I woke yesterday morning with an unusual dose of bounce, life and gusto. With great theatrics, I skipped into the kitchen flipped on the kettle, threw a bunch of Jade Mist Green Tea leaves into my brewing vessel, splashed water from a great height and waited my ritual three minutes for a morning dose of joy. With tea, music, headphones and a basket full of sunshine in hand, I ventured out to my little possy on the back deck and considered with great enthusiasm my next blog entry. Only now, realising what was a knowing, mischievous inner voice, a striking thought was thrown into my mind “now what on earth could spoil a day like today!”. Yes. Indeed.
And then the email arrived. And oh how it arrived. A ridonculously time-sensitive super-duper valuable document I had sent a couple of days earlier that had been marked as delivered with a smile, was nowhere to be found. I think my insides resembled a washing machine at that moment.
Ha. So much for my blog entry. So much for any form of productiveness whatsoever. My blog entry was shelved to the following day (that’s today!), my to-do list was seriously revised to remove any creativity-demanding / being-nice-to-people-skills related tasks and replaced with cutting up tea menus and packaging tea. Strangely, I don’t mind packaging tea on occasion. It’s brainless, monotonous and therapeutic.
I know myself well in these circumstances, the usual “the world is coming to an end!” takes over and it’s a downward spiral from there. But this time I decided to take a step back and actually let a little objectivity play a role; after all, I had done everything in my power to solve the problem, I was now playing the waiting game. I thought I might even do something crazy like let wisdom influence the moment. It’s an opportunity in disguise! Or a setback, a chance to stop, to consider my response and take a different path! And what if this moment was specifically orchestrated to prepare me to have the capacity to deal with bigger and more complicated difficulties? A new calm decisiveness started to direct my thoughts and I even managed to enjoy chats with a few clients.
I’m not saying these thoughts stopped my stomach from churning entirely, and certainly the relief when I received the email that the document had been found was indeed, great. But there was a little sense of inner pride when I realised I hadn’t responded too badly, that just because difficulties in the past had sometimes seen me spiral into anxious oblivion, it didn’t mean this would always be the way and perhaps I may even have the capacity to deal with greater things.
And there’s one thing I know for sure, that the road to greater things is always mottled with crisis - and joy if you’re ready.