Do when you can, Pause otherwise

One day I was waiting for the lift at the ground floor of my office. Suddenly a gentleman came in haste and pressed the lift button. Since I had already pressed the lift button, it was highlighted. So I was a bit amused by his action. However, I ignored it. I could see the countdown of the number on the panel as the lift descended.

After a few seconds, the gentleman again pressed the button. Now his demeanor caught my attention. I started to observe him. I saw that he was dressed in a neatly ironed full-sleeve formal blue shirt and black pants. His hair neatly combed. He held a laptop bag. I could see a streak of sweat running down his forehead. He seemed to have reached the office in a hurry. I guessed he was late for a meeting or something.

A few seconds passed, the indicator showed the number 4. I was waiting patiently when this amazing gentleman again pressed the button. Now I had to speak up. I simply told him, ‘the Lift is going to take its own sweet time to reach the G floor irrespective of the number of times you press the button.’ He gave me a surprised look, taken aback by the sudden intervention. He was not expecting it. He looked at me sheepishly and replied, ‘Yes you are right. Just that I am running late for a meeting hence anxious’. I smiled and waited for the lift. He did not press the button again but simply waited with me.

Finally the lift arrived and we got in. All the time while we were in the lift I noticed this gentle man alternately breaking his knuckle and loosening his shirt’s collar whenever the lift stopped and opened at any floor.

When my floor arrived, I wished him best luck for his meeting and left.

             *********************

Few days later, I met an old friend of mine in a supermarket in my town. It’s such a wonderful feeling when you bang across old friends. All the old memories revive. We spent long hours chatting about our old days. Time just flew before we realized that we had to be back home to carry out our responsibilities. My friend happened to stay near to my house so I decided to drop her. She seemed more tensed of being late than I was as she had left her 3 year kid with her husband for babysitting. While we were in the auto, I asked the auto driver to drive a bit faster. There were few signals in our area. When we reached a signal, I saw my friend being overanxious and uneasy. She kept complaining about the signal being in Red for too long. I could understand her anxiety and could totally connect with her due to her concern about the situation back home. However, in her current state I found her behavior a bit ridiculous. I told her, ‘if the signals could become green the instance we raised our Blood pressure, then none of the signals in the world would ever go Red! While the signal is Red, there is nothing better that we can do but wait for it to turn Green’.

At that, my friend burst into a laughter and she remained more relaxed until she reached her home

Similar to the above two examples, in our day to day life we worry about a missed train or a bus, we even worry about the behavior of certain people which in turn affect our own health.

Inadvertently, its basic human nature to worry about each and every unpleasant thing in life. But sometimes, give a pause and think. Is it really worth worrying about things which are not in our control? By worrying about such things, we are only creating health hazards for ourselves. Anxiety can lead to many health problems, High blood pressure can be dangerous!

When you have missed a train or a bus, you will, no doubt, be late for the task or destination. But if you have a better workaround for it, like taking the next flight then it’s worth using this stress hormones to explore the alternate options, do the bookings immediately etc. to get positive results. However, if there is nothing you could do but simply wait for the next train or bus to arrive, then what is the point of increasing your adrenaline along with the damage caused due to your own tardiness?

Hence remember, while we have many things in our plate to worry about, it would be wiser to neglect those which we cannot do anything about. Maybe such small breezers are what we need in our otherwise stressful life!