Sitting in Traffic & a Change in Perspective

This post came to me while sitting on a closed highway due to an accident ahead. I was on my way to meet friends for a bike ride on Columbia Trail (my favorite in NJ) when I encountered the sudden highway shutdown. Normally I would have been flipping out at the delay and inconvenience, but while sitting there it dawned on me that I was not angry at all. Rather, my thoughts were not about my issue, instead they were more focused on hoping those involved were OK. Those of you who know me are probably thinking there is a pod somewhere in my back yard and I have been replaced by a clone (for those who don’t get the reference, Google “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”).

It is all about perspective, and after several recent events that caused a significant shift in my outlook and priorities, being stuck in that traffic was not even a blip on the radar. I was thankful that I was not involved, as I found out when the road re-opened that I was a couple of hundred yards from ground zero. A few seconds earlier on my part and I could have been the one taken away in the helicopter.

Sitting there, I chuckled at the guy doing laps around his vehicle, especially how he looked up on each lap to see if traffic was moving yet. I groaned though when I saw a truck driver shut down his rig and walk ahead. That told me we were in for a long wait – not angry, just resigned to sitting on Rte. 78 working on my tan for a while. I kept in touch with my friends at the trail head and told them to start their ride and I would meet them on the trial on their way back. They would have waited but I had no idea how long before we were free to go and it wasn’t fair to them to keep them waiting around.

After about an hour, the road opened and we were on our way. The timing worked out pretty good for my ride as I hit the trail and headed north, meeting the guys about 2/3 of the way up as they were coming back. It was a good ride, and I got a respectable 15 miles in. Not the plan, but fun being out on the trail and riding with my friends after a couple of missed weeks. It seems like I’m not supposed to focus on my mileage goal this year. And that’s OK. It’s actually freeing – another change in my perspective that I didn’t see coming.

Fast forward a few days when first, one of our TVs decided it no longer wanted to work with the remote. That was followed by a lightning strike close to our house frying our modem, a cable box, and my desktop computer. Yeah, that was a lot at once and very annoying, but again I didn’t get angry, I just sighed and went about putting things back in order. That entailed getting a new TV, dealing with the cable company for new equipment, and buying and setting up (with the help of a local repair/network guy) a new computer. Instead of focusing on the negatives I was thankful that it hadn’t been worse. Yeah, it was painful, but that lightning could have cooked our house, and I didn’t lose any data thanks to being able to restore files from the cloud backup service I use.

The computer part actually was a blessing as the dead machine was 8 years old and very slow. I only restored the files I need, which greatly reduces the storage space required both on my computer and in the backup data set, and I was able to delete a lot of stuff from the cloud location, reducing the storage I have to pay for. Both of those cleanups were long overdue anyway. After 4 days working to get the new machine and network fully setup, as I type this, the new computer is completing a multi-day backup operation. Once that is done I can exhale – phew! Note: 7 days later, backup finally complete!!

Yeah, the above occurrences caused inconvenience and the computer issue was painful, but both showed me how to focus on the positive side of things. Nothing that happens to us is good or bad until we assign meaning to it, so choose to look for the positives in life. It took some recent events to kick me into a different gear, and my message to you is don’t wait for something to knock you into a more positive mindset. Life is too short, and we humans are too fragile.

www.RetiredandInspiredat55.com 7-10-2023