“Do you have change sir?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I have two dollars.”
“Yes, but with the extra passenger, it’s four dollars.”
“I know, I have twenty dollar bill.”
“Ok, please step on the lift sir. Careful now. There’s no rush.”
As I operate the lift, help my psassenger to his seat and secure his walker, I make the quick decision to say nothing more about the fare. He appears to be in his eighties, traveling with his granddaughter and great-grandson. As I pull away, I think of why I just let this go. I’m happy with my decision.
I’m happy in general. Things have been going very well for me. My relationships, my creative endeavors, my job, my over-all health… I even had some good luck (along with everyone else on this island) with the recent storm that had threatened where I live.
Things are good!
When I started writing this post, I’d thought I was going to make it about making my own rules. How I make decisions in the face of policies I am obligated to follow and when I can and/or should ignore or bend any given policy. I was going to contrast how I just dealt with this passenger, with those I wrote about in the post I made last week titled “The Rules“.
I then looked for a quote about, making my own rules. I didn’t care for all the cliché results I got, so I tried looking at this topic from the perspective of possible consequences. What can happen when one decides to make their own rules. This (for some reason) made me think of a dramatic series I’d recently watched on Netflix called Ozark. There was a character who had made that highly annoying comment “Everything happens for a reason” and the main character (his business partner) responded by saying…
“That’s a bunch of crap. Things happen because human beings make decisions, they commit acts, and that makes things happen. And it creates a snowball effect with the, you know, their world around them, causes other people to make decisions. Cycle continues, snowball keeps rolling. And even when that’s not the case, when life’s events are not connected to other people’s decisions and actions, it’s not some bullshit fucking test sent down from the universe to check your resolve, you know.”
I then did a quick search again and typed… everything does NOT happen for a reason”. I was happy to read several articles and blog posts with this theme, by people of quite diverse backgrounds. None of the articles I read were exactly how I would deal with the topic but then I thought… why would I want to write on this topic? I then searched with… just because everything does NOT happen for a reason doesn’t mean you can’t find meaning in everything that happens.
The results of my second search was pretty much exactly the same as the first.
Interesting…
As I drive on to my next pickup, I stop thinking about what I’d just done. I stop thinking of the potential consequences and why I had ignored them. I just drive on to my next pickup, happy to do so and knowing it was the right thing to do. I’m happy.
And happiness RULES!!
