You, must, chill!

We have been working at the distant job site again the last few days, and have been putting in an extra hour or two each day to try to wrap things up. The long days and seemingly-never-ending job has been wearing on the both of us. Long days, short nights, you know how it adds up.

I generally eat dinner on the second leg of the drive home, sometime between 7:30 and 8:30. I have been pretty good at staying off of the fast food lately, but dinner Tuesday night was provided by In-N-Out Burger. I was pretty hungry by the time the 8:45 dinner bell rang, so I ordered the Double-Double, Animal style. Ironically, being a fast-food restaurant with a name like In-N-Out, they are not very quick at getting the food to you.

While I was standing in the lobby trying to take a little standing cat-nap, a guy sitting at a nearby table knocked over his Coke, spilling it into his lap, onto his white athletic outfit. And his second reaction (after the initial cold shock) was to laugh. His wife/girlfriend joined in and laughed at it as well. And I have to tell you, my first reaction was admiration for the guy.

If I had knocked a Coke into my lap, I know there would be no laughter any time soon, if at all. I'm pretty sure I would have been pissed off and berated my own clumsiness. Especially that night when my energy and patience were low, my head might have popped off.

I was relaying this story to Sean on the drive home tonight. His thought is that we all walk around with a bag of stupid mistakes, and every few days or so we pluck one out and shine it up for the world to see. Sometimes we take big handfuls, several times a day, and it feels like our bag is bigger than anyone else's. We feel so incompetent that it is hard to imagine that we are able to feed and clothe ourselves each morning. In those moments it is hard to remember the string of days that we avoided reaching into our bag of stupid mistakes. Hard to remember that we're all human, all imperfect, and were not the dumbest/clumsiest fool on the planet.,

 I need to take a lesson from the guy from In-N-Out. I need to learn to laugh at myself when I make the (inevitable) stupid mistake. Lord knows I'm not perfect, and I shouldn't be surprised or irritated by my next boneheaded move.

 And of course I need to get more sleep and eat at healthier establishments, but at least my cholesterol burger came with a side of wisdom.