Thinking Out Loud, Volume CDXXXVII

He had to attend an extremely important meeting in a city that was about a four hour drive from his home. Since missing that meeting was not even an option, what he should've done was to have made the trip the afternoon before, but he had chosen to get up very early the day of the meeting and make the drive in the pre-dawn hours. (The setting of this story is in the 1960s, so it was well before the days of cell phones.) As luck would have it, he blew a tire about 5:30 am, somewhere way out in the country. As soon as he opened his trunk to retrieve the spare tire, he remembered that he had used the jack a couple days earlier on a project at his house and had failed to put it back in his car. "Now what do I do?" he wondered. He recalled seeing a house no more than a half mile back, so he decided to walk back there to see if they would loan him a jack. When he started walking, he began to think about the fact that there were no lights on in the house when he passed, which meant the occupants were probably still asleep. Naturally, hearing a knock on the door before daylight would alarm them. Would they even answer the door? If they did, would he find himself staring down the barrel of a shotgun? They might be so angry at being aroused from their sleep they would want revenge. The more he walked toward the house, the more he imagined every possible scenario that could play out when he arrived. When he finally found himself at the front door, his mind was in the process of playing out a possible conversation with an inhabitant who was so mad, he was refusing to loan him the jack. He knocked and waited, while his mind was still whirling. Eventually, the door opened, and a man said, "What can I do for you?" The traveler, whose mind was still in the "imagining" stage replied, "Well, it's your jack, so you can just take it and stuff it!" He immediately realized how foolish he had sounded, so he quickly corrected his tone as well as words. As it turned out, not only did the owner of the house loan him his jack, but he also drove him back to his car and helped him change the tire. My dad read that story in a magazine, and told me about it when I was just a kid. Although it turned out to be a little humorous near the end, it's gives us a good picture of human nature. Have you ever let your mind take you through some dreadful scenes of an event before it ever happened? I am so guilty!! Let's say your boss calls and leaves you a message to call him back as soon as possible. Here are a few of the scenes that play out in our minds before we call him back: "Maybe he's gonna fire me. Or he might have found out what I told that customer who was so rude to me. I just know he's gonna make me work next weekend, and he is well aware we have plans." Why do we do that? We have a tendency to worry ourselves sick over events that have not yet happened, and will likely never happen. I realize fixing that problem is easier said than done, but self-improvement is never an easy task. If unpleasant scenes take place in our minds, the effect they can have on us can be almost as bad as if they had really happened, yet it's totally unnecessary. If something bad really happens, we can deal with it then, but there's no reason to live it out in our minds before it occurs, because in most instances, it never actually comes to pass; and if it does, it's usually not as bad as we imagined. Besides, if we imagine it, and then it actually happens, we have to live through it twice. After all, the boss just needs you to go by the post office and pick up some stamps on your way to work. Preston