Wednesday Whiteboard Quote - Week of April 8

"Why can't anything go the way it's supposed to?" "Oh, it did. It just didn't go the way you wanted it to. You may be a brave b***h, but you can't control the universe." -The Big C

Atlanta is notorious for its bad/reckless/dangerous drivers. Having lived in NYC for three years, I figured, "How much worse could it possibly be," when I moved to the ATL back in 2022. Well, let's just say I was never involved in a hit-and-run in NYC.  

Luckily, only the front bumper of my car was partially ripped off (see picture below) when the box truck trying to exit a convenience store by dashing across a few lanes of traffic misjudged the distance of my front bumper and just tore it up as he went on his merry way.  

Was it personal that the box truck hit me? No 

Did I take it personally? Yes 

Was the box truck supposed to hit me? Also yes  

What do you mean, "was it supposed to hit you"? Of course it wasn't! That person should never have been in a hurry and should never have tried to cut a turn too close and they should have stopped when they realized they had hit you.  

You see, we too quickly equate what we want to happen with what is supposed to happen based on all of the causes that came before. What is supposed to happen is what happened. Reality. It's super simple. When we fight with that, we lose.  

We behave as if our minuscule number of experiences should influence what is happening everywhere outside all at once. And then we take responsibility or beat ourselves up when something "goes wrong." Again, it didn't go wrong; it went the only way it could have gone based on all the countless moments that came before it. How many different moments before had to happen for that box truck's front left bumper and my driver's side bumper to meet? I'll wait. And I'm taking that personally and getting upset over a celestial meeting thousands of years in the making?  

Am I saying that we have to be elated and jubilant to pull over, call the cops, get in touch with insurance, go back to the store to try and get surveillance camera footage of the hit and run, deal with the autobody shop for repairs, on and on? No. But we definitely don't need to take it personally or waste any more energy on the "it shouldn't have happened," or "life is just so unfair," or "this always only happens to me."  

When we waste our energy on these and all the other "bad" (the times it didn't go the way we wanted) experiences we have stored, we sacrifice the energy meant for those we love.