The Joy of Delays

February 7, 2008



This blog entry is a little overdue but my days and evenings have been busy this past week. And it will probably my last entry for quite a while because I head to camp Friday evening to be involved in a camp counselor training that is going on this weekend. Then on Monday my aunt and uncle come to help out at camp for the week so I will not be doing much on the computer.

On Monday I went out to camp and then returned to the city Tuesday afternoon because I had some meetings to attend that evening. I have discovered that those things which consume my time fall into different categories. First there are the accidental delays because of some mistake on my part. And then there are those things which are completely out of my control. Tuesday was a day of both types of delays. In the morning I decided to throw some rugs in the washer and also my mophead because it was pretty nasty and I had read in the store that one was machine washer friendly. Well, the one in the store might have been but mine was not. When I went to retrieve the laundry and hang it up, I discovered that my mophead had been reduced to a ball of matted strings, many of which had separated from the rest and now lined the rugs and few t-shirts that I had in the load. Thankfully it was not a full load but I spent a good 20 minutes or so picking the strings off of the laundry. The mophead is useless as far as mopping goes but I am thinking maybe I could make it into paper pulp and try out papermaking which is to be a camp project anyway. We will see. For now I have saved the blob of strings until I have opportunity to experiment with it.

The second delay of the day was worse. I left camp around 3:45PM with hopes of reaching the city shortly after 5:00PM. I was making good time until about a mile from the city when I ran into traffic that was not moving. I knew I was very close to the city but I also had a feeling that it could be a very long wait. Thankfully it was still light out so I pulled out my journal and starte writing. We moved so seldom that it worked pretty well. One of the things I wrote down was all that I had to be thankful for even while sitting in traffic. It was a good way to help me not get so annoyed with just sitting. And so I sat and crawled along slowly for the next 2 hours. I knew it was bad when people started getting off their buses and walking. I wanted to just leave my car and walk, but I knew it was not an option. I journaled, prayed, and called some friends who I had not talked with in a while. I did struggle with not getting mad at the throngs of people who decided to try and improve their status by cutting out of line and driving either on the shoulder of the road or in the other lane. The road has one lane going in each direction and occasionally a whole line of cars would be going the wrong way in the other lane and then the traffic from the other direction would start moving again. The semis and buses had to squeeze around the on coming traffic even though they had the right away. I have to admit that I was always glad when the traffic that was trying to cut got trapped in the center and had to just sit there because the oncoming traffic was coming and the other slow moving lane did not permit them back in. In the US there are always the people taking to the shoulder and trying to move ahead in traffic jams too but often semis will work together and block their path or at least there is a little concern about the police intervening. And I have yet to see the traffic taking over the other lane and the shoulder at the same time.

I noticed that there was never just one car cutting and driving in the wrong lane. Once one went, it was a license for many others to follow. Perhaps they thought there was safety in numbers or everyone else is doing it so why not? How much influence our bad decisions can have on other people! I was also challenged to evaluate how I maybe cut people off in life.

So I arrived in the city after my meeting began, but I was not too concerned. I figured that we would not get to my part in the meeting for a long time anyway so I was not in a great hurry. I heated up my dinner and then went to the meeting thankful that for once I had not allowed myself to get so stressed and annoyed with waiting. Perhaps, (but only perhaps) I am learning.