March 07, 2007
"Because They're Mine"
A few
weeks ago, while on one of the many many business trips, I found myself in the following situation.
There I was, in my hotel room on the 22nd floor, having a heated discussion with the person on the other line. As I was talking, I was pacing up and down in front of the window, occasionally gesticulating furiously with one hand, occasionally pulling my hair or clenching my fist to prevent a potential meltdown while holding the mobile with the other. This went on for about 15 minutes until I looked out the window at the hotel across the road.
And there, just a few floors above me, there was a guy who was seemingly in the same situation as me. I stopped pacing and stood there, watching him. And as I watched, he paced up and down, sat down on his chair, got up and paced some more, pulled at his tie, ran his fingers through his hair; all the while on his mobile phone.
I had to smile, even though the conversation I was in the midst of having was nowhere near funny. While I had no clue what my "twin" was upset about, I felt some kind of empathy for him and from a third-party perspective there was something funny about two strangers reacting in identical ways, mirroring each other across the road, 60 odd metres above the city.
I guess my takeaway from this is that while your problems seem to be the biggest in the world, the same holds true for everyone else. I remember one scene from Ally McBeal (I used to love that show - it was mandatory viewing every Tuesday night on Fox during my cable-less college years) where Ally was asked why her problems were bigger than anyone else's. With a surprised look on her face, as if to say it was a silly question, she replied: "Because they're mine."
But seeing that guy through the window, I realised that perspective is everything. Boil things down to the simplest of elements and every person has the same problems as the guy next door: the root causes and the solutions are less varied than you think.
It was then that I realised, nothing is totally unbearable. Because somewhere out there, someone is going through similar shit, if not the same shit, as you.
Posted by scrabbyfoo at March 7, 2007 06:13 PM