Tuesday 6 March 2007

It's Not All Bad.

When travelling to a recent Exhibition of my paintings in a Shopping Centre 30 miles away, I noticed that a serious crash had occurred on the other carriageway of the motorway. This obviously jammed up all the roads in both directions because drivers were getting off at all available exits, and I have never experienced a worse gridlock. I was supposed to arrive at the Exhibition by 9am, but I didn't arrive until 10.20am! This in itself was bad as the paintings worth thousands of pounds were left unattended in a busy shopping centre. Then I discovered that my lights weren't working - they had somehow tripped in the Mall ceiling. I was not able to have lights the whole of that day which was dark and overcast! Anyone involved with paintings knows the importance of good illumination. Despite this I had my second best day of sales and no thefts!

I thought of the person that lost his or her life in the motorway crash and considered how most that day were thinking, not of fatalities but simple things like being late for work, or having a painting stolen or losing a sale! The stress that this caused to thousands was far out of proportion to the horror of injuries and death and shocked and grieving relatives.

Then I considered how perhaps a lapse of concentration by a driver can have such far-reaching consequences and such a ripple effect. Bad things can sometimes teach us good things by forcing us to consider the far more devastating effects that there are on others rather than on ourselves. Also it can teach us to not stress about the things we cannot change. In other words live in the Present, for that is the only moment we have at that time. Anything else is our minds casting forward to "what if."

And in the end it wasn't too bad a day despite my gloomy prognosis at the time!