The Glass Is Half Full

Ask my wife and she will tell you that I can be a bit or a Negative Nelly at times. Something will happen and I’ll be all doom and gloom and often it can take days for me to climb out of my grumpiness. But, today I turned a corner…

After a successful trip to Malton and back for our youngest girls dance exam I proceeded to head back to work after dropping her back at school and Helen at home. Something happened. 

As I was pulling out of our street there was an ominous bang – or at least I think it was a bang. Maybe it was more of a scrape? Anyway, whatever it was it didn’t sound too healthy. The thing was that as soon as that happened I was brought to a halt anyway by temporary traffic lights so I sat there waiting for the green lights so that I could move the car and assess if the noise was of any concern.

The lights eventually turned green and I slowly pulled away and immediately there was a horrific scraping noise. A noise that was distinctly that of metal being scraped on tarmac. I stopped. My hazard lights were put on and I waited until the column of traffic behind me had passed. I then proceeded to investigate what it could be.

“Oh, the bloody exhaust has fallen off” I muttered to myself as I inspect the back of the car. But, rather than the usual wave of emotions passing through my body (anger, annoyance, frustration, worry) I simply shrugged my shoulders and laughed. I actually stood there are the side of the road and laughed out loud.

You see, in the past this kind of thing would have happened on the way to Malton, meaning a missed dance exam (that was non-refundable) and in turn have set in motion and series of events and feelings that would have sent me down the rabbit hole of grumpiness. But not today. Today the car Gods were in my favour. Yes okay I have the unexpected cost of repairing the exhaust, but it happened after the event that really required the car. It happened at a time when we don’t really need the car until next week. It happened at a convenient time for the car to be in the workshop. This is something very new.

After performing the noisiest 3-point turn you would ever wish to witness and dragging the scrapping exhaust 200 meters to the local garage conveniently located for me I simply left them with my key and said “let me know the damage”. At that point I didn’t know what that damage may be. I didn’t know how much it was going to cost me and I really didn’t care. Shit happens as they say and right now I am adopting that attitude and just getting on with it.

Now I do know what it’s going to cost, but the mechanic certainly gave me a little wobble when he explained. The official Vauxhall part would cost, with fitting, over £1000. Yikes! This price bracket questions the viability of repairing a 10 year old car. However, he then let me down with 3rd party parts so thankfully the repair bill is much reduced. It’s not an insignificant cost though and at a time of year when you can certainly do with out significant unexpected costs. But I refer back to my “shit happens” attitude. Go ahead, make the repair.

Far too often I sweat the small stuff. I worry about the insignificant things in life. Yes, I worry about money and stuff like that but that can be minimised by being in control. Right now I feel in control and I’m not going to let this little blip in life cause me any more grief that in absolutely necessary.

I don’t really believe in luck. You make your own luck in life (but you don’t really). Luck is often something people aspire to have when things aren’t going their way and that being unlucky. The fact is that we all go through good and bad times. We all have crappy things happen to us but we also all have nice things happen to us. It’s called life.

Today the glass is half full – and long shall it remain that way.

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