Monday night I got home to the fire alarm in my building going off and all my neighbors standing out in the courtyard. There was no fire, but it took some time for the fire department to get there and turn it off. We eventually all went back inside. But then the alarm went off again around midnight. Then again around 1am.
The next morning on my way to work, I quite impressively spilled most of the contents of my water bottle all over my dress shirt and pants - as well as the steering wheel and driver's seat of my Subaru. That must have been an omen, because a number of other things ended up going wrong that day.
In the past couple weeks, I've had a couple pretty significant disappointments - which hasn't happened in a while. One of them was a job I interviewed for and was really excited about but didn't end up getting. But, surprisingly, I didn't get down about them the way I used to. I'm starting to see that your outlook determines how you experience things. When I was waiting with my neighbors for the fire alarm to stop wailing, I got to watch all their dogs run around in the courtyard, playing with each other in total doggie bliss – and it made my spirit happy. When I soaked myself with water on my way to work, I thought, "Well, at least it wasn't coffee." When I didn't get that job, I just concluded that there's some other job out there that I'm meant to have.
If you would've known me a few years ago, you'd say I'm not the same person. And, by the grace of God, I'm not. Or maybe I'm the same person, it's just that I've peeled away all those protective layers of cynicism, fear and insecurity. I always thought those layers were buffers against the core of human experience, which I thought was pain. But now that I've let down my defenses and learned to be more vulnerable and open, I've found that the core of human experience is not pain but joy.
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