I’ve stopped letting things I can’t control bother me. There’s no point getting myself worked up over events I can do nothing about. I don’t mean big picture things–I can still call my politicians, write letters, donate money to causes that matter to me, but the every day annoyances that come with life no longer make me tense.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, my husband and I met our son at a hotel in order to attend our niece’s wedding. We’d driven several hours and were tired. We had a short time frame to get changed for the wedding. Our room wasn’t ready. No one’s room was ready, even though it was after check-in time. Hotel employees had called in sick or whatever, and the rooms hadn’t been turned. The lobby was filled with at least one girls’ soccer team waiting to check in. My husband was short with the manager: “At least find us some place to change our clothes for our niece’s wedding!” One of the chaperone\/mother’s asked me why I wasn’t more upset. She was upset and her situation wasn’t anything like being late for a wedding. “What good will getting upset do me?” I asked her. “It won’t change anything.” She hadn’t considered that. She offered us her room should she get checked in before we could. The kindness of strangers! We eventually got a room, changed our clothes and drove to the venue. We were on time. The wedding was lovely.<\/p>\n
Several years later, I was in Las Vegas on business. The flight home turned into a nightmare. We were stuck on the runway for what seemed like hours. I did not have a smart phone at the time, so unlike many others around me, I couldn’t change my connecting flights, etc. We ended up getting into Charlotte at some ungodly hour. We were not offered cots, meal vouchers, or anything else. I was in that airport for 18 hours. Instead of getting upset, I made myself the hostess of Gate B10. I helped people whose phone’s needed charging–several of the charging stations were not functional. I chatted up people, listened to their tales of being delayed. Several people asked me why I wasn’t more upset at my own situation. Again: getting upset would change nothing and only give me bad memories. I tried to make the best of a crappy situation. I finally got on a plane to Atlanta, where I had another layover, before I finally made it home. My luggage made it the previous day. Go figure. But that’s another story.<\/p>\n
There are only so many things in our lives we can control. Accepting that makes for a much more peaceful life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve stopped letting things I can’t control bother me. There’s no point getting myself worked up over events I can do nothing about. I don’t mean big picture things–I can still call my politicians, write letters, donate money to causes that matter to me, but the every day annoyances that come with life no longer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ml_titleColor":"#000000","_ml_titleFont":"Roboto","_ml_titleFontSize":1.1359999999999998987476601541857235133647918701171875,"_ml_titleFontWeight":"400","_ml_titleLineHeight":1.3000000000000000444089209850062616169452667236328125,"_ml_metaColor":"#708090","_ml_metaFont":"Montserrat","_ml_metaFontSize":0.67849999999999999200639422269887290894985198974609375,"_ml_metaFontWeight":"400","_ml_metaLineHeight":0.92000000000000003996802888650563545525074005126953125,"_ml_bodyColor":"#a9a9a9","_ml_bodyFont":"Open Sans","_ml_bodyFontSize":0.84999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359375,"_ml_bodyFontWeight":"400","_ml_bodyLineHeight":1.1999999999999999555910790149937383830547332763671875,"_ml_wooPriceColor":"#666","_ml_wooPriceFont":"Open Sans","_ml_wooPriceFontSize":0.90000000000000002220446049250313080847263336181640625,"_ml_wooPriceFontWeight":"400","_ml_wooPriceLineHeight":1.270000000000000017763568394002504646778106689453125,"_ml_headingColor":"#000","_ml_headingFont":"Merriweather","_ml_headingFontSize":2.020000000000000017763568394002504646778106689453125,"_ml_headingFontWeight":"700","_ml_headingLineHeight":1.4699999999999999733546474089962430298328399658203125,"_mlglobal_userfontcolors":{"headingColorUser":[],"titleColorUser":[],"metaColorUser":[],"bodyColorUser":[],"wooPriceColorUser":[]},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-foibles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"18":{"name":"Life & Foibles","link":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/?cat=18"}},"tags_names":[],"comments_number":"0","wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1079,"href":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions\/1079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comptonplations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}