Nothing to Complain About

I left the house at 7:45 this morning. Plenty of time to get to work in Raleigh. Not half a mile from home my maps rerouted me. Accident ahead. I changed routes. Three miles later, another reroute, traffic backed up. I changed routes. My arrival time kept getting later and later. Then it happened again. This time the traffic was at a dead stop. I inched along to a place I could turn off and changed routes. I eventually arrived. My commute had doubled.

I found out the last detour was due to a tree down across a major road. Thank goodness my other detours delayed me long enough not to be hit by that tree. That is the way I looked at it. Not that my normal 30 minutes had taken a hour, but thanks to that extra time I was not on my normal road right as a tree was going to fall and hit some cars and stop traffic all together.

Sometimes you need to pull back from a scene and see the bigger picture. I wasn’t late for class because I always leave plenty of time for the unexpected. I wasn’t happy to constantly be rerouted and spend more time in the car, but it really wasn’t that much of a hardship. I got to listen to more of the wonderful book I am listening to.

I think about how my younger self would have reacted to all this rerouting and doubling of commute times. I am certain forty years ago I might have been screaming in my car. Who I was screaming at I do not know since only I could hear myself. I love that with age comes the acceptance of what we can not change. With age you see that maybe little annoying things are ok if it means you don’t have terrible horrific things.

Maybe I am just a little delirious from my fourteen hour day, but I am thankful for it also. I look forward to getting up early and doing it all again tomorrow, but only two classes instead of three. Nothing to complain about.