I recently heard the most beautiful story and this weird few days before New Year felt like a good time to share it.
Have you ever gone through a toll booth? Pull up to the kiosk, hand over your money, thank you and off you go. It’s one of life’s frequent non-encounters: rarely are they memorable. However……
Late one morning in 1984, a man headed for lunch in San Francisco and drove to one of the booths. He, unexpectedly, heard loud music from inside the booth. It sounded like a party. Inside the booth, the man was dancing.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m having a party,” the man said.
“What about the rest of these people?” Looking over at other booths; nothing moving there.
“They’re not invited.”
Obviously this bought up a whole host of questions, but somebody in a big hurry behind meant that the exchange had to come to an end.
Months later, arriving in San Francisco again, loud music was heard and the man in the booth was still having a party.
“What are you doing?”
“I remember you from the last time. I’m still dancing. I’m having the same party.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
The man in the booth said “Stop. What do those other booths look like to you?”
“They look like toll booths.”
“Noooo imagination!”
“Okay, I give up. What do they look like to you?”
He said, “Vertical coffins. At 8:30 every morning, live people get in. Then they die for eight hours. At 4:30, they reemerge and go home.”
“Why is it different for you then?”
“I knew you were going to ask that,” he said. “I’m going to be a dancer someday.I don’t understand why anybody would think my job is boring. I have a corner office, glass on all sides. I can see the Golden Gate, San Francisco, the Berkeley hills; half the Western world vacations here and I just stroll in every day and practice dancing.”
Sixteen people dead on the job, and the seventeenth, in precisely the same situation, figures out a way to live. That man was having a party rather than embracing the boredom.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
So, how happy is your 2022 going to be? Your decision.
