Stop. Take a deep breath and slowly, languidly take a look around. Crack a smile to get the endorphins flowing. There, isn’t that better. This is something that everyone should do once at least once a day. The reason for this little tirade all stems from an experience at the coffee shop drive through this morning on the way to work. I’ll go into detail about that later, but for the time being, let’s all relax and enjoy life for a couple of seconds. Amazing isn’t it. Take 10 seconds out of the hustle and bustle of the work a day world and things look a little brighter. Do this every day and you start to see the beauty in the smallest, stupidest things. Trust me, it works.

I’m driving to work in my usual half awake – half asleep manner this morning, a smoke hanging out of the side of my face, juggling my Blackberry and the MP3 player which always insists on crashing just as I hit the expressway, and valiantly try to shake enough of the sleep out of my head so I can appear to be somewhat awake when I walk into the office.

I should point out that I am not a graceful riser in the morning. Dawn breaks through my bedroom window and has to pummel me awake every morning. The left wing radio announcer on my radio always brings me out of the slumber with some biting commentary on whatever the hot button of the day is. Whether it’s the political up rage in some shit splat country I’ve never heard of, or a newspaper article about Aunt Ethel running a brothel in mid suburbia, it helps to bring me up to at least the zombie level. One thing I give the morning leftist, he is passionate. You can almost see the spit flying from his mouth. This morning he was ranting about how the town should pass a law not allowing anyone with a sexual charge against them to be allowed to live here. Imagine if you will, in the best John Wayne persona you can impersonate in your head “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us, Pilgrim”, at which point the Duke pulls out a portable hand cannon and starts blowing away all the baddies as far as the eye can see. Problem is, now that the duke has killed all the criminal perv’s, he’s run out of targets. That’s ok; there are a few smut shops around. Best get rid of them too. Stop…Take a deep breath…

I pull into the drive through, mutter something into the microphone that sounds not entirely unlike “Two extra large double-double’s” and wait for the idiot in front of me who just couldn’t pass on ordering the 14 sandwiches for the next two weeks worth of lunch. When he does get to the window, I cringe in horror knowing my coffee is now going to be ten minutes longer as he begins the conversation with the window girl. All of these conversations start the same way too. “Sorry for ordering so much, but (interject whatever you want from this point on) I can’t come by later to get my lunch because I’m locked in meetings, and then I have to go nurse my sick cow on my lunch break, and she’ll only drink goats milk, so I have to go to Spain to find the right farmer, who only accepts peanut shells from Zimbabwe as payment, so with all the flight time and peanut eating you can see why I have to make everyone else in this line late for work.”

I need coffee to survive. They should have a separate line in the drive through just for people who feel like talking. That way we all get what we want. I get coffee and lonely guy gets a 10 minute friend.

I get up to the window and make the early morning grimace that only we people who fight to wake up can make. It’s a wonderful expression that manages to convey the fact that I really do appreciate you making me a coffee and all, but please don’t talk to me because my head is still on my pillow listening to the morning rant of a left wing announcer and I wouldn’t respond with anything that would make sense to either of us. As the first cup of mother’s milk is being passed out the window to me I go to grab it and notice the lid isn’t on there quite right…it looks like it isn’t on there all the way…the hot coffee is starting to flow over the top, and as soon as I have it in my hand, the coffee proceeds to pour straight down into my lap. Now, this is the important part. Time fractured for a couple of seconds this morning, in which the two paths were laid in front of me, but I had to choose wisely. As time stopped, I seen the “yelling at the girl in the window” path, and the “It’s ok, shit happens” path. I regularly forget how old I am but for that fraction of a second the brain was revving at 70000RPM showing the fallout from path number one. The human brain always amazes me at how it can prioritize importance versus repetition. I opted for the shit happens path, we both had a laugh, and I drove away.

Ok, the important bit doesn’t seem that significant until you look at it again. I have seen people balling out those minimum wage, dreamy eyed girls in the morning for an honest to goodness mistake, and you can bet that she is going to carry that around for a while. We all have to start somewhere, and by yelling and screaming at her, you aren’t going to feel any better (unless you are that shallow of a bitter asshole), and you can bet that she is going to be distraught all day because of it. For that fraction of a second, Stop, breathe and think about what you are going to do. Everyone will be better off if you do.

Or to paraphrase this entire entry, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and if you’re one of those people who read the end of the book first, to paraphrase Stephen Wright, the zebra did it.