Keep calm and...yeah right

I remember the scene very vividly in my head. I was 21 years-old and had gone to pay my annual car insurance fee. As I sat and waited, I recall staring at the employees there. They were mostly in their mid-twenties and they seemed to go along their day with little concern for time or deadlines. But then, this gangly guy wearing a large suit caught my attention. He was somewhere in his early forties. He kept fidgeting uncontrollably and was sweating profusely as he wobbled from one cubicle to the next. He was the manager, but you wouldn't have been able to tell from his demeanor. The man in the shapeless suit who was having an awful day was at the mercy of his awkward gesticulations. He looked pathetic not only in my eyes, but, I guess, also in those of his colleagues who clearly didn't seem to care enough about his work-related woes. The 21 year-old me who thought he could be immune from all kind of mundane stress, smirked and thought to himself: "How pathetic, I'll never go down that road."

So, you can see where this is going, right? 14 years later I did end up going down that path and some weeks ago I came to that realization. I was having a bad day and caught myself going through the same comical motions as those of that unfortunate gangly guy years before.  I might not have been wearing a baggy suit, but I'm pretty sure I was having a mini-meltdown, and thank god, there were no 21 year-olds in the room looking at me. But looking back, I've had other ones and yes, students have seen me in such state.

The bottom line is that I was never immune from life's hurdles after all. And now that I'm coming to terms with my fragility in the face of stress, I know I need to have some coping mechanisms to deal with it. But no matter how many self-help books you might read, the hours of meditation you might invest and the countless counseling sessions, the fact is that you'll always find yourself in those kind of situations that too often will take the best out of you. So if there's one take-away, it's this one: do something in your life that's worthwhile. Choose a calling over a career, because when you will have to endure those humbling situations, it won't all be in vain.  Most importantly, don't be the laid-back colleague who could care less.