While rushing to my car yesterday in down town Austin I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, pulled my right hamstring and almost splayed out in front of a bus load of people. How embarrassing! After righting myself from my rapid descent into the pavement, I locked eyes with the bus driver, shrugged my shoulders and started laughing. He did too! So with a smile on my face, a slight limp in my right leg and my head held high, I forged on across the street to my car, grateful that it wasn’t a busy intersection with a bigger audience. I laugh at myself often. How often do you laugh at yourself? Or do you take yourself so seriously that instead of laughing and learning, you are chastising and fretting?
Oh sure, I chastise and fret too. But I’ve found that when I choose to laugh instead, I can see the learning experience in the event. A much more positive way to handle the occasional trip, fall or flub. What I learned today is that I could have fretted over how stupid I must have looked to the people on the bus, or even worse, whether or not there was anyone on the bus that knew me. What horror! By choosing to laugh instead I learned that I should probably slow down more, pay attention to the details a little more (you know, smell the roses, or in this case, avoid the cracks) and keep laughing. After all it is the best medicine. And sometimes that’s all that’s left for you to do. It’s certainly better than crying over feeling stupid. And even better, I may have made someone’s day by giving them something to laugh about too.