“For goodness sake!”, I whispered to myself, frustrated,  as the customer in front of me at the counter in River Island fannied around with her purse for what seemed an eternity, laboriously counting up the coins she needed to hand over to the cashier to pay for her new pair of plimsolls.  I looked at my watch and noticed the time – 11:27am.   I was determined to catch the 11:35am bus home as that would be the one that ran nearest to my house.  Rain was looking likely and this particular bus ran only twice an hour, so I needed to pay and dash as quickly as possible if I was to have a chance of catching it.  The customer continued to take her time resolving the payment, and then a balloon burst inside one of her shopping bags, which resulted in her toddler being terribly upset and only exacerbated the pandemonium.   I was tense, and also a little bit frustrated after eventually conceding that there was no way I was going to make that bus anymore.

I slunk out of the shop, later than planned, and wondered what could fill my time up for half an hour before the next bus arrived.  It was at this point that I checked my phone and noticed a missed call from my mother.  It transpired that she was in town too and wanted to meet for a coffee – something I can never turn down.

Had I got out of River Island when I wanted to, I would have bolted towards the bus, paid my fare and sat down before checking my phone – at which point it would have been too late for me to go and meet my mother.  Instead, I met her, we had our coffee, and during the additional time in town I remembered something which I had set off to buy in the first place, but had forgotten about in my frenzy to try and make the 11:35 bus.

I guess it was just like they say:

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Well, perhaps not everything.  The example above is a very simplistic and convenient one.  There are many other experiences which are a lot harder to understand.  For example, I’ll never see a reason for somebody planting a hoax bomb by the station last night, which consequentially evacuated the city and wasted everybody’s time.  Though maybe, I do see one positive outcome – that being the first-class response of the police and emergency services, which will surely have made myself and other residents of Canterbury feel a lot safer about living here.

Maybe it is not that things always happen for a reason.  Perhaps it is just that there is just good and bad to be found in everything, provided we make the effort to look for it.   Things are only ever what we make of them and sometimes it is not about what has happened, but how we react to it.  Everything we experience teaches us in some form or another and as such there is always a lesson that can be taken away and used for our next experiment.

Just a short thought anyway…

 

Song of the Day:    Socratic – Diamond in a World of Coal

I’m not usually a fan of these American alt-rock bands that have nasal-voiced vocalists (think Panic at the Disco or My Chemical Romance) but there’s something quite original and unique about New Jersey indie-rock outfit, Socratic.  This song is one which particularly grabbed my attention this week.  Beautiful.