An Unexpected Lesson

This week, I noticed once again, how my cultural stereotypes have been reinforced. I faced a couple of situations where it just seemed like everyone was unduly angry and had overdosed on entitlement right here in my backyard. What happened to that Christmas Spirit of my childhood that I so vividly remembered?

I started comparing the city of New York and its nearly 9 million people to Manchester, Iowa with its population of 5,000.

In my head, I was tempted to hypothesize that even from 1,000 miles away, the “Empire State Attitude” of New Yorkers was bleeding into rural America. Of course, this is based on a well-known assumption, “New Yorkers are rude.” 

Stuck Here Waiting

A change of plans demanded that I wait for almost 2 hours. I found no coffee shop for miles around.  The choice was to sit in the car with nothing to do or to sit in the car with nothing to do. I made my choice.

Top that off with a device that was steadily losing its charge and one could say that I was completely unprepared.

However, what could have been one of those ‘this-is-taking-forever’ experiences turned into something surprisingly worthwhile. It turned into something spiritual.