Shit happens
When was the last time you had a dramatic shift in mood or perspective?
Yesterday I caught up with a new work friend over lunch, after which we went for a walk. I was describing how, for a number of personal and work reasons, the last couple of weeks have been extremely hard - I've been feeling quite low energy, low focus, low productivity, operating on about half speed. It's felt a bit like wading through treacle; I think one might describe it as being on the cusp of emotional burnout. Then a bird shit on me.
Honestly, you should have seen the size of this poo. It graced my favourite hat, plopped unceremoniously into the hood of my jacket, somehow also getting right between my various layers. It was weighty. It felt like someone had dropped a tennis ball on me from a height. A tennis ball made of greenish-white gunk.
I didn't actually notice quite how substantial the damage was until I got to a nearby public toilet and was able to take the offending articles off and do my best to remove some of mess from what I was wearing (although that's a generous retelling of what was effectively smearing it around using council-funded loo roll). There was so much of it that I had to exit the loo and demonstrate to my new friend the sheer volume of the poop, just so I had a witness.
Both of us fell about laughing. Because there was nothing else to do but laugh. What would being more annoyed or upset achieve? And it was funny, made funnier by the newness of our friendship, the sunny day, and - and I really can't stress this enough - just how big the poo was. As we walked back to the office, shit-covered articles of clothing in hand, I realised that my mood and attention was the clearest it had been in the preceding ten days. After a momentary annoyance, a sense of something akin to joy kicked in - not happiness that it had happened kind of joy, but joy in the silliness of the situation.
I was reminded of De Koven's parable of The Path, The Poop and The Wasp in A Playful Path, wherein Bernie is reminded - via the medium of dog poop and resultant wasp stings - that walking a playful path doesn't promise comfort or reward; you just find what you find. It's how you respond to it that matters. The poop arrives whether you're ready for it or not. So does the wasp.
As we walked back to the office my friend said through her chuckling, "I'm sorry, that's not exactly what you needed today".
Maybe it was.