
Murphy’s Law: You drop a piece of toast, and the butter side falls face down, ruining the toast and creating a small mess to clean up. The document you spent the afternoon working on mysteriously saves to a location never to be found again by you or the IT team. Everyone seems to have forgotten how to drive (seriously – how does this happen?). The definition of a minor annoyance that seems to us like if it can happen, it will. My December seemed to be full of Murphy and his Law, striking much more frequently, all while I’m trying to jam 15 more thing into the day (also why you noticed we went super stealth quiet here on the blog).
As the holiday season turned from busy to frantic and my breaking point was near, I had an experience that made me think about Murphy’s Law, or rather the opposite of Murphy’s Law – whatever that may called. I had a busy day of running errands, planned out as efficiently as I could. Somewhere in the middle was an appointment with my stylist. The line at the post office was shorter than expected (seriously a Christmas miracle), and a couple of other things went timed just right, and I arrived at my appointment about 20 minutes early. At first, I was a bit annoyed, because it wasn’t enough time to do anything else I needed to do, but I didn’t have anything else in that part of town that would take just 20 minutes. I decided to go in and see if she was running behind, and maybe I could make another quick stop before the appointment.
I walked in and she was open; she had finished her previous client early. That’s just not a thing. I slipped into the chair, elated with my newfound time. I was struck by how lucky it was that she could take me right away. Sure, 20 minutes isn’t a huge deal and it would have been fine for me to wait. In fact, I could have probably used the 20 minutes to just sit and breathe for a minute, come to think of it. But at that point in my day, and that point in December, 20 minutes was EVERYTHING. I thought about how much we let the little, unlucky moments stick with us – it’s Murphy’s Law. We name it, and give it power. But what about the opposite? We don’t label the little, lucky moments or allow them to stick with us. We brush them off faster than they appear. I’m not big into resolutions, but I am into sharing ideas and letting other creative people name things. What should we call these moments? Those times when the stars do align? Two or three things do break in our favor? We happen to hit all the lights just right? What happens when we start to name the fortune things that happen? What happens when we give those things power? Take that, Murphy! We’re naming these things and giving the good fortune the power…we’re just not quite sure what to call them just yet.
– Catherine Wemette
About Catherine
Catherine has been described as relentlessly positive. She doesn’t think it was necessarily meant as a compliment, but dammit, she is going to take it as one, if for no other reason that she’s pretty sure it would irritate the person who said it. Catherine is the founder of Good for Her Soul and you can reach her here.