You are in driving seat of your life
Less than an hour after I’d entered their offices, I left the traffic department with a smile and a temporary driver’s licence.
Nothing felt as sweet as being legal on the road. I whistled in the car – I even looked for roadblocks.
Funny thing, how they’re nowhere to be seen, unless you really don’t have time, or the relevant documents to hand; which is when they surprise from behind bushes.
Pre-visit, I felt heavy and unpleasant; the complexity of bureaucracy is traditionally akin to paper cuts and hang nails.
But our local traffic department is rated one of the best by everyone I know, and justly so.
People in that building have heart – and the grins and banter rub off on surly drivers and would-be roadsters; everyone leaves smiling.
Driving home, I thought about two people in my own life who taught me to alter my attitude towards difficulty, inconvenience, bureaucracy or challenges.
A few years ago, I bid farewell to one of them, and a few years before that, to the first.
We often meet at least one elevated soul in our lifetimes – a person who encapsulates every quality that we wish we had. I was lucky, as life brought me both Amanda and Gail.
At first I wondered if their shared genetic condition, cystic fibrosis, was a coincidental common denominator – the issue that made me think of Amanda when I talked to Gail.
But in those sombre days following Gail’s passing, after a battle bravely fought, I realised there really are people with purpose in the world.
Amanda was one of my high school pupils. She was brilliant at English and wrote complex, edgy poems about love, death and adolescence.
If she hadn’t been off school frequently for treatment, nobody could possibly have connected Amanda with any sort of medical condition.
Fragile as a china doll, and built on the inside like a warrior, Amanda was focused on the most fascinating thing there is: being alive.
Several years after she died, I met Gail at the pharmacy, where she worked. Every time I popped in, I learnt something new from Gail.
When she wasn’t there, she was usually in hospital. But if you asked how she was, she’d say: “I’m fine, but how are YOU?”
I had these types of conversations with Amanda and Gail many times. Exchanges that were inspiring, educational, cheerful, relaxed and stimulating.
Amanda and Gail didn’t do guilt, shame or resentment.
And that, I know, is why I’m double-blessed. The chance to meet not one, but two, of these incomparable super-humans; to be reminded, again and then again, that your life is perfect, in this moment, just as it is.