The phone jingled loudly, unceasingly at 1:30 am. Dazed and started from a deep sleep, I jumped out of bed angling one foot toward the floor. My legs stiffened as my body stood, finally balancing me. I grabbed the charging, battery-powered cell phone nestled beside my purse on the nearby chair.
“You’re kidding me,” I shouted angrily at the recorded announcement, and hung up.
I can’t believe this: a five-hour departure delay for the trip of my lifetime. What if I don’t make it on time?
I went to bed earlier in the evening feeling happy and excited, plans and preparation completed and ready for the alarm clock to awaken me at 4:00 am. My book, “Doorways to Significance: Finding Peace, Power & Passion,” would be featured within the next 36 hours for a reading, autographs and sales at the largest author collaboration in the Mid-Atlantic States, the 2012 Virginia Festival of the Book. This is a big deal for me, a newly-published author. With this delay, my plans and my future were surely ruined, I thought.
Where did the bliss go?
I don’t know how long the anger lasted in my doubting, fearful sleepy mind.
Startled later with a dreamy awareness and limited consciousness, this thought prevailed: Don’t all the helpless birds have a nest?
I am now comfortably seated on Flight 624, seat 6A, on the way to the Festival with only a minimally-adjusted itinerary and a mindset: Misfortune (anger) is within the beholder’s mind. Bliss is the sublime elixir of hopeful thoughts.
Life matters seem to work out when I engage optimistic thoughts for a positive outcome instead of wallowing in fear and doubt.
