That was quite an interesting event on Tuesday, wasn’t it? For those of our readers who live in the western United States a 5.8 earthquake probably doesn’t seem like much, but it was a big shock for us on the East Coast! In a brief 10-20 seconds, our world changed. My daughter’s experience seems similar to a lot of other people: her first thought when her office building started shaking was, “Earthquake!” But immediately after that she thought, “This can’t be an earthquake – we don’t get earthquakes in the DC metro area.”
My daughter works downtown around a lot of government buildings. She was amazed at how orderly the evacuations seemed to be, without any pushing or screaming. At least in her part of town no one seemed to be panicking. That’s especially amazing in the DC area, considering our past experiences with terrorist attacks. I’m so glad that most people stayed calm even in the face of this really unexpected event.
It’s a shame it can’t always happen like that in our own lives. Whether it’s an earthquake or a 600-point plunge in the Dow, negative events that come into our lives so suddenly have a tendency to knock us flat. These life changes are inevitable. What makes the difference is how we choose to react to them.
The recent earthquake reminded me of a Weekend Words from October 2010 that focuses on how quickly life can change:
After finishing the last game of my senior football season, I returned to Virginia Tech. Our team had just finished playing a University of Miami team captained by Jim Kelly in the 1981 Peach Bowl, one of the four bowl games played on New Year’s Day. It was a sold-out crowd with a national television audience in the millions. It was the perfect way to wind up my career.
I had been a key player on that team, and I was feeling pretty good about myself as I went into the athletic dormitory that day. All this quickly changed when I opened the door to my room and found two freshmen walk-ons occupying the space. All I could manage to say was, “Where’s my stuff?” The frightened players pointed me to a janitor’s closet in the hallway. I opened the door to find all of my worldly possessions thrown in a pile. Talk about going from the penthouse to the outhouse – my eligibility for the team had expired after my last game, and now I was out on the street. I had to store my possessions – and myself – in the back of a friend’s car for two weeks while I found a place to live. My former teammates had a ball with it, dubbing me “Jed Clampett” after the character from the Beverly Hillbillies.
Pat Riley, in his book The Winner Within, calls these moments in life “thunderbolts.” You feel like you are on top of the world, and then a thunderbolt jolts you flat onto your back.
Life has taught me that these thunderbolts are inevitable, and will usually strike when you least expect them. It’s how we react to the thunderbolts that will determine our paths in life.
Have a great weekend,
Ro