Every morning I go to the bakery on the next street to buy freshly baked bread that comes from a nearby village in the mountains. But this bread—and the charming baker who sells it—are in high demand, and sometimes I get there too late. There’s no bread left. I then have to climb up the hill and buy bread of inferior quality and taste from the local supermarket. This adds another ten minutes to my morning errands.
That’s the situation. No big deal, you might be thinking. What’s the problem?
Well, when I’m given the painful news that the baker has no bread left, there are sometimes other customers in the store, who are also hearing the news. And this is the crucial moment. What happens inside us as we realize that we’re going to have to spend an extra ten minutes of our precious time hunting for our daily bread? What do we do with the realization that we’ll have to endure a visit to the supermarket? Because some of us take it badly. Some of us lose the balance of our previously calm minds at this moment. Some of us might even be prompted to begin the daily mental list of “things that have gone wrong today.”
But some of us don’t. We smile, wish the baker “good day,” and head up the hill to the supermarket. The devastating “no bread” news hasn’t ruffled our feathers one iota. We know that it’s not worth losing our peace of mind over. Es lo que hay. It is what it is.
So what do you do in this situation?
As it turns out, when I get to the supermarket, I remember that I need to buy soy sauce and beer. That saves me going out later. I also bump into my friend María, who invites me over for dinner on Saturday. Life flows.