Waiting In Line

Some people think the world rotates around them.  Recently I was at an airport Starbucks in line with a hundred other people.  A lady tried cutting to the front holding her phone up high bellowing “Excuse me, I ordered on my app!”  The baristas gave her a sideways glance ignoring her completely.  She couldn’t believe she had to wait in line with the other low lifes who also ordered with their Starbucks apps.  True also for healthcare; some folks believe they should be in the front of the line even past patients bleeding to death; “it’s not my fault they got in a knife fight.”   No, your treatment and place in line is decided by your condition and a doctor.  Demanding an MRI when you only need an aspirin doesn’t move you to the front even if you are banging the table.  I get it, you found your diagnosis on WebMD, you’re late for lunch with the wine club, so you don’t have time to wait for this nonsense.  Get in line, as important as you are, life has specific order largely for your benefit.

Driving a boat makes you do things in order; for instance you need to stop the boat before tying it to the dock.  Silly, right?  Also, while landing on a beach you’ve got to slow to a crawl, raise the motor, hit the sand, then set the anchor.  The same order in reverse when your leaving.  Simple.  Unless you’ve had 300 Coronas, then things get murky.  We were on Blind’s Pass one afternoon when a storm came in scrambling our plans.  With eight hours of beer and sun under our belts, however, our actions got sideways.  Dillon is backing the boat up, I’m pushing from the beach, the prop’s out of the water, the anchor’s up, and we’re drifting out to sea swimming after the boat.  Somehow David and I caught the stern and crawled on without getting shredded by the prop.  We all looked at each other and together said out of breath, “that was stupid.”  The tide didn’t care about fairness or equity; it was pulling the boat out to sea with us dragging behind it.  Nature is in charge no matter who we are.

Recovery is one of those areas that goes hand in hand with nature and not always at our desired pace.  After a knee replacement you’ll be walking right away but you’re not running a 10k anytime soon.   Similarly, after heart surgery I couldn’t walk 20 yards to the mailbox, but I still thought I could go back to the gym and hit the weights.  “Can you spell myocardial infarction?”   With a bunch of cardiac rehab, however, I returned to the gym a lot later and a lot weaker than I had ever expected.   Without a doubt I believe strongly with the right effort and attitude you can recover from anything.  Your position in line, however, will be based on nature and your attitude, nothing else matters.  Cheer up, worse things can happen; like discovering how fast you really can swim against an outgoing tide.  Patience Grasshopper, patience.   Slainte.