No Country for Old Men is a tough book to read. You can cut the tension with a knife. And sometimes I get lost in the dialogue. So when the guy next to me on the bus decided to turn on his speaker phone to jam out to some awful pop/hip-hop song (and if I say it's bad, it must be terrible), I got a little irritated.
Normally in a situation like this I would sigh to myself, pull out my iPod and turn it up as loud as I could to try to drown it all out. But today was different. I turned to him and asked, "Could you turn that down please?" After asking me to repeat myself in a threatening manner he said "It's a free f*ucking country. Go back to reading your book." I started to tell him to stop being so rude when a few other passengers joined my side and the driver told him to turn it off. Sweet!
I've started looking at things I have been doing a little differently. I'm asking more questions, whether it be for a raise at work or directions on a new bus. I remember my dad saying more than once that my generation has a problem with that. We'll just sit back and wait to find out rather than ask. It's been true for me. What a waste of time and worry!
Asking for help is essential when waiting tables. While training I used to stress the importance of this on every shift. Why haven't I applied this in broader strokes?
With these and other small revelations happening almost every day, I wonder why I have spent so much time contemplating something that is hundreds of days (and perhaps hundreds of epiphanies) away. So my next big move is to consider things that are more immediate and let more seismic, albeit simple, events happen within my faults.
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