Running late? It might be a blessing
On life's minor irritants GEOFF TAN YOU know how it is with forwarded "spam" mail. Friends, who receive these from their friends, will send them through to you and me, and we in turn – more often than not – will click the Forward button and send them to yet other "victims" in our address book. This is even more so when there's a message tagged at the end which says "Don't keep this to yourself, send this out to at least 10 of your friends within the next minute and you will receive a stroke of good luck!". Well, to my good fortune, so to speak, my boss forwarded me a piece of "spam" mail the other day. However, instead of deleting it, which I've done many a time due to the limited storage I have in my office computer inbox, I decided to take a peek at it and, boy, was I glad I did. No, it wasn't porn or a lewd joke. Nor was it a YouTube video showing Britain's Got Talent contestant Susan Boyle in full throttle, or judge Kara DioGuardi ripping open her black dress at the American Idol finals to reveal her hot bod. It was just a simple text message entitled "The Little Things". The piece was very dated and had probably travelled around the Internet universe a trillion times as it referred to the Sept 11 incident. However, after reading it, I felt the need to share what I had read. It cited incidents involving "little things" that happened on the morning of the tragedy in 2001 which resulted in the people involved being spared a horrific death – from an alarm clock that didn't go off on time, to missing the bus; from a car that wouldn't start, to not being able to flag down a taxi; from having to go back home to change a soiled shirt, to stopping to answer a telephone call. However, the one that really struck me was the story of the man who decided to put on his new shoes that morning, took various means to get to work but, before he got to the office, developed a blister on his foot and stopped at a store to buy a plaster. And, because of all these activities which inconvenienced him before he could get to his office at the World Trade Center, he is alive today. I remember vividly an occasion when I was tempted to beat a red light as I was very late for an appointment. However, something caused me to step on the brake rather than the accelerator. The car next to me sped on – and was hit by a taxi coming through on his right. The e-mail on "little things" has certainly put a whole new perspective on how I view less-than-perfect circumstances in my daily life, which occur ever so often: The children not getting dressed on time, getting stuck in a traffic jam, forgetting to take my mobile phone to work and having to drive home to get it, not being able to find my documents, having to perform an extra chore for the wife... The next time I encounter similar situations, I am going to take it that that was where I was meant to be at that time. And to believe that positive outcomes would continue to emerge as a result of the inconveniences. The writer is a senior vice-president of the SPH marketing division and the general manager of SPH NewMedia for Zapcode. From myPaper, By The Way – Thursday, 28-May-2009
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