A little while ago, I tried an experiment. It was all motivated by a pattern I noticed in myself:
As a classic New Yorker, I’m always in a hurry. If I see a cab coming, I thrust myself into the street to hail it in case it’s the last one coming for 5 minutes. If I hear the subway approaching, I sprint down the stairs so I don’t have to wait 8 minutes for the next one. And like most fellow New Yorkers, whenever I get on the elevator, I hit the “close door” button (often two or three times) to not lose those precious 7 seconds when the door is sitting open while no one enters.
One day, I got on the elevator, hit the “close” button and right as the doors started to close, a woman approached and was about to get on. I’d seen her around the office a few times and would have loved to meet her.
The doors closed before she could get in and I could say hi. Which of course was 100% my fault.
I realized I was actively preventing myself from potentially wonderful experiences.
So I decided to embark on an experiment: What if I stopped trying to save 6 seconds or 7 minutes all the time.
What if I stopped trying to control everything all the time?
What if I just let things unfold as the universe originally had in mind?
What might I accidentally welcome into my world?
The more I thought about it, it wasn’t just that I was trying to control things by trying to save a few minutes or seconds here or there. It was that I was trying to control and micro-manage the outcome of countless things: The amount of salad dressing or ketchup I received. The height of the liquid in my Starbucks coffee (“No room, please.”) Even if I got into the cab, I’d ask him to adjust the heat or the radio volume. If the lights were too bright in the restaurant, I’d ask them if they wouldn’t mind dimming them.
I decided my challenge wasn’t to just stop controlling the timeline. It was to stop trying to modify things in general.
What if I just stopped trying to alter the natural flow of things? Would I suffer a ton of unnecessary bullshit and delays, as I’d feared? Or would everything go just fine? Or maybe even bring some nice surprises my way?
I made some rules:
No “rushing” the elevator.
No sprinting for doors. No making substitutions on meals at restaurants. If it comes with a salad, don’t try to get fries, or vice-versa. No twists at the coffee shop. However it gets served, just drink it anyway. If the cabbie is taking you somewhere on a route you wouldn’t have chosen, just let it ride. If a woman I met gives me her phone number but doesn’t text back, let it go. Don’t try a second or third time.
I had to keep it up for 30 days.
The results were fascinating.
A lot of the time, there was no major difference in the outcome. But more often than I thought, things went surprisingly better for me. Some examples:
In the subway: Once I barely missed a train because I I walked “normally” and didn’t make it through the doors in time. The subway screen told me another “6 minutes” till the next train. But then, off at the other end of the platform, I heard an angelic voice. It was Maroon 5’s “Payphone” but sung by a woman—playing guitar and singing as a busker for tips. She was singing it with such beautiful, unique vulnerability, I rushed to the other end to hear her up close. She was transcendent. She was mesmerizing. And yet I was the only one to see her. I tossed a $5 bill in her guitar case and struck up a convo. Her name was Najah Lewis, and she was as lovely a person as she was a singer. We exchanged info, helped each other network as musicians, and a year later she got top 10 on American Idol. And I would have missed it all if I had run to make the train.
In a coffee shop: I ordered a “Venti” at Starbucks, but they only filled it ¾ full. Normally, I’d have asked them to “fix” their mistake. But I drank it as is. And found out at the end, I was pretty damn full. I didn’t need any more coffee. And from then on in, I only ordered the smaller Grande. This “ripoff” I “suffered” actually taught me I don’t need to pay extra for the Venti after all.
In a restaurant: I was sitting at the bar of a restaurant near my place doing some writing one afternoon, and in came some rowdy guys who’d clearly already had a few and sat down next to me. They made it hard as hell to concentrate. But hell, I’m the one who came to a bar, so I did the opposite of what I’d normally do (move over) and introduced myself. Turns out the guy had just sold his company and was righty celebrating. But when he found out I was working on a book, he mentioned his brother was an agent and emailed him right there with an intro to me.
In a taxi cab: The guy who picked me up was a horrible driver. Just terrified of driving at all, even at normal speeds. He had no business driving a cab. I normally would have told him to “keep up” with normal traffic, etc. At one point, he chickened out when a light turned yellow, slammed on the brakes to stop as 5 other cars easily made it through the intersection before the light turned red. I was grumpy about it but kept to my rules. Then I looked off to the side and noticed a guy I recognized walking by. It was my old roommate from my 20’s. We hadn’t seen each other in years. I told the cabbie I was going to get out for a second, but not leaving. I flagged my ex-roomie, we hugged, we laughed, we caught up and pledged to reconnect. He was in real estate now, and he ended up being the guy to find me my next apartment.
In an elevator: I was late to go on an interview at a new company–only a minute late, but felt like 2 minutes late was a deal breaker. Yet I didn’t hit “close doors” on the elevator. In walked a random guy. I asked him if he liked working there. He said he was only visiting himself, and that he ran his own studio. He asked what I did, and I told him I was a writer. He said he needed writers all the time, and did I have a card? The job interview ended up being a bad fit and I recused myself from their process. But the elevator guy got in touch and ended up throwing me a huge project the next week that was the most fun thing I worked on in months.
There were many other examples of this principle in effect, but the pattern was this: All of these wonderful things, I would have prevented myself from experiencing if left to my own devices.
The larger lesson seemed to be: Maybe these things aren’t happening to you, they’re happening for you.
The universe is unfolding on its own schedule. And it’s one that we might not understand, as crude as it might seem from day to day. But sometimes the more we try to alter it, or rush it, the worse it might go for us. Because even if we can’t see it, good things are often coming our way even when it looks like it’s just a fast-approaching sh*tstorm. But if we get paranoid and try to interfere, we can actually prevent those good things from coming our way.
Life is an elevator. As we continue on our journey upwards, we’re tempted to try to speed it up sometimes. But we might be about to miss out on the one thing that makes the journey most worthwhile.
Here’s to letting it ascend on its own sweet time.
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