To Whom It May Concern or The Power of Perspectives
Tags: Power Of Now, Time, Power Of Perspective, Positive Thinking, Perspective

“If you are going through Hell, keep going”

Winston Churchill

Have you ever had a situation when one second you feel horribly unlucky and then, literally, the next second (and I mean it — second) you feel like you couldn’t have been any luckier? A situation exactly like that happened to me recently, which got me thinking about perspectives, not silver linings but perspectives. Any situation can always be looked at from various angles and even if a positive spin wouldn’t be visible immediately, sometimes it only takes 1 second — compare yourself with your own self a second ago. Independently of in which favour the comparison will result, past or present, you will have a perspective.

The situation goes as following: I had a rare, according to 2020 standards, face to face business meeting. I attended the meeting with my boss. After the meeting we decided to grab a coffee and catch-up in person (something we don’t get to do very often in 2020). After an hour and a half, we called it a day as we had other engagements to attend and as we are exiting Pret onto the street…

Somewhere in the universe, among a butterfly flapping its wings, temperature in London getting chilly (this is December) and my fingers getting cold — I hear a sound of something dropping on the ground. I realise it’s one of my rings. I can see the next few minutes in a slow motion — as I am turning my head to see where it fell, I finally see it rolling down along the pavement and exactly like in the movie Lord of The Rings, when Gollum loses his Precious, I see my ring rolling off the pavement onto the road and… right down into the drainage. Yes, one of those common “lovely” central London drainages….

For the next couple of minutes, both my boss and I were helplessly staring into the abyss of the drainage: he, probably, perplexed and wondering what helpful words one normally says when this happens; I — utterly in disbelief in my kind of luck and what just happened.

Suddenly I look up and see a couple of men around us. They look like they are wearing something like a uniform. In the next couple of minutes, I learn that the men are plumbers and that their van was parked right on the opposite side of the street. They observed the entire drama with quite some amusement. They listen to me begging them to try and tell me that they don’t have the right tools… However! One of the guys then tells me that he has a friend who is a specialist in “this kind of matters”. He calls the guy. Dave (the guy’s name) agrees to come buy once he is finished with another job he is about to begin.

For the next hour I am sitting in Pret, wondering when to give up, how long it was acceptable to wait and whether I even should; how can something like that have happened and why me; and what are the odds to come across a plumbing van… Dave arrived within an hour. He was truly lovely. He dived all the way down into the drainage so that even his hair got wet; he sucked all the water out of there; he sifted through everything (twice). We found a credit card, iPhone, a lot of leaves and dirt, a plastic can, which I thought was IT (!) but no… and yes, after 1 hour and a half he found my ring. No, it wasn’t an engagement ring, but it was an expensive ring, a present from my parents, a set as well (I have matching earrings) and a very cherished piece of jewellery for me.

I think I was so shocked that he actually found it (‘cos by the end of the hour, I think, neither of us believed it would be possible to find it) that I don’t think I properly expressed my gratitude. I paid Dave, more than he asked, because he truly did an amazing job. I just honestly couldn’t believe my unlucky luck.

My boss (who left shortly after I dropped the ring, because he had another meeting), but who called me the next day to ask how it all ended put it best: “You were incredibly unlucky one second and then you were incredibly lucky the next.”

Whether it is this rocky year, which has been tough for so many and in so many different ways, or a number of events that happened in my life throughout this year — I wanted to share this story. Sometimes we just have to compare now with a second ago. My ring lost some of its shine and needs deep cleaning to get rid of the smell. But I got it back. The plumbing van couldn’t have been there, and Dave might have been on the other side of town or not picking up or whatever.

Sometimes your worst event might turn out to be one of the best stories you would be able to tell. Sometimes you only need to lift your head up and look up or look around.