I dread Monday mornings

I don’t know why, but most of the times, everything seems to wrong on Monday mornings. It all started with me waking up an hour later than I usually do. On top of all that I woke up in darkness. There was no power. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria aka PHCN or NEPA had decided to punish me this morning, by the giving me the single honor of dressing up in rumpled clothes to work, as if that wasn’t enough , when I turned on the tap, nothing came out. There was no water and no power to switch on the pumping machine.

As I was sitting down and searching my mind for plan B, I received a call from my aunt that I only had twenty-five minutes to prepare in order to catch my free ride to the office.

Slowly, I was losing my cool. I wanted to scream and ask the question why me. Why is it that nothing ever works out right for me? I always try to do better than my best, yet everything always falls apart in the end. I was cranky, I was angry. I began to whine.

Grandpa heard me and said called out “Sally is everything okay?” My reply was I don’t know. That was a bit too harsh. It wasn’t grandpa’s fault, but I was already in a foul mood. I was about to keep going on and on, when the poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe came into my head. It goes like this

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration,
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated,
And a person is humanized or de-humanized.
If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.
If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming

I automatically became speechless. I guess you could call that was my real wake-up call. So in my bid to see a brighter and more optimistic turn on my rather dull morning, I decided to spice up my outfit. Instead of the regular black, straight and boring getup, I opted for white.

I am off to work now with an entirely different approach this morning. I also know you are wondering if I was able to make it to work in time, despite all the mishaps earlier in the morning. I guess that is a story for another day. When I get back, if I am not too tired, I tell you about it. Make sure you all have a wonderful day.