Is it really that important?

I was walk­ing along a coun­try lane near my home recently, mulling over all the things I had to do that day when in the dis­tance, I saw an elderly man rum­mag­ing through his refuse bin.

As I con­tined to ago­nise over the busi­ness of life, finances, career, chil­dren and schooling—all the issues that can con­sume and over­whelm, my dog dashed ahead and gave her cus­tom­ary golden retriever greet­ing. There was no avoid­ing this encounter; the appar­ently impor­tant tasks would sim­ply have to wait.

As I paid more atten­tion to the elderly man, I could see he was look­ing for a lost piece of paper—clearly some­thing he had thrown in the recy­cle bin in error.

He appeared to be tak­ing his time and was still dressed in pyjamas—rumpled striped pants up to his ankles, faded dress­ing gown and com­fort­able old slip­pers  — long, sil­very hair giv­ing him a slightly eccen­tric stance.

In spite of his early morn­ing attire, he greeted me gra­ciously and appeared to have all the time in the world to chat. I thought how won­der­ful it was to reach an age where there was no longer any need to apol­o­gise for yesterday’s stub­ble or striped pyja­mas that had clearly seen bet­ter days.

I smiled at him and we exchanged a few pleas­antries and he con­firmed that yes, he was look­ing for a dis­carded document.

And then he asked, “Have you got a moment to hear a story? Two sto­ries actu­ally – they sort of con­firm why I sense find­ing this doc­u­ment isn’t going to be that impor­tant after all.”

I thought again of my busy sched­ule, of unwrit­ten arti­cles, wash­ing to hang up, emails to answer — ‘stuff’ to do and hes­i­tated. But he looked like a wise old man and I could cer­tainly do with some wis­dom, so I told him, “please, go ahead, I’d love to hear your story.”

He pro­ceeded to espouse a theory.

“Many years ago, when I was a young man work­ing for a large com­pany, my boss told me to find a cer­tain doc­u­ment he needed. I spent many hours search­ing the bow­els of the com­pany, try­ing to locate the doc­u­ment. It was no use, I couldn’t find it any­where. With trep­i­da­tion, I reported to my boss that unfor­tu­nately, the doc­u­ment was nowhere to be found.”

He con­tin­ued his story, while slowly sort­ing through the papers in his hand.

“I was expect­ing my boss to be furi­ous with me—to accuse me of being use­less, but to my aston­ish­ment, he said: “Oh, don’t worry, it wasn’t that impor­tant anyway.”

And then the elderly man turned, crin­kling his eyes with amusement.

“I know this doc­u­ment isn’t going to be impor­tant at all.”

He wasn’t finished.

“Let me tell you another story. I hope I’m not bor­ing you?” he politely enquired.

“Absolutely not!” I answered, sens­ing some more pearls of wisdom.

He con­tin­ued.

“I worked for another com­pany years later, and my posi­tion was a rather busy one, so much so that I never had time to get around to the pesky tasks I kept in a box on my desk.

“I always intended com­plet­ing the tasks in the box, but never seemed to find an oppor­tu­nity to do so.

“I even­tu­ally left the com­pany but was always wor­ried about the box and the fact that I hadn’t com­pleted the tasks that it con­tained. Through a series of cir­cum­stances, I returned to work at the same com­pany two years later—and there was my box, still there, work still undone. The com­pany had con­tin­ued to tick over, noth­ing had ground to a halt. And my box remained untouched.”

I smiled, real­is­ing that some­times, wis­dom comes from the most unlikely sources.

I thanked him for his wise words and wished  him well with his search.

“I know this isn’t going to be impor­tant, even if I do find it,” he chuck­led again.

“And don’t for­get the box!” he called after me.

“I won’t!” I replied.

I con­tin­ued on my way,  reflect­ing on what the old man had said. I slowed my pace and enjoyed the sweet­ness of the spring morn­ing, took in the birds that chirped and even allowed my pooch to chase after a brush turkey. I con­sciously enjoyed the moment rather than hur­ry­ing to the next thing on my list.

The old man was so right, I mused.  The things in the box we ago­nise over, hold onto and give far too much atten­tion than they deserve, are often things out of our con­trol or, as the elderly man explained, not worth fret­ting over at all.

© Lois Nicholls 2009