How’s the back of your camel at the moment? Not the typical ice-breaker I grant you, but it is all about the straw…
It’s often said that our sense of well-being is a trade-off between the psychological, social and physical resources we have to deal with the day-to-day challenges of life. And that’s where the camel comes in…
I reflected on the above as I sat in the lower ground floor office of the British Psychological Society in London’s Tabernacle Street on a late February afternoon. It was the last day of a Coaching seminar and it was snowing outside…a lot.
As I watched the flakes build silently on the pavement outside, I realised I had already begun to visualise my train home stuck in the middle of nowhere…my car skidding as I navigated the twists and turns on the narrow country roads between the station and home…
“Why did it have to snow today? What a disaster, I’ll never get home…”
Then I thought about the camel…and the wise words of the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus:
“People are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them”
I was adding more straw and the camel’s knees were starting to buckle.
I made it to the station only to find my train cancelled. As I stood on the platform I was struck by the tone of a fellow traveller, a gentleman with a large suitcase. He was becoming more and more agitated about the situation and with that less and less able to think clearly.
Next to him was a young lady talking calmly to her son, explaining that, whilst it was frustrating, there was nothing they could do to stop the snow falling. They had a couple of options though, hopefully a later train or worse case a stay in a hotel. Their whole demeanour was much more relaxed and their thinking more flexible. Fans of Epictetus I wondered…
The reality is neither person could change the situation, but the consequences (going by the colour of the gentleman’s face) were very different.
Every day we face similar challenges and have similar choices, particularly in such a complex and ever-changing world. So when your next challenge rears its head spare a thought for the camel and how much straw you are layering on its back…
Right, I thought as I stood on the platform…getting home is going to be an adventure rather than a ‘nightmare’. And as I jumped on the next train I shed a few bits of straw from the camel’s back…
I did make it home…having skidded a lot on the tight country roads to be fair, but I enjoyed the journey nonetheless.
Camels in the snow…who knew…