Sunday, December 20, 2009

This is Christmas

I was in a Canberra department store on Christmas Eve a couple of years ago along with hundreds of equally desperate last-minute shoppers. We were queued half-way through the store - large trolleys groaning with toys, CDs, clothes, baubles, wrapping paper, wreaths of tinsel, tins of scorched almonds, paper tablecloths, serviettes and more. It was bedlam.

Then... HORRORS, the power in the store cut out!

You can imagine the scene. Nineteen cash registers flickered and died in concert, the lights went off and the air could have been sliced with one of the carving knives that were on special in the kitchenware aisle.

For a few awful seconds there was no reaction at all except for stunned disbelief. I braced myself for the inevitable revolt. Hot, tired, cranky, ‘over-it’ shoppers had already queued for more than twenty minutes in the inadequate air-conditioning. ‘Mass uproar, here we come’, I thought.

And then, unexpectedly, from somewhere way back in the queue, a man starting singing.

‘Dashing through the snow...’

There was a smattering of nervous giggles.

‘In a one-horse open sleigh’, he persisted.

Three or four voices tentatively added themselves for ‘o’er the hills we go’, and furtive glances were exchanged between strangers, while others tried to curb reluctant smiles. Imagine the vibe, a few seconds later, when a couple of hundred people spontaneously joined in with the Jingle Bells chorus. Just about everyone in the shop – staff and customers, old and young – was singing.

There was smiling and laughing and more than a few tears. Staff lit candles and started handing out lollies and chocolates and we all sang Silent Night and waited patiently for the power to be fixed. The registers and lights finally sprang to life and joined the festivities. Everyone broke into an enthusiastic round of applause - cheering and laughing and chatting easily with the strangers beside them.

It was one of the most beautiful, unexpected and uplifting moments that I can recall.

It’s so easy to get frustrated and fed up with a difficult situation that is outside our control. We do have free choice, though, over how we will respond.

When something goes wrong, as it inevitably will, we choose whether we will throw a tantrum or sing. We can give up and walk out, or we can dig in and look for ways to make the most of it.

What an enormous difference that choice makes. I saw how remarkably easy it was for one man to easily lift the mood of hundreds of people, within seconds, just by choosing the optimistic response to a mutually frustrating situation. As a result, something that might have remained an annoying incident that we all went home and complained about was transformed into an unforgettable Christmas highlight.

I wonder how many similar opportunities we miss in our lives, just by defaulting to a negative response...

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