With continuous rain in Singapore and temperatures hitting as low as 23 degrees celcius. Holiday mood had already activated and I had no external meetings planned so I decided to dress casual to the office today. I had one other underlying reason for this, I wanted to wear my new Hush Puppies shoes I had just purchased at Isetan in Nex.
Leaving home a little later than usual (the holiday mood activation) I got down from the elevator and started walking towards Lorong Chuan MRT station. From the time I had began walking I was feeling slightly uncomfortable with my shoes, it did not look like it was the perfect fit and it was a little looser than my other shoes. By the time I got into the train I started becoming anxious, thinking I had ended up buying a casual deep comfort lace shoe which was not the perfect fit for me.
Still not giving up, I got down at Bishan Interchange and walked towards the North South line time to catch a train to Raffles Place. It was becoming increasingly obvious to me that the shoe was a little too big for me. For the next 27 minutes, my mind was all over the place. First I was blaming myself, thinking I had selected the wrong size. Then I started blaming my son, thinking that because he was rushing me to go and eat his chicken rice I ended up selecting the wrong size. Next I moved on to blaming the shop assistant thinking she packed the wrong size before finally blaming my wife as I was rushed since she was waiting for her famous hokkien mee and if I was late she would be starving. After I finished blaming everyone I could think of, my mind began calculating the chances I had of getting away with lying. I still have the box and the original receipt, when I get home I could clean the mud on the shoe , repack it and return it.
My 27 minute journey from Lorong chuan to raffles place was the time I used to catchup on all the news; today however, it was all about my shoe, so without knowing if Trump was still in power or if Mahathir was on board with KL-Singapore HSR project, I got down at the Raffles Place MRT station. Generally at the platform level I would walk to the end and take the stairs ( to add to my 12,000 steps a day), while walking I saw this gentleman in front of me, well dressed, perhaps a lawyer or a management consultant. He was walking without any shoes on, just socks, his left leg ankle was twisted so he didn’t wear a shoe on his right leg to keep the balance between both the legs. He was walking very fast in front of me and I probably only saw him for less than five seconds.
Now here I was feeling embarrassed that for last 40 minutes I had been thinking about a mere shoe. I simply needed to get used to it or wear a thicker socks. The guy I caught a glimpse of for just five seconds was walking confidently and happily despite knowing he wouldn’t ever be able to wear a shoe in his life.
I did not appreciate what I already had and this will now stay with me for a long long time. This is definitely going to be topping my list of lessons learned in 2019, and get me moving more towards a more minimalist living in 2020.
One doesn’t need a life long journey to learn lessons, a 27 minute train journey from Lorong Chuan to Raffles Place can give you the best lesson you could ever learn in your lifetime.
