Guest Blog - Shane Curran

You Are Your Choices

Yesterday, I lost my passport. In normal circumstances, this is just something that happens to people from time to time. An unwelcome inconvenience but not an earth shattering event. For me, nearing the end of an almost year long residency application process in the United Arab Emirates, this had the potential for some serious and impactful consequences.

I had just been for a medical screening and, afterwards, left my keys and passport on the roof of my car as I sanitised my hands (cheers COVID). I then promptly grabbed my keys, hopped into my car and drove off. Only after getting back home did I realize what had happened, when my passport was nowhere to be found and a passport-sized imprint was left streaked across the roof of my car. My mind quickly spiraled as I raced back to the car park that I had left 20 minutes before. While I was driving, I tried to talk myself through it and visualize my passport sitting there on the tarmac, untouched and undisturbed.

“It’s going to be fine. It will just be there. It’s fine. You’ll see it as soon as you drive in. Nobody would have touched it. It’s going to be fine”.

I tried to imagine the sense of relief I would feel after finding it again, and concentrated on that feeling. This managed to keep me relaxed until I got back.

But the passport was gone. I raced around the car park, both in the car and on foot, searching every inch, under every car but found no sign. I asked the businesses close-by if anyone had handed it in, asked security guards at the nearby hospital, asked at the police station across the road. Still nothing. I left my number and name with all of them and decided to head home. The advice from the police was that someone may have found it, so to wait until the following morning and come back to them if I hadn’t heard.

The emotion I felt on that drive back home was unlike any I’d felt before. Everything is linked to this passport and the thoughts of having to replace it and begin the entire process again, while running the risk of overstaying on my current visa, was nauseating. It was such an overwhelming combination of fear, rage, panic, despair and anxiety that I couldn’t really feel anything. If anything, I felt numb. However, the drive home gave me time to think.

I realized I had two choices. I could either get back home and let this feeling take me over, or I could choose to have the best day I possibly could. Having taken all the actions I could for the time-being, I could either wallow and dwell on the negatives, or I could try to look for positives.

When my wife asked me how I felt, the concept became clear in my head. I told her, “I could die tomorrow. I could be driving somewhere and get into an accident and this would have been my last day on earth. If that was the case, how would I want to spend today? Would I want to sit here feeling sorry for myself, which achieves nothing, or go out and do something really fun?”. I chose the latter.

About an hour later we were at Yas Waterworld, a huge waterpark in Abu Dhabi. Over the next six hours, my wife, daughter and I had an incredible day taking in all the waterslides, the lazy river, rollercoasters, and enjoyed some great food together. I heard my daughter laugh with such unbridled joy and saw my wife relaxed and content as we drifted along in the water. Every so often my mind would drift to the passport but I kept telling myself, “You can’t do anything about it now, how would you want your last day to be?” and this brought me back to the present. After one of the best days I’ve had in recent memory, we hopped in the car for home.

Just as I was about to drive away, my phone rang. Someone had found my passport and was arranging to return it to me. All was well.

This episode taught me a couple of important lessons.

1. Take action and then have some fun. If you’re working through a problem, and after you’ve taken all the possible actions you can to address it, put it out of your mind and have some fun. A field was never plowed by turning it over in your head, the same as a problem won’t be solved by thinking about it ad nauseam. Take a break and come back to the problem with fresh eyes. Doing something positive, that brings you joy, makes much better use of your time.
2. Choose the positive option. The outcome would have been the same regardless of the choice I made. If I decided to sit at home and stew for those six hours, I would have still received that phone call, but I would have actively tortured myself for a whole day before it came through. What an incredible waste of my time, energy, and life. Not to mention the discomfort my family would have felt with the dark cloud I dragged around all day. When you have a choice, and you always do, chose the one that brings something positive into your life.
3. Choose to change your default reactions. Lucky for me, I have just finished Victor Frankl’s incredible book “ Man’s Search for Meaning”. In it, Victor asserts that in any external circumstances, you have the power to decide your reaction and attitude, and you should therefore chose one that is positive. My reaction to this issue was so uncharacteristic for me that my wife thought I may have had a psychotic break. A typical reaction to making such a dangerous blunder would have been rage with intense and prolonged self-criticism. As I’ve said above, that reaction would have made my home environment, mood, and day purely negative with absolutely zero impact on the eventual outcome. So if I have the power to choose my reaction, which I do, why the hell would I choose that?
4. Be a conscious and active participant in creating your life. One final point was that it wasn’t a matter of making a single choice and that was set in stone. I had to consciously make that same decision every time a negative thought crept in during the day. I had a quick sentence to go back to when they did - “How would you want your last day to be?”. By consciously making that choice, over and over again, I ended up with one of the best days of my life. I’ll try to continue making that choice now, with every day I have left.