Munching on chocs, thinking over the little incident earlier. After waving goodbye to Jo and May Yee, I was zoning out in the cab, chewing on my Starbucks sandwich while running the choreography for tomorrow’s dance classes in my head when I realized this cabbie was driving us further from my destination and we were nowhere near my house.

So I said, “Excuse me, I think you’re taking the longer route.”

In an uber defensive tone he said: “This road has less traffic, if not I take the other way a lot of cars! *mumble mumble* Just now I asked if you wanted to take CTE expressway faster…”

(CTE is the slower and much longer route! Annoyed…)

“Err *sarcastic* but it’s past midnight now why would there be traffic? Anyway I cab home every night.”

That kinda shut him up. For a moment he looked as if he wanted to argue further but didn’t. My cabbie was Indian so I tried alleviating my annoyance by recalling all the worst racist jokes I’ve heard in my lifetime, then felt bad because that’s absolutely childish…and the Indians whom I am friends with are all good friendly people. Really not my day, I thought grr.

Cabbie was silent for the rest of the journey in which he eventually found his way to my house…but the fare was definitely way higher than usual. Too tired to argue. I was just prepared to give in but he surprised me with: “Just give me how much you always pay, it’s okay.”

Ended up still paying him more than my usual amount, after all he’s earning a living, and he probably has a long night ahead. To me, he was my ‘mood-wrecker’ but on the other hand I was also his ‘mood-wrecker’.
Things ended well though. I smiled and said thank you, and that’s it’s okay he took the wrong route. At least he admitted! (though not explicitly. Taxi-driver pride?)

Realized that a lot of times, negative emotions are self-inflicted. With a little twist of perspectives, I realized I can stop feeling annoyed because I managed to avoid that slippery slope. I could blame everything on “omg this is a BAD DAY”, but I could also stop feeling like its a bad day. Although many bad things happened…it could still potentially turn out to be a good one!

Also, deep down everyone knows what is the right thing to do – the right steps to take, just that we may choose not to take the right action. I’m sure he felt really unjustified when I tried to correct his natural-GPS abilities as a taxi-driver. Hope that he knows…it was really the wrong route, no kidding.

Didn’t expect that he would offer to cut my fare. One of my undesirable traits…expecting the worst from people.
Guess it comes with learning over the years that one should not place high hopes on others? Terrible thought…needs to be eradicated. Though time and again I’m reminded that being independent is the only way to go.

Wish I were Professor X!! Admire his awesome ability to control and affect human mood and emotions…