Today's inconvenience can be tomorrow's blessing

Sometimes inconvenience is a blessing in diguise

Last night I was reminded of just how much luck and chance play a role in our lives thanks to two events that occurred after attending the Drake concert at Madison Square Garden,

First, my girlfriend and I decided to take an Uber back home to Jersey instead of riding home with a family member who was in the area to pick up my girlfriend's niece from the same concert. We only live about 5 minutes from each other, so riding with him would've made perfect sense and would've been way cheaper. For some reason, though, the thought didn't even cross our mind to ride with him until just after ordering the Uber. We were already getting into our Uber when he called us to offer a ride.

As it turns out, our Uber driver had just driven over from the Lincoln tunnel, our usual preferred route back to Jersey, and was aware of some heavy traffic that the GPS wasn't displaying correctly. He suggested an alternate route. It seemed odd that the GPS wouldn't show this heavy traffic, but we nodded and went along.

We ended up taking a longer route home via the George Washington Bridge. I sat in the ride, a bit annoyed at the fact that this route was adding an additional 30 minutes to the ride home, which feels like a lifetime when you're half tipsy at 12 am on a work night, and you have a few dollar pizza slices sitting on your lap, hot and ready to be devoured.

45 minutes later or so, we made it home safely. As we walk in the door, my girlfriend texts her niece, asking if they got home okay. She replied that they were still getting through the traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel. Yikes.

Somehow we had lucked out. We got the Uber driver with the information we needed at the right time. In this case, the long route home was actually the shortcut. Lucky.

Next, it's 1 am, and my girlfriend and I are finally settled on the couch and catching up on our anime while inhaling our dollar slices. Suddenly we hear a large crash and tumble outside my apartment window.

"What the fuck was that?!" I immediately go to check.

I look through my window and see a car parked in the middle of the street with its hazard lights on. Behind it was a large skid mark covering about 10-15 feet. After getting over my initial disorientation, I realized this car had somehow sideswiped 3 cars parked in front of my apartment, with the middle of the 3 catching the worst of it. It was hit so hard that it was knocked from the street onto the sidewalk and, as it turned out later, needed to be towed.

But here's the thing. 99% of the time, my car is usually parked in one of those 3 spots in front of my apartment. By pure luck, chance, or what may have you, those spots were already taken when I went to park my car last. I ended up having to park further down the block. As it turns out, this one minor inconvenience a few days before saved me from a major headache in the future.

All that to say, it's important to check our perspective and remember to express gratitude when we can. We make hundreds of small daily decisions that we don't know the future impact of. We do not know what life-changing moment is just around the corner for us. Today's inconvenience can be tomorrow's blessing.