by Aliza Panjwani, M.A.
How many of you responded aloud or internally with an emphatic “YES”?
Being a transplant from a suburb outside Toronto, transitioning to life in the city (New Yorkers never call it the Big Apple, I soon learned) was a challenge. Everyone appeared to be in a rush and a good majority of people, to me, seemed unnecessarily impatient. I recall a particular morning a few weeks after moving here, standing at the station near my house. The train arrived. True to a busy weekday-morning fashion, people were packed in subway cars like sardines in a tin can. And yet, I observed them pushing and clamoring their way inside the train. I scoffed, feeling proud of my cool-as-a-cucumber, laidback-Canadian-ness and thought, “Another train is two minutes away. Can these people reaaaally not wait? Are they so impatient?”
Fast forward to half a decade later, I recently came to the stark realization that I may have become one of “those” people. *GASP*. Just a few weeks ago, at 8:00am on Tuesday, in the heat of July, I made my way inside an already congested train. My thought process in getting on the crowded 8am train was this: There had been a lot of delays in the morning lately and if I did not get on this one, what if the next one was delayed? Better I scramble my way inside this one and be efficient, otherwise I’ll be kicking myself later on. That would be terrible and I just couldn’t stand that.”
Let me paint you a picture of what happened next: I stepped – err…wiggled – inside. Somehow, I had positioned myself in such a way that my head ended up underneath the armpit of a taller gentleman. It didn’t smell like roses. But there was nowhere to move or to turn. The train stopped at every single station until I got off for several minutes because of an incident at 59th St and Lexington. I was, in fact, on the very delayed train that I had been trying to avoid. And if that weren’t enough, there was no AC on in this particular subway car, so it was incredibly humid and stiflingly stuffy. “Ugh, I hate how New York has made me so impatient. If I had just waited for the next train, I at least wouldn’t be stuck in the train like this.” The incident set the stage for the rest of my day. I ended up rushing to my morning meetings, didn’t have time to get coffee, or pick up lunch for later in the day. I ruminated about my choice to get on and was thinking back to the early days of moving here, when I wouldn’t have gotten on a train that was already jam-packed.
By then, I had already attended my Albert Ellis Institute trainings and when I got home that night, I used principles of Rational Emotive and Cognitive Behavior Therapy to reflect on my thought process in the morning. New York can’t make one impatient…just like it can’t make anyone the opposite. New York is New York; it may feel alive sometimes, but it is a city, a non-living entity. It doesn’t have the power to ‘make’ one anything. Some of you may not be buying this but bear with me on this seemingly radical idea: it is not the city that was making me impatient, but rather what I was telling myself. “I’ve got to be efficient, I’ve got to be smart given the recent morning delays and get on the train that is here NOW. If I wait for the next, less crowded train and then it is delayed, that would be terrible, and I couldn’t stand it especially if I could have prevented it.” Geez, thinking this way, no wonder I ended up squished underneath someone’s armpit in the subway car.
“That would be terrible and I couldn’t stand it.” Irrational beliefs, galore. What if I had said this to myself instead: “I can get on this 8am train even though it looks super crowded and I don’t want to, OR I could wait for the next train and be more comfortable. If that next train does get delayed, it would suck and I would be frustrated, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world and I could bear it. I could maybe even get a seat and listen to that podcast episode I downloaded.” If this is how I had been thinking to myself, guess what I would have likely done? I would have waited for the next train; it may have been delayed but I would have been a lot more comfortable and perhaps not so cranky the rest of the day.
Albert Ellis once said, “The best years of your life are the ones in which decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, [New York] or the president. You realize you control your own destiny.” Okay, so he didn’t say the New York bit, but I do believe that if he were here, he would wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. Not one to mince words, he would probably say, “Aliza, of course, New York didn’t make you impatient. YOU made you impatient.”
What is your recent stressful commuting story? (I know you have one). Did you end up blaming the city or someone else? What were you telling yourself and what could you have said instead? Would that have changed the rest of your day in any way?