What I Learned From One Uber Ride
An unexpected life lesson
Life will continue to educate you. No matter how much money you have or how healthy you are. Life lessons are abundant and come at the best (or worst) times.
I constantly look for advice and new experiences when I’m around others. Today, I was able to have a wonderful conversation with an Uber driver. His wisdom and perspective on life brightened my day.
An opening to a new perspective
Throughout our discussion, the driver described to me the various traumatic events he experienced as a child. Any one of them would have been enough to scar someone for life. But it wasn’t the immense amount of suffering he went through that drives this story today. It was his positive attitude.
Despite the painful adversity, he decided to stay positive each day. He told me he volunteers at the local schools and participates in the community. Did I also forget to mention that he’s a foster parent of three?
These acts were enough to inspire me. I was past the point of asking why or how. I looked deeper into what he wanted to accomplish. He gave a simple answer:
To give what wasn’t given to him. Love, kindness, and confidence to those who were without.
End the cycle of trauma
The subheading says it all. It must end.
How simple would it have been for this man to recreate the horror and torment that he was subjected to? Wouldn’t it have been easier to succumb to his tortured past?
Realizing what’s been done to you is the first step. The next step is finding a way to cope with it and the last step is moving past it in whatever way you can.
Some people don’t get past the first step. For those individuals, I wish them the strength to break free of their demons. This life is stressful enough without them.
I’m not telling you to forgive and forget completely because that isn’t realistic. I am simply asking you to soar above the trauma and don’t let it define you. You don’t have to change communities like the protagonist of my story. End the cycle of what has been done to you to create a more perfect world.
Piece by piece. Brick by brick.
I know you can do it.
