That Saturday evening, I returned home in the evening feeling bad about my mistake.

It was the same Saturday I mentioned about in last week’s blog post, and I had almost arrived at the church, which was the venue for the day’s training. I was still in my car, driving at a slow pace, wondering if I should park in that narrow street or if I can find more parking space elsewhere. It was a quiet little street (did I already mention ‘narrow’?), and hardly any traffic.

But there was one oncoming car just then. In my attempt to keep a safe distance from that car, I got my car too close to the car parked on the street and I scraped the side of that car! What do I do? My immediate response? Panic. More so, because this was the first time I was hitting my car – actually my husband’s! I was restless for a few minutes, but then I calmed down. I called my husband, and he made me feel even better.

A gentleman who was directing the traffic (I am going to call him ‘the volunteer’ because he was also a volunteer who was helping out at the training) was watching as I hit the other car. But it was too quick for him to stop me. He came over and directed me to move the car away without further damage. There were some cosmetic damages to the sides of both the cars, the other being worse.

I knew this wasn’t exactly a great start to the day. This was going to ruin the rest of my day. After getting the car into the parking space, the volunteer told me he would find the owner of the other car – most likely also attending the training. Meanwhile, I could settle in, as the training had already started by then.

I quietly sneaked into the back of the room where everyone was. To my relief, no one saw me. At least I believe so! I looked around the room, wondering who the owner of the other car might be.

Now I had to take a decision – I could either keep thinking about the “I should have’s” throughout the day or stop thinking about what just happened and get on with the training.

Right then, I chose to do the second one. I just said a quick prayer, and decided not to think about it anymore. I had to agree that I no longer have control over what already happened, but I can do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done (not by rehearsing it in my mind!!)

The first part of the day went by, and I was able to concentrate on the training for the most part. But whenever I saw or met someone, I couldn’t but wonder if he/she was the owner of the car.

Finally, the other owner was identified during the lunch break, and I got to talk to the lady (Ok, I hadn’t met her till then) and we exchanged insurance information. It wasn’t much of a deal, after all.

But it probably would have turned out to look worse if I had given it too much thought. I am glad I didn’t.

I don’t claim to be a worry-free person all the time. I do let fears and anxiety occupy my mind at times – I mean, a lot of times.

But I wish I would always take a moment to pause and evaluate if the problem would actually be solved by allowing it space and time in my mind. Often, problems only become bigger, not smaller, because we keep worrying about them. Certain things just don’t deserve that space in our mind!