Live Where Your Feet Are

Funny story, yesterday I went in to renew my drivers license. I’d been putting it off as long as possible because I’m so busy and the process generally takes forever. I even Google searched how long the grace period was so I could drag it out as long as possible. Turns out it’s 60 days (8 weeks). About 3 weeks into the grace period I heard you can set appointments now which is much faster. So I did. The nearest appointment was 3 weeks out. This would put me 6 weeks into the grace period. Perfect, 2 weeks to spare! 

So yesterday of course was my appointment. Ironically, when I showed up to the appointment the place was dead. There were literally only a few people being served and like 4 open stations. I tried to check in to my appointment, but it did not work because I was more than 15 minutes early. Apparently, they don’t serve appointments early. So I had to cancel my appointment and check in as a walk-in just to be served. Pretty silly. I got my waiting number and was told to wait until I was called. Just as I sat down to wait — my legs had barely touched the chair — they called my number at station 5. I immediately popped up and headed over. 

You could tell they guy at my station had done this a thousand times. He instantly started hammering through the questions; “Name?”, “Address?”, “Veteran?”, “Height”, ‘Weight?”, “Donor?”, etc. I rapidly responded and he rapidly keyed in my information. In under 60 seconds, as we neared the end of his questioning, he said, “Okay, perfect, time for the eye test, go ahead and press your forehead down there and read left to right for me.” When I pressed my forehead against the eye test monitor I could see there were 3 columns of letters but only the center column and right column were fully illuminated. So I spent the first 5 seconds really focusing hard to make out the far left column. I couldn’t do it. So I started to mumble, “Hmm, that left side does not seem lit up. Did you want me to read left to right starting from the center column, or all the way from the left where it’s not as lit up?” 

There was no response, so I said, “Can you hear me?” There was still no response. I looked up from the monitor. Apparently, he was daydreaming, because when I looked up it must have snapped him out of it. He looked at me enthusiastically and said, “Okay, great job! It will be $28, did you want to pay with cash, check or card?” I rolled right along with it because, at this point, I was pretty concerned that I wouldn’t pass this test! 

The guy working at the station next to him caught side-eyes with me with a perplexed look on his face as I pulled out my credit card, I gave him one of those “stay in your lane man...” looks. So he let it go. I paid, got my headshot taken, and got the heck out of there. All in all, the process literally took under 5 minutes. As I drove back to work, I got to thinking how easy it is to not live in the moment and daydream about other things. Especially when you’re doing something you’ve done a thousand times. But we must fight this urge. It’s important we all live in the moment. Try to live where your feet are! This will allow you to serve your clients, teammates, family, friends and everyone you’re surrounded with better. Remember W.I.N, (what’s important now). Live where your feet are.