Don't Sweat It All

The car won’t start. What an unfortunate thing to start the day!

We were about to leave for a court hearing one morning when the trouble came about. And did I just mention we where all dressed up and all for the episode? Well, actually, it was my girlfriend who was. But that’s beside the point which was; we had to give it a push to jumpstart this baby-- I meant the car. The ‘gentleman’ in me suggested that I leave her out of the task at hand and besides, it would have raised her brows if I mistakenly asked her to give me a hand.

So there I was; summoning all my strength to give the car a hell of a push. At least, that was the whole idea. But, not to my surprise though, the car didn’t budge. Okay, so it probably moved an inch but it was still a futile and pathetic showcase of masculinity. At that moment it really didn’t dawn on me how lame and useless I was in that instance. I was so into the pushing that I didn’t bother how others, including my girlfriend, would see me. Or was I just not minding it?

So with my so-called-pride wolfed down, I solicited some help. No, not from my girlfriend, of course, but from the oh-so-willing kanto manongs who probably just had their pandesal and kape. Only two manongs yielded to my prodding (alright, so I used my Pussy-Boots-Charm. Bite me!). The next thing I know, we were working our muscles to give the car the push it needed. We’ve almost covered the entire village still pressing on and getting more than the work out we needed but still no sign of life from the car.

We later found out that it got something to do with and empty car battery. The sad part is it never crossed my mind the whole time I was dripping in sweat.

Moral of this untoward anecdote: when faced with a somewhat tough problem, try to think first and asses the mess at hand. Don’t just randomly try all the solutions that come to mind to get you out of it. You might just be wasting significant time in the process. Muscling your way through all the troubles in life might not be a good idea after all.

Sometimes the answer to the problem is not as Herculean as we think it is. Life may be hard but it doesn’t mean every answer should be. It might just be under your nose. In this case, the answer was just under the hood.