Serving Soup

For those of us who have the pleasure (ha!) of traveling regularly, you know all about the extra time spent taking off your shoes, getting your “very dangerous” three-ounce beauty products into a plastic baggy, and tossing your laptop into the bin. While you are gripping onto your boarding pass and driver’s license in your teeth, it leaves you plenty of time to make new friends. Well, I had such an opportunity a few weeks ago. I struck up a conversation with a nice gentleman from Europe who was kind enough to listen to my opinions on the upcoming election. I think this was clearly his first mistake.

Anyway, as this gentleman and I were chatting, he must have sensed my “passion” on the issues. He interrupted me and told me that he wanted to share an old German saying that he believed summed up his overall feeling of the election. He said “Just remember, the soup is always cooked hotter than it is served.” And just like that, I got a good dose of clarity. You see I, like many others I am sure, had been processing so much of what I was hearing and reading that I had immediately gone to the worse case scenario. Between watching the news, reading the headlines, or listening to those never-ending political ads (I have never been so happy to see an end to these), we are consistently sent messages of doom and gloom. Worse yet, we fear for our futures. Consumer confidence has been at an all time low, and it is inevitable that this causes us all to question our business and personal lives.

The reality is much of what the media exposes us to, is inflated drama. Drama sells and we buy it. But if I take a moment to get some perspective, I realize that you can’t buy into everything you hear, at least not to the extent that some would like us to believe.  So, going forward I will take these messages with a cup of “tepid” soup.