Events Don't Dictate Attitudes

It was a long time ago, certainly over three decades into my past, that I was only a little boy sitting on the back of a trolley being wheeled around a supermarket in Portugal. I remember being a kid who lacked courage and was in the habit of crying if the trolley stopped and I couldn't see my mother or any other familiar faces for that matter. I was terrified of being abandoned; I haven't experienced that innate fear in a long time. I believe it was a mixture of being scared of losing the people I loved the most and feeling frightened of the certainty of not being able to survive in a world I barely knew anything about. I was also tenuously apprehensive about bursting into tears in front of so many strangers while baulking at the idea of having to cope with family being out of sight.

The moment I feared had arrived and panic ensued. Tears began to well up in my eyes. 'Where is my mum?' and 'Where the hell is my family?' were thoughts that flared up in my mind as worst-case scenarios were starting to occupy my imagination. I felt lost and was on the verge of crying with the tenuous hope that an adult among strangers might overlook my shame and weakness and actually help. As I looked around, I noticed something that put those emotions on hold. I had a deep realisation that I could react differently to my apparent predicament just as Plutarch once experienced hating certain foods but simultaneously realising that others could eat them quite happily.

Not far from where I felt lost and trapped but now curious and intrigued, there was another boy like me but possibly younger (as he had a dummy in his mouth) and sitting in a trolley as well. What surprised me the most was his visible insouciance despite the absence of responsible adults around him. The boy seemed to be just WAITING with ostensible BRAVERY ... Something I lacked. I instantly admired him for displaying the ideal attitude to an unpleasant situation. His demeanour indirectly judged my lily-livered character and I wanted to be as unruffled as he was. I was tired of feeling trapped, lost and scared every time I found myself apparently alone in a supermarket.

Perhaps the boy had been unaware of having been left by himself and, in hindsight, he could have been daydreaming in a moment of bliss ignorance—but this doesn't matter because what I perceived and the way in which it was interpreted at the time was quite useful and transformative. I was able to reframe the situation after taking that boy to be some kind of hero in the making, bravely waiting for his parents to return (or come into view) and having faith in this reassuring outcome. 'I could be like him!' So I successfully mirrored him and instantly found peace. In fact, I was quite chuffed with myself for waiting quietly. Something had awoken in me which I didn't know I had. I had discovered another way! And it had paid off, too, because not only did I manage to overcome my fear of getting lost, I had also managed to impress my family—even my estranged father, who barely praised me for anything, had acknowledged that I hadn't cried and calmly waited like a good boy!