I wrote previously about my recent trip to Yosemite with my mother and daughter and how the long drive and the heat, and finally a God-awful hotel room just about ruined things. Until we were allowed to swap out our filthy, dingy, hot room for a truly lovely two-bedroom suite, for the same price of $230 a night, even though a sign on the wall stated that the going rate for our new room was $600. And yes, it was peak season, and yes, we got this room very late in the day. And yes, other people were told there was no room at the inn.
I'm not sure exactly what I have to say about this: how things instantly turned from unbelievably bad to better than I could have hoped for, except that I'm filing this under "general thoughts on life," because I do think there was a lesson there.
Yes, I know that maybe it was just that someone had canceled their reservation at the last minute, leaving this room open. Maybe the clerk had pity on me and my sweaty family. But I also think it's a lesson about expectations and what we settle for and what we can potentially achieve/attain when we don't go through life looking for things that are just good enough, passable, but rather think of the ideal, our wildest dream.
I have to stress how dramatic this hotel swap was. It wasn't like we swapped out two similar rooms where one had air conditioning and the other did not. Our new room was about 1,000 times nicer on every level. I only wished that we had found it earlier in the day so that we weren't so exhausted when we did get there (although, it was quite a nice place to be exhausted!)
It reinforced for me in a larger life sense that:
1) You have to ask for what you want. I was so anxious to get out of the old room that I was ready to forfeit the money I'd already paid. But then we decided that we'd just ask if they could do anything for us.
2) Reality often can exceed your expectations. Too good to be true just doesn't hold up.
3) Things can turn from dismal to very bright very quickly.
4) A larger hand does seem to be at work. Logically, there is no way I could have foreseen this room opening up, being that it was peak season and other people were coming into the hotel looking for rooms and being turned away.
And a bunch of other stuff too. Like, don't assume that Yosemite in July will be a fun vacation for the whole family. And, don't believe those totally false images of the rooms from the Yosemite Web site when booking a room.
They say that all the people who come into your life are there to teach you a lesson. I think they say the same thing is true, by extension for all the events you experience in life. Sometimes, the lesson is pretty obscure. But sometimes it is screaming out.
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