Got up this morning ready to drive home to a Christmas party house concert, only to discover the party was cancelled the day I left home to drive to Houston. I missed the email because I hardly ever check my emails. Text is where I live now. The new king of immediacy. It used to be the fax. Then it was the email. Now, it’s the text. I can hardly wait to see what’s next. Or maybe I can.

But back to today’s cancelled party. It was highly anticipated. Good music, good friends, holiday cheer. Now, because I always try to find the bright side, it mostly means I can wait out the cold front and avoid driving home in the rain. See? A plus. There’s almost always a plus if you look hard enough. I think it’s part of the universal plan. Things have to balance. Heck, it might even be a law for all I know.

Anyway, now there’s a slight hole in my weekend. But since nature abhors a vacuum, life will rush in to fill the void, and I’ll find something to do, even it’s only daydreaming as I drive. In fact, I believe I’ll think about the wedding I attended last night, and how happy the wedded couple seemed, how we all danced, surrounded by family, and even though there were moments when I missed my wife, by and large the evening was a terrific celebration of life and I was happy to be there.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale