A Week Without A Wednesday

I came on a cruise to see new places and have new experiences, and this week didn’t disappoint. I was stung by a bee on a beach in Tahiti, learned our itinerary is changing due to the Corona Virus, and lost Wednesday.

I came on a cruise to see new places and have new experiences, and this week didn’t disappoint. I was stung by a bee on a beach in Tahiti, learned our itinerary is changing due to the Corona Virus, and lost Wednesday.

I went to sleep Tuesday night, February 25th and woke up on Thursday morning, February 27th.  No, I didn’t sleep through Wednesday because Wednesday, February 26th didn’t exist on our cruise ship this week.  We crossed the international date line on our way to New Zealand and Wednesday, February 26th  disappeared.

On Tuesday the captain reminded us to advance our clock 23 hours. This sounds like a big change, and it is the loss of a day, but if I think about it in a different way, I realize it’s only a one-hour change to my day-to-day schedule.  It’s the same process we follow every Autumn in the US when we set the clocks back one hour and have an earlier sunrise and sunset.

My attempt to help others minimize the perceived impact of this change by focusing on a one-hour loss vs. a one-day loss seemed confusing for most of my fellow passengers who enjoyed whining about the jetlag they were experiencing from a 23-hour time change.

One step to successfully managing change is to take a realistic look at what will be different as a result of the change. What will you lose? What will you gain? What will stay the same? Yes, we lost a day, but we’ll get it back when we cross the international date line again before we get back to Florida. What may have seemed like a big change really had little impact on our life.

A second step is to realize you’ve managed similar changes successfully before and you likely will again. We’ve adjusted to many one-hour time zones since leaving Florida on January 4th and this was just another one. Plus, we have a rug on the floor of each elevator with the name of the day. If you’re confused about the day of the week, just ride the elevator. It’s amazing how irrelevant time becomes when you’re at sea and have no place you must be or nothing you must do.

A third step to successfully managing change is to accept and adapt to the reality of what is. Resisting reality only produces frustration. Our strength comes from our willingness to remain flexible and adaptable to our changing circumstances.

I had an opportunity to apply this principle when the captain announced a change to our itinerary because of the Corona Virus. We won’t be going to Indonesia, Singapore, Kenya, or the Maldives. We will be extending our stay in Sri Lanka and adding a stop in Mumbai, India. There is nothing I can do about this change but accept it and focus on gains rather than loses. I’ve never been to India and am excited about the opportunity to spend three days there.  

And lastly, how many people can say they were stung by a bee on a beach in Tahiti?

I really wanted to spend my one day in Tahiti on the beach drinking  Mimosas. I didn’t know bees could be found on beaches anywhere, but somehow managed to step on one as I walked to the crystal-clear blue water. My foot hurt for about 10 minutes, but the water felt good, the sky was blue, the waves were perfect, and the Mimosa was good. I soon forgot all about the bee sting.

It was a week of unexpected change and unusual experiences, but don’t we have many of those over our lifetime? We can be continually stressed out or choose to accept the reality of the moment. Applying the steps I’ve described above helps with the process.

 The reality of the moment for me is that it’s a leap year so my February will still have 28 days,  I get to visit India, and I survived the bee sting.

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