Take What You Have and Make What You Want

By Alan Cohen

On our way out of the airport parking lot, Mr. Everit and I found ourselves in a slow-moving line to pay the toll. I began to feel impatient. What was the big holdup?

Finally at the toll booth we found a handsome olive-skinned Italian man with thick white hair. As he handed us our change, he burst into several rousing verses from La Traviata. At first I thought he was a kook, but as he belted out the chorus, I recognized quite a spark in his eye. He was enjoying himself immensely and he wasn’t a bad singer, either. When the toll man finished his performance, Mr. Everit and I smiled and applauded.

As we exited onto the state highway, Mr. Everit asked me, “Do you know what most people believe is the most boring job in the world?”

I thought for a minute before answering, “Security guard?”

“Nope. Toll collector. I read it in a magazine.” He always seemed to have the facts he needed at his fingertips. Did he make them up, too?

“Do you think that toll collector back there was bored?” he asked me.

“Certainly not,” I chuckled. “He was having a grand time.”

“‘Take what you have and make what you want,’” Mr. Everit stated dryly.

“Take what . . .?”

“Take what you have and make what you want,” he repeated matter-of-factly. “It’s the secret of happiness. Only a handful of people realize it. You just saw a living demonstration.”

“That toll collector?” I asked, being a little skeptical.

“That man had supposedly ‘the most boring job in the world’ and he was in heaven! A few hundred yards away, thousands of people with more money and mobility are scurrying, hurrying, and worrying. That man, in his tiny cubicle, refused to be stifled by his conditions. He took a dreary toll booth in the thick of impatient drivers and exhaust fumes, and turned it into an opera hall. I call that alchemy at its finest.”

I looked back at the toll booth, now just a dot in the distance. There was still a line of cars waiting for their surprise concert.

My face squeezed into a question mark. “Do you think it’s possible to do that with any job?” I asked.

“Can you just take any job and make it work?”

“There are two ways you can change your life,” he answered. “You can change your conditions or you can change your mind. Your mind is more crucial because it’s the one thing you always have the power to direct. Clever people find ways to shine right where they are.”

If I smoked, I would have lit a cigarette. Instead, I reached for one of Mr. Everit’s Skittles. “Does that mean we’re supposed to stay in boring jobs or dead-end marriages?”

Alan Cohen is the author of the best-selling, The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, the award-winning, A Deep Breath of Life, and the acclaimed, Why Your Life Sucks and What You Can Do About It. This August join Alan in Maui for his life-transforming Mastery Training. For information on this seminar and a free catalog of Alan’s books, tapes, and seminars, phone 1-800-568-3079, visit www.alancohen.com, email admin@alancohen.com , or write P.O. Box 835, Haiku, HI 96708.