observations at Fedex

Sound post and visual effects are both happening in the Bay Area right now, so I've been at the FedEx office a lot. In the last hour before the final 6:15 pm pickup deadline, a nice feeling of Zen descends onto the area right in front of the counter. Yes, the FedEx workers are in what I'm sure is a daily crisis mode, but the customers are strangely at peace with one another. I see people opening doors for other people with heavy loads, people helping each other tape boxes together, yielding places in line to the older or more burdened or the picking-up-onlies. I assume everyone there is on some deadline or another, and like me, have spent their whole days running around and gathering crap and waiting for printouts and forgetting to write down addresses and driving and parking. I further assume that the people who have successfully arrived at the FedEx counter have, like me, made it. The great relief that comes from that, the feeling of falling into a bed of completion, is what I think accounts for the general good humor and semi-utopian consideration for each other. A small thing to be sure, but something I look forward to.