Quote from Modern Love About Recalibrating the Universe When Anything Bad Happens

“Whenever anything bad happens, you should try and recalibrate the universe or whatever you want to call it with its opposite.“

Yasmine, Modern Love

Beyond the Quote (255/365)

Spoilers ahead. In the final episode of Modern Love, Season 1, we are shown a scene of a young man, Rob, who gets stood up at a café. Disheartened and upset, he goes to leave the café and (appropriately enough) walks out into the rain. He slowly pulls back to shield under the café’s awning as an attractive blond women, Yasmine, runs to shield on the other side.

Noticing his upset look, Yasmine tries to spark a friendly conversation with Rob, but quickly ends up on the receiving end of his disgruntled feelings and cynical replies. What’s remarkable about this scene is how Yasmine turns it around and takes what could have been a really awful encounter and turns it into an incredibly pleasant, loving one. Here’s how the rest of that scene unfolds:

Yasmine: Look, I can’t imagine what you just said feels like. I’ve literally never had anyone not go on a date with me.

Rob: No kidding.

Yasmine: But I’m thinking, like my mother used to say, whenever anything bad happens, you should try and recalibrate the universe or whatever you want to call it with its opposite.

Rob: Right. Universe, recalibration. Got it.

Yasmine: Wait, wait. If somebody cuts you off in traffic, you just are extra generous with the next person who wants to get out. If somebody steals your wallet, you go to the poor box and make a donation. You’ve just been stood up. You feel like shit, right? What if life gives you another date? Right now?

Rob: Are you for real?

And lo and behold, they go on that date in that little café and end up dating thereafter. Beautiful, right? Now, let’s be clear that this doesn’t mean you should go around dating people who get stood up so that you can “recalibrate” the universe. That probably wouldn’t play out as happily as it did for Rob and Yasmine. But, the underlying message is an incredibly powerful and versatile one that we can definitely apply to our lives: when wronged by someone, go do right by another.

This formula is way better than the current motto that seems to be shared by many in the world: when wronged by someone, wrong them or others worse. The revenge mentality only shifts the “calibration” of the world out of whack even further than it might already have been shifted by the first wrong. And more “wrong” doesn’t make anything more “right.” What two wrongs do is just double the wrong in the world. And that, in my opinion, is why the world is so horribly calibrated in modern times.

If we want to recalibrate the state of the world, my gut tells me that Yasmine is right—we have to absorb all of the wrongs that have been done to us and, like alchemists, send them back out into the world as rights (or do that as much as we can manage). We have to take the nasty and turn it into nice. We have to take the bitterness of heartbreak and turn it into warmth. We have to take pain and turn it into poetry. We have to find ways to take the unpleasant, undesirable, awful moments of our lives and turn them into something that is otherwise pleasant, thoughtful, or kind.

The way I see it, we are either a part of the problem or a part of the solution—there is no middle ground. We are either recalibrating the world or we’re contributing to the chaos, unrest, and wrong. We’re either spewing cynicism, like Rob, because that’s how the world made us feel. Or we’re radiating love, like Yasmine, because that’s what the world needs us to do for it. Let’s resolve to be the bigger person and rise to the occasion of recalibrating the world—for the world. Because, God knows, the world needs it.

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This post became the introduction for: 101 Acts of Kindness To Do When Wronged To Help Recalibrate The World

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