There’s a stoplight I hit almost every day.
And for years, it annoyed me.
Always red. Always right when I’m running late.
Always a reminder that I’m not in control.
Until one day, I smiled.
Not because I felt happy.
Not because I wanted to.
Just because something in me remembered: this moment still belongs to me.
Applied Zen lives in places like that.
The middle of your commute.
The pause before a meeting.
The grocery line, the coffee spill, the slow-loading webpage.
Not glamorous. Not spiritual. Just real.
The stoplight became my practice.
I don’t mean I turned it into a ritual.
I mean I just noticed it.
I stopped fighting it.
I took a breath.
I let my jaw unclench.
And I smiled.
That’s it.
No mantra. No incense.
Just a small, human reset.
Sometimes I even say, out loud, if no one’s around,
Thank you for the stop.
Because I didn’t know how badly I needed one.
We race through life thinking peace is at the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the project.
But it’s never there.
It’s here.
Right now.
In the two minutes you didn’t want.
In the red light that made you late.
In the breath that brought you back.
The stoplight isn’t your enemy.
It’s your bell.
Applied Zen doesn’t ask you to go anywhere special.
It just asks: Can you be here now?
Even in your car.
Even in traffic.
Even when you’re annoyed.
Especially when you’re annoyed.
That smile?
It’s not fake.
It’s freedom.
The moment you remember you can choose presence, even at a stoplight, you’ve already begun.
So try it.
Smile when you don’t feel like it.
Breathe when you want to scroll.
Be kind to the version of you stuck at every metaphorical red light in your life.
Because that pause might just be the doorway.
And it’s open.
Enlightened Life Fellowship 