One of those moments happened during a simple errand. 

In the early days of Buddhist-informed recovery, I was introduced to a practice called wise action. It was less a grand moral principle and more a simple, daily question: What is the most honest and least harmful next step? 

It was a Sunday morning, and I was running through my to-do list. I had a basket of items in my hand at a department store and was making my way up front to check out. As I passed the self-checkout, I saw the sign: 12 items or fewer. 

I had fourteen. 

Trying to practice wise action, one of the first things I started to understand, I decided to go to a full checkout lane instead. I got in the first open line behind two people, not paying attention to much else. 

When I finally looked up, the reality hit me: the woman working the register was moving incredibly slowly. 

Painfully slowly. 

It reminded me of the sloth scene in Zootopia at the DMV. I laughed to myself, mostly because I needed to. 

And my first instinct was the same as it had always been: Oh great. I don’t have time for this. I have things to do. Why is she moving so slowly? 

The old irritation bubbled up so quickly and so automatically that I barely noticed it before it started to take over. 

But then something unexpected happened: I took a breath. 

Not as a strategy. Not because I had it all together. I just paused long enough to actually see the woman in front of me, not as an obstacle, but as a person. She looked older. Tired. Working on a Sunday morning. And it hit me that maybe she wasn’t moving slowly because she didn’t care. 

Maybe she was doing the best she could. 

Without forcing it, something in me shifted from self-importance to compassion. And just like that, I could stand there without spiraling. 

In the past, a moment like that would have set the tone for my entire morning. The irritation would have followed me to the car, into the next store, and into the rest of the day. I would have carried it long after the moment itself was over. 

This time, it rose, I felt it, and it eased. 

That may not sound like much. But to me, it was a sign. Awareness was beginning to interrupt old patterns. 

The more I paid attention, the more I saw moments like this. They weren’t dramatic. They didn’t make great stories. No one else would have marked them as progress. 

But I did. 

And it mattered. It showed me I could pause before reacting. I could meet ordinary life with a bit more steadiness. 

I didn’t respond that way every time. Not even close. But those small moments of choice began to add up. They became part of the foundation for everything that followed, not because it meant I was fixed, but because it showed me I had a choice. 

And slowly, I began to realize something else: a lot of my suffering wasn’t only what was happening around me. It was what my mind added to it.