At about 11 am last Halloween morning, a nice old lady in a big, maroon Lincoln Continental helped me out by wrecking my little speck of a car while I was in line at a red light. I really liked my car. It was small, great on gas, easy to park—in short, the perfect city commuter car. I was pissed at having my space invaded, my hatchback perforated and my hood corrugated (against the tow bar of the big American SUV in front of me) but, curiously, I did not feel so great a loss for the car as I would have expected. I was just pissed off at having my day forced into a pattern other than the one I’d intended.
Otherwise I was pretty calm about it all.
Perhaps you will see it this way, if you subscribe to such ideas: I’d had this side job I’d been doing for several years. It would take me almost eight hours every Sunday, with travel time. For more than a year, I’d wanted to quit doing it, as I wanted the time for my growing music production…but needed the money (welcome to planet Earth). I’d worked out my finances so that I could live without the income and, on top of that, the company was leaving L.A., so I’d lose the job anyway. But that decision was still hanging there in space: “I don’t want to do this work anymore.” Add to that, the realization that I’d wanted to get some regular exercise for quite some time. I am not the kind of person who will make time to go to the gym. If I can’t get my exercise in some way that’s practical, I am not likely to make extra time for it.
That's my (former) car's front end and some lady's rear end.
So, here’s these two decisions I’d made. Those things (decisions, conclusions) don’t just evaporate. They’re like push-pins in a map. You can go back and see where you pushed the pin in. And I think they have the power to change the directions of the roads on the map–the roads being the directions one life goes in. (So like I said…if you subscribe to such ideas. )
The lady in the Lincoln just happened to come along and help me make good on my conclusions so perhaps I should have been nicer to her.
Annoyed with the situation, I was exchanging insurance information and talking to her insurance company on the phone, when she casually asked me (about my car), “What kind of car is this?” I hesitated…looked at her as if she just asked me if I’d ever heard of Amway and slowly replied, “It’s…a…wrecked car.”
I am okay. There’s a certain satisfaction in just knowing that such wreckage is not your fault. I had some minor whiplash, got physical therapy, etc.
But all of a sudden, I am without a car and, despite being able to buy another, I curiously did not want to re-enter the world of the commuter. I entered instead the world of the mass-transit customer, the pedestrian.
This has been going on for more than four months and…I like it.
More to come.
So it seems to me that when you are considering putting a pin on a map the universe will drive that pin home eventually for you and on top of that when the universe wants to push that pin there is nothing you can do about it and then again there is a sense of relief isn’t there?
I know when a pin I have been thinking about long enough gets pushed whether I push it or it is something that the universe will push me to or away from there is always a sense of relief at one point!