A Matter of Perspective

This morning there was a car accident outside of my house.  The two cars hit so violently that the back of one car spun around and hit a car parked on the side of the road pushing it 15 ft up the road and onto the curb.  Surprisingly, no one was hurt (a testament to the wonders of seat belts and air bags – God bless the engineers). 

 

The woman who owned the parked car came out about 20 minutes after the accident to find that her car was probably totaled.  She threw her hands up in the air and announced that this was just one more thing that had gone wrong with her life that week, starting with losing her job and her unemployment check being delayed.  She had that desperate look of someone life has just hit too hard. 

 

I thought about it though.  She’s lost her job.  Her unemployment check is delayed.  Her car gets totaled.  I see the final one as a gift.  You see, we live within walking distance of a subway stop and two blocks from the bus route.  She has easy access to alternate transportation.  With this one fell swoop she has been freed up from the need to pay for car insurance and gas.  It was an older model car, so it’s likely owned it outright.  She’ll get the settlement check within a week – which is probably faster than her unemployment insurance could show up.  It’s not one more thing that went wrong, it’s the universe finding a way to smooth the way for her. 

 

But that’s my perspective.  And you could say that my perspective is skewed given the fact that they missed my car by inches and it wasn’t my car that was totaled.  But I will tell you that when I was going on my walkabout a few years ago someone broke into my car and stole my laptop computer.  Thankfully, I had just backed it up, so I didn’t lose much data.  And it was an old computer that had been given to me by a friend who had upgraded.  It was worth about $50.  But my insurance covers replacement value, so they gave me $1700 for the computer.  I used the money to pay off my car loan and to fund my trip.  It was truly a gift from the universe.  And in the moment it happened, I knew that it was a gift.  I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did. 

 

The key was for me not to be attached to how things were.  If I had replaced the laptop simply because I was used to having one, I would have been much worse off.  But because I was willing to let go of having it, other avenues were available to me.  If the woman across the street from me is open enough to accept not having a car for a while, she’ll have some money to tide her over until her unemployment check arrives.  If she is attached to getting back to her comfort zone, then she’ll probably have more expenses to deal with since replacing a car is almost always more expensive than the settlement money they provide. 

 

Where are you attached?  What is your comfort zone?  Are things breaking down around you?  Before you work too hard to replace what gets broken, think about whether you really need it.  Perhaps you could simplify your life instead.  For everything new you want to bring you’re your life, you will likely have to let go of something else to make room for it.  Sometimes that’s an easy sacrifice, other times it’s more difficult – but we usually have a choice.

 

Remember, everything around us happens because it happens.  It is a function of the energy we put out.  Our perspectives are what make things seem “goodâ€? and “badâ€?.  What perspective do you choose today?