Hi Chanie,
Thanks for offering the Rosh Chodesh Society lesson today. I was able to apply the principles of emotional mastery we studied immediately after leaving your house. My fiance, Andy, called to ask that I come directly home because he lost his car key. I was planning to run a few errands on my way home and felt inconvenienced since I had a plan of what I wanted to accomplish in my mind. All the stops I had to make were on my route back to Bayville so I’d have to backtrack. But I accepted the situation without agitation (step 1: restraint) and sought a purpose for the predicament (step 3: seek opportunity & purpose). I moved in with Andy this past fall so I’m still getting used to living with someone and being “a couple.” So I told myself that this was a good reminder that committed relationships require taking on another person’s problems as your own.
Turns out, Andy had lost his key somewhere in the Bayville ShopRite parking lot. Fortunately, he encountered a guy in a pick-up truck who agreed to give him a ride home. So Andy was at home with no key and no car. He had pretty much resigned himself to the fact that he’d have to go to the car dealer to get a new key. If no one had turned the key into the store’s customer service department, my afternoon would be shot by a trip to the car dealer. But I kept reminding myself that there was nothing on my “to do” list that couldn’t wait till tomorrow (step 2: consider another perspective).
I got home to yet another opportunity to get upset. Andy was on a conference call for work so I had to wait 20 minutes to discuss the matter with him. I could have gotten really frustrated, especially since he left a greasy pan on the stove and dirty dishes in the sink. But I occupied myself with email until he was off the phone (step 1: restraint). Turns out, he had gone to ShopRite to buy me flowers (step 2: discovered a heartening piece of information). As he was walking into the store, he discovered that his key was missing. He searched high and low in the parking lot and never made it into the store. He would have stopped somewhere for lunch on his way home from ShopRite but that plan was nixed when his key disappeared. So he made himself lunch at home. The silver lining (in my perspective) to this part of the story is that Andy never made it to the burger joint as he originally intended. He had no choice but to fry up the grass-fed, organic ground beef patties from the freezer to satisfy his craving. So rather than eat a burger made with beef of unknown origin with all the fixin’s, at least he consumed some higher quality meat without the unnecessary carbs and toppings.
We went back to the ShopRite parking lot to scope out the area around the car one more time. Like before, the key was not in the car and no where in the vicinity. Andy decided to check with the clerk in the liquor store to see if anyone had returned a car key. No luck. Then, he remembered that he had taken some garbage out of the car and wondered if maybe he had thrown his key in a trash barrel. So we checked the two barrels closest to the liquor store entrance. By this time, I had lost most hope. He started walking toward a third trash barrel which was even further from the ShopRite entrance. I said to me, “At this point, you’re grasping for straws. Why would you walk out of your way to throw away the garbage?” I had just gotten the words out of my mouth when he pulled his key out of the trash bag. What a relief! While I was using commonsense, Andy realized that he had walked from behind his car to the sidewalk and approached the less obvious trash barrel.
I am so glad that we dealt with the situation calmly. Had we not, Andy would not have collected all his thoughts and found the key. While we will likely laugh about this day for many years to come, we did discuss the risk of losing a key. I wish we could say that we prayed to G-d and he answered our prayers. But we didn’t. However, we did take the opportunity to consider the practical lesson from the day and resolved to get a spare key just in case we ever really lose the original one. :-)
Lauren