Give Your Problems a Pair of Dancing Shoes
90 Day E2T Letting Go Experiment: Day 2
“I’ll remain calm,” I said. “I will let go. No situation is worth being upset.” I picked up the phone and dialed customer service. There’d been a problem with a payment from a new biller and instead of the company reaching out to tell me, they continued to try to withdraw the money from my account.
If it had been the right account, there wouldn’t have been a problem, but for some reason their system was trying to take money from a savings account that I don’t use.
By the time I saw the problem, there had been over $100 in fees for non-sufficient funds on a $27.00 payment.
My bank is always lovely, and they immediately returned the fees that they charged to my account and figured out the problem.
Ah, that was easy. Letting go has a magic to it.
Unfortunately, the the bigger issue was on the biller’s end.
Breath, I thought as the automated phone service asked for information I knew wouldn’t be passed onto the customer service representative.
Automated services, drive me insane, so much so I end up screaming at the phone as it refuses to let me speak to a live human.
This time, I was letting go, and choosing how I would feel about the situation. I learned this on day one. . .I get to decide how I react. As the automated system kept me in its cycle of ridiculousness, I sat in my yard, I watched the birds, I looked at my flowers.
Ten minutes later, yes ten minutes, I finally heard a person’s voice. I explained slowly, and as simply as possible what had happened and what I needed her to do.
Then the live person spoke and immediately I felt my calm dissipating. “I’m so sorry, M’aam. That is a very unfortunate situation, however. . .”
“No, there’s no however. There’s only, I need you to tell your system to stop hitting that account. You have an internal error, and I want a refund for the money you charged me for non-payment.”
“I’m so sorry, M’aam. I understand what you’d like, however that is not possible.”
Calm? Blown up, as she continued to read her script.
Don’t yell, I thought. “Ma’am, I need you to listen to me. I have extreme patience in my life, but when it comes to customer service not listening and reading from a script, and after ten minutes of an automated system, I turn into the wicked witch. Before I lose my temper in frustration, could you please let me speak to a supervisor.”
“I’m sorry, we don’t do that here. I’m perfectly happy to help you if you’d like to make a payment today.”
Letting go, controlling how I felt. . .Kaboom! Even my pretty little garden couldn’t keep me calm as I looked at the time I’d spent on the phone, and explained the situation again. It took an entire hour to finally get a supervisor, explain seven more times what the problem was, for them to decide I needed technical support, who then figured out the internal error, who apologized, and sent me back to the original people to fight with them about the fees that should’ve never been charged.
This all happened when I’d normally be figure skating. It was too late to make it to the rink, and already in a foul mood, I decided to handle things that deal with problem X. I may be letting go, but the situation doesn’t just disappear.
Instantly I realized I shouldn’t have given my biggest situation the name X in order to let it go. The letter X began to look like it had feet and arms that waved around as it danced, mocking me. All my plans for the day thrown out the window, and X seemed to get worse over the next hour as whatever I touched became a new frustration.
I was about to slam my computer down, when I stopped. “Let go,” I said aloud to the sky. “Get a cup of coffee, sit in the garden and do anything but look at X.”
X didn’t want to let up.
Fine if you’re going to dance around in my head, you’re at least going to be dressed properly, I thought. I gave X a pair of white sparkly shoes, a top hat, I put a smiley face on his shoulders (yes, X seems to have taken on a male personality), and I gave him white gloves and a cane.
Suddenly, I was laughing.
Laughter, I thought. That would change my mood quickly. It’s the second lesson in the Bucket List Life 21 Day Challenge, and I knew it worked.
I turned on one of my favorite comedians and laughed until I cried and my belly ached.
The day shifted. I returned to work, forgetting about X. The afternoon had been set aside to complete tasks, but everything was in such flow, that I was finished hours earlier than planned.
I’d recently met a man who’d been on his way down from Maine on a motorcycle, and had asked me if I wanted to go for a walk sometime. During our conversation he’d asked me what I was doing that day, and I told him it was my birthday. He offered me the present of a yoga session, a Thai massage, or a motorcycle ride.
Now before you think that this was a pick-up line (I did at first), it wasn’t. He travels the world, and his way of giving back for all that life and people have offered him, is to give gifts to those he meets.
I decided to take him up on the offer for a walk. We climbed the hill by my house and sat overlooking the city.
For hours, I listened to him tell me stories of how he came to be traveling through the area, his life as a nomad, and that he was in New England to spend more time with his father, who was aging. He was also an Archeologist, another gift he felt he wanted to give to the world, to preserve the past and history for the future generations.
“People live in such prisons,” he said. “They fear everything. Our media wants us to be anxiety-ridden so that we can’t see our own freedom. When I tell people where I’ve been, all they can talk about is the bad thing they heard on the news about that area. I’ve traveled the whole world, couch surfing through most of it, and all I’ve found are friendly faces.”
This man didn’t know my history, or the path I’ve followed of my dreams, believing for many years that no matter where I was in the world, life would care for me.
In those hours we spent on the hill, instead of berating myself for not working, or accomplishing, I felt the wind on my skin, and enjoyed the bright red tiny bugs that made their way along the rocks. I saw flowers I wouldn’t have seen if I’d been wrapped up in my thoughts or the problems of the morning.
“Travel is my way of life, whether I’m home or abroad,” he said. “I try to keep that same attitude of exploration wherever I am.”
When I travel, I never research. I don’t have any expectations of what I want to see, unless it’s something that needs a permit like going to see the Mountain Gorillas in Uganda. I wake up each morning, excited for the day’s adventure, wondering what life will show me. Yet, when I’m home I schedule my time. I figure out how to make everything fit, and I leave little space to simply let life show me its magnificence.
We left the hike and I went to meet my friend to work out the situation that had upset me the night before. Instead of having expectations of what we’d decide, I let go. Whatever the outcome it would lead me where I was supposed to be.
When we came to the end of our initial plans, I was excited for the future.
Day 2 brought about challenges. I wanted to pick up X with that battle cry. I also wanted to complain. Instead I learned to shift. To put dancing shoes and a top hat on my problems.
Once X looked a little silly, the whole day shifted.
I’m uncertain what day 3 will bring. I’m attending a skating festival tonight with high-level professional skaters. For four days, I’m going to be pushing myself beyond my comfort zone. It’s my birthday present to myself.
Can I let go of my fear of inadequacy next to so many skaters who have grown up on the ice, and just get in there and suck the marrow out of the experience?
Maybe I’ll picture all the skaters with top hats, canes, and sparkle shoes so that they aren’t so intimidating.
