The Lesson in Less

I live in America. Being a U.S. Citizen, I have great opportunities and over the years I have learned to take advantage of them. I have gone from someone who made a minimum wage after school to an income I was well satisfied with. I was able to afford things I never dreamed of and had grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle. Of course, you'd think that made me very happy but it didn't. When I went from married woman to single mom suddenly, the pace and the effort it took to keep up with my appetite for living made me grow weary. I wanted more free time, I wanted less stress. I wanted less bills. I wanted less results of wanting more.

The pinnacle came as I was driving my brand new Mercedes into the city where I worked. My office was in a prestigious building right in Boston's financial district. I wore beautiful tailored suits and ate nice lunches with my coworkers. As I sat in my latest purchase, staring at the traffic and being frustrated by the wait I started to cry. I called my mother and told her that I just wanted a simpler life. I didn't want all that I'd worked for any more. It was making me miserable. If this was "it" then life could have it back. I wanted to quit my job and write a book. Her unexpected reply was "so do it". And, the next day, I did. I packed up my desk, had a few long meetings with my supervisor and Vice President and left with a box and a smile.

The time I have spent in shorts and flip flops since then has been great, mostly. I don't have to be up before dawn, I spend time with my daughter in the morning making breakfast, putting together puzzles, discussing what we'll do today, fixing her hair and leisurely getting her off to pre-school. I come home and eat breakfast and fire up my laptop to get writing. Sometimes, I don't even shower until after lunch. Easy, some would say. I sit in my tiny shoebox of a condo on the second floor in a small Key West neighborhood. I call it The Tree House because my balcony is surrounded by flowering trees and palms. My condo could have fit 4x into my old house. There is no lawn to worry about mowing, no landscaping, no nothing to do maintenance wise. I was doing okay financially. I didn't have the freedoms to spend like I did before but it was kind of a novelty to not just buy anything on a whim. I think I was playing with the idea of having less but actually seeing it in action was going to be another story.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. Getting a lesson in less was coming. It is a long story but with the social security benefits I am living on plus the proceeds of my investments that I have used, I never gave a second thought to money being tight. I had enough and that was all I cared about. I was still able to get pedicures and massages, that mattered to me. I needed to get the car washed once a week, it's an unwritten rule. You need to get your car washed regularly or people will think badly of you, didn't you know that? One thing led to another in my checking account. Money went this way and that and a cash out on my investment proceeds somehow never ended up being sent and I didn't realize that the check they were sending in the mail to me the day I called wasn't coming and it had somehow been mistakenly voided and couldn't be reissued for another 30 days. Did Mr. Customer Service on the phone just say 30 days?!
I immediately logged in to my bank account to see what cleared and figure out what I absolutely needed to spend in the next week and a half. That left me with a whopping 40 dollars. I had 40 dollars to my name, for the next 10 days. How in the world does anyone live on that for what seemed to be an eternity. Impossible I thought. It can't be done. I moped, I complained to God, I felt sorry for myself, all kinds of negative things. I started to resent my decision to quit my job and be down here at the very end of Florida.

What was I going to do? I decided to give it a try. To live on my 40 dollars and not use my credit cards until my next deposit. It was great challenge but I was willing to see how little I could live on and still put food on the table and gas in my car. I took inventory of what was in my cabinets and freezer. I determined that we'd probably be okay. Instead of just going to the grocery store because it was Wednesday and that was grocery day, I decided to use what ever we had to make meals. I couldn't just make what I felt like having. I had meal plans and had to stick to them. Carli wasn't getting her choice of what to have for dinner. She had to eat what I put in front of her. Quite a feat for a very picky little toddler. We had a couple of nights of crying at the table but she rallied quickly when I didn't relent and told me she was "better now" and got down to eating. Who knew? She could overcome her finicky eating habits.

The gas I had in the tank of my over-priced crossover was going to have to do. I had to fight the urge to bust out the American Express and just drive by the gas station. Gasp! I couldn't wash the car for two weeks. To top it off, I had to park my car under a tree for a couple of days and we all know what birds in trees do to cars that are underneath them. I had to drive around in shame. You know what? No one pointed and laughed. No one looked at me in disgust. It was okay. I did it but the morning my deposit hit, I was right to the car wash, no questions asked.

So where are we in my lesson? I didn't go to Starbucks, walk to the corner to get Carli ice cream or pick up any trinkets. I did go to the dollar store for trash bags and to the grocery store for the essential things that couldn't wait like milk, bread and vegetables. I had seven dollars left over after my trips to the store. The last part of the lesson came when I pulled into a gas station with my last 7 bucks and put what I could afford in cash into my car. No one starved over the last two weeks. I got to where we needed to go. I consolidated trips to places and we walked when we could. Where I ended up was leftovers in my fridge and a little less than a quarter of a tank until I got to the gas station this morning and twenty six dollars still in my checking account. I lacked nothing I needed over the last two weeks. No one went without and no one suffered anything. When we ran out of convenience breakfast foods we made pancake batter. It was fun, Carli loved it and she ate pancakes almost every morning. That is heaven to a 3 year old. When we ran out of snacks, we made sugar cookies. Fun times had by all and what beats homemade cookies anyway? I invented entrees with unlikely ingredients that I will definitely make again.

My life is much simpler. The lesson in less was not easy but it was very necessary. Even with the less that I had, I had so much more than other people right here on this very island I am hanging out on. I am blessed, still. I don't mourn the loss of shopping trips and online purchases any more. I am happy with what I have and content to make great and appreciate what I call mine. I have too much. I am thinking of ways to trim what I can to make it easier and not worry about trivial things that don't really matter and excess is definitely one of those trivial things.

Love Thy Neighbor Part 3 - Forgiveness

Forgiveness is something everyone wants. I know I do when I mess up. Oddly, it is something that most are very slow, if at all, to give away. If we all want it so badly when do we hesitate or deny it to others? Some would say, "I do forgive". I would question, think of someone who has wronged you that you think that you have forgiven. I mean someone who has really wronged you, it caused damage to the relationship. Think of them, bring them to mind. How do you feel? Pain, sorrow, anger, frustration? Anything like that? If you don't have any emotion other than the good, fuzzy feelings of friendship or love I am sorry to say, there is something between you that hasn't been forgiven. I know first hand.

Studying myself in situations of asking for and extending forgiveness I have noted a few things. First of all, asking for forgiveness is very hard. It is, if you are sincerely looking for reconciliation rather than an "I'm sorry too" in return. I know it is nice to get the other side to admit fault but it doesn't always happen. Sometimes they even apologize for something else that wasn't even what you had in mind! Oh, the complexities of relationships. In any case, the first times I earnestly sought forgiveness were and remain, very powerful and humbling experiences for me. In all but one case, there has been reconciliation on some level, meaning the relationship continued on either immediately or eventually in some way.

One comes to most readily is one that was not only hard but the recipient challenged my motives, I would say now to that person, good for you! It was someone with whom I worked along side who eventually became my supervisor. The thing between us was, as peers, we had differing views on how my program within the company should run. I created our program and he had run a successful, similar program at another office within the same company. My program was also successful. I was not very open at all to his trying to mentor me when I hadn't asked for it. Honestly, I was pretty full of my own ego and didn't appreciate him trying to deflate it either. Tensions progressed and further down the road our boss informed us that he had too many managers reporting to him and that I would roll up under this man's team. You'd have thought that our boss had punched me in the face right then and there. I was resentful. My relationship with this then peer and now boss continued to deteriorate. I was indignant, disrespectful and openly critical. I should have been fired but for some reason he didn't. I had come to a place over time where I needed this office distress to end. I hated going to work and I didn't want to find another job. I sat down, went over where my faults were in this relationship and humbly presented them to him after a regularly scheduled business meeting and asked him to forgive me. I went on to say, which I think is most important in these situations, to define what my plan was to not let this behavior continue. He surprisingly pushed back. He asked me to state examples of what I felt were my trespasses against him. I was caught off guard, took a second and then gave him one or two. He asked for more. I swallowed and pressed on, giving him more detail and some others. Something most interesting happened. His face changed. It softened, he looked almost emotional and informed me that no one had ever put him in this situation of asking forgiveness before. He thanked me and we left the conference room. Our relationship changed immediately and for the better. We went on to have many great wins in business together. It turns out, we were a very formidable force together and we remain friends and I hold him as one of my best supervisors, mentors and role models in business. Imagine that.

Harder though is extending forgiveness, mostly to those who are not seeking our forgiveness in the first place. This is my "all but one" person I referred to earlier. I find that this is so common among us. It is so hard to get through and although it causes us so much pain and emotional scarring, it seems we'd rather allow it to reek havoc rather than heal it. I am in fact, still working through this myself with this individual. This person is a family member. During a great trial in my life, this person extended help and the security of help and undying love for me and my daughter. I didn't know this person well in an up close and personal sense but I took the emotion to be genuine and accepted. Public and private promises were made and almost immediately were reneged on. Resentment welled up in me and two more disappointments lead to me, very publicly, announcing this person's wrongs and letting everyone know who I thought he really was. I don't even need to detail the extensive damaged that did to our relationship. I was angry, rage-filled and vengeful. I felt completely justified in my actions at the time. I still believe that this person did wrong me. The sticking point is, I have humbled myself to see my errors, presented these to this individual on more than one occasion not only to have my asking for forgiveness rejected but even harsher words hurled back at me. This person is not open to any communication from me or my daughter at this time. Rejection of me is fine, I've had to live with that before but when it comes to my daughter that is another thing entirely. The "Momma Bear" in me rises and I want to swipe my paw at anyone who dare harm her. I considered this person's actions to be an affront to the emotional well-being of my daughter and I couldn't let it go. The mere mention of his name, the thought of this person made my blood boil over. My jaw clenched, I never turned down the opportunity to voice how hurt and disgusted I was with this person's behavior to my family and close friends. Truth be told, I hated how I felt about this person and I wanted to let it go but I couldn't. I prayed about it, resolved to not feel this way any more, only to be disappointed to find myself angry and discussing how I felt about the situation, again. The crossroads came recently when I had to contact a company my late husband had an annuity with to find out how to close it out. I called and was informed that the paperwork for the beneficiary would be in the mail in a week. Not really paying too much attention, the mail came and to my utter shock, this individual was named as the beneficiary, not me his wife. Ironically, after I felt like I was punched in the stomach for about an hour, this pinnacle helped me let it go. I took the paperwork, put it in an envelope along with a note explaining what this person had to do, stuck it in a mailbox and walked away. Why did this bring about change? I really don't know. Maybe God was pressing me to put my prayers into action and decide if I really wanted to stop carrying around this baggage any more. Will this bring about change in our relationship? I really don't know but I am finally able to think of this person and wish them well. When the thoughts reappear of me talking to this person again and what I would say, I immediately changed the subject in my mind. I can't entertain the "who's right" argument any more. It doesn't matter. This was initially a miscommunication that needed to be resolved followed by someone not meeting my expectations and my reaction toward that. It could have been easily settled but now it may never happen. That's okay. I can leave it there without needing to open old wounds every time someone brings this person up or I think about it.

I've learned that forgiveness is an action. I need to decide to forgive and be committed to the forgiveness regardless of what happens. Easier said than done but I feel so much better having put this into practice. I have wronged people and I have had to ask for forgiveness and they have graciously extended that to me. They, I believe, have moved on and allowed our relationship to continue. If I would expect that from others, why shouldn't others expect that from me?