Ever since I was a teenager the universe has taught me lessons through money.
I’ve never really had money. As a 19 year old living in Manhattan, every penny counted and every time I lost or had to spend a large amount of money on school, or rent, I felt it. I never had anybody to rely on to help me.
The only way the universe could show me that I was allowing life to get too out of hand was to give me a punishment with money… usually involving a piece of technology. The first time this happened was when I was 19 and a digital camera broke right before my first trip out of the country. Last week, my iMac stopped working out of nowhere.Computers, glasses, teeth, have all broken at the right time. There’s been countless other instances throughout my life where I have been allowing myself to get too overwhelmed, too busy, too hungover, too hamster-on-a-wheel, and I’ve needed a universal lesson to make me pause, think, open the wallet, and reflect on what’s been going on.
This is not to say that every time that your phone breaks that you should think about your life (…or maybe it is). It’s to say that we all *probably* have a similar story, where something tends to keep happening when we’ve lost ourselves, that we can begin to notice, and use it as a moment to reflect.
The iMac catastrophe of last week put me into a place of anger. I was angry at my husband for using Skype when it broke (which had nothing to do with it) and then I was angry for the computer store for calling it vintage and telling me they couldn’t fix it. I was in the rat race of my own mind before I was reminded of the greatest teacher. I knew it, and felt it, but I resented it. So on the car ride home when I was starting to self-reflect, I realized that once again, I was letting life live me. I was so concerned with being busy that I haven’t had a moment of rest in a while. This lack of rest takes away from all Creative Energy that I tend to judge myself for not having at a moment’s notice.
The new iMac is still sitting in my office as I made a commitment to myself to make the office feel like me before setting it up. That means work needs to happen slower. And that’s ok.
