Many car owners and drivers experience this at some point, sometimes more than once.
There you go, heading off to work, perhaps running a bit late because of this or that.You’re heading for the freeway hoping it’ll get you there faster. So you’re taking the ramp hoping to merge into traffic easily then you hear that POP sound and then the dreaded thump thump thump as you recognize you just got a dreaded flat tire.
You pull over knowing that now you’ll really be late, so you call the office to explain then you roll up your sleeves for what you know is going to be a messy job and open the trunk to get the jack, the wrench and whatever else you need only to realize that you forgot them in your garage when you cleaned up the trunk a few days ago and didn’t put them back in the trunk.
To top it off… it starts to rain. Not a little cloud passing by, not a drizzle, this is an outright downpour.
You reach for your phone to call AAA (or CAA in Canada) and are told your membership expired a few months ago because you forgot to renew it.
Then you notice your cell phone battery only has a few minutes of juice left. What a dilemma!!!!
The scenarios really don’t matter, it’s that feeling that the flat tire is the tip of the iceberg, things are spiralling out of control and you don’t know where the brakes are.
You might even feel like someone or something is telling you something (or screaming), but what exactly? Even more frustrating is the fact that these scenarios feel like they’re piling up, backlogged as it were.
Trust me, I’ve been there more than once. It’s an awful feeling really, like being caught in a fast moving river and you can barely keep your head above water while you’re being swept away.
The solution isn’t screaming, ranting and raving, waging war against some unseen foe.
The very opposite is needed and this is not meant to patronize anyone. Stepping back, taking several deep breaths while ‘acknowledging’ the situation, ‘addressing’ it in a way to get one’s bearings or footing and then ‘accepting’ that this is the result of old stories we’ve been telling ourselves repeatedly over the years, often not even paying any attention to what we tell ourselves. The ‘accepting’ part really has to do with ‘accepting’ our responsibilities for our life and its content (more on that in another post), and specifically accepting ourselves as we are, not as anyone else would like us to be
We could have been re-telling stories (often unconsciously) about being ineffective, powerless in the face of challenges, powerless to change our ‘destiny or fate’, or not smart enough, not having the strength of character others think we should have. Or it can be stories about how unfriendly or unkind some sort of Higher Power or the Universe is. Perhaps we tell ourselves we will be punished for this or that… and the list can be long.
This level of introspection can help uncover deeper issues sometimes related to our own inner turmoil, or perhaps even full blown inner storms. These really need to be paid attention to if we want to feel connected once again with our sense of purpose, our innate guidance system because we may have veered off course.
This process of Acknowledging, Addressing and Accepting “AAA” (not related to automobile services) can be very revealing, and getting us back in the driver’s seat and on the road again.
“Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don’t know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda