Little Victories

Sometimes the world feeds us falsehoods. Or misdirected messages. Or confusing experiences. We teeter-totter our way toward truth, or our version of it at least. Panic sets in. Or hope. Or despair. Or none of the above.

Every moment offers us the chance to see things differently, if we choose the eyes to view life anew.

Today I had a moment like that. No, in fact, I had several.

The first moment came when I desperately tried to call my son’s school. His report card had not yet arrived in the mail, although the school secretary insisted he had sent it in the mail last week. We reside in the same mid-sized German city as the school itself.

Photo courtesy of Miguel Bruna, Unsplash.com, reprinted with permission.

It shouldn’t have taken so long.

And then the secretary growled that he had sent the report card as a registered letter, something he could surely track if he had done so. As I tried to call the school to inquire about the tracking number, the call would not go through. And I wondered why the Universe had placed a roadblock in communication once again.

I decided to let it go for the moment, to focus on the plans of the day. Another road trip with my newly licensed daughter who needed assurance she could find her way to IKEA with the car by herself. We shopped. We laughed. We got back home in one piece.

And when I arrived, the so-called “registered letter” was resting in the mail box, smiling at me triumphantly. Oh the little victories in life!

The secretary had put the word “Registered” on the envelope, but the word alone was not enough for the German postal service. As with any good Teutonic administrative move, you have to actually fill out a form, pay the fee and identify the document as “registered”. Simply claiming it is so are merely letters on paper. In the secretary’s view, the letter had arrived as “registered mail.” But in the eyes of the German postal service, it was just another letter to be delivered.

The second moment involved a ten-second interaction with a fortune-teller who approached me from seemingly nowhere. Well-dressed with an expense purse in tow, she said: “I need to read you your future.” I smiled at her and said, “No need. I already know it.”

How do I know it? Because I have seen the falsehoods the world provides. The future lies within us. If we have the ears to listen. I know I can steer my life in a direction of my choosing. And when things happen beyond my control, which is 99% of the time, I know I am equipped to handle it.

And finally, after an amazing client conversation in which we both left feeling more empowered than before, I realized the future is here. Now. In every moment.

We can celebrate the little victories when we let things roll just as they should. All we need to do is get out of the way. Because things will happen and we can choose to either be steamrolled by them or dance on the path the Universe has paved for us all along.

 

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