Blessings and Grapefruits

Today I wobble between inspiration and despair but at least I am writing. Mostly inspiration. There are so many business ideas, so many ways to make a difference, so many ways to get busy saving the world.

From my mojo blog to my dating book, to revolutionizing the mortgage industry, a miracle blog, I am full of creative ideas.

Jonathan Fields talks about building a revolution, not just a business. What his work has shown me is that, for there to be deep fulfillment,  there must be a greater cause beyond just the traditional business model and making money. There must be a greater cause for greater contribution in order to gather the momentum to rally people against a common injustice or outdated no-longer useful practice, towards a more useful and productive way of consumerism.

Today I got a taste of being of service when my neighbor Davis and I spoke about the car I lent him for months and then let him buy with non-interest payments. He repeated once again how he didn’t know how he could thank me, that he was praying for me every day. I told him that in an exchange such as this, both are blessed, the one receiving and the one having the capacity to give.

I remember the car sitting for months parked across the street. It was my first car I ever owned, a wonderful car I drove for years and paid off. I loved that car and often spoke to it. Once I got my new Lexus  I didn’t need it anymore and it looked sad and downtrodden hanging out by itself.

I tried posting several ads but the people who came to test drive it didn’t come back. I felt the pressure to sell it but in reality there wasn’t really a financial reason to do so. Thankfully. One day I posted for-sale signs on it and waited another month. I kept getting this little feeling to wait. So I waited.

One day I was yet again coming back from a walk with my new baby and saw the car parked there. I thought to myself that I am ready to let it go and that I would post another ad but I didn’t because that little voice told me to wait.

In the meantime my neighbor Davis from Uganda living across the street had a grapefruit tree in his yard which I would eye, desiring fresh grapefruits for my morning juices. One day I knocked on his door and said hello. We made acquaintances and I asked him if I may pick his grapefruits and he said of course. Several weeks passed and I was happily picking grapefruits and on occasion would see him and wave.

When he called for the car, I knew exactly who he was. He asked to test drive it and I just gave him the keys, busy with our new baby girl. Something told me to just let him drive it. My heart went out to him when he explained that it took him two hours to get to and from work by bus and that he was looking for a new job and he needed a car desperately.

So I let him drive it. And I didn’t worry about it. I figured when he was ready he would pay me for it. He changed the battery and kept driving it. He said he wanted to buy it and could we meet. So we met and he asked for a payment plan because he had spent his savings on one of his three daughters in Uganda who needed heart surgery. I was already prepared to let him just drive it and I told him he could drive it until he could pay and he can just pay the insurance $35 a month for now. He faithfully left the money under my front door mat every month and eventually after some months he got a steady job and was ready to start making payments.

The business woman in me wanted to charge him interest but a little voice told me not to. So I offered him a fair price of $3500 and 13 payments of $250 a month plus the insurance so a total of $285 which he said he could easily do.

So he has made two payments so far and before that he drove the car for two or three months. Whenever we speak he expresses his heartfelt gratitude but what I feel is blessed to have been able to be in a position to really truly help someone who needed it and appreciated it.

I feel so blessed by this miracle I want to continue operating my life this way. I would like to focus on service and contribution and get compensated for my creativity and special gifts of sensitivity, listening to Spirit and musicality. I would like to share these gifts with the world.

I am shifting my focus from production to meaning. Wayne Dyer calls this the afternoon of life. But I am 36 and am I already in the afternoon of my life?

I know I am on the right path because I feel the fire in my belly again. I am creating again, I feel powerful and unique again, I trust in the Universe and my gifts again.

I am still confused about many things such as why it was so difficult for my mother to allow me to differentiate and I also have compassion for the people who raised me. They had to craft coping mechanisms in order to survive communism and the humiliation, shame and abuse that was prevalent and widely accepted as normal. They had to create grandiose personas. My mother is the know-it-all fail and mistake proof always right academic version of narcissism, my father is similar in his refusal to admit or apologize for mistakes, but he also has millionaire proclivities. Ha!

And where does that leave me, my friend Ana once asked when we were discussing the inability of our narcissistic parents to see us, relate to us, or allow us our individuality and separateness. Well, it leaves us without Fathers. And Mothers. Or at least with leopard-print white and dark bullet-whole type paper- thin mannequins of them, hollow, physically there but mentally and emotionally checkered and scrappy. And it leaves us working harder to find community, support, self-esteem and self love. But we can get there, with a little help from our friends here in this world and our Guides and Angels and God in the world beyond.

Thank you Spirit for the opportunity to be creative, to have friends, an enjoyable life and may it be a life of deep contribution and service. May I be what I truly am. May I find the courage, the support, and the self-compassion to be the artist that I truly am.  Amen.