More and more I turn to my baristas for the really important life questions.
Yesterday, Jared — who has mastered the ice coffee formula at Acre — when asked if he thought it might be a coincidence that my battery hasn’t turned over only three times when others have moved my car replied, “We all know there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
However, after a Saturday 8pm jump-start, with the car left inactive until 5pm Sunday — it happened to me. That sad, impotent sound of a dead ignition.
[The most logical conclusion now is that the car has consistently started perfectly, except when left inactive over ____ hours.]
Triple A really is great although after Anthony the designated Jump Starter left, there was a massive set of confusion about billing. (The first four calls per year are free; after that they send you a bill in the mail for $60.) Anthony left our jump start and I headed to the beach to meet Susan, fresh from transforming the people of Chicago.
Somehow after we both left the scene, Anthony was told he needed to get $60 cash from me. I risked a three way call while driving where Triple A denied such nonsense and transferred us to Dispatch.
“Dispatch” was deeply confused about pretty much everything. Part of it wasn’t his fault — the service code was somehow for a canceled towing in Dallas, Texas — but even after I explained that I was in San Francisco and that Anthony had actually jump started (not towed) the car ten minutes ago, he still asked Anthony if he was in Dallas. As proficient a mechanic as Anthony was, I still don’t believe he’s yet designed a teleportation devise to get himself from Dallas to San Francisco in 5 minutes flat. [And beyond that “Dispatch” then revealed that he wasn’t “Dispatch” he was “Receiving” and that Anthony still needed to talk to “Dispatch” to clear the code from his system.]
I keep looking for metaphors in the whole dead battery scenario, but frankly — as I write this at the coffee shop nearest the well-reviewed on Yelp Prestige Auto Service — I am finding it exhausting. Sometimes you just have to let experience wash over you unquestioned.
Speaking of which, I forgot to mention my enneagram controversy over the weekend.
I took the first free tests on the Enneagram Institute’s site last week but decided that it was too unclear and that I should take the 145 question, 40 minute paid test to determined which of the 9 universal personality types I was.
And … drumroll … it was not only a tie for my primary type, but then a three-way type for my second type. IE, pretty much a five way tie (out of 9 types). The Enneagram Institute sent me an email with the results saying I probably should wait a week or two and then try the test again. (IE, they were more or less giving up.)
Is it possible that I don’t have an enneagram type? Am I so spiritually evolved/tragically damaged that my enneagram boundaries have become utterly blurry?
Who can say?
I am, however, reminded of one of the most helpful of Bashar’s concepts: the echo.
This morning a lovely lady named Cheryl forwarded an email quote from Abraham-Hicks about how basically everything in your life is because of your vibration (which I interpret to mean “it’s all your own damn fault” most of the time.)
Bashar has a great point which is that once you’ve made a change, the universe will often respond with what feels like an echo, a rehash/reoccurrence of the same old stuff, not so much because a Schoolmarm-ish Universe is “testing you” but because there’s just a delay in the way thought and matter interact. But this echo is your opportunity to observe your own response to the old circumstances to see if you have indeed changed, or whether it’s just more of the same.
So maybe all my “dead battery” stuff and all the disproportionate emotions and situations it brought up (surprise expenditures, not-being able to move forward, inconveniencing other people, wondering if other people were to blame, why can’t I get through to “Dispatch” and why doesn’t “Receiving” understand the laws of space and time?) are just an echo of … mid 2011? Again, who can say?
All I know is that my new response is to sit serenely in this coffee shop with Belle and plan my book launch, edit my children’s book, craft some LLS monologues for the new play, and rejoice in being a type 10, one the enneagram has yet to recognize.
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