Anyone who has ever gone on a long trip is familiar with all the final details that annoy, crop up, and land at the last possible moment. Today was no different. At about 6 am tomorrow the shuttle is going to carry me off for a month in Tanzania, and the amount of preparation for all the adventures has been enormous. The last week has been a flurry of getting bills paid, including pulling out funds for tips for porters, chefs, shuttle drivers et al, meaning that pretty much all my accounts are on fumes. Naturally, two days ago I got a notice that my car registration required an emissions test, and my car insurance payment came due, along with a slew of other payments that just happened to land at the worst moment.
Here’s where I got taught a wonderful lesson, in the form of the basement flooding that happened back in September. My USAA adjustor and I developed a relationship wherein I kept him in stitches about the repeated floodings, and I continually told him to take care of the Coloradans who had more need than I did. And I meant it. We talked football and since he’s from Texas I razzed him about the Texans and especially Tony Romo. Now it was time for me to ask a favor. I compiled and sent him a list of my damaged goods- some pretty big and pricey. When there was question about a value he gave me the benefit of the doubt and that meant, in some cases, several hundred dollars more. In about five minutes he tallied up the total, asked for my approval and sent it up the pole to get me my payment ASAP. That check will make all the difference between meeting or not meeting my responsibilities while on travel.
This is not to say that John wouldn’t have done this for any USAA client, because they’re good that way. But my guess is that I might have earned a brownie point or two because of the exchanges we had during September, and because I made him laugh repeatedly during what I knew to be a very high stress time for the USAA adjustment team. You pay into the bank of good will and when you need to draw from it, there’s an excellent chance you may be able to get what you need.
This just goes to show that even when we are in extremis, it’s good to keep perspective, and when people are trying to assist us, to appreciate and honor them. I didn’t expect USAA to do what they did today. I am beyond grateful for this help. We are not necessarily “owed” over and above service, but John reminded me today that we can most certainly earn it.
WordFood of Tolerance
My best friend Lori sent me a piece by Ben Stein this morning which addressed the need for God and religion in our society, our schools, and in our lives. His comments had been featured on CBS on Sunday morning and been sent around the Internet, and part of his comment was that because the email was about God, it was likely not to be forwarded as much as lewd jokes or cartoons. He has a point.
In my book WordFood I talk about how it’s easy to be consumed by popular culture, by tabloids, gossip, distractions. This is what I call Junk Food. Like potato chips and other snacks, it’s addictive, fun to consume, fattening, and extremely bad for you. Ultimately it takes up precious space in the mind where more positive, nutritious information could be building us: education, professional and personal development, motivational tapes that challenge you to a higher quality of thinking. And yes, religious study, whatever that may look like to you.
Every one of us is animated by something larger, some gift, that gives us life. And I believe powerfully that while we have life, we owe a good life to the power that gave us that life. Most of us were brought up within some kind of belief system. Some of us go find something that speaks to us more personally. Some create a system by which we establish a discipline, and this is the key word here, to live, worship, and respect others’ way of being in the world. But whatever that practice may be, it involves a discipline of mind, and a humbling of oneself to a greater power, and an effort to see that good that exists in all humankind.
To the extent that we are insistent upon filling our minds with Junk Food about celebrities who are less than stellar, about sports figures who take drugs, we miss out on the everyday heroes who people our neighborhood. There is much to study about ourselves that is valuable. To fill our minds with how to be better citizens and life students and better friends.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a little Junk Food now and then. Even I know how Kim Kardashian is, if only because I stand too long in the 15 item line. It just seems to me that given the great variety and beauty of sacred texts in the world, and how they exhort us to treat each other with respect, perhaps this might be balancing fare to the ugliness of “Survivor: The Phillipines.”
What we feed our minds informs our language. It informs how we treat each other every day. Road rage is the result of a daily diet of stress, a lack of graciousness and the need to be right no matter what. And people are dying because someone gets cut off a few inches in traffic.This isn’t us.
Whether we read a Bible, a Koran, a Torah or any other sacred text, it grounds is in what is truly important in life: respect for life, humility for our place in the vastness of all of Creation, and a hope that we can make a difference.
When it comes to the intensely private and personal issue of what we all are guided by, this is an unknowable. But I can say this: that a change in our WordFood Diet is a fine thing when we want to change the way we perceive, and are perceived, in the world.