Visiting a friend in New Orleans recently, I accompanied her to several stores as she made purchases of new furniture. Over fifteen months had gone by since her house flooded, and now she was finally getting to move back in!
As it turned out, I don’t think I have ever had a more frustrating shopping experience. Nothing about it was simple.
My heart goes out to the people of New Orleans, for whom difficulties of this kind abound on all fronts.
When you’ve seen your city standing eight, twelve feet in water—for weeks—it takes a lot of courage to try to put your life back together. Especially when, as I write this column, rain is descending in torrents and streets are flooding.
You see, all that water sitting all those weeks was a tremendous strain on an already aging underground infrastructure. Not just the weight, but especially the filthy salt water of Lake Pontchartrain, polluting and corroding everything beneath the city. So drainage is greatly hampered. At any moment, the fish bowl can begin to fill again, as it is in places this morning. It’s estimated it may take 25 years to fix the problems, and well over $5 billion. But where else do you go? This is home. It’s where your family are, your work, your ties.
Plus, New Orleans happens to be one of the most historically and culturally interesting cities on the North American continent. It’s a heritage the world can’t lose. We owe gratitude to the brave people who are seeking to preserve it by continuing their lives there.
To make a purchase of several thousand dollars worth of furniture should have been a simple process of presenting a credit card, signing, then going home to wait for the shipment to arrive. Instead, we were exactly two hours trying to check out. And then, once home, we learned much of the pricing was incorrect. Hours followed on the telephone.
The store situation—it was just one of several—came on the heels of months of frustration that so many are experiencing. You take off work but contractors don’t show. Or they start a job and then disappear for days or weeks. Or, as many have found, they take your money and don’t do the job at all. When this kind of thing happens again and again in area after area of your life, it can be taxing--especially if you are trying to return home after a long period in exile, which has already worn you down.
The store situation was the straw that almost broke the camel’s back. You see, there are special discounts for Katrina survivors, which is wonderful. Except that the complicated way they have to be applied requires staff that are expert. And if there’s one thing New Orleans suffers from right now, it’s a shortage of longstanding trained employees. It’s hard to get labor in the Big Empty, and the turnover is high.
The fact is, everyone is stressed out. Everywhere you turn, people are trying to cope with their own set of difficulties. The store clerks have their own homes to fix, contractors to meet during work hours, appliances and furniture to buy. Remember, it’s your entire life situation that has to be replaced.
Nothing is easy in the Big Easy right now.
It took a week or two to get the purchases straightened out on the credit card, with the correct discounts applied. In the end, all came out well. Everything shipped on time. My friend is back home at last.
But when you are spending thousands of dollars, and it’s so difficult to make it happen, something in you says, “I deserve better service than this. I shouldn’t have to endure a huge struggle in order to spend my money. It’s such a big waste of my time.”
Yet it is what it is.
Given what it is, we can respond either with drama or joyfully. But what’s the point of drama? Becoming angry does no good at all and makes a difficult situation even more miserable for everyone.
It comes down to expectations. When we shop, or seek some assistance we greatly need (as many in New Orleans are having to do), behind our request is a hidden longing for unconditional love. We want to be treated like we are “someone.” When we’re not, we feel slighted.
If you want to experience unconditional love, there’s only one way to guarantee it. You have to find it in yourself. You have to allow the loving person you are at your center to come alive and flood you with the love you crave.
When you love yourself, and have no expectation of others showing you unconditional love, not only are you not wounded when things don’t go your way, you actually become helpful. You look for ways you can give of yourself to make it easier on the other party.
This changes how you shop. Instead of going into a store with the expectation of being kowtowed to because you are, after all, spending your money to pay these people’s wages, you go to be a blessing to the staff in the store.
In his book The Presence Process, Michael Brown states, “There is nothing to ‘get’ from this world.” He explains that when we really see “that there is nothing for us to get in this world and that instead we are the ones who have come to place unconditional love into our experience of this world, then we will have crossed the bridge to a new and profound life experience.”
Do you think of yourself as being here to place unconditional love into your experience of life?
Amazingly, frustration ebbs away when you begin shopping with an attitude of gratitude rather than expecting to be served. You see a difficult situation as an opportunity to spread cheer, warmth, and a relaxed frame of mind. You are looking for how you can contribute positively to a transaction, instead of being upset because you didn’t get treated in the grandiose manner your ego expects. It gives you joy to have money to be able to bless those who work at the store with an income.
This Christmas, there’s a lesson for all of us in this New Orleans experience. Behind the surface of their roles as staff are individuals who share the same Inner Presence as you. It’s not just a financial transaction that’s happening in business, it’s a potential experience of this Presence. By responding consciously to people, seeking how you can make your interaction a loving exchange, you honor this Presence.
Each person behind a counter, behind a desk, or waiting tables is a sister or brother who has come into your life, however briefly, to help you awaken to the love within you.
When a transaction is difficult, it’s an opportunity. You have a chance to rein in the temptation to rant and rave, and instead respond from the loving Presence that’s your essence.
In other words, it’s not about the furniture, the clothes, the food, or the gifts. It’s never about the surface situation. All of life’s situations are but the context that facilitates the arising of Presence within.
Says Michael Brown, “The moment we really ‘get this,’ our fear, anger, and grief will subside and our experiences will be washed clean with gratitude.”
We are here not to get, but to bless. We are here to “learn what it means to give unconditionally of ourselves.”
As you finish up Christmas shopping, and you unwrap your gifts in a few days’ time, free yourself of the expectation of “getting” unconditional love. Instead, appreciate whatever comes your way in your entire experience of Christmas—even if it feels inadequate, a bad choice, or just plain stressful.
By opening yourself up to the Presence at the heart of each person in your Christmas, you’ll experience the true peace and goodwill of the season.
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