From Chaos to Peace

Photos
Peaceful Valley in Tolland. These fit the "peaceful" theme of the following post.

Things seem to be going wrong
In my last post I told you how my A/C went pffffftttttt on Wednesday morning. Then, last night the water company was messing round with the water mains (probably flushing) and I had a toilet full of muddy water that wouldn’t go away. Luckily I did not run any water in the main part of the house, which kept the dirty water at the downstairs level.

On top of that, I had been unsuccessful in finding someone to look at my A/C. Everyone I called either didn’t carry Carrier anymore or wouldn’t service a residential unit. Great. In desperation I emailed Bernie’s TV & Appliance (the unit was bought there in 1984) asking them to recommend someone. They don’t carry Carrier anymore, but they did give me the phone number for Carrier Corporation.

This is what saved me
All the while, I kept going back to Jon’s blog on Conscious CT and kept reading his last post, In Chaos You Can Only Be. I had to keep reminding myself that there was nothing I could do about these situations and all I could do was “just be.”

This morning I woke up and the water was clear. I took a nice bike ride to Charlie’s restaurant for the wholistic practitioners’ breakfast, came home and cooked myself a sumptuous lunch of salmon steak, baked potato and steamed asparagus.

Then I called Carrier Corp. They gave me the name of two companies who might do the repairs. I called one of them (the other company I would call only as a last resort!). Quality Appliance said they could come out on Monday. I was good with that. Staying calm. Five minutes later they called back and said they had a cancellation and could come out this afternoon. Would that be OK? Indeed it would.

The diagnosis was a failed fan motor. Might have to replace it. Still…I stayed calm. Remember, in chaos you can only be. I was doing my best to “be” (which would not be my natural state of mind or demeanor in situations like this).

“Let’s try some oil, first,” the nice man said. Then he pushed a button on the air conditioner. It sprang to life and immediately began putting out chilled air. “Well, let’s see how long that might last,” said the nice man. “Could go another 25 years. Who knows? I’ll find out how much a new motor will cost, just in case.”

I paid the nice man and he left. I was still calm and “being” in the midst of what was chaos. I had not exhausted myself with a useless expenditure of angry, negative energy

Why am I telling you all this?
I’m convinced that if it hadn’t been for Jon’s blog, and the fact that I was using it to remind myself to stay calm, the outcome of today’s chaos would have been quite different. I am convinced that my usual reaction to such situations would have produced such negative energy that everything would have continued to go from bad to worse. Normally I would have been an abrasive, crazy person!

I think I’ll print out the post on Chaos and paste it where I can read it…often!

Thanks Jon.