The Cost of Living

I was driving from one of my early education school sites to another, where I support the humans in creating seamless supports for children preparing for kindergarten. I was slowing down at a stop sign when the driver behind me sped away. She looked into my window to get a view of the driver delaying the arrival at her destination. We made eye contact. I was irritated by how impatient and reckless many drivers can be. Then the Spirit spoke to me: I couldn’t go to where she was. That is, to her psychological and spiritual location. I had to stay where I was in the larger moment of appreciation and gratitude. Had I left where I was to be where she was, it would have cost me.

Then I thought to myself about the cost of living. One definition of living is to breathe, be and do independent of our past, our present conditions and any future concerns. It also means to be and act independently of our and others’ opinions, beliefs and imposed limitations on ourselves. The cost of living then is what we pay to remain in the joy, peace and wonder of whose and where we are.

So many insights from an irritated driver and my choice to not wrap myself in it. I parked my car and was reminded of a verse in Philippians (chapter one, verse 22). When the Apostle Paul said “to die is to gain,” he was also referring to dying to the lowest parts of self that deceive us into thinking we win because we’ve met someone where they are and still – we think – we are superior to them. But have they not some power if they evoked us from our place of being to theirs?

The cost of living.

Then I am reminded my beloved First Lady say, “When they go low, we go high.”

This, too, is the cost of living.