Being The Observer

Yesterday was a great day for me. As usual, when I have a particularly interesting ACIM lesson, I find myself with the opportunity to practice it in real life. Sometimes several times before I get it right.

My daughter and I were loading my car at Home Depot. We were very happy. I was slinging bags of organic compost and manure into the back while she was loading the flowers we just bought to plant in it.  I went around to the passenger’s side to throw a bag of extras in the seat, when the wind caught my door and it touched the car next to me. Here’s my mistake. It sounded so gentle that I didn’t bother to turn around and see if there was any damage. The windows were down and we were laughing because cow poop is hilarious to a seven year old.

As I was pulling out, I heard “Well of course it doesn’t matter to you, because you drive a piece of crap!”  I stopped, and said “I am so sorry, I didn’t know I did anything, is there something I can do? Do you want… (here’s where I was going to say my insurance info) when I was interrupted with “MY SON WITNESSED THE WHOLE THING! YOUR DOOR HIT MY CAR!!” I looked over at her about seven year old son, and smiled and apologized again, when she screamed at me “JUST GO YOU IDIOT! YOU’RE BLOCKING TRAFFIC!” That’s when I realized that I didn’t actually do any damage, so I left.

For some reason I thought the whole thing was funny. Reid said ” Did she just call you an idiot?” And I laughed and said “Yes she did. I feel sorry for her because she’s probably having a rough day. I hope her day gets better.”  when Reid said “I feel sorry for her son. He has to live with her.” And we laughed.

Later a friend called and I relayed the whole incident to her because I thought it was so funny. But after hearing myself talk, I realized that it wasn’t really funny after all. And it reminded me of a Beatles song. I don’t know the title, but in the song John Lennon is describing a day in which he is experiencing everything as an observer in a dream.  There’s a line in it “And though the news was rather sad, I just had to laugh. I saw the photograph.”  True, he was seeing things from the detached “observer” point of view because he was stoned. But nevertheless, it made me realize that I was there (for an instant), I found joy in a person who was attacking me. I didn’t pull over and make her show me the damage, and argue with her and think that she was a jerk, I just smiled and blessed her, and wished a better day for her.

My meditation of the day was something like “Let me see things with new eyes.”

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