The Hangers were the Last Straw…
The hangers on the floor were the last straw. The hangers had been accompanied by tissue paper squares and plastic bags on the floor, with more papers, bags, hangers and random shirts strewn across the front counter next to the register.
That’s what I walked into one morning at the shirt shop at my part-time gig – a colossal mess. My mind went into tantrum overdrive.
“WTF?! Good morning to you, too! This is what I’m good for?! Cleaning up after other people’s messes?! This is BS!” and blah, blah, blah for at least 12 minutes and 37 seconds.
My big inner tantrum was accompanied by an outer mini one. I refused to clean up the mess right away. I even added to it, throwing a few scraps of paper and a plastic thing on the floor next to the existing rubble.
“So there!”
The biggest revenge, of course, would be to walk out the door, leaving the mess and the gig behind right that instant. Let the shop have NO ONE at the counter. Maybe there’s not enough room at the counter, anyway, with all those hangers in the way.
But that would be letting pride, anger, vengeance and all those other zig-zaggy emotions take the helm.
Kneejerk reactions tend to make bigger messes, not fix existing ones. So I centered myself. Calmed down. Meditated. Prayed. Went outside and chain smoked. Got rational.
Decided to ask who left me this when the boss and coworker came in later that afternoon – then found out it was the boss himself who left the mess.
His explanation was that “we” employees sit around all day doing nothing, not even restocking the shirts. Thus he was upset when he came in really early and had to do it himself.
Oh. So this was his way of, um, telling “us” we need to restock shirts? I wondered who “us” was, since he knew dang well I would be the one to find the mess.
Kneejerk reaction again wanted to kick and throw plastic things. I had the urge to scream something like:
“I don’t sit around all day doing nothing! Don’t you know the blood, sweat and tears I put into this place? Don’t you look at your website and social media feeds, now on FOUR different channels? Don’t you watch the videos I create, the blogs I write, the love I put into each and every post?
“Don’t you know all the off-work hours I spend fretting and stewing about a mistake I got blamed for? Don’t you know I once even wrecked a WHOLE BEACH DAY because, instead of luxuriating in the Gulf of Mexico, I kept checking my phone to see if my pay would once again be late or on time?”
But I didn’t. I instead did my work. Finished the shift. Went home to a salt bath infused with lavender and sandalwood essential oils – unhooking the day and all of its emotional attachments from my being.
The time had come. I was done. The end of this job had been coming for quite some time – exacerbated having my work-from-home hours cut – and my inner guidance provided an exit strategy that would allow me to quit this gig while helping me transition back into what I loved doing.
Retail wasn’t it. The shirt shop job was not a good fit from the get-go, as it came with a mainstay of retail work and a side offer of creating art.
I applied for the art part when yet another kneejerk reaction about two years ago made me rebel against writing. I had just lost a high-paying job as a writer when the company was sold to an agency in Brazil that fired the entire American marketing team.
I was shocked. Enraged. Determined to “show them!”
“I’ll show you! I’ll get a job NOT writing. So there!”
Since I was born a writer, lived as a writer, made my living as a writer for years, and absolutely loved writing, you can guess that this kneejerk reaction screwed me royally. But I was sticking with it, dammit!
Thus began two years of what felt like a freefall through life, landing the shirt shop gig with the hopes it may fulfill every hope, dream and need for validation while paying the bills and buying me a pool. OK, at least paying the bills.
Guess what? It didn’t. Not just because it was a part-time gig with a firm cap on the maximum amount of money I could earn there, but because I was doing everything backwards.
By placing all those expectations on an outside thing, I was giving away all my inner power. I was letting the outer world dictate my emotions, thoughts and actions.
Despite 25 years in recovery being guided by spiritual principals, I had once again made that massive mistake of grabbing for outside things to fill my inner needs. That never works.
Even if it feels like it’s working for a while, outer things change. They are temporary. They are totally out of our control. And, when we let the fearful, hate-fueled outer world create our inner world, then our inner world is going to, well, suck.
The truth is, we already have everything we need inside of us. Peace. Joy. Abundance. Love. So much love. A passion-fueled Spirit dwells in each and every one of us, too. When we let Spirit lead the way, it gives us absolutely everything we need.
I know this works. It’s how I was able to quit drinking myself to death all those years ago. And I now have a renewed commitment of letting Spirit guide me into the next 25 years and beyond.
I also have a big burst of gratitude for the shirt shop, as it taught me so many lessons in which I evidently needed a refresher course.
Like you can’t get water out of a rock. Time and again I would bang the rock, looking for validation, praise, fulfillment, a raise – things that just weren’t there and weren’t going to come. But I kept on banging.
I kept on blaming, too, as if the job were the cause of all my woes. It wasn’t. I was the cause of all my woes. The choices I made. The attitude I adopted. The feelings of unworthiness, anger and fear I let prevail – instead of realizing we have a choice every moment to let our minds either live in conflict or inner peace.
To attain the peace, we need to stop attacking. We need to stop blaming. We need to forgive. I forgave myself for letting the lower nature take control. I forgave the boss and the job and all connected with it for the perceived wrongs I had felt. Heck, I even forgave a seemingly clueless driver who I felt cut me off on my way to my final days at the shirt shop gig.
One more major lesson hit me square between the eyes. We cannot deny the work we were born to do. Well, we can. There are certainly plenty of jobs that would be a horrible fit for any of us. But we’re apt to be miserable unless we’re singing the song of our soul.
My song is to create, to help others learn, laugh and heal. Yet the illusion of fear and other warped perceptions kept me trapped. Fear of failure can be brutal. It tells us not to move forward with our dreams. That way we’ll never fail, right?
Fear also likes to tell us the known misery is safer than the unknown – even when the unknown is limitless prosperity, abundance, fulfillment and joy.
Heck with it. I’m doing it. Scratch that. Spirit is doing it for me. Through me. As me. My task is to let my higher nature take control. To follow the inner guidance, maintain the goal of inner peace, practice forgiveness, let love flow. To keep my mind, heart and soul stayed on what I was born to do. And I was born to write, speak, Reiki-ize and soar – not pick up hangers off the floor.
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Ryn Gargulinski is an award-winning author, artist, speaker and Reiki master who vows not to have a lifelong resentment against hangers. As founder of Sanctuary of the Wild Souls, she helps people trade fear and anger for fulfilment and love. More at WildSS.com and RynskiLife.com.
