Ticket to Blue Skies

The thorn in the paw of my day.

It’s a helpless feeling. Looking up, just 50 feet away from getting back to my car, and seeing a pert parking attendant snap off a ticket, place it under my wiper with a flourish, and zip off, satisfied, in her little blue car. I had dutifully slotted three quarters—one hour’s worth—into the machine perhaps an hour and two minutes earlier. No race to the car could have interjected. No heartfelt plea or adamant indignation was going to repeal the fine. She was gone. The ticket remained.

My mind immediately dashed through a swirl of What If’s, choices or circumstances that could have made a difference. Dah! I’d visited each of my favorite shops in Northampton, but if only I hadn’t taken extra time out to for a side trip into Deals and Steals to check out potential new sneakers.  Or if I hadn’t stopped into that art store to briefly look at journals for the upcoming trip to Europe.  Or if I’d gone with the quicker burrito from Bueno y Sano rather than the longer-wait sushi from Teapot. Or, most maddeningly, if I’d just cut across the street rather than taking the time to—good doobie that I am—walk out of the way to the nearest crosswalk before crossing Main Street. The list went on. Any one of them would have, could have, should have avoided the $15 fine.

My frustration continued to surge and I realized that this was the kind of lemon that could sour my entire day. Thankfully, some part of me questioned whether that was really the day I wanted and my fallback emotional mindfulness practice spoke up: “Name the clouds, Ted. Just name the clouds.” Somewhere along the line, some friend or teacher gave me this simple technique. We can imagine our natural, default state of being as a simple happiness, a blue sky. Life is good, not in an ecstatic or manic way, but in the way that sunsets or springtime or sandwiches are good. Blue sky. Into that sky come emotional clouds. Those emotions might be wispy and thin or dark and stormy. Whatever the mood, they come into view and hold there, waiting and collecting until acknowledged by awareness. If we never recognize or speak our emotions, they inevitably gather thicker and thicker until the open sky gets blocked completely, gray, dreary and lifeless. Once we choose mindfulness—Oh, I’m hurting about this. Look, I’m excited about that.—the clouds begin to move out on their own. The emotion only wants to be experienced, to remind us of the gift of being human. Yup! You get to feel this too! Once it has fulfilled its duty, it need not stick around.

A fine spot for a cloud-clearing lunch.

So I got in the car and drove up to the Smith Botanical gardens to find a peaceful spot for lunch. As I sipped my miso soup, I took a little cloud inventory. What was I upset about? For one, I didn’t like that Northampton had started charging $15 rather than just $10 like it had a short while ago. Especially with the reduced income of my sabbatical year, each expense digs deeper into my pockets. I also didn’t like that the ticket undermined the good discipline I’d just shown against unneeded spending as I passed through several stores. I had actually thought to myself mere moments before “It’s good that I’m being prudent. Every $5 I don’t spend on something unnecessary is another $5 I can put toward my dream of buying a house on a lake someday.” Now, here was $15 near immediately down the drain for something useless! Along those same lines, I had consciously been enjoying a more leisurely pace to my stride all afternoon. Walking more patiently is a good thing, isn’t it? And now I was being punished for it? Writing this out now, the emotions seem whiny, but they were real then. The point wasn’t to judge, feed, or defend the feelings, only to notice. One, two, three. Name a cloud. Let it move on.

As it always does, the practice gently lifted my spirits. Once acknowledged, the feelings started to dissipate and blue sky started to peek back through. With that greater clarity of vision, I also found that I could fess up to my own role in getting the ticket. Honestly, I could have put another quarter in when I first left the meter. I could have set my phone to alert me when time was up. I could have remembered the lessons I learned 15 years ago from those ruthless spiritual masters, the Boston parking gods. You need not get frustrated, they’d say. If you don’t want a ticket, pay the meter and get back in time. No punishment. Only cause and effect. The attendant had written the ticket, but I had earned it.

Feelings noted, responsibility taken. Back to blue sky.