#50 Inconvenience, thanks and connection
After the driver's door on our old car got banged in an accident, it didn't always latch. There was a trick that involved moving a part with a screwdriver while holding the handle just so, but this time it wasn't working. It was freezing cold outside, with a strong wind. Fingers were getting numb in the struggle to unjam the part. We were two hours from home and worst case scenarios were running through my mind. I wondered who else might be caught with inadequate shelter out in that cold. When the door finally closed and latched, it was like a miracle. The warmth was like gold. For days afterward whenever any car door shut without difficulty I felt a rush of thankfulness.
I was reminded of our struggle with printers. The old one had gotten increasingly cranky, announcing that it was "out of paper" more and more often, till we finally gave it up in despair. Having made the decision to invest in a new printer, it was a rude shock to discover that nothing on the market would speak to our old system. After another round of research, and increasingly desperate phone calls , we finally located a compatible second-hand printer. A friend brought it over, it wheezed and clanked-and printed! We didn't mind the noise-at this point a printer that actually worked was almost too good to be true.
Well, it must have been on its best behavior that day. It continued to wheeze and clank, but it also ate up great mouthfuls of paper, started printing halfway down the page, and more often than not sent out crumpled sheets and great wavering lines of smudgy print.
Slowly we learned its tricks. If you fed it just one sheet at a time, if you reached in your hand and guided each one out gently so that it touched nothing on its way out, and if you were lucky-you got a clean page with crisp straight black lines of print, running from top to bottom. It was a miracle! Though not ideal, this was more convenient than buying printer service at a copy store, way better than typing, much more professional than handwriting, and infinitely easier than mastering movable type or chiseling a message out on stone.
Then there was the time the car wasn't available and my destination was off my well-traveled public transit paths. I was forced to take a strange bus on an unfamiliar route. Leaving extra early just in case, waiting outside in the nippy air, checking the schedule again and again, fretting over the timing of the return trip, locked into an unforgiving schedule-I wasn't used to any of this. I thought of all the people for whom this inconvenience was part of their daily reality, and came away with a sense of awe at how it's sometimes possible to simply get in a car when you want to and go to just where you want to go. It's like a miracle.
I think of the ingenuity of people over all the years who have found ways to hold things together and make them work because there were no other options. I think of people who don't have cars or computers. Whenever something doesn't work right, or isn't convenient, whenever I have to struggle, somewhere in that experience is a blessed opportunity for thankfulness and for connection.
11/06
I was reminded of our struggle with printers. The old one had gotten increasingly cranky, announcing that it was "out of paper" more and more often, till we finally gave it up in despair. Having made the decision to invest in a new printer, it was a rude shock to discover that nothing on the market would speak to our old system. After another round of research, and increasingly desperate phone calls , we finally located a compatible second-hand printer. A friend brought it over, it wheezed and clanked-and printed! We didn't mind the noise-at this point a printer that actually worked was almost too good to be true.
Well, it must have been on its best behavior that day. It continued to wheeze and clank, but it also ate up great mouthfuls of paper, started printing halfway down the page, and more often than not sent out crumpled sheets and great wavering lines of smudgy print.
Slowly we learned its tricks. If you fed it just one sheet at a time, if you reached in your hand and guided each one out gently so that it touched nothing on its way out, and if you were lucky-you got a clean page with crisp straight black lines of print, running from top to bottom. It was a miracle! Though not ideal, this was more convenient than buying printer service at a copy store, way better than typing, much more professional than handwriting, and infinitely easier than mastering movable type or chiseling a message out on stone.
Then there was the time the car wasn't available and my destination was off my well-traveled public transit paths. I was forced to take a strange bus on an unfamiliar route. Leaving extra early just in case, waiting outside in the nippy air, checking the schedule again and again, fretting over the timing of the return trip, locked into an unforgiving schedule-I wasn't used to any of this. I thought of all the people for whom this inconvenience was part of their daily reality, and came away with a sense of awe at how it's sometimes possible to simply get in a car when you want to and go to just where you want to go. It's like a miracle.
I think of the ingenuity of people over all the years who have found ways to hold things together and make them work because there were no other options. I think of people who don't have cars or computers. Whenever something doesn't work right, or isn't convenient, whenever I have to struggle, somewhere in that experience is a blessed opportunity for thankfulness and for connection.
11/06
posted by Pamela Haines | 9:30 AM
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