What is holding me back?

byMichael-55

388 followers

7 years ago

“I bargained with life for a penny, and life would pay no more … “

Many years ago, I pulled over and stopped on a freeway in Melbourne. Where my right foot first touched the road lay a penny. What was of peculiar interest, is the penny and I were minted in the same year.

So I put the penny in my wallet and thought of it as my lucky penny. I will always have money

On Saturday morning I went in the car to buy three plants. I carried one plant and had my iPad and wallet in the other hand. And the nursery assistant carried the other two plants. Reaching the car I placed the iPad and wallet on the back of the car and opened the front passenger door. The three plants traveled home on the car floor.

At home in the driveway, I went to the passenger side around the back of the car. And, in shock noticed the iPad was still on the back of the car but no wallet. Alarmed I called out to my wife, quick get in.

And we retraced my steps with both our eyes glued to the road. The plant nursery was some four or five kilometers from home on a dual roadway. We traveled in the right lane (left-hand drive country) with eyes on the other side of the road. With three sets of traffic lights and busy Saturday morning traffic, the journey seemed to take forever impatiently.

I was thinking if I didn’t retrieve my mallet would it matter? What was in the wallet that was important. Cards money drivers license and the penny. In a sentimental possessive way, I wanted to find the penny. The rest wasn’t as important.

Then by chance, I spotted my wallet a couple of hundred meters before the nursery. Screeching to a halt and reversing 100 meters, both Nual and I got out of the car. Nual saying I’ll go, thinking of my still injured knee. Between the roads was a deep stormwater causeway with thick long grass. The wallet was my sole focus, and I’d managed to pick it up.

But low and behold, everything was intact and the wallet hadn’t been run over. Two cards had fallen out and were about three feet from the wallet. Everything was still in the wallet, except the penny. Back and forth along the road, I searched.

Meanwhile, Nual had brought the car around. As we were driving back home, with me holding the wallet, this poem came into my mind. “I bargained with life for a penny, and life would pay no more.”

As we drove we talked about the morning’s event. So in a strange twist of fate. I was relieved of the penny and penny thinking. Hanging onto that “lucky” penny for all those years hadn’t done much for me, and with it now gone, my mind and wallet are open.

Is there a moral to this story, or a similar story of your own? Maybe. Be it a penny, a lucky charm, a talisman, a constant thought, or some words you say to yourself over and over. They are all the same in effect.

If we continue to bargain for a penny, then that’s what life will pay. Sometimes we give up old worn out ideas, and trinkets we have a belief about. And sometimes we lose them through circumstances. But either way, better to be rid of them.

Here's an after-thought ...

... a penny for your thought.

Unless of course you value your thoughts more than just a penny.