Adventures have setbacks. This is the essence of what makes them adventures. Adi and I decided that we would rent a 4 X 8 U-Haul trailer to carry only our “essentials” to Galveston. We are downsizing, we both agreed, and we want to become light and nimble in order to be able to get up and go on a moment’s notice. Signed, sealed, delivered and written in ink—only our essentials, we reiterated to each other.
We never truly know quite how much “stuff” we have accumulated in our life until we decide to uproot and transport these possessions to a new location. Things that seem so important when we first buy them become a nuisance when we have to decide what to do with them when their value diminishes. The very thing that we think will bring us happiness oftentimes becomes burdensome when it’s no longer shiny and new.
Adi and I began packing our small trailer and it didn’t take an expert in geometry to realize that we were running out of space very quickly and it was becoming painfully obvious that we needed to make some harsh decisions on some items that “wouldn’t be making the cut” for our trip south. Within 24 hours of formalizing our agreement, Adi moved into renegotiating mode.
“I think we need to get a bigger trailer,” she pleaded.
“I thought we talked about this. Only the essentials,” I pleaded. “How about we eliminate some of our stuff?”
“Or…or…we could get a bigger trailer!”
As a man who has learned the art of choosing my battles, I relented. This is how our life is a lot like the television classic, I Love Lucy. Adi (Lucy) comes up with an idea, I (Ricky) say it’s not a good idea, and then we end up doing it anyway. In complete fairness, Lucy’s schemes oftentimes work out perfectly in ways I never saw coming.
It wasn’t long before Adi and I got in the car with said “small” trailer in tow to exchange it for its bigger, bulkier brother. This, I thought, seemed to be the exact opposite way to downsize. It seemed we were now getting a bigger trailer so that we could transport these belongings five hours south to donate the contents to the Galveston Goodwill. Adi, for her part, was not deterred.
“I have a plan,” she assured me.
We arrived at U-Haul and when we walked in the door Chet, the man who helped us the day before, greeted us.
“What are you still doing in town? I figured you’d be in Galveston by now.”
He remembered us and knew our story. We shared it with him in detail. We were leaving Fort Worth to start a new life in Galveston. We were downsizing…starting a new life. If this were a screenplay we would call this the “inciting incident.”
“Funny you should mention that. We may need to get a bigger trailer to take to Galveston, Chet.”
“I thought you were downsizing,” Chet asked innocently.
Exactly, Chet. Exactly. I shook my head surreptitiously as if to say, “Now’s not the time, Lucy has a plan.”
Chet immediately jumped into action. He began searching through the available inventory and he found us a 5 X 8 trailer which he assured us would be more than enough for two people who were downsizing. Chet was a superstar. Not only did he exchange our trailer for a bigger one, he didn’t even charge us for the upgrade. Things were looking up on our end, I thought. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The Universe was shining upon us and I always understand the importance of throwing a little ray of gratitude her way when she does me solid.
“Thank you,” I whispered, looking upward. “For always looking out for us and blessing us along our journey.”
I have never been a man’s man. In fact, there is a sizable chance I might be half-woman (in reality, aren’t we all?). I think the chic word for it is “metrosexual.” I always become more aware of this when I am tasked with completing a man’s job and Chet had a man’s job for me to do.
“I’m going to need you to back your small trailer right beside the bigger trailer and then you can unload from the little one and we will get you on your way.”
Backing up a trailer is challenging. The whole process of having to turn the car steering wheel in the opposite direction that you want your trailer to go is way too much for me to process while people are watching. This is performance anxiety of an entirely different variety. For those of you that have ever tried to back a trailer into a space without the proper skills to do so might understand this is a lot like handing a Rubix Cube to someone who has never seen one and saying, “Solve this.” It’s a whole lot of pressure.
“Yeah, Chet, I don’t know if I’m your guy on this one. I’m lucky if I can even drive forward with this thing.”
I’m sure this gave Chet a whole wealth of confidence in me. Just the thing you want to hear from the person renting your expensive equipment. “Not my thing, dude. I can barely drive.”
“I’ll direct you,” Chet said, giving the international “keep backing up wave” as he tried guiding me back towards the trailer hitch. After three aborted attempts at trying to line up the trailer, Chet soon understood the dilemma we all faced. Adi and I had a three-day contract for this U-Haul. It had to be in Galveston by Saturday. If we kept up this pace, we wouldn’t even have the thing attached to the hitch by the time it was due on the Gulf Coast. Chet, who is by all accounts a man’s man (his boots were bigger than one of my legs), took charge.
“Do you mind if I just drive your car?”
“Honestly, Chet, I thought you’d never ask.”
After wrapping the entire interior of our car in plastic wrap (new protocol, he told us), Chet got to work. In less than 60 seconds, he backed the trailer perfectly into a shaded area in the parking lot for us to unload/reload our trailer. He then pulled forward after he unhooked the smaller trailer and backed the car a second time mere millimeters from the bigger trailer. Before I could say “emasculation” he was out of the car and hooking us up once again to get on our way to Galveston.
I walked over to Chet as he exited the car and I slipped him a $20.
“Thanks for helping a brother out,” I whispered to Chet.
“No problem. When you get the trailer reloaded stop in front of the store so I can make sure the hitch is secure before you hit the road,” Chet offered. It always amazes me what a $20 bill can do for someone’s disposition.
Then, Adi and I began the task of unloading every box that was in the smaller trailer and repacking it into our new larger trailer. There we were, in a U Haul parking lot, placing everything we owned into our new 5 X 8 U Haul trailer in the 105-degree Texas heat. This was the new life we dream about, sweating profusely and arranging boxes in a 5 X 8 oven. After we finished, we stopped back by the front of the U Haul store and Chet gave us the okay to head on our journey.
Adi and I drove back and picked up the last remaining essentials and started our journey to Galveston. This is downsizing and moving to the beach, I thought. Light and nimble, that’s what we are. Light and nimble.
We arrived in Galveston on Friday evening, just in time for rush hour traffic through Houston. Houston is not typically considered the most “traffic friendly” big city, but as it turned out getting through it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it might be. When we arrived at our new home, Adi came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea: we would unload all of our belongings into the garage of the Carriage House and use this as our staging area as we systematically unloaded our boxes. This would give us time to decide what to do with everything and we wouldn’t have to clutter the house in the meantime.
Flawless plan. What could possibly go wrong? We unloaded everything from the trailer into the garage which incidentally is not a traditional garage—it’s half a garage. Half the garage is protected by the side of the house while the other half is exposed to the elements. In Galveston, the elements, I would come to learn rather quickly, tend to be, in a word—unpredictable. These are all things we learn with time.
We were home. We had arrived at our new life. The only thing left to do was drop off the U-Haul in Galveston and then we could start this new life. After a quick drive to the U-Haul facility and a rather suspect placement of the trailer in the parking lot, Adi and I had completed the hardest part of our new journey. We had gotten all of our essentials to Galveston and now all that was left to do was put our new home together—on our terms and timetable.
Lucy had a few more plans for me that I wasn’t completely aware of for the following morning. She tells me things in passing that I’m not always sure are “firm plans” and then will later assure me that indeed they were “firm.”
“Remember, we are doing the Aquarian Sadhana tomorrow at 4:30 am with Siri Bahadur.”
Long day of packing and then repacking. 5-hour drive to Galveston. Unpacking and putting everything in the garage. Returning the U Haul trailer. 3:45 am Aquarian Sadhana with Siri Bahadur. Check. Pretty simple 24 hours. If I were being completely honest, doing the Aquarian Sadhana was the last thing I wanted to do in the wee hours of the morning.
3:45 am came early. We rose in our new house for our first morning Sadhana on Zoom with 12 other spiritual seekers and one of Adi’s delightful teachers, Siri Bahandur. Everything was going swimmingly…until…the swimming began. Our boxes, that is. We heard a sound that resembled sizzling steaks on a grill. The rain fell slowly at first, almost unnoticeably. Before long it picked up the pace and this is when Adi realized:
“Our boxes are in the garage!”
This is the garage that is half-open and exposed to the elements. Water poured onto the cement floor of the garage and while 11 other people were reverently paying homage to the Source, I got up and began bringing every single box inside the house. Our beautiful plan to have a staging area was foiled. For the next 30 minutes of the Aquarian Sadhana, I had a personal experience with every possession that we deemed “essential” as I carried them into the house where eventually we would need to find them a home.
For a moment, I got frustrated. I wondered what I was doing with my life. I wondered why all of this was happening. As my clothing got wetter and wetter and I lifted box after box I wondered why we moved. I wondered if we made the right decision. I wondered so many things. This is downsizing, I thought again. This is saying goodbye to the rat race.
I was drenched like a rat as I sat down to finish the Aquarian Sadhana, the same Aquarian Sadhana that I didn’t really want to do on this early Saturday morning after moving less than 8 hours earlier. And then, I laughed to myself, as I thought of the famous Phil Collins song, I Wish It Would Rain Down.
You said you didn’t need me in your life
Oh I guess you were right, yeah
Ooh I never meant to cause you no pain
But it looks like I did it again
I had left my old life behind. It was a life with many triumphs and challenges. It was a beautiful adventure and all adventures have setbacks. I enter this new life that will most assuredly come with new triumphs and new challenges. It’s all part of the journey. It will rain down and it may even do so on every possession that you own. The rain doesn’t care how your day is going. The rain doesn’t have an agenda. The rain’s only job is to rain down and our only job is to enjoy it—whenever it decides to come.
No matter where we are—life happens. How we deal with the challenges that life brings is what defines us as people. Moving doesn’t change who you are inside. Only we can change ourselves by doing our own self-work. No matter where we go we bring our own consciousness with us. There is no escaping the work that we need to do to change ourselves on the inside. Getting rid of possessions doesn’t free us—our daily Sadhana practice frees us. Our daily spiritual discipline is what liberates us to a new life and no matter where we are, we can perform that daily discipline, but it’s up to us to do the work. These are the things I have learned.
I smiled to myself as I sat back and listened to the great Siri Bahandur sing the beautiful mantras of the Aquarian Sadhana. I sank into that very spiritual discipline that would liberate me. It was in this moment that I knew how important it was to rise to do the Aquarian Sadhana. Is it work? It is. Would I have rather slept? No question. Did I need to get up? Yes, because if I hadn’t it would have rained down and our boxes would have remained soaking outside. I had to allow life to rain down on me. I smiled as I recognized doing Sadhana saved our things and actually made our lives easier because we were able to address a challenge the moment it arrived. It was all working out perfectly, I just needed to learn to let go and let it rain down on me.
A chapter had closed and a new one was staring me right in the eye and I knew in my heart, everything is going to be okay. I have Lucy and I know that wherever Lucy is, adventure awaits.
To hear David narrate this blog listen on Spotify!