My Preciousssssss!!

Protecting the pennies is a good way to ruin a business. True?

I do know that this week, I had run across some conversations about situations that seemed so petty. I was telling my stories, they were relaying ones they’d heard. Overall we were basically bitching about protecting our pennies.

In one sense, money is tender we trade as proof of a business transaction. In another sense, there is so much more exchanged, than just the loose change.

I was telling someone a story. Actually it was a rare little incident, that didn’t go well. He was telling me one similar that he’d heard of. We swapped stories of worries and ‘well it’s always sumpthin’s’. It wasn’t a constructive conversation, but it was friendly and cordial and we bonded over our small-business woes…

Small business?? Yes. Pennies are small. Smallest coin we got. I was looking at my pennies and pouting. So was he. Is it responsibility that contains our focus on these details? Are we being good stewards and noticing wastefulness where it lives? Should we be proud that we could maybe save a few copper-colored circles in the future, by complaining today?

Nah, I don’t think so.

I think we are both small business guys because we’re looking at the smallness of it. I think we’re fighting any growth of a fortune by dwelling on the piddly-diddles. I am king of seeing tiny minute mistakes. They infest the sphere of my vision. Swarming and mating even, they multiply and cloud the clear blue sky.

The pennies can poison.

Business is like life, life like business. ‘How some things work, is how all things work’, according the wise Mr. Steve Chandler.

There was a book called ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff” – I didn’t read it. Probably too busy, noticing my lack of motivation, or interest or (laughably) time to read, and complaining to myself about that. Instead of just opening the cover and starting.

I know some guys and some gals who dream big. They seem to speak into existence wide swaths of projects and grand illustrations of service. These life artists seem to endeavor to create beyond the microscopic. They do, and they keep doing. They don’t seem to salivate over succulent little stories of small delicious complaints.

I wonder when I will see that it’s the protecting of my pennies, that is slowing me down? I want to cherish all of the tiniest of troubles. I want to count and admire each one. I want to collect and preserve them, from the beginning of life till today. I couldn’t let my pets out of their cages. Where would they go? Who would care for them like I do?

What would I spend my attention on, if I didn’t have these little pests in my life? Oops! Did I just say that? I couldn’t have meant it. Oh no…

When we play a game of coed rec league volleyball, lots of little moments happen. The points go quick sometimes. The frantic juggle of a long volley can just continue on and on and on too… Lots of little mistakes are made. The point ends. We get one, or we lose one. Then we move on to the next.

I sometimes grip the tiny microsecond of time in which I get to decide whether to hold onto my failings of the last few moments, or let them go, start fresh, as the new serve sails my way. Usually, almost always, I let a twitch happen and a release. My brain blanks out. I play the next new point, from a loose and lively space, wanting to win the one point we are on, right then…

I do it in volleyball I said…

In our business, in my jobs, in my marriage and my spiritual life, I may protect my pennies too often. I want to worry and tend to them. I ache to see every one, shined up and sparkling. I ignore the blessings that bunches of them bring.

If a penny is a tiny fraction of the greater whole, then we have illustrated the duality of life. It takes tons of little pennies or little atoms or little moments or even mistakes, piled together to show us the bigger picture.

I can zoom out sometimes. I can choose to do it. I could see the greater possibility, the pictures yet unpainted on the massive blank canvas of the life in front of me. I could choose that.

I pray that today, I try it. I pray that today, I let the penny be tarnished and bent even too. I pray that instead of painstakingly processing the microscopic, I take a step back to observe the enormity of the blessings enveloping my soul.

I won’t ever forget the pretty petty problems, but I can get loose, shake them off, and proceed toward one next step, without totally slowing down… At least I want to give it a shot, today 🙂

With love and spiritual wealth in my prayers for you, I will speak to you again next week. I will then again share something that tugs at the inner-me, hopefully it touches the inner you. So that, we all know we don’t exist alone, as it can feel so often, when we pet and ponder our precious little pennies…

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols


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