Trust your gut. Follow your heart. Listen to your intuition. We have all undoubtedly heard this counsel from our friends and family countless times and have repeated the same with a similar frequency. During times of internal struggle these can feel like platitudes. But trite as these old adages may sound, they are in deed truisms. You know when you just know something except you don’t actually know it yet? Or that feeling when you know you should or shouldn’t do something and you aren’t’ sure why but you just have this hunch the future version of yourself will be grateful?  That’s how I have felt about buying a new car for the past few years.  

Man, would I have loved a new car.  Or a reliable car.  Or a car where all four windows could roll down.  And every time my car would break down or overheat or every time I called AAA and they would kindly remind me I had already used all my calls for the year so I would have to pay additional fees, I would be so tempted to throw in my frequent flyer status at the auto shop and finally get myself some new wheels.  But then the parts would come in or the bandaids would go on and I would be back on the road and I knew that a new car was not on my path.

Our possessions tie us to a version of our life. The stuff we own, the things we collect…they weigh us down. There are many reasons we, as human beings, collect things.  We collect items that are beautiful and pleasing to the eye.  We collect items that make life more comfortable.  We collect items that hold sentimental value.  Items that protect us, transport us, shelter us.  Beauty, comfort, and sentiment are all noble elements of our shared human experience. But stuff is just the physical manifestation of emotional attachment, not the emotions themselves. The things we collect are the relics our feelings leave behind. Being encumbered by stuff can make change more difficult.  It can almost feel, at times, as if we are overburdened with the emotional attachments our things represent. And all these things, this stuff, creates noise. It creates a frequency which can muffle the messages the universe is sending to us.

There is nothing wrong with our human collections as long as we are aware of our relationships to them in relation to the world around us.  I have a house and I have stuff. Lots of stuff. Though far less than I did a few weeks ago. And all that stuff made it more difficult for me to change the trajectory of my life when I was called to do so.  And then I think about that new car.  The one with the fancy windows. And I think about my old car, the one that was with me when I said yes to an adventure. The one that allowed me to take off every month and travel because it did not require a payment from me. You see, I met a handsome sailor. And had I had that new car with that new car payment, those trips to go adventure with him just would not have been possible. This life I have been called to lead would not have been possible. My sailing off into the sunset with this human adventure would not have been possible. And I think about my gut, my heart, my intuition. I think about all those times they told me that something was coming, that my life was about to change. About the times they implored me to hang in there, because I didn’t know what I didn’t know yet.  About how they told me that buying a new car would just create more noise.  About how they were right.  I think about this and I am grateful for that sound advice, those trite old adages that had been spoken to me so many times from so many people over the course of my life.  

I guess the point of all this is that sometimes we need to turn down the noise in our lives to hear the universe whispering to us.  And that looks different for us all.  For me it was not having a car payment. But whatever that is to you, give it a whirl because the message is worth hearing. Giving yourself just a little bit of freedom from the things that tie you down could allow for some pretty big magic to work its way into your life.  Who knows? There could be a handsome sailor in your future too.