I don’t think of myself as a handyman. In fact, I almost always pay others to take care of things around the house, because I’m afraid I’ll make it worse.
Well …. there was this one time when I re-caulked my shower, which felt and looked amazing … but my mind dismissed it as a one off…
So when my fiancé asked me to take a look at her refrigerator that was icing up …. I was very uncomfortable. On one side I wanted to help her, but on the other I didn’t want to embarrass myself by making her fridge worse, and as such, appear as less of a man than I think I should.
Yet, in my mind, I went back to this blog’s founding question: what will bring more love into my life?
That simple question, as always, made it very clear to me as to what I want to do next.
With a combination of google and my own observations, I found that one side of the door doesn’t close all the way. As much as I hoped that me playing around with realigning the rails would work by opening and closing the door in all sorts of creative ways … it didn’t.
It was time to start the much dreaded disassembling process. Took off the front door. Took out the containers. I found out what the problem was …. One side’s rail wasn’t flush when closed, which prevented the freezer from sealing and as such let in moisture that consequently iced up … but I had no idea how to fix it. It seemed like the rails were jammed and there’s nothing I could do to unjam them.
What do I do? Do I just admit defeat? I can’t. This was one of those times where ego was actually every useful.
I did the only thing I can do … the only thing left to disassemble … I took the rails out of the fridge.
So there I was sitting on a chair. Holding the two rails in each of my hands. Side by side. Looking back and forth. Seeing the problem of one of them being not flush in the closed position even closer. At a point it almost felt like the jammed rail was mocking me … “Here I am, still stuck and you can’t do anything about it .. I just hope you can put all the pieces back together after you admit defeat to your fiancé”
Then it hit me. I grabbed a hammer, and hammered away until the jammed rail was jammed in such a way that it closed flush. I wouldn’t be able to open the freezer all the way, but at least it would close properly.
I put it back together and it worked.
I felt like a superman💪
What did I learn?
First of all, asking myself what will bring more love into my life works in even seemingly smallest of tasks.
Ego is useful as long as the identity at stake is love based. I like to think of myself as a person of service. Not taking up an invitation to help, or quitting too early is an equivalent of an insult.
I also learned that when stuck, take whatever next step can be taken. I could have pulled a “weather reporter” and stopped after recognizing that that the rails were jammed as a way out. After all, I did advance the story … right? Also, much like a weather reporter … there’s nothing I can do about the fact that the weather is bad … right?
The fact that I went a step further to take the rails out of the fridge, gave me a new vantage point that brought forth the hammer insight.
Funny thing is as I wrote this blog … these are the very same lessons that are getting me though creating my first online quiz … boy were there a lot of “weather reporter” moments … more on that later though …
What helps you to follow your heart when there doesn’t seem to be a way? What keeps you going?
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