Seize The Jacket

Life Lessons In a Mall Dressing Room

Some say that understanding comes to you when you are ready for it. I guess that's one way of looking at it. I prefer to think of understanding and knowledge as a vast sea in which we live. It's around us all the time wether we notice it or not. Yesterday I noticed a bit more.

It all started two days ago at the massive Vasco de Gama mall across the street. I was in a store called Zara looking at jackets. I really like jackets as style definers and I was on the hunt for a new one for fall. Zara had several to choose from and I was having a hard time choosing. In fact this was my second trip to the same store to shop jackets.

Suddenly I saw one I hadn't spotted before. I went to the dressing room, put it on, and it all just sort of came together. I was so inspired by the look that I pulled out a camera and snapped a few frames. (I've never done that before.)

I thought maybe I should buy it right then, but then I wavered thinking what if I found another I liked better elsewhere in the mall. I put it back and left.

Over the following hours I never did find a jacket I liked better, or even as well as the one at Zara. In fact the more I thought about it and looked at the photos, the more I realized this was the jacket I really wanted. By then it was closing time so first thing the next morning I went back to buy it. I didn't immediately find my size on the rack so I asked a salesman if they had it. He went to the back and came out to say it had been sold that morning and they didn't have anymore in my size. Now I wasn't devastated, it's not that big of a deal, but I was disappointed. And that's when I became aware of a little piece of understanding that has been floating around me all along. And here it is.

Throughout life we are presented with opportunities to have, do, be what we want. These opportunities always come with the price of making a choice. You can have the red or blue balloon, but not both. You can a be a dentist or an artist, but not both. And many times it's the choosing that we find hard and frightening since we're afraid of making the wrong choice. What I realized with the jacket lesson is that just making a choice allows you to move on and experience more life and more choices. Choice A leads down one path and choice B down another. Neither is wrong. Neither is better. The important thing is just to choose.

The salesman said they'd have more jackets in later this week and you can bet when I go back and find my size I'll be taking it home this time without a second thought.

Cheers For Now,

Dave