Today when I went to take my two children to school, I couldn’t get my car to start. The car’s batter was dead.
I remembered that my husband had mentioned that a light had been left on in the car, and that he had turned the light switch for the car off. He hadn’t checked the doors or anything like that to see if something had been left open. He assumed turning off the “switch” would be enough. Maybe it was. Maybe the battery had already run down enough to cause it to be so low on energy that it wouldn’t power up the car.
No matter. I was left with an energy-drained batter and no ability to take my kids to school until the AAA road service tow truck arrived to give my car a jump start. At this point, I was told that I could probably use a new batter, but mine had recharged and I was good to go.
All of this reminded me of the fact that cars symbolize our bodies or our selves. So, I asked myself, what does my car’s energy-depleted battery tell me about myself?
The question was easy to answer. Like the battery, I felt drained of energy, unable to get started and move forward. With so many things to do, my “light” is on all the time, draining me of the necessary energy to get start on the projects most important to me.
So, what’s the lesson? I have to findย way to energize myself, to jump start my own battery.
Oh, for a AAA repair man to show up and simply jump start me…symbolically, mind you. Because getting out of the energy-less doldrums feels very hard. It takes effort I don’t seem to have the energy to muster. The simplicity of having my car jump started is what I want — someone to just jolt me full of enough energy that I am ready to go, go go…
Instead, I have to find it within myself to drum up that energy. How to do that? One way is to physically create energy with energy. This means physical exercise — something I haven’t been doing. The more we move our bodies physically, the more energy they generate for us. They get charged up and become all the more ready for use. Thus, anyone wanting more energy, wanting a recharge, should find a way to become more physically active or to become physically active in a new way.
The second thing that will jump start your system — and mine — revolves around passion. We have to find something we feel passionate about and do it. Start on that project. Do the thing you say you want to do. When you begin doing something you enjoy, your energy level will rise and you’ll want to keep doing whatever you are doing — writing a book, composing a song, painting a picture, teaching a class, learning a new language…
But without that AAA repair man with his jumper cables, we have to find that little bit of energy left in the batter, the tiny bit that allowed the car to make that clicking noise when I turned the key, and use that to at least get us out the door or onto the treadmill to exercise or started on that project that fans the fires of our desire. We have to find the will power to do what we say we want to do, and then the energy will follow.
Tomorrow, I begin. My sporadic exercise regimen becomes more scheduled. My passion project becomes a part of my daily life, even if it means getting up earlier or staying up later to work on it.
I’ll be more tired, you say? I’ll be “leaving my light on” again and running my batter down? I don’t think so. I think I’ll be recharging it, generating energy as I go. Why don’t you try, too? We’ll find out together.
Imagine if everyone who felt they were running out of energy recharged their batteries in this way. What a world it would be…a world filled with energetic people performing passionate acts. Not only would our batteries be recharged, we’d be happy, fulfilledย and living our lives fully as well. I wonder if anyone’s car batter would need recharging?
