the cups part 5 - the secret of right timing called LUCK

Did you know 1 in 3 pieces of jewelry are worn for luck?

Another secret of that perfect cup of tea or coffee or hot cocoa (yum) is knowing when the temperature is just right.

(and I am starting to tire of the cup metaphor after 5 long posts and my teeny, tiny attention span and I'm sure you are, too, so if I switch to peppers or chicken wings or toasters to talk about temperature - I know you'll thank me)

Anyhoo, this right timing with tea is one of the secrets of right timing with everything. 

Many years ago, hub's lease was about to expire on his garage and we set up a meeting with the owners of the building to sign a new lease. When we arrived they told us their son had dropped out of college and had decided to ... open a truck repair business in our shop. So instead of renting to us they were going to rent to him and because our lease was about to expire we were basically out of luck.

As you can guess this was not good news. Hubs had just spent 3 years building his business in this location; working a gazillion hours. He was stressed. I was stressed, too and Olive, well Olive wasn't around yet, but let's just say, this was not a good day.

We started looking everywhere for a new location, but because we work on trucks and need larger doors than typical garages and because most locations are not zoned for trucks and because we didn't want to lose our existing accounts by moving too far away we were out of luck.

There was actually a perfect shop within blocks of our house, but it was an empty building next to a repair business that worked on cars and trucks and we didn't think they would want to rent to us (the competition), but finally, in desperation hubs went over to talk to them. The owner of the business said he didn't really work on that many trucks, but he didn't really need the rent money either - he'd think about it. 

We started to get our hopes up a little. We were only a couple weeks from having to move the shop. We thought maybe we were in luck.

The next day the owner of the business talked to the owner of the buildings who was an old woman and she said, "No, I don't know these people, I don't want to rent to them." Hubs set up a meeting, but she wasn't looking for any tenants she didn't know and she said, "No". We were out of luck.

The day before we had to move we heard about an empty airplane hanger at a nearby airport. Hubs, quite illegally I'm sure, moved his operation into the airplane hanger. We were in luck - sort of. His mechanic took a job somewhere else and hub's workload slowed down enough to make it all just barely do-able (no welding, no water, no heat, no windows). After a few months in the airplane hanger an old man moved into the hanger next door with a glider plane. He was in his 80's and getting his pilot's license.

Hubs and the old man became friends and one day he asked hubs why he was working in an airplane hanger. Hubs explained our situation and the old man said he knew an empty shop owned by one of his very oldest and best friends and he would talk to her. We were in luck.

It turned out this oldest and best friend was the woman who owned the shop down the street - it also turned out that in the few months we had been in the airport - the owner of the repair shop and main mechanic had developed carpal tunnel syndrome and was actually looking to do even less work. This all fell together. We were really in luck.

Now what is the chance that hubs would move into an airplane hanger next to a man who was best friend's with the woman who only rented to people she knew (so now she felt like she knew us because her friend did) and that the main mechanic would get carpal tunnel syndrome and now needed our rent money to make up the income he was losing from not being able to work as much.

This is the kind of win-win that life/the Universe/God can put together - it happens all the time. Sometimes we try to push and pull and make things happen instead of letting things fall into place and we muck this all up.

(sometimes there are a whole lot of things going on that we can't see - things that need to fall into their own places to make room for us to fit into ours)
 
Maybe the things we call unlucky - are actually the very steps that get us to the lucky - if we just stay on the path.

And staying on the path does not mean continuing to do the same thing - the very thing that isn't working for us, but it does mean doing something.

If we know what we want and if we know why we want it and we take action, maybe life can use whatever action we take - to get us where we want to be.

Maybe we really can get what we want from where we are with what we have!

 (we may have to let go of a few things first, often the idea of a rescuer - when we really get that no one is climbing down that well to pull us out, and we may need to grieve the loss of this myth for a while, but when we really get that - we can really start to make our journey to LUCKY happen)

Hubs is much more decisive than me. He is much more likely to know what he wants. My own right timing usually works differently and I'll talk about that in part VI (damn I love roman numerals!).

xo all