None of the tools in the toolbox are working. The four-mile walk didn’t clear the rumbly rumbles from your head. Meditation failed to take it down a notch. There isn’t a song to lift you out of it. Everything your generous, well-meaning friend suggests is wrong. And there isn’t a Tiffany’s nearby to quell the mean reds. The more you resist and fight, the stronger the undertow seems to get.
Rip currents can be deceiving because the water looks calm, but it’s very dangerous. If you get caught in one, you are advised not to struggle against it, despite the panicky impulse to do so. Instead, turn sideways and swim out of it, and if you can’t do that, float or tread water. A rip current loses energy and dissipates as it moves out past the breakers.
Walking past the bus stop, a young woman speaking Spanish, a language you should have doubled down and learned by now, asks for your help. She is asking you, you think, when the bus is coming. Somehow, between her miming and limited English and your limited Spanish, you cobble together that she wants to go to Burlington Coat Factory to buy her husband socks and shorts and a hat for Father’s Day with the gift certificate she pulls out of her purse to show you. You guess that certificate was a gift to her, but instead she is using it to buy a gift for her husband. You come to understand that he usually gives her a ride—to work, to the store, to wherever she needs to go—but today, this is for a surprise for him. In the end, you still can’t answer her question and manage to say, “I’m sorry” in Spanish.
You would like to go home and get your car and come back and give her a ride, but you’re still a mile from home and you aren’t sure how to communicate this plan. You go into the bank and when you get out, you see her further down the sidewalk talking to two gentlemen. She turns and sees you, waves and smiles, “It’s okay.”
Walking home, you realize the mean reds have retreated. You just turned sideways and swam out of a rip current.
Divine Ready 