Exactly what I needed

Saturday, the day after I was wetting my pants over my complicated life, I got exactly what I needed: someone to challenge me. In yoga the day before, the teacher was asking us to be grateful for those people who challenge our choices, our life, our words, everything. You know who they are, sometimes our friends, our family or just people we meet in the laundromat. I had a friend coming over and she was going to spend the night on my couch. I rushed across the street to wash some sheets and towels for her impending arrival.

In the laundromat, there was a guy looking at me. He was very striking looking: Tall, white hair, tanned skin, bright blue eyes, in his 50's or 60's. I could tell by the way he was watching me that he was going to butt into my life. I quickly put my clothes in the washer and headed back home. 25 minutes later I was back to put them in the dryer. Now the man was sitting outside on a bench talking to another guy. He looked at me again, as I went inside. Oh brother! I put my clothes in the dryer and then read my National Geographic while I waited. He came in as I was checking my clothes and saw the magazine. "National Geographic? Do you get that regularly?" I said yes and he asked me if I actually read it or just looked at the pictures. It took me a minute so he told me that he was making that old joke about the naked breasts on African women. Charming. I assured him that I did, in fact, read it and that I didn't think they showed tits anymore. They must be cracking down.

As I folded my clothes, he proceeded to ask me a hundred questions about where I live, what I do for work, etc, etc. I should have kept my mouth shut but he had a nice face and sounded like John Wayne. I told him about my plan to move back to L.A. and start my own business. Next thing you know, the guy is telling me that L.A. is awful and I don't want to live there, that San Francisco is the best place on earth, that before I go I should look for a job with the city. They, apparently, give lifetime health care after you work there five years, but they're changing it soon to twenty years. "You should be buying a house," he said, "with first time homeowners, you could buy a house with $10 grand." He added I should at least try that before I ran home to live with mommy. It's funny because in the moment, I was actually interested in what he had to say. We talked about how abysmal health care is in this country and I said that I thought the government was taking plenty of our money, they just weren't spending it on the things that are important to us. I also said that I think people rely too much on "health care" instead of just being healthy.

I told him my plan is to stay healthy and not get hit by a bus. It sounded ridiculous, but then again, so did his plan. Honestly, five years as a civil servant? Could you imagine? I felt like I was dying in a corporate environment for crying out loud. Buy a house, in the Bay Area? I've been laid off twice in a year, there's no security in a job and what happens when I have that huge mortgage payment and no job? It was in the hours later that I realized I am designing my own life, my own freedom, my own security. The encounter with this stranger, who iterated all of my own counter arguments to me, in person, made me defend my plan, face my doubts and realize that I'm doing exactly the right thing for me, right now.