Oh Snap! Our Car Broke Down

My husband and I were having a rough patch for the last several weeks with an extremely busy schedule at work, incidents that brought our morale down, and illnesses. We really needed a break.

Luckily, the week-long Fall Break was here, and our family was driving to Tokyo to see my mom and have respite from a lot that was going on in our life. We were packed nicely, kids sleeping in the backseat, driving smoothly, and I let out a sigh of relief, full of hope for a restful week… when… two thirds into the drive to Tokyo, the car battery light turned on and with it, a bunch of other lights started blinking with high pitched beeping sounds. We tried to monitor it for a while hoping it was a glitch in the system, but my husband noticed that the car was actually losing power, and he swiftly pulled to the side of the highway and turned off the engine.

He turned the key to turn the engine back on… and nothing. Oh Snap. There we were, stuck on the side of the highway.

Long story short, after numerous calls and an hour later, we were able to get in touch with the Road Service center to get our car towed, and our family and our bags dropped off at the parking lot of the nearest convenience store in the middle of nowhere. Again after numerous calls, we were instructed to wait for another hour at the parking lot for a hired car to arrive. People visiting the convenience store passed by with confused looks, as they saw our family standing in front of the store with several large bags, a stroller and two child seats on the ground. It was quite an unusual sight really.

I was tired to my bones and I looked up to the sky with a sigh of disbelief, confusion, emptiness, when I remembered the exercise that I did with my students recently to identify silver linings in times of challenges. So I started…

• At least our kids are in good spirits, not whining and wailing

• We are in a country where support can reach us in a matter of hours rather than days

• This accident happened during the time that the car rental shop was still open

• This accident didn’t happen in the middle of the winter

• The sunset is beautiful tonight

• Our insurance covers the cost of the hired car and for the car getting towed

• My husband did really well to pull to the side of the highway before the car stopped

• We are lucky to be in front of a convenience store so that we don’t have to go hungry

• We are safe

I could have kept going on. Even in the predicament we found ourselves in, there was so much for me to be grateful for. As the hired car arrived an hour later, I met it with lightness in my heart with lots of gratitude.

No challenging moment is a waste if we can peel away from just ruminating on the things that have gone wrong. We can choose to use these moments as opportunities to bring our attention to what we DO have, or what we might have gained or learned from the experience even if the experiences were hard. Identifying silver linings is one way to shift our attention this way. It is such a simple yet powerful practice to give us the energy to move forward even when troubles bring us down.

If you are interested to find out more you can go to: https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/finding_silver_linings!