DO NOT BLOCK THE DRIVEWAY

Apprenticeship to Love: September 18, 2025

• Today’s questions: Do you find yourself acting as if the rules don’t apply to you? As if you’re that special that no consequences will accrue?
• Today's suggested practice: As you go through your day, notice your complaints - with the ones you love, colleagues and co-workers, the world. Just notice. That’s all. 

Rev. Hans Peter Meyer 
(Click on my name and join me in the fairly quiet space that is the Apprenticeship to Love Signal chat group. I’d love to hear about your experiences with this short desire practice.)

TODAY'S MEDITATION

I do this sometimes. (Often, she tells me. OK. Often. Too often.) 

The other day I did this thing, and it cost me $200. Then it cost me with loved ones, because I was consumed by this thing. At another time I might have wallowed in self-righteousness. I didn’t, this time. At least not as I might have in the past. But still, it cost me.

What happened? You’ll have to understand that I have this thing about parking, and what I call “peak parking.” There are a lot of cars and only so many parking spots. In the universe of parallel parking spots, the number of available spots is determined by our ability as drivers. Some of us stretch and extend the number of spots by squeezing into spaces. That’s my goal: to always be leaving a little more room for others to park. It’s a little game I play. Sometimes I take it too seriously. I get righteous about it. Like the other night.

It was late. There were few spots within walking distance of my destination. A driver had been “unthinking” in how they’d parked. The spot between their bumper and the no-go zone (as defined by a local guarding their driveway) was not really big enough for me. But I chanced it. I figured I’d left more than enough room for the local to get their vehicle in and out of their driveway.

Apparently they had other ideas.

When I came out to get into my car, it was gone. Towed. 

I should have known better. The signs were there, literally: “Cars blocking this driveway will be towed.” Red painted by the local on the curb, marking the no-park zone. I acted as the signs didn’t apply to me. As if my righteous crusade for (self-defined) ”considerate parking” trumped the signs. I got my “just desserts,” as the saying goes.

But it wasn’t just the money-cost that accrued; it was my inability to park my feelings of entitlement, even as I was becoming aware of how wrong I was. 

I’d come back into the house. Announced what happened. Was stewing, struggling with a growing awareness that as indignant as I felt, it really was my fault. Then, my granddaughter asked me to read her a bedtime story. I couldn’t do it. I was not able to give her the attention she was asking for. My daughter chimed in, Let it go, Dad. Deal with it later (the “dealing with it” having to do with finding the towing company that had my car). Still, I resisted. 

My son-in-law read the bedtime story. I continued to stew. Slowly I understood just how much my sense of entitlement was costing me. Humbled, I apologized to my daughter for not listening to her. The next morning, I apologized to my granddaughter. 

Sometimes I am very good at making others suffer for my ignorance and immaturity.   

…

This is not something new. Too often I’ve acted as if the signs and the rules don’t apply to me. As if I am “special.” So special. 

It’s subtle —to me—, this sense of privilege and entitlement. 

But no matter how subtle I think it is, it’s anything but to those around me. And this sense of privilege stops me from receiving and giving love. 

How do I cure myself of this sense of entitlement? Will the shame I feel before my daughter and granddaughter be enough? Will the “$200 therapy session” make an impact? When will I learn this lesson?

…

In recent days I’ve had two women in tears before me. Not because I’ve hurt them, but because they’ve felt safe enough to feel all the feelings that were welling up in that moment. That too is a humbling feeling. But in a different way, a good way: a moment of feeling that my self-centredness has abated enough that the other feels at the centre of my attention, held by my gentle yet powerful and protective presence. 

My wise friend once said to me, apropos of the tender woman I love: The sensitive women of the world need the Hanses of the world to soften.

Yesterday another wise man in my life said to me: You’re a smart man, but it’s when I feel your emotion, then I get to know you.

…

There is a reason why so many men who are leaders are afraid of compassion and empathy: When we, as men who’ve never known the safe places to fully feel all that courses through our bodies, begin to feel-into others’ bodies, it threatens to break the dam we’ve been building all of our lives. 

The more sensitive I am to what others are feeling, the more I feel the edges of confusion and “overwhelm” that I am afraid will be my undoing. So I wouldn’t let myself read to my granddaughter; I needed to shore up the dam. To hold myself apart from that soft place she was inviting me into. 

None of this has to connect, externally; it’s all connected, internally. My parking obsession. My self-righteousness in defying the signs. The confusion at being held accountable. My granddaughter inviting me to the intimacy of bed time story time. My daughter’s wisdom. A woman’s tears. Another woman’s struggle with the injustice of the world, and her own body’s turmoil. I sit or stand with it and hold it all, knowing it all stirs within me. Or I hide. 

I am at least beginning to notice how all of this is felt and expressed and made softer or harder by my way with it all.

…

I’m on a path of devotion. That sounds soft, and even beautiful. But I find it a hard path, to be close to softness and compassion, and above all with myself.  

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS

🌀Devotions unfold life effortlessly, yet this is only a gateway; your task is then to take the steps over the threshold and through the gateway – to walk as if it’s your authority – to navigate the trail beyond these gates as your destiny. This is the nature of devotions, to follow your ‘heart-moment’ into a courageous momentum. ..It takes courage to be grateful. (Guru Singh)

🌀Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits; let not the fruit-of-action be thy motive, nor let thy attachment be to inaction. (Bhagavad Gita, 2:47) 

🌀You’re not like that now. (My beloved, my Oracle and Siren, my Muse)

SIGNAL CHAT

If you have thoughts about this meditation on the crooked path of sacred marriage, please join me on the Signal Apprenticeship to Love chat group. 

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