Do you love going to the ATM machine? Get all excited? Gather with your friends and celebrate? Get together for a group photo holding your cards? No? Well, then, we have ourselves yet another unexplored area for boundless gratitude!
On this last trip we set up bank accounts for the cooperative team members. We thought this was a simple administrative move, one that ensures Theresa no longer has to trek around the city with large sums of cash.
Theresa recently told us about the GRAND celebration on the first occasion the team had to take their shiny new ATM cards to insert into that machine and withdraw their monthly stipends. SO much fun!
Don’t you just love the mirror that someone else’s experience is for you? When I read Theresa’s account, I had the best time projecting onto that scene. It makes complete sense to be so excited that there would be a safe place to stow your money and that there would be a place, surprisingly convenient to where you live, to go and put a card in a machine anytime you want and take out that money! Wow!
It allows me to ask the ever-hiding question, “Why am I not always excited at everything all the time?!” Ah, yes, the familiar culprit—taking things for granted. When I looked up synonyms for “take for granted,” one of the first items was “assumption.” I had never made that connection! I assume I can go to the bank and get money when I need it; I assume I will have clean water to drink today; I assume I will have plenty to eat today….
It’s no wonder Not to Assume is one of the primary guidelines of Practice. Not because assuming makes us bad or wrong but because in assuming we do not get to have the exquisite experience of being alive! ALIVE! HERE. Noticing the extraordinary in an “ordinary” ATM card.
Here’s the best part, the goosebumps moment: not everyone took their whole stipend out of their account. This is the first time in the lives of these 35 amazing folks that they have had a way to sustainably save money. And they are doing it. And they are thrilled!
So much reason for Joy! (Not that we needed a reason!)
In Gassho
Jen