When Is It Gonna Get Hot?

This morning I checked the weather before I took Charlie out for his morning constitutional. The temperature clued me that I needed to bundle us both up in our winter duds and brace ourselves for an unseasonably chilly morning.  What is wrong with this picture?  It’s 33 degrees on April 8, that’s what.

I don’t know about the weather where you live, but I can tell you that in my lane, we’re all sick and tired of layering up when it’s supposed to be spring. Down coats and scarves just don’t go with cherry blossoms and daffodils.  As I zipped and hooded us up a “Once Upon a Time” story popped into my head.

Many years ago when I was an outside sales rep, my days were spent pounding the pavement (ouch—sorry feet!) hiking from door to door in building after building in hot pursuit of hot prospects in a big city full of big buildings.

Oh there was a whole lot of hot out there.  One year in late May and early June, the weather moved from winter directly into an endless stream of days so brutally hot that the very thought of going outside sent folks scurrying back to the safety and comfort of their air conditioned zones.  Day by day as I slogged my way from door to door I began to notice that mine weren’t the only spirits drooping from the scorching heat.  There seemed to be an epidemic of general malaise in the air, a fog of depression that had engulfed the entire city.

Oh for an inside job where I could sit at a desk in air-conditioned comfort all day.  Fortunately for me, most of the kind folks I encountered took pity on me, but I could only linger for just so long before someone thought that it was time to kick me back out into the oppressive heat.  It would be times like these when any self respecting outside sales rep in her right mind might consider a new occupation.  Alas, such was not the case, and the person I worked for was not sympatric to the plight of her soggy beleaguered sales team.  Off we went.  Out the door and into the blistering heat.

On one such as day I stood propped in the corner of an elevator on my way down from the 9^thfloor dreading the thought of having to exit the building, the elevator stopped long enough to collect a new passenger.  “Oh good, I thought.  A brief momentary delay before venturing out into the inevitable.”

I can still see him to this day.  A handsome hunk of a guy wearing a crisp, clean Fedex uniform and a smile so bright that it reminded me of those toothpaste ads where a sparkle of light pings off a front tooth.  There I stood propped in my corner dazzled by the vision of handsome, while trying my best to refrain from wilting down to the floor in a puddle of despair.

“Good morning!” he said with a cheerful attitude that matched his sparkle smile.

“Well, it would be a good morning if I didn’t have to get off this elevator and go out into the heat,” I grumbled.

“Well we asked for it, you know.”

“Huh?  What do you mean?”

“We kept saying, ‘When is it gonna get hot?  When is it gonna get hot?’”  And then he was gone.

Aha!  The man is right!  Just as it is now, the weather then had been unseasonably cold for far too long into the spring.  Everyone was complaining. “ It’s too cold.  When is it gonna get hot?  When is it gonna get hot?”  There was a group mantra in the air and it got hot.

Is it true?  Do we get what we ask for?  If so, perhaps it might behoove us to give some serious thought to what we allow to wander around in our heads.  If I change my mind will I change my experience?  I decided that I was going to rewrite the mantra.  If it is true, if a group consciousness can create a heat wave, can it be reversed by a change of mind?

That day, I told the story of my elevator meeting to each person I met.  I asked everyone that I encountered to “Think San Diego weather,” and to imagine a balmy, sunny, clear- blue-sky, low-humidity sort of a day that brings joy to the heart and puts a spring into the step.  It was amazing how spirits lifted at the very thought.

Even more amazing was the fact that the next morning I awoke to a day of San Diego weather.

Coincidence? I’ll never know.  But it certainly does give one pause to wonder, doesn’t it?  Think about what we might be able to do if we change our minds about the climate of our government, of our country, of the planet?  What might happen if we all shifted from a negative attitude to a positive one?  If we see light instead of darkness?  Is it possible to change the world one mind at a time?

Is there just one little thing that you might like to change your mind about today?  If so, how about starting with something small, like the weather?  Today the weather.  Tomorrow the world.

It couldn’t hurt, right?  After all, what have we got to lose?  We’ll never know unless we try.

Okay, so are you in?  If so, leave me a comment and let me know.  The more the merrier! Together we can change the world.  We’ve gotta start somewhere, right?  Okay, enough with the platitudes.  How about we move on to Weather Changing one Mind at a Time?

Seriously.  Let me know.

PS:  Quite possibly there may be either a gaping hole in the middle of this post, or a photo of a fiery blaze stuck sideways in a place where a photo ought not be.  Just overlook it and chalk it up to computer ineptitude.  🙂  I know it’s broken, but I don’t know how to fix it.  But then again, maybe it isn’t broken at all.  Maybe I just think it is.  And maybe by some miracle it will fix itself and be just fine.  I won’t know till I push the publish button.  So good luck and here goes . . .