Magical Thinking

A few weeks ago, my husband walked into the house with a small open box in his hands. Inside it were some small light holders for those dangily Ikea track lighting fixtures and a key. A key that matched the same look of our lock as it’s a weird, super technical lock the previous owner had installed. Someone left this in our mailbox all day. The belief that it would remain safe and untouched. The mystery was on.

We tried the key in our lock and thought that even though we had the locks changed when we took over our house last Fall, maybe it was some kind of skeleton key and we’d need to rush off to a panic room to live off of flecks of granola and paint chips while we were stalked from outside by someone WHO HAD OUR FREAKING KEY AND WAS WATCHING US SLEEP EACH AND EVERY NIGHT?

The key didn’t work and panic subsided, but confusion remained. Who would leave a box in a mailbox with a key to a house within it in this day and age? Was this a key for us or a key for someone else on the street and accidentally left in our rusty, metal mailbox?

A few weeks later, we came across our old lock that we had kept and lo and behold, upon testing the mystery key – it worked. The previous owner of the home was the culprit.

Dear reader. We live in a city. A city where this kind of key in a mailbox scenario is an open invitation to come on in and load up a truck full of all of my possessions and then give me the gift of meditating on impermanence and attachment.

I don’t want this gift just yet. I love my dogs, laptop and television too much right now. There. I said it. Bad Buddhist. Strip me of my mala beads.

My husband had the best response for this. The previous owner of this space suffers from “magical thinking”. We knew when we met her, she was a bit on the woo-woo side. She told me she’d go off on cabin retreats with some spiritual guide. Naturally I bonded with her as I seem to attract the spiritual seekers and batik-wearers of our world. We still get her magazines on our doorstep with fractal images and headlines speaking to astral projection and how to make one’s blood more alkaline.

I told my husband that I thought she was a magic pixie dream girl that never grew up.

I’m all for health food, alternative therapies and spiritual communities but with the caveat that the motivation of the practitioner and those who are selling the treatments or delivering the training does so from a place of genuinely wanting to help and not just making a buck off of another sap.

It’s time for the “Buyer beware” caveat.  Rather than going off chasing rainbows, rubbing crystals your bits and engaging in hedonistic activities, let’s get real for a moment. Let’s question what we’re being told. Let’s question what we believe. Let’s spend some time examining what we’re being sold and what we’re buying.

Let’s not leave our keys in mailboxes.