It was time to do something special.

For my car.

Gassing up, I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. A car wash. The car was on the filthy side and for some reason on this random day I decided to spend a couple of bucks and clean it up a bit.

I stopped at the kiosk as I approached the entrance. There I was presented with six different car wash options ranging from the basic wash to “The Works”. I don’t recall the exact name of the option I selected, but once my credit card payment was accepted the light turned green and into the wash bay I went.

All through the washing process a large LED indicator would light up and tell me exactly where we were in the cycle. Pre-Rinse, Foam Soak, Undercarriage Wash. Even Rain-X.

I wish they made Rain-X for humans.

The repellent nature of Rain-X causes water to bead up and easily run off coated surfaces, especially windshields. And sure enough with the final rinse of the washing process the water had nothing to cling to now that the car had just been coated.

As a human, sometimes things cling to me. Things get stuck, often becoming emotional things, which I wish simply beaded up and rolled off me like water on my Rain-X treated windshield. Instead, they linger, they adhere, they require me to find a way to deal with them as they often impact my visibility in moving forward in life.

Short of running through a car wash myself, the best repellent I’ve found for preventing adversarial things from getting stuck on me is revisiting the vision I have for me. The life I wish to create for myself and the intentional mindset to accompany it. Purpose is powerful. Clarity is powerful. And with both comes a repellent of their own which will not prevent the unwanted things from showing up in life but will help prevent them from sticking around. 

Like Rain-X, which needs to be reapplied from time to time, so, to does the need to revisit and reapply the vision of life. It’s a process I’ve learned which requires regular and consistent maintenance if I hope to optimize my ability to resist the impact of the undesirable things which inevitably show up in life. 

Photo by Zulfahmi Khani on Unsplash

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