Yesterday, I took my father-in-law's car to a lube center at a mall where we had some other errands to run. The guy who attended me was nice, and he took about 30 minutes to check the car and explain all the things they needed to do, and how I should do them immediately. He gave me a huge list of recommended repairs, and the total cost was quite high, around $1k. I went into a slight panic since I really don't know anything about cars or whether what he said was true. I also had no idea if the price they game me was appropriate.

This triggered my social anxiety to levels I hadn't experienced in a long while. I managed to ask the guy to give me 10 minutes and went to sit in the car. I called my wife, who was with my parents, and told her the whole story. In the end, we decided not to go ahead with any of the repairs at this lube center since it was too expensive. Besides, we needed to talk to my father-in-law first, and the kids were already tired—so we figured it was best to just go home.

I apologized to the guy. He was nice enough, but I could tell he was annoyed. I felt flustered about the whole thing and just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

I got in the car and, while reversing to finally leave, I didn't notice an obstacle in my way—one of those metal arms they use to lift cars for oil changes. I drove straight onto it with my front-left tire and immediately heard the hisshhh of high-pressure air escaping. I had punctured the tire. Well, not just punctured—it was completely ruined, with a huge gash on the side that meant I couldn’t just get it repaired. I needed to buy a new one.

I sat there for a second, breathing in and out. Then I looked outside the car and saw everyone in the store staring at me in disbelief. So, I opened the door, plastered a smile on my face, and and went to see how bad it was. Thankfully, the guy who had been helping me was super nice and changed the tire for me (which was fairly quick since they had one of those guns to tighten the bolts (impact wrenches)). Once the spare tire was on, I thanked everyone and got out of there as soon as I could, taking care not to hit anything else on the way.¹

Now, my social anxiety had escalated into a feeling of being a totally incompetent person. Incapable of anything. Worthless. Not just because of my lack of car-knowledge, or because I wasn't able to do normal adult stuff, or because I had just done something really stupid by not paying attention and gashing the tire. But also because my wife and kids were tired, and I had somehow let them down.

I knew these feelings of unworthiness well—I’ve been dealing with them most of my adult life. Usually, I manage to keep them under control, but the situation was just too much for me.

I called my wife, who had been waiting for me with the kids all the while, and explained what had happened while trying not to hit anything on my way out of the parking lot. She was kind enough, but not exactly trilled about that fact that we now had to go buy a new tire before we could go home.

The rest of the day wasn't so bad. The guy who changed the tire for us was very friendly. More than anything, we were just tired (no pun intended). As I distracted myself with other things, the feeling of worthlessness subsided a bit, but it did not go away entirely.

By the time we finished doing everything, it was already 6pm and both kids were exhausted. Our oldest fell asleep almost immediately once we started our ~1h drive back home. There was a lot of traffic so I had time to sit with my feelings.

After about 30min of observing them I started to feel an unexpected warmth of love spreading from my chest until it encompassed my whole body. If I reflected on it then it stopped, so I just let it be to see what would happen.

At this point I remembered a quote by Ram Dass (I think it's from his book Be Here Now) about his feelings of unworthiness and his guru. It went something like this:

Maharaji said to me, "Ram Dass, love everyone and tell the truth." And I looked at him and I said, "I can’t do that. I can’t love everyone." And he just laughed and laughed, because he saw right through me. He saw all the places where I held back my love, all the ways I judged others, and he loved me anyway.

At this thought I started feeling tears swell in my eyes. I realized how I put up this wall to protect me from situations like what had happened today, but this wall also keeps me from allowing others to love me, and (more importantly) from being able to love myself.

I wasn't full-blown crying, but it was a powerful experience. The wonderful thing is that now I feel there's a tiny tiny dent in my armor, where my heart is, and a tiny tiny light has been shining there since then. And, if I give my attention to it, I can feel it, I can feel it grow.

...

It's funny thinking about this in retrospect. At the time my day seemed so awful and I just wanted it to be done, to hide in my bed and hope that tomorrow would be a better day. The thing is that this strong experience of sadness was a necessary precondition for the realization of love that I later had in the car.

For better or for worse, only through suffering will growth come.

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Footnotes

1. Now that I think about it, they seemed quite happy to see me go. I suspect they were worried that I might blame them for leaving the metal arm unfolded and try to demand some recompense. Maybe if I were someone else, I might have. But the truth is, it was as much my fault as theirs. ↩