Downtown Winnipeg is full of one way streets and although very obnoxious, I pride myself on being able to navigate them well.  I’m a native Winnipegger after all!  Yesterday a friend and I went to check out an antique store on Young street, a one way going North off of Portage.  We drove into the area from Ellice and so had to take a one way going south to get up to Portage…but the one I chose brought us out on the wrong side.  So I skillfully turned into a back alley and thought I’d just pull through to the parking lot on Young.  Wrong!  It was blocked by another parked car.  So I drove down the lane and saw an empty spot.  Not stopping to look for a sign, I parked and we walked to the store to look for treasures.

There was a small niggling thought in my mind that I really should have taken the extra five minutes to drive around the block again and end up in the store parking lot, but I pushed it aside and got lost in 4 stories of history, knick knacks and worn wood.

As we walked out about an hour later, one mans’ junk in our arms, I joked “I sure hope we didn’t get towed.”

We rounded the corner and there it was, the worst sight one can ever see – an empty parking spot.  Not the good kind that you’re looking for when you first show up somewhere, the bad kind.  The spot where your vehicle was – the spot that screams “$$$$ is about to leave your bank account”.  The spot that makes your spirits drop like a brick without a parachute.

To make a long story short the car was just down the lane, hooked up to a tow truck and $100 later we were on our way.  But for some reason I let it ruin my day.  Yes, it was an expensive mistake, but it was the hit to my perfectionism that got me the most.  And as I thought about it over and over again I couldn’t seem to let it go.

I arrived home in a funk and logged on to facebook to check my messages.  And then I read it – a status update informing the world that a loved one battling with cancer had passed away.  A wife was now a widow.  A child was now fatherless.

“What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.”

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe