Organic
Pasture Raised
Omega 3-Large
Store Brand
Brown
White
Trendy Brand
Outdoor Access
Medium
Soy free
Rustic Brand
Organic Restorative
Extra Large
Perfectly encapsulating Barry Schwartz The Paradox of Choice, the options for eggs at your local grocery is a paralysis inducing decision.
Couple your options with the complex set of prices that seem to manipulate true value and play on our belief price equates quality, it is no wonder why I am (probably) never buying eggs again.
It's a problem, and, when I see a problem, I fix a problem.
I’m no Wreck It Ralph: I’m a Fix It Steve.
I think it is the years of listening to Tom Feiza's Mr. Fix It on AM Radio with my grandpa.
On the show, someone would call in with a home improvement question or issue, and Tom, Mr. Fix It, would provide an answer with practical steps to remedy the problem: see a problem, fix a problem.
Solving people's problems is the majority of my daily work.
On the daily, students, players, and parents alike, approach me with problems in hopes I can provide some solution.
It is always a helpless, vague statement that never asks for assistance but a tacit plea of vulnerability.
My iPads dead.
I can’t find my jersey.
I’m afraid my son is going to fail.
So, when I walked to my car around 9:42 pm on March 13 to find I had a flat tire, Mr. Coach Brown showed up, planned, and executed: see a problem, fix a problem.
After a day of travel, watching people on a plane sprint down the aisle; grow irate as others tried to navigate the narrow walkways with bags and children; huff, puff, and nearly knock someone down, I was as cool as a cucumber.
I had just spent 6 days in Boston with no schedule, reveling in relationships, and nature: I could take a much-needed deep breath.
On my drive home from the airport, I reflected that everyone should make an effort to travel once a year.
People need the chance to pick themselves out of their day to day, to reconnect with those who know them best and talk about how their lives are removed from their life itself. It is in these moments of withdrawal that we can truly look at and consider what changes we need to make to our lives.
Recall, I think you should stop flying direct and strip yourself of the faux agency you cling to. Most of our choices are reactive, not proactive: we are responding to options provided by a world that moves with or with our us, never truly making or creating how we think.
This reality becomes apparent when our entire schedule is dictated by weather patterns, flight paths, and everyone standing to deboard the moment the plane lands.
With this reflection deep in my mind, I touched down in Houston with a stillness similar to Thoreau during his 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days at Walden Pond on a cool fall morning.
But like a rock skipped by a kid who has yet to appreciate the quiet retreat nature provides, my pond rippled, and my stillness disappeared, as I walked out of the grocery store to find I had a flat tire.
If you know anything about my experience in Houston, you know I have had flat tires. On three consecutive trips, I returned from Hobby Airport to find I had a flat: the plop of the dilapidated rubber filling the space my stomach cleared as it dropped at the sound made as I crept over a speed bump in fear of what I already knew.
So, when I saw my flat in the parking lot of The Whole Foods in The Galleria, the only Whole Foods open until 10:00 pm, bless up, I knew exactly what to do.
Grab your bags.
Put them in the back seat.
Take the cart back.
Pop the trunk.
Grab the fix a flat.
Close the trunk.
Shake it up.
Unscrew the tire stem cap.
Fill that puppy up.
As it fills, recall every gas station you know and figure out which likely has an air pump.
Throw the can in the back seat.
Get in the car.
Drive away.
After weeks of slow pacing, a trip to Boston with no real schedule, and a full day of watching others reconcile their lack of agency, I left my Pete's, cage free, pasture raised, organic eggs behind: all 18 of them.
We have a habit of overcorrecting when life hits us hard, but this often only leads to a disaster far worse than had we steadied the course.
This is why van certifications tell you to hit the deer.
Traveling at high speeds, swerving in an attempt to avoid a crash will throw the center of mass off and cause a rollover far more deadly than simply hitting whatever it is that is coming at you.
This is a great metaphor for our lives.
See the deer, hit the deer.
As we live our lives, we move along, gazing at our surroundings, taking in conversations, listening to playlists, laughing at jokes.
Yet, the future always looms in the distance.
We cannot quite make it out, we cannot control what it will be, but we know for certain of the uncertainty on the horizon.
Slowly, our minds become preoccupied with the anticipation for what is to come. We drown out the sights and sounds that are of the present moment and become enamored by all that we cannot see, touch, or hear.
Jerking the steering wheel left or right, slamming the breaks at the first sight of unknown danger in hopes to avoid a head on collision, we adjust all too quickly.
We lose our routines, we disconnect from friends, we allow ours fears, anxieties, and memories to tell us that whatever is coming is too much: we spin out of control.
Yet, as we roll over, tumbling past the problem in the wreckage of our own creation, we recognize we could have avoided this self-induced barrel roll.
Had we just kept at our pace, enjoying the moments around us and hit the problem head on when it became something we could deal with because it was real and in the present moment, we would have come out far better.
My tire is fine. But that had anything to do with how fast I responded: it was already flat and had likely been flat when I drove from IAH into town.
My focus was not on the tire but the food I needed to prepare, the retreat I still had to finish planning, the apartment that needed to be cleaned.
Had I been present to the moment I was in and not worried about how my tire would have affected me the next day, or cursed Houston for giving me yet another flat tire, I would still have eggs in my fridge.
But, I oversteered.
I saw the deer but did not hit it.
And, because I did not, like A Tribe Called Quest, I left my eggs in The Whole Foods Parking Lot.
So no, I’m not renouncing eggs because of the anxiety inducing buying process or even for the terrible price based on the macro breakdown.
At this point, I’m not buying eggs again until I can figure out how to remain still: how to find peace in the present and not get lost in the future.
Until I can figure out how to hit the deer.
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