sending love to a car company

mm
By: heather trappler
Hi, my name is Heather Trappler. I am passionate about yoga of all kinds, urban walking, hiking, anything in water, organic food and farmers markets, and my spiritual pursuit. I offer Intuitive ...
Edited date: November 6, 2022Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

After almost 12 years, I recently purchased a new “clean” diesel car. This auto choice addressed my current ideals of simplicity and environmental care, in a pretty cute package. When I recently learned that the company had deceived the auto market with its claims, and that I was driving a car that was actually harming the environment, I was devastated.  As I sat with this news, this bitter pill filled my body with self-pity, utter sadness, despair, and a dash of “poor” me.  My shiny new transportation was demoted in my mind, and I had dreams of shooting You Tube videos, pushing the car off of a cliff, to its fiery death. 

After I spent the weekend sitting with my sadness, which looked a lot like lying in bed, I decided I needed to write about this. I needed to share this opportunity of dealing with perceptions of betrayal, disillusionment, and powerlessness for my own healing and hopefully extending that to others.

I have no real answers, as you will see, since I am still in the “thick of it”, but my hope is to crack the door on forgiveness and healing in the end. Are you game to journey with me on this one?

So this is how the story goes, girl buys shiny new toy only to find out that it is not what the advertisement has portrayed it to be. Worst of all, her new toy harms herself, her family, and other living beings on the planet and Mother Earth. The girl is horrified and suddenly her shiny new toy looks terrible to her and she no longer wants to play with it. But wait…others have had the same experience, and therefore she is not alone. Internally she knows she is never alone, but she is somehow comforted that she KNOWS she is not alone. After a few days it no longer feels good to hold this sadness, hopelessness, and hurt in her body. She doesn’t want it but she can’t distract herself from the pain. She decides to write because it is an outlet to share her pain, and she thinks that the more she shares her pain the more healing can occur for everyone. She starts thinking about all the people who worked for the car company who didn’t know about the deception. She starts to feel compassion for those that have worked so hard for the company and who may be hurting as well.

Then a little voice says, “What if you send love to the company?”And this dear reader, is where I end, for now. This is where MY work begins. This is what I know for sure: it does not feel good to hold this anger and hopelessness in my body. I have practiced yoga and other forms of self-care too long to negate the work. Anger is the kindling to the fire, and love is the water that will extinguish it….and perhaps that water will nourish the earth for seedlings of forgiveness and healing to grow. It does not FEEL good any other way.

Read next >> 5 qualities for effective leadership