Visiting Your Idol

We recently loaded up the family and two friends and embarked on a seven-day adventure to Florida. We needed it. My car was in the shop with a $3,000 bill for repairs, and my home was next in line to be fixed for water damage that I had caused by playing Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor.

I’d replaced two windows in my upstairs bedrooms and found out a few years later they were installed incorrectly and had slow leaks. Water had crept into the upstairs walls and the downstairs walls and ceiling. We were facing $7,000 in home repair costs.

After a twelve hour road trip with four teens and two adults, we’d made it to Florida. We love traveling to 30A and spending time on the Emerald Coast. It’s one of our happy places … usually.

When we arrived, we were met by a tropical storm. The beach was closed for the first three days. When it finally opened, everyone rushed the beach, including us, but we thought, let’s temper our beach time, so we retreated back to our VRBO.

Our thinking was everyone is at the beach, so let’s do the opposite. My wife wanted to do some shopping, so she drove to Seaside, one of our favorite little beach towns to shop and stroll. On her return trip, she was hit by someone driving and not paying attention. The entire driver's side of our rented minivan was smashed in. My wife waited two hours for a police officer to come and write a no-fault report. See Florida law for an explanation.

By this time, I was thoroughly searching for a silver lining.

I drove forty minutes to the nearest rental car location to swap out our damaged van. They explained they didn’t have one and sent me two hours in the opposite direction. When I arrived, they informed me they did not have one either.

You would think a phone call could sort this out, but no, customer service tells me they cannot see the inventory and could not guarantee one would be available.

A day later and nearly five hours of chasing wild geese in our disfigured van, my wife located another, so the next day we drove another forty-five minutes to pick it up.

During the vehicle swap, we were informed we were being charged a ‘mandatory’ one-way return fee since the damaged van would eventually need to be transported back to its original pick-up location in Houston. $550 if you’re wondering.

“Hello?”

“Silver lining?”

“Are you out there?”

The new rental van cost us $471 for two days. Why? Supply and demand? Price gauging? Who knows.

More than ever, I was committed to finding that damn silver lining.

On the drive back to Houston, I listened to a brilliant conversation between Tim Ferriss and Arthur C. Brooks. I’m linking it in the notes below if you’d like to take a listen.1

Brooks is a Harvard University Professor and recently co-authored a book with Oprah, and he’s worked closely with the Dalai Lama. Brooks is a significant teacher, thinker, and author to say the least.

In the episode, he talks about an exercise he does with his students called Finding Your Idol.

A quick important side note:

“Know Thyself” is an ancient Greek maxim popularized by Socrates.

Keeping your enemies closer than your friends has also been popularized; otherwise stated, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

If we combine these two ideas, we get, Know the enemies within.

One of our greatest enemies within is most certainly our idol.

Okay, back to the exercise. Idols are one of four things: Power, pleasure, money, or fame.

We can go through a quick test to find out which is ours, and it’s usually easy to eliminate the first.

During the podcast, Tim was asked which would be easiest to throw out. He immediately answered, “Power.”

To confirm this, Brooks asked, “Could you see yourself as a congressman or a government leader?”

That leaves pleasure, which Tim admitted was likely his idol. After running through the exercise myself, I was left with pleasure as my idol, too.

I realized why I was so angry. I’d found my enemy within.

My car, my home, my minivan, the lady that smashed my family, all the expenses back home! They were all keeping me from pleasure.

I’d not been allowed to visit my idol.

This was the silver lining. Understanding. Learning. Letting go.

This can be a very useful exercise, and here’s my take on why. I believe we were all created with desires that are oftentimes hard to fill, so we end up worshiping something in an attempt to fill the desires.

Some worship musicians, some power, some a feeling, others worship stock portfolios. Idols are enticing because they turn us on, and when we visit them, we think we’ve filled a void and satisfied a desire.

I think about this quote a lot,

There are ways to mitigate idol worship, but first, we must identify what our idol is.

This exercise, in and of itself, was enough of a silver lining for me, but there was something very important that Brooks added to the conversation that I’ll paraphrase.

If we find ourselves absorbed by problems, we should make ourselves small. This spoke to me because I was right in the middle of a mess. I was absorbed by problems, very small ones in the grand scheme of things.

Did I mention that of the six people who went on our vacation, two of them broke bones, myself included? And, the wrecked minivan we left in Florida was missing a seat, one that I’d removed and left in my garage in Houston to make more space for the trip? I know, it all sounds like a sick comedy.

Back to making yourself small. How does one do this? Brooks explained, you can think about the grandeur of God. The vastness of the universe. The amazing humans we are surrounded by. Think about the things that are so vast, we cannot fully understand them. We can then realize just how small we are and settle that most problems are minute and very temporary.

On my way home. I thought about the Grace of God.

I had my health. My family was safe. No one was injured in the accident, and we’d just spent a week with some very special friends in Florida. Everything was okay; in fact, everything was great.

I need to identify my idol and shrink myself to realize this.

Postscript ~

While in Florida, I captured something beautiful to share with you.

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