Since when did you ever pay for anything anyway?

Since when did you ever pay for anything anyway?                

Last week while driving back home Nyla said to me “Daddy, tonight I want to watch Despicable Me II with you but it is not playing on Netflix. “

I said, “It’s ok honey, we can rent it on Channel 300”

She answered, “Yes, but I don’t want to pay the 5 bucks”.

To which I replied, “Since when did you pay for it anyway lol?  Forget about what it costs, we will have a great time together J”

Later that evening I received an email from my office advising me that the Ministry of labor ordered us to pay an outstanding expense amount for one of our ex employees who we fired after discovering he stole a lot of things.  In fact, one of our customers caught him after stealing at least ten computers.  We never knew how much he stole until we did the audit at which point we discovered that he also overcharged his expenses by more than $25,000 over the previous 2 years, among other thefts.

When I saw the order to pay him $2,000 for his last expense submission I became very angry.  I have always suffered anguish from witnessing unfair practices, especially when they involve theft and then being protected and even rewarded by some unknowing government agency or legal technicality.  This self-righteousness made me very unhappy at times even long after the cases happened while going through years of legal battles.

I responded angrily by advising my staff to appeal the decision and to make sure they understand that this employee is a crook who owes us tens of thousands of dollars and who also made us lose large contracts by his thefts and that we have the proof.  To this our lawyer responded by saying that we cannot challenge the judgment and that we had better pay the assessment or we will face penalties and disciplinary action and may even start a whole audit of our expense procedures. 

When I read this I became enraged.  Once again, a crook steals from us and not only gets away with it in-your-face, but also gets further rewarded and I have to pay for it with my tail between my legs. I wrote back in extreme anger expressing rage and ordered that company procedures must be changed and made much tougher so this sort of incident never happens again. 

The bottom line however is that I was left shaking from this.  My piece of mind destroyed.  I was feeling defeated and impotent and very angry.

Meditation

Later that night I meditated.  When I came to meet my inner child, he (or I) was upset about this incident.  Being the “parent” and advisor in my meditation, I found myself telling my inner child, “we have to let go of it.  It is not worth it.  Just as we advised other people to let go and let “God” (whoever or whatever that may be) when faced with situations outside of their control no matter how fair or unfair it may be, we too should let go of this.  To which my inner child responded “Yes, but I will still have to pay for it L!”  And I found myself saying “Since when did you ever pay for it anyway?”

What I realized, is just as I provided for my daughter to enjoy the movie, so has “God” provided for us to enjoy our lives.  After all, God has provided everything and in enough abundance to cover all the costs for us to enjoy life without the worry of those things outside of our control. 

To assume that we pay for everything ourselves means that we believe that we deserve credit for all our blessings, which is not even close to the truth.  It does not take much to realize of how many blessings we have, including life itself, before realizing that we never paid for a fraction of what we have. 

This cost is therefore between God and that person and I should not assume control of that account, and in stead be grateful that God has provided in abundance such that even that does not really affect me in any material way anyway.