Thank and Grow Rich

or The Day a Construction Worker Gave Me a Message from the Universe

June 2021

A construction worker in front of a Tim Hortons MAY have just given me a divine message.
But first, let’s start with the book.

I love this book. First of all, Pam Grout is hysterically funny. Second, the book is about a topic that I love but repeatedly struggle with (which is why I’m reading it for the third time). Third, it has ‘party games’ instead of ‘improvement exercises’. Who wouldn’t love it??
But here comes the interesting bit, the bit about the random construction worker.
This past week I was reading (ok, rereading for the third time) the part in the book where she explains how tapping into gratitude and joy helps us connect with a different reality - the reality where we see how rich we are, how loved we are, and how much the universe (or whatever name you’d like to give the almighty energy force) wants to connect with us.
After suggesting that it is imperative to start every day saying ‘something magical will happen today’, she then casually mentions how when you start living in gratitude and looking for miracles, various things will happen…like repeatedly seeing a personal sign that reminds you the universe has your back, or having a message come to you from the mysterious side (like, say, your postman says something so unexpected and intuitive that you think maybe he’s actually an angel in disguise), etc etc.

Ok, I’ve done this before (the last two times I read the book); but let’s give it another shot.
So the next morning I got up, in pain, tired, and said, “Sigh…something magical will happen”, and tried hard to think of all the things I was grateful for.
Then I drove into Kitchener to go to a cleaning job. Nothing magical yet. I had some time, so decided to make a stop at a thrift store. Possibly magical, but I got lost and had to stop to find wifi so I could look up directions. Magic-potential quickly dwindling.

As I sat in my car by the sidewalk beside a Tim Hortons, checking my map app, I suddenly heard a cheerful voice. “Hey! Stop looking at your bank account!”
Huh? I looked up. There was a very large Jamaican man wearing a fluorescent construction vest standing near the hood of my car. “Excuse me?”
“I said…Stop looking at your bank account on your phone there! You look glum! You don’t need to worry about that! You’ve got everything you need. Love, joy, 6 trillion cells in your body that know how to do things…did you know, when you wake up, all those cells have to work together just to open your eyelid?? It’s amazing! It’s a miracle!! You need to be grateful just to have this!”
I stared at him.  “Uh, yeah, you know, you’re right…” I said. “I was actually JUST reading a book this morning about starting out your day with gratitude…”
“NO, MAN.  Don’t START your day with gratitude.  BE gratitude. That’s all there is!! BE IT.”
And it went on from there. I wish I could remember all the things he said, but essentially he preached with enthusiasm for about five minutes about pretty much EXACTLY the things I’d been reading.
As he finally walked away he called back, “I see you’re driving a Honda Fit. That’s good. Because you ARE fit. Yep. You are. Don’t forget it.”
I sat there a bit stunned.
Well, I guess that was my angelic postman.

I’d like to say that every day since then has been magical and I’ve been gratefully counting my blessings everywhere I go.
It’s harder than that. Many days have been difficult; I’ve been grumpy a lot; the magic has been hard to see.
But I keep remembering my construction worker and his “6 trillion cells”. That WAS magic. And he was right. We’re surrounded with miracles if we just look for them. Sometimes we’re just so used to them that we don’t even see them.

Ps. When I walked to the library tonight to use their wifi to post this story, there was a construction shirt and a stone saying ‘hope’ on the bench outside the library.
Hm.