Reminders

Sacred Reminders

Recently I began receiving ten or more unwanted spam calls per day. They were irritating! I needed peace of mind, because they were interrupting my flow, and I was getting mad. I tend to want to fight back.

There are various strategies I have employed with them, since my phone company and congressperson have, so far, failed to fix the problem. 

One way is to waste their time by playing along and keeping them on the phone a long time. There are even apps you can get with robots that will do it for you. “Huh? I can’t hear you...just a sec....wait, I’ll be right back... could you repeat that?” Does not work for robo calls, however.

Then there is shaming. “psychiatric helpline, what is your problem? Why are you trying to make a living by bothering other people? Are you some kind of sadist creep?”

How about silly? (Breathing into phone) in high pitched voice: “um, mommy is sweeping. (More breathing) Do you want to pway?”

Or threatening. “Cybercrime hotline. You block em, we stalk em! Would you like us to trace a call for you?”

You can take your own voice out of the equation, and let your radio or tv answer, till they figure out it’s not a live person and hang up.

Unfortunately, all of these take a lot of energy. Whew! Maybe I need to meditate more. They say the best thing to do is just to not answer.

But suddenly I hear gunfire in my neighborhood. And I know what to do. There are many places out in the country where it is legal to just shoot off your guns, whenever you like, any time of the day or night. When I first moved here, from the city, I was shocked! 

But it was fine when I figured out how to handle it. Now, whenever I hear gunfire, I imagine it is Shiva, destroyer of illusions, doing his work. Making the world a better place. Hey, it works for me.

Years ago, before there were apps and cell phones, I looked for some kind of randomly occurring reminder to stop whatever I was doing, take a deep breath, and center. There were watches with multiple alarms, but you had to preset them, so not really random. Finally I got a random meditation alarm app. Maybe alarm is not the word. Reminder. But I just never use it. Maybe it is too contrived.

Now I have a random reminder that is working in more than one way. When I get my daily ten or more spam calls, it cues me to take a moment and meditate. No more irritation, just a lovely real time call from the universe. I changed my ringer to a pleasant meditative chime, and I just let it ring. All good.