As most people know now the smoke from the California fires has settled into the Bay Area for nearly a week now. It’s the worst air quality we’ve ever had in this area. What makes it doubly challenging for people who live here and enjoy the outdoors every day is we can’t go outside except for short bursts because it’s so smoky. That means there is no exercise for many of us who use it to keep from going stir crazy if we’re indoors for too long!

Besides, the quality of the outside air permeates older buildings, comes in whenever the doors are opened to go in or out and many of us live in older homes, older apartments or work in older, leaky buildings. Air filters for the face and indoor locations are virtually sold out locally, and online options for delivery are slim which brings me to my story.

The air outside was dangerous, and I know with our old house, the inside air wasn’t much better.

Last Thursday I finally realized the air was going to be pretty bad or even worse for another week and opted to order an air filter online. I placed the order based on delivery dates as well as the comments from other buyers. A couple of hours later I received a message indicating the filter would be delivered two days later than the site stated when I had ordered and confirmed it’s delivery date.

The previous couple of days I could bear the smoke, but the thought of an additional week was going to be too long without something to keep the indoor air somewhat clean. It was also going to be necessary to avoid the smoke concentrating in the house without the breeze from outside to clear it out.

I went back to the site after talking to the customer service person and ultimately decided to return it and order another. After ordering it, I received the perfunctory message confirming the order and the estimated delivery date. When I double checked the delivery, I realized I had misread the date and realized it wouldn’t come for another week!!!

Angrily I canceled the order and decided to just breathe the bad air for the next week. Earlier I had spent a great deal of time trying to locate an air cleaner on other sites that could get one to me over the weekend, so I knew it was fruitless to go back and look some more.

At that point, I was beside myself with anger, frustration and a whole lot of negative energy. Peter came home and offered to try to locate another one, but after checking he couldn’t find one that would get here sooner either. If he couldn’t find one, there wasn’t one to be found!

I threw up my hands in frustration and decided to think about how beautiful it had been a couple of days earlier on a bike ride and enjoy the images of the colorful leaves and the (clean!) wind in my face. We headed off for dinner, and I forgot about the whole thing.

Saturday morning I was getting ready to go out and briefly run errands and Peter came into the room holding a box. “Guess what just came to the front door, your air filter!”

What!! I had canceled all the orders because none of them were going to get to me until after the air started to clear out with the weather change! As Peter turned to leave the room, he said with a knowing smile “The Universe made it happen for you, you just had to get out of the way.”

It’s not for you to get hung up in the how. Decide what you want and get the heck out of the way.

As I finished preparing for my errand run, I paused to think about what I was thinking when I threw my hands up in frustration with the delivery dates. I realized I let go of my expectations and said ‘Universe, you handle it’ as I stomped off. That simple act of allowing the energy of the Universe to take over somehow delivered the filter to me at the appropriate time.

I’ve now had cleaner air to breathe the last couple days and find myself frequently thinking back to the thoughts I had as I was angrily letting go. I realized I was putting up too much resistance and the Universe was telling me to back off by putting all the air filters out of reach – no quick delivery times.

Do you have too much Grrrr… in your life?

If you find yourself pushing too hard and getting frustrated, can you pause to release some of the resistance and trust in yourself and the Universe?