Those who know me will laugh when they read this article because they know that paying for parking is one of my pet peeves. I think that parking should be free and I will go out of my way to look for a free parking spot, rather than paying to park my car somewhere. I can park for free at home – my car is always in the garage. So when I go somewhere I do not expect to have to pay to park the car that I had to take to get there. And yet that is rarely an option. 

When I was in Los Angeles with a friend recently, we drove around for fifteen minutes looking for a free parking spot. Well, I should say that I drove around looking for a free parking spot while my friend sat quietly in the passenger seat, knowing that it was useless to try to talk me out of my quest until I was satisfied that there were no free spots to be had. 

We eventually had to pay a nominal rate to park my car because there were no free spaces available. I had to make the choice between paying for parking ($8 an hour) or driving around looking for something that I was not going to find in Los Angeles, free parking!  And if you have ever been to Los Angeles you know that parking in the wrong place can be very costly – they love their parking fines. 

This article is not a rant about the cost of parking, it is an introduction to a theme that we express often in our lives, usually without thinking about it. We get into a situation in our lives where we get stuck and don’t realize until much later that we have been sitting in a very expensive parking space. The cost is not monetary, although it can be, it is a cost we can measure in terms of energy, time, power, potential, and joy. 

If you look at life situations where you have agreed to help someone or to take on their problems or to get them out of a jam, only to find out that you are now involved up to your eyeballs and it is causing chaos and commotion in your life, you’re paying for parking. And as long as you stay in that situation your cost of parking goes up every minute. 

Here’s how it works and this is an example I have used before – listen to the podcast to hear the story of my client who parked her life for over 10 years because her family did not want her to move to Hawaii. 

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Created, narrated, and produced by Jennifer Hoffman.

Artwork by Jennifer Hoffman.

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