…my second-to-last day in the south of France. That impossible-to-describe feeling when you walk back to the parking lot and stare at the empty space where your car was just a moment ago. And now it’s gone. You’re 1,500 km from home, and the car with EVERYTHING in it has been stolen. Phew. That takes a moment to sink in.
But the angels were already on the case. While I was still at the police station, my car was found about 50 km away. So off we went in a police car to pick it up. Of course, it had been cleared out. But somehow the thieves seem to have been interrupted, because they left my keyboard lying in the grass. (Or maybe they just didn’t fancy carrying 32 kg around, or couldn’t fit it into their getaway car 🙂.) They apparently had no interest in the drums, and they didn’t find my laptop in its secret hiding place. So, all things considered, I was incredibly lucky.
The rest of my luggage, though, has shrunk rather dramatically…
All my bags are gone. All my clothes. My travel money, of course. All my tech bits and pieces, including my iPhone and in-ears. They didn’t even leave me my wash bag.
So I’m continuing the journey without a toothbrush, with one pair of shorts and a single T-shirt.
Once the initial shock had passed, though, I realised that this was the culmination of my journey through France. I’ve visited many historic places, including Montségur, Lourdes, Rennes-le-Château and Sainte-Baume. And the theme that opened up at the beginning of this trip was self-forgiveness: making peace with the parts of myself I’ve lived in other lives, so I can look at the world with more compassion in this one.
It went deep. Really deep. Deeper than I ever expected. → you can read the experience here
And now, here I was, given the chance to bring that self-forgiveness out of the distant past and into the present moment. Into a very real experience. Because, of course, my inner critic was ready to pounce: I hadn’t prepared well enough or hidden all my valuables away. I hadn’t bought those little GPS trackers you can put in your bags, even though I’d looked at them before the trip. I shouldn’t have parked the car with all that stuff inside so obviously on a free parkingplace. And on and on…
There was plenty I could have blamed myself for. Instead, being at peace with it, and feeling grateful that everything truly important is still with me, feels pretty wonderful.
And then there are the people who broke into my car. Plenty of room for anger there, too. But I found that even that could soften into compassion: for people who may feel so little self-worth, and be so far from love, that in the world as they experience it, doing something like this might feel like their only option.
So here I am now, feeling surprisingly light, travelling home with a lot less luggage.