Life’s Moments

On Tuesday morning my business partner, Matt, and I were on the way to a client meeting and were talking about various things.

I was telling him that one of my personal cars was coming off lease and my wife, Adele, and I needed to figure out what to do. The long and short is we downsized. We stayed with the same manufacturer, but chose a model that gets 20% better gas mileage, offers more interior seating space, has surprisingly good handling, acceleration and also has the AWD we think we need for those cold, snowy winters here on Long Island.

It was a hard choice filled with angst, stress, confusion before the moment Saturday morning when we decided to walk onto the lot and see for ourselves if the specs on the Internet about the interior space, could be true. They were and we ended up buying the vehicle.

We all fear the car buying process but our experience, for the most part, was pleasant except for the fact that no one likes to have to lay down a big chunk of money at once and we always feel we should get a better deal.

In the end we are happy with the purchase. In retrospect, I know that the moment the salesperson approached us out in the lot, before they had even officially opened; convincing us we didn’t need a six cylinder was a life moment. Once we drove the four cylinder we had to take stock and ask “why do we need the bigger motor we were originally going to get?” Beyond ego there wasn’t a good reason. Through this life moment we took one more step into the growing awareness that helped us develop canvas magazine.

I remember in our beginning discussions about canvas, my partner Matt talked about people entering this consciousness from various places and moving forward in steps. I gave this notion some thought at the time, but it’s become more prevalent as we talk with people daily. He was right most — of us need to go through this process in steps.

When I spoke to employees at the dealership they said they are actually finding many people taking the various steps in the car purchasing process. Not everyone is buying hybrids, nor did we buy one, but people are thinking about lessening their footprint and car purchases are now starting to reflect this.

Good for all of us! Hopefully each day a number of us learn we don’t need the six cylinder engine, as we did Saturday, that the new four cylinders for the most part have enough juice to do what we all need. Each step like this will take us closer to a better place.

Again, it’s all about life’s moments. If Adele hadn’t said “let’s just stop at the dealership,” “let’s just take the test drive” and “let’s just get the purchase over with,” we’d still be driving my truck which cost over $50 for each fill up right now, got 17 miles to the gallon, and rode like, well, a truck.

Life’s moments came again when I shared my story. When I shared it with Matt, he said, he’s considering the same type of change. When I shared it with Anthony at the pizza parlor by my house, he also said he’s in the same stage. Happily so are others with whom I’ve spoken with over the past week.

If this can encourage one of you to have a life moment, I’ll be gratified.

Tom Pellicane – Publisher canvas magazine