If you want to hear spirit talk, you have to listen very closely
and pay close attention to any sign given to you. Everything counts, especially urges.
This lesson was brought home to me by “the million-dollar peanut butter
and jelly sandwich.” It didn’t cost a
million dollars, but it brought me a million dollars. Let me explain.
It happened while I resided in Paris. I had been living there for a year studying International Business Law at the American University of Paris. My tiny studio apartment was located in a beautiful area about a block from the Eiffel Tower. Every morning I jogged in the Champs de Mars, a grassy field that extends from the tower three blocks to the Avenue de la Motte Picquet across from the Ecole Militaire.
Paris is a beautiful city, as beautiful as its reputation. I was enchanted with Paris and didn’t want to leave. I had lived there before, spoke French well and could navigate Paris easily by Metro and bus. In February, my course at the University ended and I faced the prospect of leaving the city I loved and returning “home” to the U.S. with nothing there—no job and no place to live. In fact, I would have to move back into my parents’ home! Yikes! The idea made me very sad.
Yet, I had a student visa that would allow me to stay an additional six months if I could find a job. So set out to find a job I did. I scoured the job postings in the local newspaper and at the student center. I sent out dozens of hand-written letters (the French analyze your handwriting as part of the application), in French! I networked. I went to the student employment center and got a two-week gig working eight solid hours a day decorating baby shoes for a local artisan. But that gig wasn’t good enough to satisfy the requirements of my visa, so I kept on searching.
Then one gloomy Sunday at the end of February, I had a craving for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Now, in France at the time, the early 1990s, there was no peanut butter or grape jelly in French stores. The bread available was baguettes and grand pains in long crusty loaves, or specialty bread in wheels. There was no soft, pasty, white Wonder Bread. That is, there was no peanut butter, no jelly and no American style white bread anywhere except a store called The Real McCoy located on the American University campus.
The Real McCoy specialized in catering to home-sick American students on study-abroad semesters at the University. It sold American food products such as Heinz ketchup and baked beans, Campbell’s soup, Jello, peanut butter—both Skippy and Peter Pan–and Welch’s grape jelly at premium prices. The clerks who worked there would make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread for 45 francs. (It was before the Euro became the currency.) At one Franc equal to 20 cents, that price was $9.00—pretty high for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
No matter the cost, I had to have one. My job search had been exhausting and I needed something to make me feel like “home.” My imagined sense of gooey, grapey glop oozing between my teeth and sticking to the roof of my mouth brought me a secure feeling, the ease of childhood, a feeling of being cared for, loved.
My money supply was meager. I didn’t have 45 Francs in my purse, so I searched between the sofa cushions for embedded coins and emptied every pocket of every coat and jacket. After searching every nook and cranny in my tiny apartment, I finally came up with the 45 Francs to buy my coveted sandwich and whisked off to the Real McCoy just a few blocks away.
Upon arrival, I ordered my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, “Peter Pan please, and Welch’s grape jelly on Wonder bread,” and forked over a handful of coins to pay. It was served to me on a napkin with a cup of water. I sat down at a counter beneath a bulletin board to savor the first bite. Sinking my teeth into the goo, I sighed as the sweet, salty gelatinous paste filled my mouth. In joyful satisfaction, I let my eyes wander to the bulletin board where I saw a card that said, “Help Wanted. English speaking computer operator. American papers OK.” And a phone number.
Needless to say, the next day, I phoned the number, went for an interview and was hired. The job turned out to involve market research, which was something I had studied as a Psychology major. That job led to a subsequent series of high-level market research jobs paying, on average, $50,000 a year over the next twenty years, which totals one million dollars.
Had I not acted on my urge, had I hesitated at the price of my desire, I would not have found that job and my life would have been different. Would it have been better? Would I have found another equal or better job? Who knows? But what I do know is this: Spirit, your higher self, that part of you that connects to the infinite, knows the way to your next best opportunity and will show it to you if you pay attention. Spirit will seek the path of least resistance to convey the message to you and that path is likely something which pleases you in the moment. If you turn your attention to that which will make you happy, act on the urge to be happy now, then you will find the next step to the next happiness and the next happiness over and over again.