Hi. Welcome to Bloom Anywhere. I'm Gwen Moran, a writer, editor, author, and problem-solver. My goal is to share information, ideas, and resources to help you overcome obstacles, reach your goals, and find more joy in life, even when things are messy. Thanks for joining me. (If you got this from a friend, subscribe here.) I'd love your feedback and suggestions for future topics. Please send me an email: connect@bloomanywhere.com.
Let me begin by saying I have a bad habit: I typically don’t use a padlock on my gym locker. I don’t have a good reason, and I know it’s not a smart thing to do. I don’t carry anything valuable into the gym, and I typically go early when there are relatively few people there. Three years ago, when I began swimming at this club, I picked a locker tucked in a corner and have used the same one nearly every visit since. I am a creature of habit.
Several weeks ago, after swimming, I returned from the shower, gym bag in hand, and found that someone had moved my sneakers out of my locker and secured their own things in it with a tiny gold padlock. As I wondered who would steal a pair of well-worn Hokas—and how I was going to walk to my car in socks—I found them tucked in the next locker over. Weird.
I forgot about the incident until it happened again about a week later, with the same gold lock affixed to my locker. And then, again, a few days after that.
“Someone is moving my stuff out of one locker and into another,” I said out loud after the last time.
“What a strange thing to do,” another woman replied.
The Standoff
Now, it felt personal. I began to take note of other gym-goers' locks to see if I could spot the perpetrator. Then, I returned to my locker to find a woman standing next to it. I reached to open the door, and she turned to me.
“We like the same locker,” she said. I noticed the little gold lock in her hand.
“Apparently,” I replied.
“It’s the same number as my birthday. It makes it easy for me to remember,” she said.
I nodded, gathered my things, and left without saying anything else. I made a mental note to buy a new padlock asap.
But when I returned to the gym the next day at my usual time, to my surprise, the little gold lock was on the locker next to mine—the one where I had been finding my sneakers. My go-to-the-mattresses attitude softened.
What the heck was I doing? I didn’t have any claim on this locker beyond getting there first in the morning. What if she needed a mnemonic device to remember where she put her things? What if her birthday held special meaning for her? And even if those things weren’t true, who cares? There were hundreds of lockers available to me. Sure, she shouldn’t have moved my shoes, but if stowing her gear in that particular spot meant that much to her (and nothing to me), why was I wasting mental energy on creating conflict? Good grief, with all the things I have going on in my life, I could certainly put that energy to better use.
So, I decided to let go of my old locker and threw my stuff into another one, and I’ll continue to do so. And use a padlock.
Know When to Walk Away
Life is filled with myriad interactions that have the potential for creating misunderstandings or offenses. And while it’s important to reinforce boundaries to protect what matters to us, some battles just eat up energy and create ill will. Think about whether the outcome will matter after various periods of time: A week? A year? Five years? (If I’m still thinking about which gym locker I used a year or more from now, please call for help.)
It feels like we should intuitively know when to simply shrug off some situations. However, the world is tough, especially now, and constantly having our guard up can make everything feel like a fight or a slight that needs defending. There’s a difference between ceding ground when it matters and walking away from conflict and drama that don’t. Choosing the latter, even (or especially) when you’re right, is strength and self-care.
How do you work on keeping your peace these days? I’d love to hear about it. Send an email to connect@bloomanywhere.com.
