A Green Wallet Changed my Life

While the title of this post might sound unusual and a bit incredulous, believe me when I say that a green wallet changed the trajectory of my life.

While visiting Chicago, my close friend Claudia took me to her favorite store, a modern curio and furniture shop in Bucktown. The store had a modern design sensibility, with its clean lines and fresh colors. The furniture was contemporary, in a stylish and retro way. The store displayed jewelry and household items, carefully selected for their craftsmanship and distinctive features.

I was walking around the store, admiring the curated selection of products, when I saw a beautiful wallet. It was made of leather and felt luxurious to the touch. The wallet's stitching gave it a handmade quality. With a billfold and a change purse, it was also very practical. And the color? It was a unique moss green color. I had never owned a wallet like this. Most of my wallets were black or brown, generic-looking wallets from brands like Kenneth Cole or Nine West. This wallet was special.

I called my friend over to look at the wallet.

"If you love it, you should get it," she said to me.

"But the color, is it practical?" I asked her as I perused the other colors that the wallet came in, discovering that the wallet also came in black and brown.

"Who cares if it's practical? If you love it, get it," she said.

It wasn't a cheap wallet. It was three or four times the cost of what I would have spent on one of those generic looking wallets. But I loved the wallet so much that I had to have it.

So, I bought the green wallet.

We were driving home to my friend's house in Lincoln Park, and halfway there, I told Claudia to pull over.

"What's wrong?" she asked me.

Clutching the moss green wallet in my hands, I said, "We have to go back. I made a mistake. I need to exchange the wallet for the black one."

"What?" she said perplexed. "You love that wallet."

"I know I love the wallet," I said, admitting defeat to the allure of this beautiful, exquisite wallet. "But, what would it say about me to own this wallet? I don't own wallets like this. I carry black wallets. Practical things."

She looked at me as if I were crazy, "It's a wallet!"

"Yes, but I will pull it out every day, and it will remind me of how I don't carry green wallets."

Claudia cocked her head to the side. We had been here many times before. She'd been my friend since college. She's supported and coached me through important decisions, like moving to New York City, convincing me to leave my job on Wall Street, and breaking up with boyfriends - way more significant decisions than what kind of wallet I should buy. "If you want to go back to the store to return the wallet, we can go right now. But I want you to be sure you want to return it," she said to me.

"I want to return it," I said as I rubbed the soft green leather under my fingertips.

With that, she turned the car around, and we drove back to the store where I exchanged the beautiful moss green wallet for a plain black wallet.

My relationship with that wallet did not stop after I had returned it. I perseverated for days about this moss green wallet. I loved that wallet. I especially loved how unique and colorful it was. But why couldn't I bring myself to keep it? Was it too bright for me? I lived in New York City, where the unofficial city color is black, a color that had magical slimming effects and looked good on everyone. And it was practical because it went with everything.

When I contemplated why I obsessed over the wallet, I realized that my struggle wasn't with the wallet itself. Nothing ever really is that simple. At that point in my life, I was having a hard time in my life. It wasn't like I was miserable. I had a great paying job in marketing at a large multinational company. I made the most money I had ever made at that point in my career. But I didn't love working in a big company, and there were parts of my job, the administrative and project management parts, that I didn't love. I yearned to do something more creative.

I talked about this wallet with my therapist at the time, a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, and he challenged me to think about what the wallet represented in my life. It wasn't hard to see that the wallet represented the parts of me that I had trouble claiming - the creative spirit within me that was yearning to break free.

I couldn't keep the green wallet, not because of the color, but because of my ascribed identity. I thought of myself as a practical professional (black wallet), not a creative soul yearning to be more expressive (green wallet).

Every time I pulled out the new black wallet, I reflected on how bland it looked. I realized that there were so many instances in my life when I chose a black wallet instead of the moss green one. I often chose the practical solution instead of the option that was calling to me in my heart. I've discovered that if I wanted to have more meaning and more color in my life, I had to take chances in life.

If you want to launch or build that dream business, you have to choose the green wallet. If you want to create art, literature, or film, you have to select the green wallet. By choosing and then using the green wallet, you will start to identify as a green wallet-carrying creative.

I never did go back to look for another green wallet when I got back to my hometown in New York City, though I thought about it constantly. But, a few months later, after discussing that green wallet with my therapist, I was back at home in my apartment, looking around my modern and pristine apartment. I decided that the room needed more color in it. So, I went to ABC Carpet and bought a - you guessed it - a moss green carpet. But it wasn’t just any carpet, it was a chic shag carpet. The carpet is now in at my feet in my office, reminding me that I am indeed a creative soul.

When confronted with the choice of having the plain vanilla cupcake or the Madagascar vanilla cupcake topped with chocolate ganache double whipped frosting and candied orange and ginger, chose the latter. Rather than selecting the direction that will bring you more of the same, choose the option that will bring you more joy and happiness, even if it is a hard decision, even if it is the more difficult path. Life will be much more colorful and delicious if you do.