You may have noticed my profile on Twitter (@ThanksFLMS) has a picture of an outstretched hand holding a penny. That is my actual hand and also an actual United States penny. I started picking up pennies when I saw them in the street during the first or second year I was trying to get sober. Why? Well, I collected pennies as a kid, as did my grandfather and he also actually put pennies in his penny loafers which I greatly admired. I’ve always been a civil war history buff and think how wildly improbable it is that someone like Lincoln not only became President of the United States, survived terrific personal loss and then saved the Union. I’m also fascinated by Lincoln’s partnership with Ulysses Grant, the very serious alcoholic who effectively won the Civil War when he brilliantly seized Vicksburg and control of the Mississippi River. So that’s part of the attraction to pennies.
It was the Fall of 2012, my divorce was fresh and I was about to turn 50. In another attempt at sobriety, I had started in an intensive out-patient program (“IOP”). I’d report to a nondescript office building in downtown DC five evenings a week for three hours of group therapy, individual counseling and lectures on a variety of topics related to addiction and recovery. My memories of that time are pretty bleak and dark. Most nights, I’d walk home from the IOP, pick up Mala Chicken from Great Wall and lock myself in the house, breathing a sigh of relief that I’d managed to get through the day without drinking. Weekends were very long and very difficult. I’d go to AA meetings at the DuPont Circle Club, try to keep myself insanely busy with projects around the house and errands and take long, long, long walks listening to music. I still have a playlist from that era: “The Love I Lost” by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, “Times Like These” by the Foo Fighters and “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay, to name a few. Anyway, you get the idea.
One afternoon, I saw a penny on the sidewalk and picked it up. I was looking at it while I was walking and the thought that popped into my head: Maybe pennies were like breadcrumbs? Maybe the Universe scattered them to keep me on track? Perhaps not a rational thought, but keep in mind that I was also trying to wrap my head around the idea that you could get sober by following the teachings of a book written in 1939 (spoiler alert—you can). Anyway, I felt like the penny thing was not much more outlandish and I started picking up pennies whenever I saw them. I quickly realized that every time I did, I felt vaguely happy, sometimes a little burst of hope. I like to overthink things and I began to build an ideology around picking up pennies. I’ve already described the historical symbolism, but I also began to see pennies as reminders to look around, to be present, to appreciate really little things. Pennies are pretty humble and somehow stooping to pick one up struck me as an opportunity to practice humility. When I began looking, I saw that there were pennies everywhere. Well, not literally everywhere, but in a lot of places.
It’s possible that I may have gotten carried away and began picking them up whenever I saw them, even in situations where I placed myself in physical jeopardy. Like the August day when I nearly got hit by a car, crazily trying to pry a penny that had partially melted into a crosswalk on 7th street by the Capital One Arena. A quick note: There is also a penny similarly melted into the asphalt at 86th and 2nd. I’m often asked if it matters whether the pennies are heads up or down? In my view, it does not, I don’t even really look as I pick them up. I keep them for a few days and then put them in a jar and start looking for the next one.
At this point, I have about ten years of picking up pennies and two years of sobriety. I still try to pick-up every penny I see. I do see them as breadcrumbs, an indication that I’m headed in the right general direction. I notice when there’s been a bit of time between pennies. It makes me reflect a little; am I connected the way I should? Am I doing the right things? And then I start to look a little harder. I usually find another penny soon enough. To me, there’s a pretty direct connection to the gratitude lists, I think it’s the same ideology: Be present, be open and willing, look for and honor the little things and always practice humility.
Anyway, that’s why you see that picture of me holding a penny. I don’t advocate endangering oneself in traffic, nor can I tell you that the Universe actually uses pennies as way-finding beacons. But as I used to tell my kids, if you don’t believe in Santa, where are the toys going to come from?
This! Be present, be open and willing, look for and honor the little things and always practice humility. Thank you for sharing.