A “True” Test

Last updated on: April 20, 2011 at 8:57 am by Kathy Tuan-MacLean

A “True” Test 2011-04-20T08:57:00-04:00 Kathy Tuan-MacLean

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(This is blog post #4 on a series looking at True Self/False self. Click here to read #1, #2, and #3)

Two weeks ago at my daughter’s 13th birthday party, I foolishly left my open computer sitting on the kitchen island while 11 girls helped themselves to pizza, cupcakes, soda and ice cream sundaes. As one of Kai’s friends poured herself a glass of water over my keyboard, in as calm a voice as I could muster so as not to startle her, I said, “Could you please pour that water just a step or two back?”

She looked up at me, then down at my computer, and backed away slowly. I snatched the Macbook, smiled, and said, “It’s OK, it’s just my life. . .”

According to Adele Calhoun, our spiritual director, the false self is composed of anything you can lose. Your possessions, your job, your relationships, even your roles. Some of us women wrestled with that concept. If my kids die, will I no longer be a mother?

Well, today I’m facing perhaps one of the greatest challenges short of losing a child, family member or friend.

My Mac has died.

It didn’t die in a splash of water or with a cupcake smooshed into its keyboard. It didn’t die from falling out of my unzipped computer case (which happened 2.5 years ago). It just died a quiet death sitting open while the family watched “The King’s Speech” (the R rated version–totally worth it–unfortunately for my kids, no language in that movie that they haven’t heard in our house!).

I bought a external hard drive about a year ago when a colleague’s Mac died and she lost everything. I’ve even been relatively good at backing up so I should have everything until a week ago Monday. But I’ve heard that certain things don’t back up, so I won’t know everything I’ve lost until I visit the Apple store, buy a new computer and restore everything.

Last night, as I prepared for bed with a sick feeling in my gut, I thought about what I know is lost and the implications:

My journal musings from the spiritual retreat–but at least God heard and remembers my prayers
The budgets for my team and the pdfs I still haven’t sent out–but at least my boss has a copy and pdfs aren’t that challenging to make
The minutes from our Cana marriage ministry leadership time, including the colors I changed in the schedule–but at least there were 3 others there who hopefully took notes and remember what we decided.
Any appointments I scheduled in this past week–so sorry if I don’t show up when you were expecting me!

Everything I wrote for this blog got posted. I didn’t write anything for my book or interview my parents. I didn’t create any new recipes. I didn’t download the pictures from the birthday party yet, so they’re still on my camera. And it’s a sign of our family’s privilege (and Scott’s IT job) that we still have 2 functioning computers in the home–hence my ability to blog.

It’s going to be a hassle figuring out what’s gone and reconstructing how I want to compute in the future. I’ve been trying to wean myself from Entourage–now may be the time. And I could never get Quicken to balance our various banking accounts correctly (I know, I know, operator error!), so maybe we’ll just start from scratch.

Turns out I didn’t lose my life after all.

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