Overwhelming, or Just a Good Challenge?

I knew I wanted to marry my husband Brian the day I misread a plane itinerary and we missed our flight home from Thanksgiving with his family, the first major holiday he and I spent together. I burst into tears when I realized what had happened.  My husband paused, thought things over, and said calmly, "I've always wondered what would happen if I missed a flight.  Now I'll get to find out."  

This man, I thought, would be good to have around in a crisis.  This one's a keeper.

It strikes me that one of the main things I would love for my children (and myself) to learn is that setbacks and obstacles are simply part of life, part of the waves we have to surf, part of the weather we have to dress for.  Obstacles and setbacks and mistakes are not something we have to rail against and tear our hair out about and wildly beat our breasts over or expend gobs of energy regretting.  They are simply a condition of learning and being human and being part of a world that is imperfect and uncontrollable.  And as my husband says, the only way to avoid making mistakes is to do nothing, and that would be a mistake.  I have such a hard time remembering that, though, I sometimes wonder how I'll ever be able to convey to my kids that making a mistake really doesn't mean you're a big worthless screw-up--it just means you're trying something difficult or that there's something additional you need to learn or do in order to succeed.  

I thought about all that last week when something happened that I didn't expect.  I had organized an information table for our neighborhood library at a local festival.  I'd arranged to pick up the table we were going to borrow for the event the morning of the festival.  "If I'm not there, I'll leave it on the side of the house for you," the woman had told me.  

Brian was out of town, so I had to haul the kids along to the festival along with the chairs, the informational pamphlets, the postcards to the mayor, and all the other assorted info table swag.  I stopped to pick up the table.  No one home.  No table anywhere to be found outside the house.  I had no phone number for the table's owner.  I got back in the car and started talking out loud, trying to figure out what my Plan B was.  I decided to stop by two other neighbors' houses who'd also offered tables, but neither was home.

By this time, I was starting to get a little weepy and self-pitying.  I tried to stay calm, knowing that this was an opportunity to model a productive response to a setback for the kids.  I tried to be honest about my frustrations:  "She probably just spaced it out.  But this is why it's important for people to follow through on something they commit to doing, because when they don't, it can cause trouble for the people who were relying on them."  I let them hear me think out loud about how to solve the problem:  "Well, I guess I'll just go home and get our card table for now, and I'll stop by her house later on when I get a chance to see if I can get the bigger table from her."

I am not going to pretend that there weren't a few "shit, shit, shits," muttered darkly under my breath in the midst of all my more reasonable utterances.  But in the end, it all worked out.  We made do for a while with a much-too-small table and eventually were able to borrow a bigger one from another non-profit group at the festival.  My kids got to see that things can indeed work out even when there's a glitch or two in the original plan.  My next aspiration is to learn to greet setbacks with actual joy!  Like, oh, goodie, I get to practice my problem-solving skills.  Or, oh, won't this be interesting to see how this plays out?  Perhaps when I'm 80 or so, I'll get there. . .  

Years ago, I remember talking to a friend's husband who was opening his own recording studio in Uptown Minneapolis.  He was in his early twenties, and he'd inherited his start-up capital due to a tragic circumstance:  both his parents had died.  Knowing he wanted to start a band and run a recording studio, he'd quit college and instead rented an apartment down in New Orleans, all by myself, so he could be alone to study up independently on sound engineering and equipment and write a lot of good songs to get his band off on the right foot.  He chose New Orleans, he said, because he could be alone and therefore not distracted by his social life at home, but when he wanted a social atmosphere, it would be easy to find.  The rich musical inspiration didn't hurt, either.

Now, after his self-imposed course of study, he was building a recording studio, all by himself.  Things were still in a state of chaos when I was talking to him.  He pointed to various areas of the construction site and explained where he'd put the recording booth, where he'd put the mixing board, and so on.  

"It seems so overwhelming!" I said, seeing all the obstacles between him and completion.

He looked genuinely surprised.  "Nah," he said with a relaxed shrug.  "It's just a really great challenge."

That was 1995.  He is now a successful recording engineer and musician, making his living doing what he likes, facing setbacks with a cool confidence in his own ability to figure things out--at least as far as I can tell.  

So is my life overwhelming, or is it just a really good challenge?  How I answer that question really shapes the whole process, don't you think?