Life is a series of choices.
When our children have activities scheduled at the same time, we have to choose which to attend and which we will miss, no matter how much it seems to rip us up inside. Their disappointment and ours can be palpable, and yet we forge on.
When we see kids in tears – or nearly so – over the outcome of a sporting event, we can’t help but wonder if there’s something we could have or should have done differently to spare them that heartache.
When we hear from someone unhappy with policy set by groups or boards on which we serve, we have to ask ourselves whether those sentiments are representative of larger constituencies or if they’re simply the opinion of one angry e-mailer. Set them aside, or respond and rectify?
By the time we’ve become adults, we’ve presumably grown to the point where we’re able to handle life’s little misfortunes. Just this week:
* My daughter’s softball team held its year-end party celebrating an undefeated season, at the same time our older son’s Little League team played in a postseason tournament game 25 miles away. This came two days after I’d missed the end of her last game to take the boy to another of his games. My wife and I still having not yet perfected the art of being two places at once, we divide and conquer.
* Our younger son’s tournament games are also routinely scheduled at the same time as the older boy’s games. We’ve not yet had all three kids with games at the same time, but darn close. And we know people who have been in that situation. I don’t envy them.
* I’ve seen children – mine and others’ – overcome by emotion when losing a tough game, performing below their own expectations or sitting out some innings to accommodate playing time for all players on the roster. It’s tough to see kids hurting, and the inclination is to fix it. Sometimes we can’t, and that hurts too.
* I heard from a fellow Naperville coach, angry over a decision made by our league board, of which I am a volunteer member. His language was pointed and his opinion clear – he didn’t like the choice we had made, and he let us know about it.
In the moment, each of these situations was worthy of special care. Emotions can be raw, deserving of proper attention when it’s clear that all will not be happy with the outcome of our choices. Children look to us – the adults – for guidance on how they are to react, how they should handle these situations. What they learn from us now will shape how they grapple with similar decisions later in life.
But step outside your bubble for a moment, and each of these events – all-consuming as they may seem at the time – are just a few of life’s routine bumps in the road. These aren’t choices like some must face, whether to pay the electric bill or to buy food for hungry kids. Or like whether to endure another round of grueling cancer treatment in the hope of extending one’s days, or to live out those days as comfortably as possible.
Those are choices with lasting consequences. Life and death consequences.
And then, amid it all, when we hear that a man and son have lost their young wife and mother to cancer, the triviality of daily life comes sharply into focus. In the end, all we can hope for is to have done well in our time, and to have raised the next generation to do the same.
Those are just a few of the events on my mind and the minds of those around me in recent days. Your world is likely similar at times, e-mail after e-mail bringing updates on one such situation or another. Among them was this poignant note from one of the oldest and wisest men I know at this point in my life, which landed at exactly the right time to put things into proper perspective.
“Wow, what a shock,” he wrote in reference to our colleague whose wife had passed over the weekend. “We get wrapped up in our own situations and think we have serious issues, having no idea what others around us are dealing with.
“I’m reminded of an old story, that if we all gathered around and put our troubles/concerns in the middle of the room to share, when we saw what others are dealing with, we would take our issues back and move on.”
I’ve known our now-widowed colleague for only about a year, the whole time his wife in failing health unbeknownst to me and to some others around us. Though he’s always struck me as a man stretched thin, his stresses great, I chalked it up to the work we were doing. That and to the cumulative toll of life’s trivialities.
All around us, if we give ourselves a chance to see, others are carrying the weight of a world far greater than ours.
When you have the chance – today, tomorrow or some point down the line, try it. Put your troubles in the middle of the room.
Things might not be so bad after all.
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Twitter: @RobManker
Rob Manker is a freelance writer for the Naperville Sun who lives, works, parents in Naperville.