What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?
It’s easy to think about hard times. And it’s easy to give in to them.
But the reality is that it’s not the hard times that we have to worry about. It’s what we do about them.
Because it’s a true today as it’s always been. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall. What counts is how often you get up again. And only you can do that.
What’s a time you followed your gut and it turned out to be exactly right?
It was the end of our 37th wedding anniversary holiday when my wife and I stopped at the Pont-ar-Daf car park at the foot of Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons for a rest after a long drive. We decided to stretch our legs a little with a stroll up the path leading to the summit. I had reached the top with a friend a few weeks earlier but my wife had never attempted it.
After a short walk, I asked my wife, who suffered from mild asthma, if she wanted to go back to the car. She asked me what the view was like from the ridge that we could see. I said it’s worth seeing and she said, “Let’s see how we go.”
We walked on steadily, one foot in front of the other, got to the ridge and, indeed, the view was worth the effort. I asked if she was ready to go back to the car and she asked which peak was Pen y Fan. When I pointed it out she said, “Let’s see how we go.”
We kept waking and reached the summit, with its view across the whole of South and Mid Wales just as everyone else was leaving. We were left alone at the top for about ten minutes. It was probably the most emotional experience of our lives together.
We took the required photos and just sat there, alone together, tears in our eyes from the waves of emotions. Getting to the top at the end of an anniversary holiday was well worth the effort. It was a shared experience that drew us even closer together than we had ever been before. And all because of her gut feeling, “Let’s see how we go.” It was the first and only time we ascended Pen y Fan despite living in its shadow for over 40 years together.
The following year, there was upheaval in the family. But that shared experience had given us the strength to keep going and just “see how we go,” one foot in front of the other, in the face of trials.
I rarely directly share personal experiences, but this one has kept me going despite everything that life has thrown at us.
Just over five years later, my wife’s asthma turned out to be lung cancer, and she passed away a few months before what would have been our 43rd anniversary. But that shared experience has kept me going, still dealing with the upheaval in the family, still putting one foot in front of the other, still telling myself, “Let’s see how we go.”
What’s a fear you’ve overcome — and how did you do it?
I grew up with the fear of getting it wrong. I always felt that nothing was ever good enough for my mother, and that I was constantly being criticised when, in fact, she was probably only trying to do what was best for me, encouraging me to be the person she knew I could be.
Let’s be honest, most of us have had it drummed into us that “good enough isn’t” (good enough).
Then I learned the Pareto Principle. 80% of the benefit results from 20% of the effort. And I suddenly realised that good enough really is good enough. We aren’t perfect. We are going to make mistakes. There are very few, if any, areas in life where perfection is essential. So why waste 80% of our effort trying to correct that last 20% which no one except the most critical perfectionist (which is often ourselves) will notice, anyway.
Triumph and Disaster are imposters. They may engender strong emotions at the time, but those emotion fade and are replaced by the next big issue facing us in life.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same
(If – Rudyard Kipling)
Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, is a study in contrasts, considering many of the opposites that we encounter in daily life. He describes being able to do what others cannot; of handling situations with equanimity; of dealing with life in a balanced way.
Yet his comment, above, on the opposites, Triumph and Disaster, seems to add another dimension. Most versions of the poem capitalise the words as proper nouns, almost as if they are people, or even gods. And, in truth, many people see triumph as an idol to be worshipped at all costs.
Continue reading “The Imposters”
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