This blog is a like one of those pictures that contain hidden 3d images. If you don’t catch the meaning after reading it once try staring at it with your eyes crossed and the meaning will pop right out of the screen. And if that works for you please post what it means in the comments section because I’m dying to know.
Rules, laws, structure, goals, plans they’re all important. But life is too short to freak out when everything doesn’t go exactly as planned.
Case in point: two weeks ago my wife and I celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary. We woke up thinking we were going to see Kenny Chesney in concert (don’t be a hater ‘cause I said that, my wife really likes Kenny, enough said). Earlier in the week my wife’s cousin said he’d hook us up with some tickets, good tickets. He has a connection to the band. The plan was to meet up with him on the day of the concert. He’d done it before so we had no reason to believe it wouldn’t happen again. But when my wife tried contacting him in the morning he never responded. We started doubting in the afternoon, approaching the time we’d have to leave in order to eat an early dinner and still have time to make it to the concert. At do or die time, even though we still had our doubts, we decided to take a leap of faith, drive up to SLC and have a nice dinner, hoping we’d hear from her cousin in time to make the concert. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory. It was delicious. If you ever go there be sure to try the Avocado Eggrolls appetizer; if you like avocadoes you’ll love ‘em.
When we sat down at our table we still had time to make it to the concert. We hoped we would. But our minds were busy coming up with alternative plans in case the Kenny concert fell through. These new plans ranged from simply driving back home (not the most appealing option since it was still our anniversary), to finding another concert. It turns out that Chris Isaak and Blues Traveler or Howard Jones were playing that night at different venues. So, at least we had options.
We paid our check at the Cheesecake Factory 10 minutes after the Kenny concert was scheduled to start. Plan A was officially out of the running. I’ll be honest we were disappointed. At a time like this I can imagine some people might freak out, or they might try to assign blame. Oddly enough we did neither. Our disappointment quickly changed into which plan B should we try? This was turning into an adventure.
We drove to the Sandy Amphitheater where Howard Jones was scheduled to play. I felt a little foolish going, because I’m usually a stick-to-the-plan kind of a guy. I don’t like surprises. But hey, it was my anniversary.
The first thing we noticed at the ticket booth was the big sign GA seating sold out. I almost turned around right then. But instead we had to ask “What, if anything do you have left?” Thirty minutes prior to the scheduled start of the concert I didn’t think they’d have much. At first the guy inside the ticket booth said “Sorry, I don’t have any seats left together. You can buy two singles if you like.” I looked at my wife. Luckily before we were able to respond someone else inside the booth said “I have two seats together.” The guy helping us turned around surprised. “Just a sec.” He said.
When he came back he said, “I have two seats on row L right here.” He pointed to a print out of the seating configuration. I looked at it for a second, and having never been there before I couldn’t make heads nor tails of where those seats actually were. But hey, they were together. My wife asked “How much?” Then casually turned to me and asked “So, is that what you want to do?” For those of you who don’t know my wife that’s code for “I don’t care how much the tickets are, or where the seats are, it’s my anniversary and we’re running out of options. So, get out the credit card buster.” I won’t bother you with the trivial thoughts running through my mind at that time, let’s just say I did the right thing and whipped out my card.
We walked through the front gate looking for any clues as to where row L was. We must have looked lost because one of the event staff offered to help us. She led us to the seats and that’s when our anniversary adventure changed from this might turn out alright, to hey, this is going to be better than a free Kenny Chesney concert. It turns out row L is the first row of the upper reserved seating area. The lower area could be full of screaming 40-somethings standing and dancing during each song and I would still be able to blissfully enjoy HoJo unobstructed and straight on from a seated position. These seats were so sweet I almost felt guilty missing Kenny Chesney (because my wife really likes Kenny). Note that I said almost.
It turns out there were a few still-crazy-standing-and-dancing concert goers in the lower section, but not as many as there used to be. I guess a lot of us have grown into mellow-easliy-tired-I-prefer-sitting-and-listening concert goers.
The concert was fantastic. Howard Jones performed every song on both Human’s Lib and Dream into Action. Howard described it as an experiment. He sounded very much like he did on the records and tapes I used to have. I liked his conversation between songs almost as much as the songs themselves. For example, before he started the song Human’s Lib he read the first few lines of the lyrics and said, “This isn’t a template for how one should live their life. It’s just a bit of fun to sing it.” During the breaks between the songs he laughed a lot and didn’t take himself too seriously. He genuinely looked like he was having fun. That made me have more fun too.
Still in adventure mode after the concert we decided not to go home. We called our kids to let them know. Then we drove around looking for a hotel. Lest you think we’re horrible, neglectful parents I’ll point out that we prepped our oldest that we might not be coming home. See, if we told them outright, before we left, who knows what would have happened in our absence. As it was a couple of them didn’t know we were gone till the next morning, and they behaved exactly as if we were there.
We had such a fun time, talking about our adventure and eating cheesecake; and gaining some much needed perspective. Sometimes small and simple things turn into something great. And sometimes unplanned trips turn out to be better than the planned ones.
I’ve been a planner and a goal setter for most of my life. And for the most part it’s worked out great. But one thing that’s been hard to learn is that even though I make plans and set goals I don’t have as much control as I think I do. And the more people I care deeply about the less control I have. You see, we give up control when we invite others into our lives – and especially when we have children. We can’t force others to do what we think is right. We shouldn’t even try. But sometimes I get upset when other people’s lives take a turn for the worse which I think I could have helped them avoid, if they’d only just listen.
Part of the perspective we gained was about our family. A few months prior to our anniversary we had bit of family trauma, a bitter pill if you will, something that is too personal to go into in such a public place as my blog. Sometimes life wraps its arms around you so tightly it hurts. It's smothering. And sometimes when that happens I feel like giving up, on everything. Suffice it to say that by the time our anniversary rolled around we had been more down than up for quite a while.
You know the sayings you can’t see the forest for the trees and familiarity breeds contempt? Well, because of our bitter pills I think those two statements approximated my wife’s and my own feelings for longer than they should have. We were so caught up in and distracted by our bitter pills that we allowed ourselves to get completely wrapped up in any problem du jour hoping the bigger stuff would just go away. Because of all that we lost sight of the bigger picture: we have a healthy, happy family. And really, what more do we need?
Like I said before, life is too short to freak out when everything doesn’t go exactly as planned. Sometimes it’s the unplanned events that give us the perspective we need to recognize what’s really valuable, what’s really good, what’s truly important in our lives. In the end it’s the people that matter, everything else is just a story. So why not give it a positive spin. I know it can be hard, but recognizing unplanned events as adventures instead of just problems, is the first step in creating the positive spin. I’m not sure we’re completely over our bitter pills just yet, but our anniversary was a definite turning point.
