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May
2006
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When a tree falls on your life |
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Crises can lead to new beginnings
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James
Pankratz
Special to Parenting |
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Here are some tips on what to do when a tree falls on your garage. Readers of last month’s column will recall this is what happened to our family last Fourth of July. Well, actually, it was a tree limb — but a very large one — and in a loud, spark-filled instant, it managed to take down the electrical and phone lines, kill the power, hit the garage roof, and pin the car parked in the driveway.
So what? You’ve had far worse things go wrong in your life. That’s my point. Sooner or later a metaphorical tree is certain to fall on everyone’s roof, causing a major headache or worse. What are productive ways to cope with difficulty and loss?
Last month we discussed the benefits of our mind’s and body’s first line of defense — denial — in responding to a loss. Denial (“I don’t believe it!”) is useful in buying us time to rally our inner resources before we try to figure out what to do about the problem.
Once I come to accept I have a problem on my hands that shows no evidence of going away on its own, I have three choices. There are three basic ways that human beings solve problems.
1. Change the
external circumstances
My wife called the electric company on her cell phone. Within a relatively short period of time, two men in white hard hats were surveying the damage. Armed with ladders and chainsaws, they cut through and cleared some of the accessible branches.
One workman pointed out something very fortuitous. Because of how the huge limb had come down, it was actually resting, although precariously, on a smaller limb.
This had cushioned the fall, protecting the car from the full impact of the blow. In fact, he felt there was a good chance he could drive the car out from under the limb without disturbing it. While we watched in suspense, he maneuvered the car forward, and then out from under. There was no discernible damage. This brings us to the second method of solving problems, a variation on the first.
2. Work up the
courage to leave
The workmen didn’t have the equipment, the time, or the authority to reduce the limb and its many branches to toothpicks, but they could remove my car from danger. There are times when we need to evaluate the obstacle that we’re up against — an approaching hurricane, an assailant, a toxic work environment, a bully — and decide if we have the time and resources to get ourselves out of harm’s way.
Millions of years of evolution have hard-wired our brains with the “flight or fight” response. Flight need not be cowardice. It is an essential method of self-preservation.
If I were constantly plagued by falling limbs, it would be time to evaluate whether living in the middle of the forest is a good idea. It would be better to leave than to keep shaking my fist at trees for behaving like trees.
3. Change my attitude
Suppose I am unable to significantly change my external circumstances, and lack the resources to leave. Or perhaps I believe that leaving would result in worse consequences for myself or others. Then what?
This third option is the most profound way that human beings solve problems. Our intellect equips us with the ability to transcend to some degree our material circumstances by how we choose to look at a situation. Essentially we can look at a crisis as either an unfair hardship that we allow to defeat us, or as an opportunity for growth and change.
When we take the larger view, we realize a crisis can be bad news waiting to change into good news. Back to the tree. The first tree service told us the tree that lost the limb would have to come down. The large sugar maple is like a member of our family, providing shade to our backyard and those of our neighbors. We definitely did not want to lose it.
However, the second tree service told us that our favorite tree could be stabilized with cables and metal rods.
We received several bills for the tree work, the electrical work, and the replacement of the garage roof. But the insurance company paid for much of it.
The tree, which had shaded the back yard for decades before we moved to our current house, is still standing, a reminder that resilience is the ability to take the long view that a crisis can lead to a new beginning.
(Pankratz is a marriage and family therapist for Catholic Charities Milwaukee regional office.) |
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