3x Thursday

A Cross In The Road

1. What do you do when you have a worldly (politics, war, etc) problem and you can't solve it or do anything about it? How do you react? What do you do?
One of my profs in college said something that sticks with me in moments like this: you always have choices. In this case, I'd say the main choice is in how you react to the problem. Rather than seeing it as insurmountable, see it as something that you can respond to in small ways. For instance, although I support (most of) our troops in Iraq, I refuse to plaster my car with magnetic plastic "ribbons." I can send money, or spend time, to help people in places where bad things have happened (Darfur, the Gulf Coast). I can find out as much as possible about the situation and work for or support organizations that I feel are doing the right thing to resolve the situation.

2. What happens when you have a problem in your personal life that you can't solve? Or you can, but the outcome sucks. What do you do? How do you go about resolving issues like this?
Some things can't be avoided. Sometimes you just have to put your head down and bull through the shit. It's better to slog through and get out the other side as quickly as possible than dancing about the edges making noise and failing to act. Yeah, it sucks. But it sucks less if you face reality squarely than if you spend extra time and energy thinking about how much it sucks. Get it over with and move on.

3. How do you handle sticky situations? Do you have a method? If so, what is it?
Oh, dear, I was so NOT raised to be tactful. I'm afraid I mostly do what I said in #2, which sometimes means it's a bit of a bull in a china shop atmosphere. Generally, if possible, I do try to find some humor in the situation, hopefully at my expense rather than other people's.

Bonus Question: Has there ever been a problem that you can't solve? Only every day. I think this is part of being alive and part of the world. Some current ones: figuring out what to do with a spastic guinea pig, deciding what my part is in the country's political future...and the big one: how to deal with obnoxiously difficult people at work.

I should mention that in all of these cases, the best answer for me is to stop and pray about it. I don't always do that, and that's when things tend to go wrong. Sometimes, praying is all you can do in the moment. And sometimes that's more than you'd think.