Turning Complaints Into Opportunities (And Other Lessons From Mom)
*NOTE: This essay first appeared in my monthly newsletter, December 2020. You can read it in its original form here. And if you’d like to have my newsletter delivered straight to your inbox, you can subscribe here. I promise to be an ideal guest at your email party: I arrive on time, leave before things get weird, and never show up uninvited.
"It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will."
(from Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery)
Anne Shirley artwork by James Hill
Story time:
The story is titled, “The First and Last Time I Told Someone I was Bored.”
The person I told was my mom, and the story goes like this:
I was young, probably around 6 years old, and still ruling the roost as an only child. The day was dragging. The house felt too quiet, like a museum or a trap. I didn’t have another kid around to play with, I was tired of all my Barbies, it wasn’t a ballet class day, and I felt much too important to be stuck all alone in my pink room with floral valances and canopy bed, doing nothing.
So, being the outspoken and overly confident young woman that I was, I marched into the living room where my mom was vacuuming the rust-colored carpet of our house on 8th Street, and boldly declared that I was bored. I made sure to inflect my tone with as much self-righteous annoyance as possible, too, so mom could really get the picture.
I don’t know what I expected her to do about it.
Maybe gasp in horror that she had allowed boredom to overtake her bright young daughter under her own negligent supervision?
Perhaps scoop me into her comforting arms and soothe me with promises to make it all better?
Whatever my expectations, they certainly did not hint at what I actually ended up with:
An aggressively raised eyebrow, and my mom’s own bold declaration:
“Only boring people say they’re bored, Jamie. Use your imagination. Or, if you insist on being boring, I’m not boring, and I can think of lots of things for you to do…”
A clever smile snuck across her face as she proceeded to recite a brutal list of household chores I could complete for her, starting with polishing the furniture, and continuing with scrubbing the toilet bowl. I don’t know how, or if, the list ended, because I’d already hightailed it back down the hallway and into my bedroom, where I sat with the lessons I'd just had handed to me:
Lesson #1: I can't ever tell mom I'm bored again.
Lesson #2: I can be the kind of person who complains about the problem, or I can be the kind of person who creates solutions to the problem.
Lesson #3: The difference between the two kinds of people is a matter of imagination.
I miraculously felt very motivated to get creative, and spent the rest of my day entertaining myself with activities that had nothing to do with Comet or Pledge, although, over time I’ve also realized that even housecleaning can be pretty fun, with a little imagination.
Lessons from Mom in posing for photos.
Every complaint is an opportunity.
There have been moments during 2020 that have required every ounce of imagination I could muster in order not to completely give up or give in. I know you have your own list of these moments, too.
Now, with Christmas approaching and lockdowns likely to keep us distanced from loved ones over the holiday, we're finding ourselves having to imagine new ways to celebrate "the most wonderful time of the year."
It may turn out that we can't make things perfect, but we can still make them purposeful.
We start by making up our minds firmly that we will.
What about you?
How are you planning to celebrate the holidays this year?
What are some creative ways you're making moments meaningful?
How are you creating opportunities out of complaints?
I'd love to hear from you.
And if you're having a hard time getting creative, I want to hear about that, too.
I can't promise to come up with a list of chores as efficiently as my mom can, but I'm pretty good at coming up with ideas for getting out of doing them :)