Grace Under Fire

Ask anyone how I react in a crisis – I’m pretty sure they’ll tell you I’m useless. I flake, I crumble, if all else fails, I cry. Not one of my finer qualities.

My mother and I were reminiscing about someone my sister had briefly dated when she was in 8th grade. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it somehow ended up with repeated phone calls that my sister didn’t want to take. I wound up answering the phone – with my mother and my sister both telling me to say she wasn’t home. In the heat of the moment, I blurted “She said she’s not here”. Obviously not one of my finer moments, but it got the job done.

As I’ve gotten older, I haven’t gotten much better. Unfortunately, when things get heated I tend to panic. Someone once told me I go from A to Z without letting B through Y happen first. Not very elegant, but it’s a true statement about me. Over the years, I’ve worked on correcting this, with varying levels of success.

As much as this part of my personality gets in the way sometimes, I’ve started to accept it for the positive, while still trying to control my negative reactions. In terms of planning, it means that I try to see the end result. In terms of my actions, I try to see what the result of those actions may be. The key, I think, to fully embracing this is taking a deep breath, and asking myself “OK, Beth, what next?”

A big project crops up at noon that has to be completed by the next morning? I’ll spend an hour freaking out that I’ll be at work until midnight. That hour would have been better spent by planning a course of action, asking for help and getting the project done. Getting flustered and upset just gets in the way.

I’ve been single for the past few years. Of course that means I, with apologies to Helen Fielding’s heroine Bridget Jones, will die alone with my body found two weeks later, half eaten by wild dogs. Why shouldn’t I take my neighbor up on that offer to fix me up with some of her co-workers? Why not go on another blind date?

The more I think about it, “What next?” is the question I’ve been asking myself a lot these days. The future is not written in stone, just because my life is one way now, that doesn’t mean it's how it is going to be in 40 years. The next step I take is my choosing and impacts that happens at Z.

OK, Beth, what next?