Turtle Champions!

I just love summer.  So far, we have saved no less than four painted turtles making their ways across Minnesota highways.  I am not brave enough to pick them up, which dismays my son a great deal, but I can act like a sheepdog, forcing them out of danger.  They scramble surprisingly fast.  We saw a large snapping turtle at Boy Scout camp.  His prehistoric looks were marred by the fact that he seemed only able to heave up his back legs.  There was no way to help him, however, without risking our fingers.  Finn says we need to keep a pail in our car to save any more critters we find in trouble.  I imagine he thinks I spend my nights riding my bike over the trails and saving turtles everywhere!

Aha! Moment or Duh! What Failure Can Tell Us

I had a friend just share this story with me when I was going through a particularly bad week.  Her mother Betty, who is always impeccably dressed, keeps a beautiful house, never gains a pound and never is late, joined a yoga class.  My friend received no less than fifteen calls from her in the first week. Betty explained that she was being unfairly singled out by the yoga teacher, who seemed only to come over and correct her.  "I couldn't believe she kept coming over to adjust my downward dog!"her mother wailed. My friend replied that the teacher was only being helpful.  To which her mother answered, "I will show her!"  And so she did. She went home and Googled all she could about the yoga poses and practiced in front of a mirror until she could do the moves perfectly. By the end of the week, she called my friend in triumph.  "The teacher complemented me on my well executed plank!"  When telling me about this, my friend had to chuckle, "I don't think my mom got any relaxation benefits out of yoga!" 

And that is the problem with the emphasis on winning in our culture: sometimes failure can stir us to do something better, but sometimes we get so focused on winning, on "nailing it" that we miss the point of the class, of the exercise, of the school, of the job.  Sometimes, we need to listen to failure.  I was once told by a professor that I should exit a program because of my poor math skills.  Instead of listening to her, I pounded away harder until the program exited me-- and then the full extent of my failure laid me out for two months.  But I was struggling to succeed at something I was not good at and that I did not want to do.  The saddest thing was, I was afraid to try (and fail) and what I really wanted to do.  The irony is that while I may not have been the absolute best at what I enjoyed, I would not have failed at it, simply because I loved doing it.    This is my Duh! moment.  Something I wished I had realized way back when.  The challenge as mothers is to not let our children have these Duh! moments, but to turn them into Aha! moments--moments to make grand changes in the way their lives are headed.   Teaching them to persevere is important, but teaching them to abandon a hopeless dream or the wrong dream is of equal consequence.