A couple of Sundays ago, I was up early to finally get my kayak in the water for the first time this year. It was one of those perfect New England mornings. Sunny. Sixty-five degrees. Not a breath of wind. When I arrived at the lake, the water was glassy, and the only people already out were two men quietly fishing together from a small boat.
On a scale of one to ten for lake paddling? For me, this was a ten.
I unloaded my foldable kayak, hauled it down to the little launch beach, and began assembling it—a process that usually takes about ten minutes.
Except…not this morning.
Disappointment on deck
After twenty increasingly frustrating minutes, I finally discovered the problem. One of the internal pieces had become dislodged—likely when I packed it away after my final paddle last fall—and I needed a tool to fix it.
Drat.
By now, two more boats had launched, the morning was warming up, and I knew that if I drove home for a tool and returned, the peaceful lake I’d been looking forward to would likely have given way to powerboats and jet skis. Nothing against either; they simply weren’t part of the experience I’d gotten up early to have.
I stood there on the launch beach, staring at the kayak and searching my mind for another solution. Nothing. So I packed everything back into the car and drove to a nearby hiking trail instead. The hike was beautiful. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. It may have been a very small disappointment in the grand scheme of life. But still a disappointment.
Training day
One aspect of Reclaiming Capacity that I’ve been developing is something I call First Principles. If The Map shows the landscape, First Principles are the travel notes. They’re the observations that help us navigate that landscape with greater ease and consistency. One of those principles is “ordinary moments are the curriculum of life.”
Or perhaps, another way to say it is: Ordinary moments are our training ground.
We often imagine that life’s biggest challenges are what shape us. I’m becoming increasingly convinced that, more often, life’s biggest challenges reveal us. When the stakes are high, we usually don’t rise to some brand-new level of wisdom, composure or self-possession. We instead fall back on the small habits of reaction that we’ve been practicing all along. In traffic. When our expectations aren’t met. When our 4-year-old breaks a plate.
The same is true in leadership. (Keep in mind that “leadership” applies to leading an organizational department, an athletic team, a family, a company, a farm, a classroom, an artists’ retreat, and more.) Under pressure, we rarely invent a new way of responding. We automatically default to the one we’ve been rehearsing every day. That’s why ordinary moments matter so much.
A person doesn’t begin their running journey with a marathon. They begin with a walk around the block. Then perhaps a little jogging. Then another day. Then another. The marathon isn’t where they become a runner. It’s where years of ordinary practice become visible.
Perhaps disappointment works the same way.
My kayak. A flat tire. A last-minute change of plans. Learning that someone challenging-for-us has been invited to dinner. These moments may seem insignificant. But perhaps they’re preparing us for the disappointments that won’t feel small at all.
Practicing disappointment
So, what do we actually practice? For me, it begins by allowing disappointment to be exactly what it is.
“Crap.”
“Seriously?”
“Gosh dang it! Stupid freakin’ boat.” (Possibly saltier language 😉
Emotions are meant to move through us. The trouble begins when we help them unpack their bags for an extended stay. How does this happen? One thing I’ve noticed is that disappointment often arrives with a story:
There goes my whole day.
Nothing ever works out.
It’s not fair; this kind of crap always happens to me.
The event itself may last only a moment or two. But the story? Unnoticed, it can last all afternoon. Or for days, months, even YEARS. One of the subtle practices of Reclaiming Capacity is learning to notice the difference between event and story.
For me, that often means stepping back and finding perspective. Not to dismiss the disappointment. Not to pretend I’m above it. Simply to return it to its rightful size.
Years ago, when a tree fell on my house, I certainly wasn’t partying my way through the experience. I complained about insurance adjusters. I felt overwhelmed at times. I’m oh-so-human.
But I could also see something larger. I had people who loved me. I had insurance. I had a house for a tree to fall on in the first place. And I’d made it through every difficult season of my life up to that point. And this one? It would eventually become another season, another chapter of my life.
Not the whole story.
Returning to the trail
My kayak never made it into the water that Sunday morning. But somewhere between loading it back into the car and stepping onto the hiking trail, the disappointment stopped being the story. It simply became part of the morning. The hike turned out to be exactly what I needed.
I repaired the kayak a few days later. Life moved on, as it does. The more I pay attention, the more convinced I become that these ordinary disappointments aren’t interruptions to our growth.
These ordinary disappointments are where the micromovements of growth happen.
They’re opportunities to practice becoming the kind of person we’d like to be before life asks us to become that person under much more difficult circumstances.
What ordinary disappointment might be inviting you to practice today?
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