Arms And The Problem

Arma impedimentumque cano, ab hominibus qui mandatis non respondent...

This week I have been plagued by people not answering e-mail or returning phone calls. The first roofing guys I hired never showed up. Now the second roofing guys have not shown up. The physical therapist tells me to get a piece of paper from the nurse, and the nurse has not responded to three messages. The administrator who is supposed to be in charge of a vital program is AWOL. There’s the lead paint saga. And, most exasperating of all, various People On Whom A Big Project Depends seem to have vanished into thin air. My days are filled with lobbying these people and gnashing my teeth.

I was getting a bit cranky and demoralized about all this. Imagine me shaking my fist at the heavens, Scarlett O’Hara-style.

Then I was noodling around in the bookstore while the Bean read Dora the Explorer books, and I found this book called “Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality,” by one Dr. Henry Cloud. (Henry *Cloud*? It sounds Shakespearean to me.) Basically the theme of the book is “Don’t be an idiot and you’ll be a better businessman.” It makes the case that businessmen have to be emotionally aware, and it’s interesting to see a man making the case to men, since usually it’s a woman making the case to women, and women are already persuaded that emotion is the best thing since sliced bread. So it’s interesting for me, as a woman, to eavesdrop on a man talking to men about it all. I shouldn’t overstate the case about this book being groundbreaking, but it held my attention over the intrigue of Dora the Explorer trying to keep Swiper from swiping the Easter eggs.

So this Henry Cloud had some precepts that I thought were useful to the current endeavor:

“Things never work. When they don’t, that is the time to make them work. Then, if you do, they work.”

You think I’m putting you on, don’t you? You think I’m being very clever and satirical and quoting this so we can all laugh. But you know, I think the typical culturally ingrained female equivalent -- or anyway let’s say my typical equivalent -- is:

“Things never work. When they don’t, rethink your strategy. Then, rethink whether you’re really suited for this at all, and whether you aren’t getting stupidly above yourself in this ridiculous endeavor, and whether it isn’t all hopeless anyway, and whether, if it isn’t actually hopeless, the particular constraints of your personality don’t make it effectively hopeless in your case. While you’re at it, think whether it wasn’t wrong-headed of you to start this whole thing in the first place. And brood on powerlessness a bit. There! You’ve got it!”

But this Dr. Henry Cloud, who doesn’t know we women are listening, says that successful people put their arms around the problem.

So I am trying very, very hard to persuade these People On Whom A Big Project Depends to do something that they’re not terrifically motivated to do. The whole thing has been giving me high blood pressure every time I think of it, so my solution has been to avoid thinking of it, which doesn’t make me any more persuasive, I can say that. Fortified by the notion of putting my arms around the problem, I wrote one heck of a persuasive e-mail. This e-mail was a triumph of calm persuasiveness. It did not have, screaming between the lines, the thought, “You are avoiding me and it drives me crazy! I knew this was a bad idea! I am going to go hide my head under the pillow and then dine on worms!” I mean, I didn’t just put my arms around the problem, I jumped the problem’s bones. The problem and I got very close and had a big long talk about our pasts and what we wanted out of a relationship and how sweet we were on each other.

I haven’t heard from the people, so maybe even the newfound coziness of the problem and me is not enough to influence fate. We’ll see. But the mere notion that when things don’t work, that is the time to make them work — I think that’s something I could use a little more of. Non-avoidance: what a concept. If you want me, I’ll be over here cuddling with the problem.