Cracker Barrel Old Fashioned Store and Restaurant uses the slogan,“Getting There is Half the Fun.” For us, getting there is the fun. That’s why we much prefer driving the back roads and looking for off-the-beaten-path attractions far more than flying to a specific tourist attraction. It’s within those little known sights and sounds and with those down-to-earth people, we learn about America. Charles Karalt and Steve Harman, of “On the Road,” have actually earned a living while having fun “getting there,” wherever “there” is for them.
Poet Robert Frost says,
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.”
When “the getting there” is important, traveling becomes a true journey in discovery. However, all of life offers a journey, a process to follow. Only a rare few are born with a talent so perfected that as a child they are declared a prodigy. Most of us labor to master our own skills. For us, accomplishment arrives at the end of a long process.
Loretta LaRoche, stress management consultant, says, “Enjoy the process. The research on happiness shows that it isn’t the attainment of something; it’s the process that makes people happy.”
Years ago, a freshman stood at my desk at the end of our first class and asked my least favorite question, “Do you remember me?”
“How should I know you?” I asked.
He smiled. “When I was little, my mother took one of your workshops. One day, I had to come for a short time until someone could pick me up. You asked me to help with a demonstration and I agreed. You asked me how to make a peanut butter sandwich. I said that you just spread the peanut butter.
“You then took the knife and pulled a glob of the stuff out of its jar and spread it on my hand. ‘Like that?’ you asked.
“No, no, spread it on the bread."
“Then you said, ‘But you didn’t tell me to spread it on the bread.’
“I don’t know about the teachers in your class, but I never forgot that lesson,” he said.
Language arts teachers often invite students to demonstrate a process - how to eat an Oreo, how to play chess, how to build a birdhouse. The instructions always include one caveat: explain your demonstration as if the observer knows nothing about the subject at all. This popular activity encourages students to think through the process of a simple or complex task and include all steps in order. It’s a great organizational tool.
However, we language arts people also teach the craft of writing as a process - brainstorming, organizing thoughts, rough drafting, revising, editing, final drafting, proofreading, publishing. All professional writers follow similar steps; amateurs should, too.
Although I’ve long appreciated the value of the process, I was surprise by a statement from one of the producers of this year’s Oscar winning film, “Slumdog Millionaire.” In an interview, he said, “It’s an old Indian philosophy - “Don’t look at problems as problems, rather embrace them and learn from the process in solving them. That’s the theme of this movie.”
Wow! I haven’t seen the movie, but in these trying times of a weak economy, of great fears, of uncertainty, it just may be the advice we all need. Rather than wringing our hands in despair, perhaps, we should look at our specific problems, not as problems, but rather as challenges to embrace, to tackle and then to learn from the process in solving them.
Of course, we’re all angry at the greed of the unscrupulous who have caused many of our troubles. Certainly, some of our problems are tangled up with the woes of others - much like the housing mortgages that were bundled, then sold and resold. It can be a mess. Also, nature and illness can wreak havoc on anyone’s life. And while no one person, not even the President of the United States, can solve the nationwide malaise single-handedly, each one of us can begin to work through our own specific concerns.
Sure, all of us would rather be problem free. It’s easier. But solution always starts with an attitude that we can work toward an end result. As we chip away at those problems we can actually solve or learn to live with those we cannot eliminate, we inevitably discover much about ourselves and our own fortitude.
My dad, who died four days after his fiftieth birthday always said, “Things don’t always happen for the best. Our job is to make the best of whatever happens.”
2009
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