Look at The Terminator or better the target of his wrath in the first movie of the epic sequel.
There the android terminator is sent from the future to kill the mother (Sarah O’Connor) of the resistance leader (John O’Connor) who is fighting the dominance of the machines in a dark future version of human existence.
We all know that those machines didn’t get anywhere with this mission but what’s even worse for them if you think about it: The machines created the problem in the first place.
As by sending a terminator from the future, the machines made the future version of adult tough John in return send one of his best soldiers to protect his mum from the killer terminator. And guess what, exactly this soldier then fathered John during exactly that mum protection mission!
So would the machines just have sat it out and resisted of sending the terminator in the first place, they wouldn’t have created the problem “John, super determined resistance leader” at all as John was a direct (biological) result of the machines’ feverish urge to do something, anything, I call it “action”-ism.
Everything is beautifully easy in hindsight. Especially when one can analyse and judge the dramas of life’s ups and downs from the comfort of his*her TV sofa.
Yet something of it holds true. While it’s important to act, I feel we sometimes do too much of the presumably good action stuff which is comforting as it releases some sort of happy hormones gratifying action in lieu of other achievement. Yet I feel it prevents us from focusing on the real deal. Lots of blind execution but what’s the goal we are trying to achieve?
Back to my Terminator example: If the goal of the machines was to stop John Connor to resist, instead of brute force, did the machines ever ask him what it would have taken to make him stop resisting? Maybe negotiate the (surely terribly complicated) terms of co-existence of humans and machines but yet potentially a way out of eternal deadlock and a resources-consuming standoff?
Don’t get me wrong. I am no friend of laissez-faire, laggard behaviour or ignorance of things that have to happen .. once you have analysed the situation and pondered over ambitious yet realistic solutions, that is. I love to get s** done and I am fond of intelligent and well-meaning pragmatism. Having said this, I am no stranger to “over”action.
But I can tell you, people, it’s time consuming and awfully draining. It is I guess rooted in the deep desire to control what is happening to us, to be the masters of our fate and to just be adorably approval-achieving perfect at it. Some sort of compensation for anxiety is probably also an ingredient of the sometimes toxic over-action-stress-mix.
So. No. Don’t worry, you don’t need to check that every staff member is doing exactly what you told them to, they are adults, if in doubt, fire them. No. You don’t need to clean the bathroom yet another time because dear friends or parents are over. They’ll love you anyway. And no, you don’t need to be the super conversation facilitator. It’s fine telling the stories you have and rather listen to and ask other people what they can add to the conversation.
Sometimes it might be just better to sit back, take a deep breath, let the headache recede and then take another stab at the world’s insurmountable issues which usually seem less important the next day.
To quote writer Lars Amend from his book “Why not?”:
“There are no problems, just new situations which I don’t know yet how to handle.”
But we will, all in time.
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