Have I Finally Grown Up?

In February, I took a mini trip with my husband to beautiful Moab, Utah. We hiked Arches National Park, Canyonlands, and Dead Horse Park. It was the perfect time to go there. The weather was cold but beautiful, the parks were empty, and the prices were fantastic. We had a great trip and we were both ready to get home to packed work days the very next day. The Moab airport is smaller than most grocery stores and essentially there’s one flight a day to Denver. If you miss that flight, you are out of luck.

Our flight looked good to go. We boarded the plane and then the first of a series of apologetic announcements from our pilot started. They dragged on for a couple of hours and eventually led to a canceled flight. We would miss our Denver connection and had no choice but to stay in Moab another night. We had to get in the slowest moving line of all time to get rebooked and to get food and hotel vouchers from the airline (because their plane didn’t work)!

In years past, this would have pretty much put me over the cranky edge. I was highly concerned about having to cancel client calls and maybe let a bunch of people down by not being able to give a two-hour webinar that I had committed to on the next day. Yet despite my concern, I remained relatively calm. I didn’t use my snarky voice, I wasn’t sarcastic with the airline people, and I didn’t even snap at my husband. What the hell is going on? Am I growing up?

Adulting Means Making Peace with The Things You Can’t Control

For some reason, that I’m still working on understanding, I wasn’t very upset. I was actually nice to people, remained patient with my husband, and came up with a work around for the webinar that I ended up giving the next day from a nice hotel room. I’m not guaranteeing that this attitude will hold until the end of my days, yet I’m pretty happy with myself for that day.

As soon as our pilot started having us hop on and off the plane, I had a bit of a chat with myself that went something like this, “You have no control over this. None. It will be what it will be whether you are a snarky bitch or not. Do you really want to end your wonderful trip by being upset about something that you can’t control?” And my answer was a resounding, “No.” And that was it. I couldn’t control it. The pilot couldn’t control it. The airline workers couldn’t control it. The airplane had a faulty radio. That sucks and yet, there was not much any of us could do.

Adulting means making peace with the things you can’t control. #adulting #control #anger Click To Tweet

People, I’m not sure what happened on that day. Maybe it’s because I am now at the ripe old mature age of sixty, or maybe I’ve just started to realize that the only thing in the world that I can control is myself. That’s it. Clearly, I’m a bit slow on this awareness in that I know toddlers who figured it out before I did, yet I seem to have figured it out. It feels oddly fantastic to grow up. Can any of you relate?

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC