Everything Is Not Yet Lost

I was cleaning off my desk and found a quote I'd saved years ago, from the Will Ferrell movie Everything Must Go.

“Everything is not yet lost.”

In the film it means pretty much what it sounds like. Keep walking. Keep trying. Things are bad, but they're not done. If you haven't seen it, watch it — it's not the Will Ferrell you're expecting.

I think I held onto that line because it does something I need more than I'd like to admit. It picks a way to read the situation. Not a true reading or a false one. A chosen one.

That's the part that's hard to face. It's easy to spot in other people. I never have to look far to find the clearest case, though. It's me. Once it really lands — that it's 100% on me how I read whatever's in front of me — the excuses run out. There's nobody left to deal with but myself, and all the petty faults I showed up with.

So here's what I do — and more and more, what I do with my kids and my students too. When somebody starts in on how bad things are — and I'm usually first in line — I make them picture how much worse it could be. Not in a vague way. Specifically. How many ways. How much worse.

It never takes me long to shut up about how hard I've got it.

But the shutting-up isn't the point. The point is where it drops me. I look up from all the worse versions — the ones that could've been happening to me, and to them, and aren't — and I'm just glad it isn't worse. The person in front of me is still right there, and I can see them again now, instead of whatever I was carrying a second ago.

I've gotten faster at it over the years. I don't climb down into the bad version and stew. I give myself a peek, and then I come back — to right now, to where I actually am.

My desk is still a mess. But it was clean enough today to let me find that quote.

What do you do when your brain starts building a case for how bad you've got it? Let us know through the contact page.