If you have any contact with just about any pre-teen girl (or even some younger girl), were you to play the song "Let It Go"* you would find the girl singing along. It's the perfect entree for my topic of "what do I have to walk away from."This may not seem like a problem, but it is for me. I need to stop trying to fix things. Now, I don't mean objects--while I tinker, and can pound in a nail, or do some such trivial thing, I am not the fixer of things in our family.
What I mean is--I need to stop trying to fix circumstances.
Herewith a few examples--I have a senior family member who depends on me to help out with things. While he is in a senior facility, he still needs help with going shopping to buy clothes, or having a button sewn on a shirt, or some other small task. It is his penchant to say, as he presents me with an item, "can you...?" I have been asked to change the fastener on slacks from one of those metal hook arrangements to a button/button hole or to take in slacks that are too loose. I have been asked to fix a printer (the sensor light kept flashing PAPER JAM) or failing that get a new one. I have been asked to...just fill in the blank.
My bent is to GO RIGHT TO IT...leap into action. With the slacks, I took them to a tailor who did as I asked. With the printer, I got a new one (the old one would have cost more to fix than a new one cost). Time and again, after I have done as requested, there is a second request. "I don't like the button and button hole; I wish I had not had it changed." Or "the slacks are too tight; I wish they were back the way they were." Or the printer--"I don't like it; I want my old one back."
So, I take the slacks home with me and let them out again. The button/button hole I can't reverse. The old printer I return, and take the new printer home.
OR--other examples. I enter a public bathroom and find trash all over the floor. Likely as not, I will pick up that trash and place it in the receptacle. Or, I see weeds growing in a neighbor's yard. My impulse is to pull them. Please note--I don't.
On and on--my personality bent is such that I just know I can improve something.**
Perhaps because of these recent experiences with the senior family member, I am learning that sometimes I just need to walk away.
Let it go, let it go.
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* From the movie Frozen--you can listen to it here.
**If you know Myers-Briggs personality typing, I am an INTJ.
6 comments:
This brings to mind two proclivities of my own although I hadn't thought of anything to actually post on this topic.
Hmmm ... I started to write, but I may actually post.
Boy, along with my need to have everything be as I think it could/should be, being the "fixer" is yet one more facet of my personality as well that I know I need to keep in check. I feel your struggle, and hear that damn song. LOL!
No matter what type of personality you are it would be pretty hard to say "no" to the old man. But that sounds like a case where "you're darned if you do and darned if you don't". For the rest of it I'd just say to step back before you enter into "helping". It might just give you the perspective you need to figure if you go ahead with help or let it go on its own.
Boy do I know about that circumstance of helping an older person, and then have them change their mind or not like it. Not a personal thing on their part, but for some reason I take it as a personal failing if I do something for one of my parents and they don't like it or can't make it work. Hard to let it go...
And by way, curses on Microsoft for changing their operating system so much that my dad can't recognize it. At 88 he's not going to learn the new ways, so he just feels lost and confused before he actually would have needed to. Grrr.
I have learned not to be overly helpful on my job because I have to encourage my patients to be as independent as possible. In the past I have become over-involved but came to realize the recipients of my efforts were indifferent to my efforts. So I generally MMOB.
I am glad to see I have company in the realm of fixit!
And I agree the best fix for me personally is to, as Ginnie said, step back.
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