Happy Little Accidents
“We don’t make mistakes. We have happy little accidents.” - Bob Ross
Recently I was commissioned to build a cross and an offering box for Mosaic Episcopal Church in Pearland, TX. I began designing the two pieces in my mind weeks before I began building. Then I went into Home Depot to purchase wood. While there, I changed the design two more times. I was convinced my final design was going to be SICK!
I got home with $130 worth of wood and got to work. My idea was to glue .75-inch pieces of pine and oak together to make a striped cross. I knew it was going to be beautiful. It takes a number of hours to use this method. Carpenters have to cut wood from two or more varieties, line them up, either use a brad nail gun or a biscuit joiner, glue them, and press them together with clamps.
A day later when I looked at the finished product I was greatly disappointed. The stripes turned out great! But nobody wants a cross that looks like clown pants. I immediately was bummed that I wasted $60 worth of wood to create a beautiful, but unusable piece.
The mistake ended up being a gift. After scratching my head and looking at a pile of wood, I came up with a better idea for the cross than I initially imagined. I was even able to use the clown pants to make a more ornate offering box!
Here is the deal. I could NOT have come up with the final design had I not made the initial mistake. It became a “happy little accident” that made the finished product SO MUCH better.
As I slowly reworked my mistakes, I began to think about the parallel to my life. My plans and dreams rarely turn out the way I want them. Sometimes that leads to shame and despair. Often it leads to disappointment and grieving a loss of what might have been.
Two Things I’ve Learned About Navigating Unmet Expectations
Feel the pain - This post is not an argument to ignore painful experiences and conquer your fears. Pain is not meant to be avoided. Fears are not meant to be vanquished. They are simply feelings meant to give us information about what is going on in our bodies. Feel the pain. Listen to the fear. They may have some important things to teach you about what you need to thrive. Furthermore, these emotions must be processed and released. Otherwise, they will build up and, likely, come out sideways.
Try again - While I have a long way to go before I can be considered a master carpenter, I am beginning to turn out some pieces that are worth sharing. I learned all that I know from trying things, making mistakes, asking for help, and then trying again.
The same goes for life. Often our fears and pain are connected to past experiences. Our brains can stay stuck in those places if we don’t slow down to process the emotions and allow our brains time to update. If I gave up after I made clown pants instead of a beautiful cross, the narrative that would have developed would have been that I am prone to mistakes that ruin projects. However, because I slowed down, felt the pain, and tried again, the narrative that developed is that mistakes can lead to better end results.
This isn’t just true for carpentry. I’ve experienced this sort of rewiring and narrative changing in my interpersonal relationships as well. For scientific research on this, google “forming new neural pathways.”
