Imperfect on purpose

To rid a space of all graffiti carries a heavy opportunity cost. (Image by Robert Balog)

I deeply miss teaching school.

For years, I showed up every morning to The Little Middle School, just like a real job with a boss. In effect, I had hired myself to work directly with the students, instructing them in math and science and writing and history and laughing at their hijinks. It was challenging, rewarding, frustrating, interesting, and fun.

I didn’t quit because I didn’t love it. I quit because I had other things I wanted to do. Now, I’m a thousand miles away while school goes on without me. I have had to let go, and that’s been challenging and rewarding, too.

I trust my team, I believe in my team. I’m involved, but I have to recognize the limits of that involvement. It’s my job to help keep the program in alignment with the vision, not to manage the day-to-day details. In the moments when this role is difficult—when the team is making decisions that are different from the ones I would make, or I feel wistful about what I’ve given up—I have to remember that the discomfort I feel is a gift. Because someone else is making the decisions, I don’t have to make them. Because someone else is doing the job I used to do, I get to have a new job—even a new life. The situation is imperfect on purpose, and in the end, it’s exactly what I want.

Some of us, when we’re making a decision or assessing risk, look only at the upside. My friend Thornton, a gifted attorney, suggests that we also consider the worst-case scenario. If you can live with it, then you can move forward with your choice.

Some of us, on the other hand, consider only the downside of a decision. We take the reasonable likelihood that something will go wrong as evidence that we cannot proceed. In such a situation, we ought to consider the potential benefits of our action and weigh them against that worst-case scenario. We might discover, as Tim Ferriss suggests, that we are willing to “let the small bad things happen” so that we can experience the good things that result from the change we are making.

When I decided to follow my husband to Maine so that he could pursue his apprenticeship in wooden boat-building (it is as cool as it sounds), I knew that the road ahead might be rocky. I figured that I was going to have lots of time on the road going back and forth from Maine to Atlanta. We would likely lose money on the home we had purchased. I’d have to hire more people and somehow coach them remotely. I would miss my friends and my students.

Indeed, things have been rocky (there is a global pandemic, for one thing), but it has been totally worth it. I was able to start a new business. I’ve made new friends and had new experiences. I’ve discovered that mentoring others, even remotely, is something I love doing; it’s almost as great as playing music with my middle school students every morning, which heretofore had been my favorite work-related activity.

It’s been really exciting to give people, including myself, new opportunities for learning. I am not getting it right all the time, which is the whole point. I’m trying stuff and messing up and trying again. I, myself, am imperfect on purpose, heading into territory I’ve never traveled before. That’s how growth happens.

Transitioning out of a role I loved has been bittersweet. It’s also a practical challenge in addition to being an emotional one: there’s a lot of stuff I could have done to make it better, smoother, or easier if I had had more resources. However, the resources would have come from somewhere. I have to be okay with when it happened and how it happened, making it work under the present circumstances. Given the finite reality of time, money, and energy, anything that is less than optimal is actually enabling what is good in my life.

Learning to let go and give up control is an ongoing process. In doing it before I’m ready—before I’m great at it—I’m setting myself up for things to go wrong, but I’m also allowing wonderful things that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. It’s a trade-off, but hopefully it’s also a win-win, for me and for the others. Even when I’m missing my old life and my old job, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than right where I am.