March 24 | If You Love It So Much

“When something goes wrong, we have the choice to either resist it or incorporate it” – Rick Rubin

When something goes wrong, we almost always spend our time trying to make it go un-wrong. 

We might begin with the practical, trying to reverse the actual course of what is not working. Patching up the work before anyone notices the problem, or setting something else in line so that it never becomes an issue. 

Or instead, we might settle for un-wrong-ing the emotions, shifting the blame to other people, the universe, or the gods themselves.

We might invent impossibly complicated mathematical models to show why the things that have gone wrong were always going to go wrong or never should have gone wrong or simply were wrong the entire time.

Or we may hit the PR track to show why the wrongness wasn’t, in fact, our fault, and we were as much the victim of the wrongness as anyone. 

Truthfully, while wrongs can be righted, they can never be un-wronged. Every thing that goes sideways presents for us two choices: either resist it, fighting the effect, or incorporate it, finding a way to let the unexpected push the work forward.

Two options. But no third option for undoing.… Read the rest