Many weeks ago, for a value of “many” roughly equal to 4, I posted the questions for Series Six of “Five Questions”. And I said I would answer the first one a few days later. But I didn’t. With everything else going on it got overlooked. Now the vultures have come home to roost and it’s time to catch up and answer that question. Here goes …

Around here we like life on an even keel; things going along smoothly. Yes, of course there is the occasional annoyance, like broken washing machines or pond pumps, but they are seldom catastrophic or disasters and are generally easily fixed or bypassed.
What surprises me is that this seems to be totally contrary to the way many of our friends and acquaintances operate. They seem to be unable to ride along smoothly, bobbing along on the waves of irritation. They seem to have to stagger continually from one crisis to the next — often several at a time — with even the smallest setback being an end-of-world catastrophe and needing others to help dig them out of the midden.
I can’t understand how people can operate like this. It would do my head in and seems to be so mentally destructive. It must be either a way of life of their choosing or an ingrained manifestation of adolescent angst which they cannot shake off.
Now, OK, I’ll admit we don’t indulge in many of the activities which are more liable to provide unforeseen (even foreseen) disasters. We don’t have kids, or kids-kids, so we don’t have to cope with illness, accident, the vagaries of schools, lost boy/girl-friends etc. etc. We don’t own a car (in fact neither of us can drive).** We own our house and don’t move every 3 years. We don’t spend all our leisure time flying round the world in search of sun, sand etc.
[** Not having kids and not driving are probably the two greenest things we’ve ever done, or ever can do, in our lives.]
We decided years ago that these were things we didn’t need to do, so we wouldn’t. I calculated many years ago that using a taxi when we need one, although it feels expensive, is actually cheaper than having a car, and so much less stressful — it hardly ever stops us being where we need to be; and for longer journeys we enjoy trains. Our house is adequate for the needs of the two of us, albeit not in the very best of areas, and we’re not ones for wanting to boil like lobsters in sunnier climes.
That doesn’t mean we don’t do things and don’t get to the places we need/want to, though it does mean we need to plan ahead a bit more, thus foregoing a certain amount of spontaneity. We try to think ahead and make considered, rational decisions: plan twice, act once.
Of course things go wrong. And when they do, well that’s life. You pick up, shrug your shoulders, work out how best to fix the problem and move on. It is neither a drama nor a crisis.
As an example, a couple of weeks ago we were both due, the same afternoon, to go to the dentist for our bi-annual check-ups and abuse by the hygienist. Our dentist is 7-8 miles away and we keep going to him because he is so excellent, despite that it needs a taxi. In fact on this occasion a friend had promised to run us over there in return for petrol money, coffee and cake — fair enough. But at the appointed time said friend didn’t appear; and mobile phone contact failed.
Having reached past the appointed hour, even for Plan B, we rang the dentist and explained nicely what had happened and rebooked the appointments. If the dentist decided to charge us for late cancellation, as we expected and knew he should, well such is life; it happens occasionally. In the event they haven’t charged us. It turns out said friend was ill for a couple of days and hadn’t been able to top up his phone; hence the lack of contact. Yes it was inconvenient and it might have cost us money, but it wasn’t a grand tragedy. We carried on and enjoyed a bonus free afternoon!
Basically it is as Noreen says: we don’t do panic, excitement, drama or surprise; we just roll along letting things largely wash over us; taking everything in our stride. It all seems to be common sense — but then as we know there is no such thing!
I’ve had to learn to do this; I don’t know how I did it, but it has certainly helped me a lot over the years. I couldn’t have done project management at the level I did without it.
OK, our approach is not always benign. For instance we don’t always put the effort we maybe should into having things repaired, but resort to throwing money at the problem and buying a new one — although that is always a considered decision. We’re lucky that (at the moment) we can afford to. And of course it’s all doing our bit to keep the economy going. It is all part of keeping things ticking along gently and evenly so we don’t, for example, spend three weeks without a washing machine while someone fails to source replacement parts. Yes, it’s a trade-off between a peaceful existence and being green — slightly less green, maybe slightly better karma and certainly lower blood pressure? We could, I’m sure do better …
But having said that I just do not understand how people can exist on a continual roller-coaster of drama, panic, crisis and catastrophe.
It’s probably good that we’re not all alike.