The Parable of the Water Balloon
The quality of our life is not determined by the activities we participate in. It’s built upon how we feel about them. And that part is up to us to determine based on our expectations.
This time of the year with school ending and summer vacations start in real earnest always reminds of my elementary school’s field day that they always hosted on the last or close to the last day of school. Each class rotated around to different activities like four square tournaments and Red Rover—a game that I think has since been banned from most schools for good reason—and snack time, and so forth. The rotation everybody looked most forward to was the water balloon launching activity.
I’d imagine we’ve all seen the launchers before. Two people stand on a rubber tube making a taut rubber square with a pouch for a water balloon to be placed inside. Then each child would get a turn pulling back the pouch as far as they could to launch the water balloon out onto the field where the rest of the classmates would be waiting with metal garbage can lids to block the balloons from hitting them.
If the objective of the game was to remain dry, then blocking a water balloon with a metal trash can is a very bad idea because the balloon inevitably pops and splashed the person holding the trash can lid with all the contents of the balloons regardless of how masterfully they might have shielded themselves from a direct hit with the balloon. I seem to remember those early June field days as always being scorchers so most of the time the object was actually to get as wet as one could since that helped you cool off and in a strange way kids got extra cool points on that day depending upon just how soaked through you got.
Thinking about those days has made me realize that so often our perspective on lots of things in life from our jobs, to our families and beyond are built upon our own personal belief of what outcome we individually believe is the right outcome. When I’m preparing a presentation for work or for school I’ve noticed I often build a certain expectation of what a successful presentation should look like and then after I’m done with the presentation, I measure the success or failure of the presentation based on how well things ended up matching that preconceived vision of that success.
Setting my sites in this way always leads to some degree of disappointment because nothing can ever fit perfectly with our expectations. The most carefully planned and orchestrated project will always churn out something unpredictable whether it be a question that you hadn’t fully prepared for or the weather didn’t exactly cooperate or someone we’re counting on do complete a portion of the plan end up not doing it quite as well or even just not exactly in the manner we were expecting.
Personally, I love losing for ways of reframing scenarios where I know I will always feel some degree of disappointment because if we are living in that headspace, even with the most brilliant performances, we rob ourselves of portions of the joy that we could experience. So let’s relate this back to the water balloon launching story. If the goal of that activity is to block the water balloon then we will get wet. If the goal is to remain dry then we should just dodge the vaulted balloons. But if the goal is to cool off on a hot day, then we can let those balloon explode against our metal trash can lids and enjoy the cool and refreshing water splashing down on us and gain some coolness points too.
What I’m getting at is maybe we need to re-evaluate what success looks like. Instead of envisioning a polished presentation where participate only sing our praises, maybe we can set a goal to help our audience understand some concepts. That way being asked tough questions could be seen as a sign that people are engaging with your content and that they really paid attention. If a vacation isn’t turning out the way we had hoped, maybe we could shift the paradigm by setting a goal of spending quality time with the family having fun doing activities the family loves. That could happen anywhere even if the car breaks down or the amusement park ends up being closed for renovation or if the movie you wanted to see isn’t playing anymore.
The quality of our life is not determined by the activities we participate in. It’s built upon how we feel about them. And that part is up to us to determine based on our expectations. And, on a side note, I think life is way too short to remain dry on a hot June day when there are water balloons around.