Exercise Perspective: Harnessing the Power of the 5-Year Rule
There are two things I loathe with equal fervor: Traffic, and ticks. Today I stared both in the face.
First my toddler awakens in an epic mood; when I attempt to brush her hair she collapses and howls. I let her stay like that for a while – a good three minutes at least – and while she thrashes around like a beetle on her back I ruminate on whether this is a battle I need to pursue. Whether it’s a fight I really need to win.
Will this matter in five years?
The answer, of course, is no. So Screw it! I say, and my daughter leaves the house with a single giant dread lock at the nape of her neck.
It takes us over an hour (sixty entire minutes!) to get to preschool. It’s a new, depressing low, but we make it. I give my daughter a kiss on her neck just beside the giant dread lock and saunter from her classroom like a warrior, bloody but victorious, from the battlefield.
Traffic is so light on the way home I practically fly. The poor suckers in the opposing lane appear positively wretched as they sit, unmoving, in their cars. I bite my lip, feeling sorry for them but so, so grateful to be me. I’m free and almost home!
And then my cell phone rings.
Something drops in my gut. I don’t even need to look at the screen because I know. I know it’s my toddler’s preschool.
“Hello?”
“Stephanie? We need you to come back -”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing …Well, it’s a tick. We found a tick on your daughter.”
Cue the Mom Guilt. It floods me as I make an illegal U-turn and idle in the same traffic that frazzled me thirty minutes earlier. Nothing’s moving and I’m fighting the urge to Google Lyme Disease as I sit there in Rush Hour Hell. I wonder how I could have missed a tick on my daughter when I dressed her this morning. I wonder how long the lecherous creature has been camping out on her perfect, innocent skin. I wonder how I could be so incompetent.
And then, amidst my inner anguish, comes perspective:
Will this matter in five years?
I think about it for a long time, I really do. I think about how there’s probably a reason why my car’s rearview is small and the windshield is big, and how this is a beautiful metaphor for life. I decide I will happily forget about this morning – about both the tick and the traffic – quite soon. I think about how, at my core, there’s a life force that’s screaming, and I don’t want her to scream. I want her to sing.
So I march back into my daughter’s classroom. I have my tweezers with me (Why? Because I’m Super Mom, that’s why) and I examine the tick. It’s barely imbedded, and it isn’t even the kind that carries Lyme. Piece of cake! So I remove it with nary a flinch, then I give my daughter a gigantic hug and tell her she’s so brave. I square my shoulders. I’m on my way once more.
Much later, when my infant is howling and refuses to settle, I feel my anxiety rise. This is unlike her (she’s usually so even-tempered!) and there’s nothing like a baby’s wails to incite within me an urge to act. But again I find myself using the five-year approach and I’m instantly calmed, because none of this will matter beyond today, let alone this month or year.
There’s nothing earth-shattering about the five-year approach. It isn’t a novel idea, and it probably won’t change lives. But the technique invites the appearance of one important thing that’s missing in most mothers’ frenetic, daily lives: Perspective. So, to my fellow mom friends in the trenches: Get good and frazzled when it’s worth it. But know it’s rarely worth it.
