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Acting vs. Reacting

While I was picking up a few things at Target late one Sunday evening, the skies opened up. I had neither raincoat nor umbrella. Ordinarily, I would just sprint to the car. But this was no mere drizzle; this was serious precipitation. Water falling in sheets. I ducked back into the store to wait it out. When I reemerged ten minutes later, I had a brand new umbrella in hand, ready to brave the deluge.

The spontaneous purchase was justified, I reasoned. We own only one umbrella, and sometimes one just isn’t enough. Four people plus one umbrella equals four mostly wet people. Not only that, but my husband for some unfathomable reason doesn’t like toting the umbrella we do have. Can’t imagine why. It is purple, with a handle shaped like a duck’s head. What, purple ducky not manly enough?

So my new gender-neutral umbrella and I exited the store. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The drenching rain had all but stopped, the rain that had been pummeling the parking lot just minutes before. I felt a little silly tucking my new and now totally unnecessary umbrella away. Perhaps we didn’t really need TWO umbrellas.

Why was I in the predicament in the first place, unprepared for rain? Because I failed to plan ahead. Because of my failure to plan, I was forced to react to my situation. (I could have checked the weather; I could have kept purple ducky in my car.) This got me thinking about acting versus reacting, in rainy weather at Target on Sunday night, and in the rainy weather of life.

We can be active participants in our lives, or we can be passive and react largely to what has already happened. We can shape our lives, or be shaped by them. As someone who is by nature introverted, I have to work hard at trying to create opportunities for myself rather than sitting around waiting for them to come along. Life is too short not to.

To apply this principle- acting rather than reacting- to our parenting, it can be useful to try and predict when challenges might occur and try and head them off preemptively.

Today, I will try and keep my daughter’s mind and body engaged at times when I know mischief might otherwise be made. I will try to act before the trouble starts, rather than always feeling like I am reacting to her after the naughtiness has taken place.

Lessons learned. I now keep an umbrella in my car. It’s too bad, though, about my husband: there’s something so endearing about watching a handsome 6 foot 8 inch tall man wielding a purple ducky umbrella.

Dana Petersen Murphy is a stay-at-home-mother who lives Janesville. Dana is a community blogger and is not a part of Janesville Gazette staff. Her opinion is not necessarily that of the Janesville Gazette staff or management.