Cutting Room: Why Obstacles Are Opportunities

“The irresistible force meets the unmovable object.”  ~Gorilla Monsoon

My father died several years back, and in the process of moving on without him, we had to move many things.  But some things took more time to move than others, including a riding lawn mower that no longer rode.

The mower had been taking up space in a weathered and worn outdoor shed on our family’s  property.  Like the shed, this mechanized monster had seen better days: it was immobile, the chasse rusted, the engine ruined, and its four deflated tires sunken through the rotted and splintered plywood floor.  When it had been operational, it was my father who mostly operated it, dutifully cutting the lawn once a week during the summer months.  But its demise and neglect into a sedentary state coincided with my father’s failing health and eventual passing.

And so the mower sat, for two grass-growing seasons, like an artifact in a forgotten museum.  In that time, I took care of the lawn, using a small, battery-charged push mower that sounded like an electric razor grinding through a rough beard.  A few times, I tried to remove the rider and perhaps have it fixed, but it wouldn’t budge no matter my exertions, and I shrugged it off as a permanent part of the shed.

Until I decided otherwise.  The family consensus was that we needed a new shed, or we needed to repair the existing one.   Either way, we had to get rid of the rider.  With this decision made, the rest was easy: I hired a local handy-man who took one look at the situation, secured to the mower a thick rope, and using strength, guile and leverage, yanked it out into daylight.  With more muscle and mind-work, it was rolled up ramps to the back of a truck, and off it went to the town dump.

Immediately, sans mower, the shed looked different: it was no longer crowded or cluttered.  Revealed were walls that needed only a bit of patching, a floorboard that could be replaced, a good and ample space that with a few repairs would serve our purposes well.  In sum: where once we saw obstacle, we now envisioned opportunity.

And I saw an opening for introspection: why did I wait so long to have the mower removed?   What was the reason behind my indecisiveness, my inertia?  For help, I asked frequent column contributor Jason Kurtz, a leading psychotherapist in New York City and an expert on human behavior, his take on the matter.  He opined:

“What occurs to me immediately is how adaptable we are, and how that can be both a great strength and a weakness.  It’s a strength because there are a great many things in life we simply have to accommodate in order to live.  As children, we have to adapt to our parents rules.  Ideally, our parents rules are to help us live, but often they are simply obstacles we have to endure and live with.  Adapting, growing accustomed to these rules, is helpful because rather than getting frustrated each and every time we have to obey a rule we don’t like or don’t believe in, we simply get used to accommodating it and over time we can even forget that it’s something we maneuver around.

The downside is that we grow so accustomed to accommodating the obstacle, that we miss opportunities to change or improve the situation.  We see this a lot in therapy.  Children learn not to express certain feelings, or try certain activities, which were prohibited by their parents.  As adults, they no longer have these prohibitions, but continue to live according to their parents’ rules.  Part of what we do as therapists is question, why do you avoid this feeling?  Why don’t you try to talk to your boss?  Why do you always date the same kind of girl?  People have grown so accustomed to a life where they can’t have something, or have to avoid something, that they don’t even consciously know that they are doing it.”

Jason’s explanation did not address my situation with the lawnmower directly, but it hit the mark no matter.  When I read what he wrote I teared up – the root of my issue uncovered.  The way I now see it, I had been so accustomed to the mower being in the shed, no matter it’s condition, I could not conceive it not being there.  My father had housed it there, and that’s where it always belonged.  Moving it felt as I was going against his wishes, his “rules.”   But also, deeper and even more meaningful, it was me not wanting to “let go” of my father: it was  his mower.  When I saw it I saw him, cutting the grass, taking care of the property…of us.

Yet the thing about personal revelations is they often eradicate subconscious fears, opening up room in the mind for healthier thoughts and feelings.  In fact, instead of feeling as if had “betrayed” my father, I felt even closer to him.  I had brought up real and intense emotions that once out made me feel lighter, more free, and more connected to his memory.  And while I will stick with my little electric mower for the time being, if desired, there will be more than enough space in the revitalized shed for a new rider.

The possibilities, for me, and the shed, are endless.

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