On a brilliant September Saturday, the kind of day that demands you go outside one last time before fall settles into its full gloom, I packed all four kids into our minivan and headed to my office.
I had spent the last week emptying and cleaning the space that had once housed the five-attorney law firm I had founded. I was about to default on the lease and file for bankruptcy. But before I said goodbye to the space forever, I wanted to make a happy memory with my children. I wanted to find some way to remember this chapter in my life as something other than a spectacular failure.
The office park was empty; none of the other businesses were open on Saturdays. My kids and I unloaded baskets holding rubber balls of all kinds of sizes and colors and headed into the empty shell of the law firm.
Some of the balls were as big as my youngest, a rambunctious and enthusiastic two-year-old.
For the next two and a half hours, my kids, ages two, four, six, and eight, ran through the hallways screaming, laughing, and chasing bouncing balls.
That day from more than thirteen years ago is still one of my favorite memories.
You don’t need to win the lottery or make a viral video to change your life. All you need is to tell yourself a better story.
When I took the kids to my office, I didn’t know I was choosing to change my life. I was just muddling through being an unemployed dad who was now a full-time caregiver while my wife was in the middle of a deep depression that incapacitated her.
But something fundamentally shifted while playing with my children that afternoon.
Human brains are meaning-making machines
One of the quirks of the human brain, and one of its greatest strengths, is that it finds order and meaning in the chaos of the universe, even in places where there is no order.
This is why you see shapes in the clouds, some people see the face of Jesus in a burnt piece of toast, and why we have an insatiable need for stories.
We see patterns where they don’t exist and tell ourselves stories that didn’t happen to make sense of the world.
0 Comments