Dragon Slaying and Loving the World
"Anyone can slay a dragon, she told me, but try waking up every morning & loving the world all over again. That’s what takes a real hero."
- Brain Andreas
I love that quote from Brian Andreas. I think about it a lot. Sometimes, it's in the context of things like the news, the state of the world, climate change - the big problems that seem crushing and overwhelming and full of despair.
Sometimes though, it's about the smaller things, the pick-yourself-back-up-and-dust-yourself-off things. The failed batch of cheese. The kids' gym clothes we forgot again. The bus we didn't make. Again. You just have to turn up and try to do better.
Recently though, I've seen that lesson appear with work. We've had a run of set backs of late. From massive courier problems that really crippled our ability to deliver, a lost contract, unexpected business costs and a project that almost went disastrously wrong. In a terrible mood the other day anyway, we had a string of mishaps - I managed to let all of our new baby ducks escape, flooded a barn, blew the power out on half of the farm and melted a piece of the expensive cream separator. I was so mad at myself I even managed to yell at the ducks for not listening (because they speak english so well)! Some days, if we were the sort of people that look for signs, they would probably point to doing something else entirely with our lives.
Thank goodness we aren't those sort of people, because sometimes the failures tell you less about what you did wrong but more about how many things simply are out of your control (see also: selling meat boxes in Veganuary!) and how the real success is how you deal when things inevitably don't go the way you planned them. And while I don't recommend yelling at baby ducks, I do recommend putting your head down and just dealing with it.
And tomorrow, we wake up and love this life all over again.
