How do you handle life’s bumps in the road? Stop and turn around? Find a new route? Or pull on your wellies and plow through?
Different problems call for different solutions and there’s no magical skeleton key that unlocks every door…Unless its true grit and dogged determination…And sometimes even that doesn’t work. But at least you know you gave it your best shot.
I liked the metaphor in this photo (for Cee’s photo challenge), taken in western Kentucky during a flood a few springs ago. If you’ll look closely, you’ll see a couple of brave souls wading through the water, slogging on through to wherever they’re going. A nice reminder to be persistent in the face of adversity, no matter the route you take.
NestOfSquirrels 
I’m a detour kind of person. For instance, once when faced with what could have been a boring rehash of the professor’s lectures, I instead wrote a theology essay in the form of a humorous radio interview between the radio host and the archangel Gabriel. (I got an A.) Or this morning, puzzling over how to apply weather stripping to the warped mudroom doorframe in a way which would still allow the door to close, I ended up applying half of the stripping to the door itself. (It worked!)
An excellent approach! As Bruce Lee would say, “Be like water.”
So long as the wading through the water doesn’t take the “perseverant to the point of stupid” route – resulting in being swept away, I’m typically a plow through person. When I see that threshold coming up – I stop and look at all of the other options really hard before I take another step. I’m as stubborn as a mule once I calculate the distance between me and that “point of stupid.” Learned that the hard way more than once, but I eventually got the lesson!
Great post, Ben. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! And I agree about only having perseverance, but only ’til you reach the point of stupid…wisdom (at least for me) is usually hard-won 😉
I plow ahead and assess damage later-lol..but as I get older and wiser…I tend to approach with caution + “put my wellies on” or like I call them my garden shoes that I scrap off later:-) .great post!
Thanks! Life is an interesting journey…and a good pair of garden shoes comes in handy 😉 Cheers, Ben
I used to be a plow through type, but then I learned it can sometimes me much more interesting to take the detours. 🙂
True! And many times the scenery is better! 😉 Cheers, Ben
And what’s in that water? Chemicals? Snakes? Or worse? I’d find a better way! 🙂
You make a valid point! 🙂