'I don’t see problems; I see opportunities'

Mr. Walker was intelligent, articulate and exceptionally vital for a man in his late eighties. I introduced myself and explained that the nurse reported that there was a “problem” with him leaving his wife at home alone. He calmly and respectfully responded, “I don’t see problems; I see opportunities”. We immediately got down to the business of brainstorming options and I helped Mr. Walker locate a private duty caregiver who he paid to stay with his wife while he picked up and delivered his shoes.

Mr. Walker’s response to his situation reminds me of a scene from the movie, “Apollo 13”. Apollo 13 was a lunar mission which launched on April 11, 1970. The crew was comprised of Jim Lovell (commander), John “Jack” Swigert and Fred Haise. Space travel had become old hat to the general public, therefore not one of the major TV networks even covered the mission. The mission was upstaged by the reported breakup of The Beatles, (YouTube; “Apollo 13: The real story”). But that all changed when an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks blew out the side of the service module and crippled the space craft. Odds were slim to none that they would make it back to earth alive. Consequently, the nation’s eyes were glued to their TV screens over the next four days. I was a junior in high school and vividly remember the networks repeatedly replaying the famous message from Jim Lovell to Mission Control, “Houston, we’ve had a problem”.

Now back to the scene from the movie. Every controller and engineer identified a problem with the spacecraft. One of the control crew members itemized the problems to another who replied, “I know what the problems are…This is going to be the worst disaster NASA has ever experienced.” Then Steve Hubbard, the flight director retorted, “With all due respect sir, I believe this is going to be our finest hour.”

Jim Lovell, when interviewed and asked by Matt Lauer years later, how he stayed so calm in the face of likely disaster replied, “I was faced with a problem, and so if I did nothing but bounce off the wall for ten minutes , I would be right back to where the problem was.”

Steve Hubbard, the flight commander reflected, “In our line of business you only worry about the things you can do something about…We have a problem, but how do we get out of this problem; what are the steps.” Mission Control engineered a five-hundred step procedure that had to be executed perfectly by the Apollo 13 crew; otherwise, they would never make it back. And the rest is history.

Scott Peck in his book, “The Road Less Traveled”, wrote, and I’m paraphrasing, “Life is difficult. Until we accept this truth, we will constantly complain about how unfair life is. Life is a series of problems; do we want to complain about them or do we want to solve them?”

In the words of, “Lucky”, another departed fellow pilgrim, “We have to be careful what line of thinking we allow ourselves to fall into.” For what we say to ourselves, our outlook, determines our trajectory.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye be good, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness.” (Matthew 6:22-23)

Loren Hardin is a social worker with SOMC-Hospice and can be reached at 740-357-6091 or at lorenhardin53@gmail.com. You can order Loren’s book, “Straight Paths: Insights for living from those who have finished the course”, at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.