My wise mother used to have some very wonderful one-liner sayings that seemed to make things better no matter the situation. Once when I was playing along in Jeopardy, I surprised myself by acing the Proverbial Sayings category because her expressions were so ingrained in my mind. Too bad I never had the guts to try out for the show. I realized that my mother’s sayings were mostly from Proverbs, or at the very least were historical idioms that had stood the test of time. She always said she was quoting her own mother who at one point, down the generational line, had a proverbial Irish grandmother.
One of my mother’s sayings was “a day late and a dollar short”. In her world, you never wanted to be either of these things. I am still trying to find out who first coined this clever expression but the practical application is “you are late” and “you are providing information that is late and less than helpful”. Today’s expression might be “arm chair (or Monday morning) quarterbacking”. Providing someone practical advice a day late no matter how sage or well-intended, rarely makes them feel good. From this oft-expressed maternal wisdom I learned to be on time and under budget, a quality which helped my work life when I was asked to manage projects and keep them within 10% margin. A micro-manager was born!
Enter the 31 day writing challenge and already I’m two days behind (more than 10%) and probably overspent to get the blog up and running. So this pressure should bring out the best in me – nothing like some pressure and a deadline, public embarrassment, loss of credibility, etc, to get the creative juices flowing. And what do I come up with? “You are a day late and a dollar short” says my mother’s voice in my head.
So what do we do when a project is a day late? Reprimand the person in charge, light a fire under the workers, ask why? In my experience, asking why is the fastest and most reliable path to resolution. There is usually a logical and important reason for being late. The “dog ate my homework” excuses aside, life sometimes takes us down different paths and we encounter obstacles we were not expecting, before being late. Shortly after 9/11, NPR interviewed people who were running late that day. The premise was survivor’s guilt, but the end result was how grateful they were to have missed the train, stopped at their kid’s school for the birthday party, or paused their schedule because the dog barfed just as they were leaving the house. This show made a lasting impression on me. How many times did I stress out about being late for something? I had good habits, but was far from perfection in showing up on time. Of course we all have that friend who is “notoriously late” and we usually learn to stop waiting on them. But do we stop to ask why?
So the next time I felt like I was a “day late and a dollar short” was during the recent hurricane cleanup efforts in our neighborhood. I would head out enthusiastically with donations in the trunk and fresh arms and legs all ready to help, only to discover they needed a bigger shovel, a bigger person, a bigger heart, or a bigger bank account. Once I figured this out, I was able to help in a more scaled back, timely, and reasonable fashion. In other words, “a day late and a dollar short” didn’t mean I was letting God, or people, or myself down, it meant my project plan needed tweaking. There was an obstacle I was not considering, I needed to open my eyes to understand what type of help was needed, when. If I didn’t have the skills or desire, I would let the A team run things. If I couldn’t help but knew who could, then I would get that person connected to help. I also stopped apologizing to myself, to God, and to others for not being heroic enough, or strong enough, or just plain enough “enough”. If I was tired, I would go back to my non-flooded house, say a prayer of thanks, shower, and rest. After all, I reasoned, I am not helping out of guilt, I am helping because its hard to watch people going through something difficult and not help. Others have helped me, therefore I should help others, was my driving mantra.
Somewhere in there I let go of being “a day late and a dollar short” as a character flaw. I needed to look at it more as a fact of life. I needed to turn the adage into an “ask why” moment, an opportunity to change course, downshift, tweak, resolve to find a better way. I needed to realize that sometimes being the right person , or the wrong person with the right skills, or any of those fateful combinations are not something I can contol. Just as a traffic jam makes you late even when you left early, sometimes being a “day late and a dollar short” is a sign to change focus, to look up and ask God, why? Sometimes it makes all the difference.
(lwr Oct 4, 2017, but it’s really Oct 6)