Setbacks, for the win.
Setback.
When it first hits, the word itself makes us feel as if we are just pieces on a board, unable to control the hand that positions us. Still, we’re not actually inanimate markers in a game. We determine how we are going to live our lives and we determine which unwashed or washed or manually labored, full-of-dirt hands get to touch us. None of those hands moves us on a board. Life’s not a board game.
Maybe life is a highway.
And it just so happens, you’re going my way.
Setbacks are really visceral. We know they happen to us, we know the dreaded apprehension we feel as setbacks are about to hit others, we know that the fame-seekers who stand at podiums and lecture about how setbacks can be disrupted should take a hike.
Setbacks are disheartening. Many of us have spent our lives trying to prevent setbacks. Take, for instance, pandemic planning. I gladly signed up for it years ago, knowingly full well that any infectious disease and public health crisis prevention will make opportunities in other medicine flourish. We can find cures faster when public health remains optimal. Setbacks on all levels are disheartening because most of us have tried to scrap and save and prevent just to live.
Setbacks affect. They affect every point of every energy molecule we have. For most of us, general life plans are sketched. We leave room for a few welcomed surprises to fill the days and years. Yeah, dirt-on-the-hands romantic surprises are a lingering thought. You know it’s true.
And most of us separate personal and professional plans. Navigating it all is easier with others alongside. Setbacks affect this, they are so unwelcome, they are not the surprises we had intended.
Setbacks are chaotic. Most setbacks happen out of our control. Sometimes no one is responsible, but often others are. Sometimes no one has a plan for you, often others will try to jump in and create a life plan for you. All of this is just clamor and we can’t even hear it anyway.
Setbacks matter. Whether setbacks happen in the personal or professional lane often doesn’t matter. What matters is the frustration, the loss, our perception. Maybe we don’t know who participated in the causation. Maybe the setback truly is all circumstantial. But here we are, cradling our life plans, trying to keep what is left of the tattered blankets and cloth in our arms. And that’s what matters.
Setbacks are personal. We may talk about our own experiences, and I’m even more glad to spotlight mine when you are going through your own personal stuff. I do this often. Maybe it’s because I know what a private person feels when setbacks are public. Likely it is a shield for you, so nothing you experience privately need be anything but private.
Here, let me shield you. I love you anyway so I may as well do so publicly:
Setbacks always disregard the professional or personal lane. I know this because exactly eight years ago I met up with my ex-boyfriend. After feeling things out, as any two people should do after time away, I let him know I was going to date online. I let him know this because he is big and strong and protective and I would be alright online. I also love when he’s happy and wanted him to be happy with the right one. If it wasn’t me, I wanted him to find her. Not yet thirty, I was excited to find a soul match and maybe have a family. Within a year, this personal plan was shredded. A little over a year later, my new personal plan was altered to meet an immediate urgency: to patch up the hemorrhaging of emotions. A setback from the perfect storm. Former memories were everywhere in my head, vague and lingering emotions that come from a law enforcement family life, a former county’s newer leadership. Leadership that was inevitably connected to cases throughout the county, throughout the county neighbors. Emotions about our neighbors. This setback was in the spotlight, and I couldn’t even lean on my ex-boyfriend. I cried on my bed, knowing it was observed, no choice but to tell the observers this was a perfect storm and they were part of it. Now other people would have personal impact from this too, which of course is the worst.
The setback fired in my mind like no other. Fast forward another year, and my teary eyes were looking at some tough mud message from Mark Cuban on Cyberdust.
When there is a setback in life, whether it was the personal or professional lane often doesn’t matter. My professional plans crashed when my personal plans crashed. Many of you know this, and the tech, sports, media, Hollywood, global leaderships, other groups and I teamed up for a great future.
It doesn’t matter which lane I was in seven years ago. I still could help create a system that tied health delivery with innovation toward cures, yet first I’d have to deal with all these people who had been watching, then deal with my personal mental wellbeing, then start over in a new city with new faces to communicate. It would get done, and it would take much longer. I wouldn’t be able to start a family yet. A setback for the win, I used LinkedIn, then Twitter, then published on websites and such.
Operation Shield, a success.
Setbacks are setbacks. They can be fate, or a divine intervention, or whatever we may believe. We can quiet the noise of the psychology that babbles on about philosophy of coping. Things happen, sometimes people cause them, if we want to believe it was divine planning we believe it. We may choose to cradle our tattered cloth for awhile, we may decide it is time to be inspired and get tough, we may just sit. In all of this, setbacks can be, in the long run, for the Win.
Setbacks are individually timed. It’s up to the individual, that whole figuring out how much the setback should stay in one lane before you put your turn signal on. The rest of us are on the highway with you anyway.
Setbacks reveal shared value. It does matter if you’ve been down this road before. Interruptions in Maps technology, as they run Saturday morning data on over, will matter less to your crash avoidance. We all have been down setbacks roads, of course, just not navigated with the same detail. Perhaps some of us have had a sprain, yet some no longer have a limb. Perhaps we all felt a degree of wealth setback during the financial crises, yet some of us lost the home we loved. Perhaps we all know what it’s like to lose a loved one, yet some have lost the one we raised. Perhaps we know what it’s like to spend the last of our paycheck on food, yet some can’t even get clean drinking water. Perhaps we remember feeling a mess of emotions during our 9/11 response as we went overseas, yet some actually traveled overseas. Perhaps we know what it is like to have our professional plans interrupted, yet some actually have lost their business. No, I’m not going to pretend I understand your entire situation. From the shadows, you wouldn’t pretend to understand mine. You would, however, insist on the broader, deeper, intrinsic, essential values. You would try to reach another with that energy. You would remind that we have some personal navigation skill already experienced, and this is a shared value.
And I would do so now for you.
Setbacks can be recognized. We recognize setbacks because we have road experience.
A setback is recognized only by the individual affected and, over time, can be for the win. As my people would say, ftw.
People should be able to talk, and walk, and live life with a quality to their health. This was true when I went to Minneapolis in 2015 and it remains true today. People need better safety in their own countries so that overall public health can advance. Our health will interplay with our neighbors’ health, politically, socially and otherwise. If we can improve all of this together, efficiency in basic medicine is realized and cures are much faster.
Pandemic planning and infectious disease management assures that we can do everything else in medicine better. Yet a pandemic happening isn’t going to destroy the rest of our plans for medicine. Some of the new urgency to health design will inevitably create better designs for all of healthcare. We will make this setback ftw. That much is recognized.
Setbacks can enjoy introductions. Introductions to words long ago are necessary in times of strife: People disappoint. Our larger governance has disappointed tremendously for decades and we can likely make the future much better, having experienced how ineffective it can get. I have disappointed you from time to time since 2015. Some of you disappointed me in trying to take my skill set without asking. Yeah I embarrassed you publicly for it. If that sting was a setback for you, then I look forward to you making it a setback for the win. People do really loud things when they aren’t being heard, and as disappointing as the loudness may be, I will be much more disappointed if our greater public doesn’t take wake ups, embrace the vocal ones and make the whole thing a setback for the win.
People who are hurt will disappoint, too. May they know they are still in, and may this arrow sail past the setback as it introduces a forgiving, inclusive future.
Setbacks can be bonding. I’m not an adult voice in the Charlie Brown comics, thankfully, so you will actually hear my words. I’m not going to squabble on about psychology and Ted Talks and how the setbacks are personal Silicon Valley bootstrapping moments. No thanks, squawkers. Setbacks suck and we all deal differently. Pass me a note during this lecture because I love you and want to go have fun and laugh.
Setbacks deserve respect. There is no point in stifling laments over time lost. That's patronizing. People who are responsible for disrupting and taking away your time or plans without ask are still responsible. We are not game pieces on a board and the only hands I want moving me to a new location are hands that would romantically find their way, to be honest.
Yet it also does no good to dwell. The point of justice is so that we don’t sit and dwell on tattered cloth forever, so that we may nurture and cradle our plans until we move about again, fresh threads in hand. Justice disappoints because it is a human run operation. I told you this in 2014 and if we hadn’t yet met, go back and read my writing. Everyone disappoints, the home court stays because we choose who stays and gets the extra pass on trust as we wish everyone well in life. We aren’t plastic players to be picked up and moved. You are in control of your life, even if the setback makes you feel like you are not.
You are in, and I love you, and I respect you. Be disappointed, and then come be visit me in my new location.
Setbacks are heard, they are never intimidating, and then we move on together. I’m here to tell you that when you make sense of it all in whatever way needed, there is also shared meaning. We are meant to accept that everyone disappoints, we are meant to love everyone as a human and you are meant to stand up after cradling that tattered cloth. You are meant to find some new fresh wraps for life plans.
Life is a highway and you’re going my way. If we’re meant to travel together, or live closer to one another, that beach is waiting. You’ve got some tough mud on your face and I may just know the perfect wave - or waterfall - to refresh it anew.
We have neighbors to look after, no one’s intimidated, everyone’s lanes will likely be repaved. We want to help people walk and talk and live a healthy life. So when you are ready, it’s time to get back to life plans.
As it sails past you, let this volunteer’s arrow never again be mockingly disregarded.
Setbacks can be for the W.