My bathroom faucet has two knobs, one for hot and another for cold. On a particularly busy day, I rushed out of the bathroom and didn’t turn off one of the knobs fully. I came back later to running water that was more than just a minor trickle. I was disappointed in the waste I had contributed to and surprised by my lack of attention.
Then another day, my husband (Tim) left our primary key fob hanging at the lock on our front door. His hands were full so he left the key in the lock intending to come right back out to grab it. Meanwhile, I locked the door from the inside. We realized what had transpired after a couple of hours. The key fob had all our keys: the house, garage, car and mailbox. This was a big deal because we’ve personally seen an uptick and consistency in petty crime since Covid—stolen mail, packages, garbage cans, and most recently a smashed car window.
This last example is the most recent. We were stepping out for a walk when I felt a nudge to go back inside the house and check the stove. I found one of the burners on at low flame. We had just wrapped up brunch and Tim meant to make a second round of coffee in our moka pot but reduced the flame when he got interrupted. It went unseen by both of us.
After these events I became hyper-aware of turning off faucets and burners after use, and ensuring keys weren’t left hanging on external-facing locks. I was very tuned-in to the potential of harm from each of these scenarios. I knew that countless other random things can happen and do, but the ones I fixated on and learned from were those that happened to me.
I see this tendency in all of us and even for the bigger things in life. I knew a person who had almost drowned in her teens and had been on a life-long journey to overcome her fear of water. Another friend had difficult experiences in foster care and hadn’t seen healthy examples of family life growing up, so she chose to not have kids. Yet another highly competent surgeon friend was publicly brutalized by her boss even during intense surgeries, so she’s working on making medicine more humane for patients and providers. I have repeatedly experienced unexpected and out of turn deaths. This created an outsized fear of losing my loved ones and a heightened awareness of our limited time on earth. My experiences have shaped how I value human relationships and the work I’m choosing to do moving forward by centering relationality in my vocation.
There are countless human experiences and we can’t have them all. We are designed to tune into and learn from our leaky faucets, our unlocked doors and our boiling kettles. Experience is the primary tool for learning and once we embrace our own painful experiences fully, they become gateways to see another more completely. Difficult experiences may not be life’s weapon against us, they might be its most potent growth, connection and empathy tool.
“Tears water our growth.”— William Shakespeare, playwright and poet
