Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Letting a Crisis Brew

Letting a Crisis Brew

The current administration in the White House have done a number of interesting things not the least of which is pointing to the value of having a crisis to work with. They have had two which were the financial meltdown and now the Gulf Oil Crisis. Early on in the Campaigning a joking reference was made to the fact that one should never let a crisis pass without taking advantage of it. This is an important aspect of problem solving and one that merits discussion.

Having a crisis gives you a mandate for action. President Clinton really didn’t have a mandate from the people to do something about the escalating terror problem that was building on his watch. Only after the Twin Towers did the people give that mandate to President Bush and it was the signature of his two terms in office. He was able to get the money and political support to take some pretty dramatic actions which included the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

President Obama has used the financial melt down and more recently the Gulf Oil Spill by taking actions to deal with the problems while at the same time furthering his political views….Like the tongue in cheek humor says, never let a good crisis pass you by.

I mentioned that getting control of my parents Health Care and Financial Power of Attorney required a crisis…until that happened, my wife and I had to let matters take their course…naturally we did what we could to prevent a catastrophic outcome however, my wife and I decided that if we were going to be responsible for them we had to have the power to go with it. If we kept jumping in and solving everything little issue that came up the problem was going to be like a tin can getting kicked down the road…They would use these issues as a means for keeping our lives in turmoil and to an extent controlling our lives as well as theirs.

Often Parents with children who are out of control, follow along behind and get them out of one scrape after the other. Finally there comes a scrape that is too big to cover up and the system descends and some form of draconian confinement outcome rears its head. The point I am making is that sometimes crisis is a good thing. It is natures way of getting us to correct a problem instead of trying to put a Band-Aid on it. The notion of “Tough Love” is becoming more popular…which is essentially not trying to clean up after our children…let the crisis develop and hold them responsible for their behavior…This approach is fraught with dangers and uncertainty but letting little problems develop that those responsible can solve on their own instead of waiting for a big one is something to think about.

There are three issues here really. The first is not solving other peoples problems for them. A purpose of this series of blog articles is to show readers the process for solving problems. Once you know it you can teach others how to use it, which is the preferred mode over using it to solve other people’s problems for them. That simply does not work too well. The second issue is learning how to step back and let others suffer and thereby learn the error of their ways…that is often hard to do. Finally there is the need to use a crisis as a teaching point for behavior.

When I pray one of my favorites is …“Lord, If I must be tested let the testing not be too harsh.“ I would prefer smaller more frequent crisis than fewer more sever ones. If you keep kicking the can down the road, eventually there will come the sort of crisis that is huge and one that you won’t have any choice but to deal with. Before that day comes think about how you solve your own problems and be careful “Helping,“ those around you,