Lessons from frustration

It begins...

  Each year we hide a pickle ornament on the tree and the child who finds it first gets to open the first gift.  It was something that our eldest son heard about in school years ago.  We started by hiding a real pickle in a plastic bag.  Later I found a blown glass pickle ornament and the game was on.

Dad looks on and laughs

I'll shake it out of you!

    What the boys did not know when they started the tradition, was how good their father is about hiding things in plain sight.  At first, when they were small, we made it easy.  Let's just say last year took 25 minutes and they still could not find it...

    The search brings out such intense frustration, Christmas Eve they tried to find where I had hidden the ornament through the rest of the year so that Dad could not hide it on the tree.  What makes this even funnier is our tree in only four feet tall.  There are not that many hiding places.

found at last!

      Even with teamwork Christmas morning (and a major hint) it took 15 minutes.  He looks like he is making fun of finding it, but let me tell you, there was a lot of relief...  In watching them struggle, it reminded me of so many things in life.  We start something not knowing how it will turn out.  Most of the time we know life's risks, but we really depend on things going how we hope they will, rather than weighing the statistical probabilities (for a good explanation of this I recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, the law of small numbers chapter and more...).
    As reality rears it's ugly head and our hopes become tempered with reality (or with past memories) our reactions are out of proportion to the situation.  We get frustrated faster and internally give up.  May this be the year of releasing frustration and finding that which we are looking for (and many presents under the tree!)