The Drawing Board

Tonight, my daughter performed in the ending performance at the camp where she has been a counselor. We have been pondering her costume for most of the last two weeks. There was a dress--but it didn't fit. There was another dress--but it wasn't nearly the right shape or really the right color. There was a skirt--but no top. There was a top--but without enough "zing."

But then there was a household fabric for the color, and party decorations for the "zing." And all put together, her costume looked just right--and was manageable for transporting and for putting on.

While I was excited to see my daughter all dressed up and performing, that's not really what this post is about. At each step in the costume process, we hit a wall. We couldn't find, or spend the money on, what we needed. We felt overwhelmed by the thought, and out of our league with the task. But as the task didn't go away, we didn't go away either.

Almost every day, we are faced with tasks that are beyond our skill set, beyond our level of creativity, beyond our budget. We could choose to stop there, to say, "sorry, I can't." But if we keep at it, believing that we can get beyond our limitations, we often find that we are more creative than we thought, more resourceful than we thought, and maybe more successful than we thought.

We could have stopped with an "almost okay," "close as we can come" costume for my daughter's performance. But we went back to the drawing board, over and over, and we came out with a product that made us both proud and helped make her shine in the show.

Sometimes it takes going back to the drawing board--being willing to question, and try again, until we really get what we want. And isn't it better to get what we really want?