This Week at Sedbi Design Studio: Lessons in Being Helpful

floor plan
photo by Nita Lou Bryant

This week I am in Chattanooga, TN.  The purpose of my visit is to help my beloved in-laws with their move from a four-bedroom, two-story house to a two-bedroom apartment in a senior living community. I imagined I'd be spending every day this week packing, packing, packing, then ferrying small boxes of stuff over to the new place and unpacking, getting things all settled in their new places before the big furniture move next week.

I imagined wrong.

As it turns out, things are proceeding at a much slower pace. I've been in Chattanooga for four days now and have packed, oh, about a half-dozen boxes. I've been to the recycling center to pitch glass, plastic, and paper into the correct bins. My assigned task this morning was to make blueberry muffins.

All my preconceived notions about how this move would be accomplished--and the many ways I could be of invaluable help--have been tossed right out the window.  Instead, this is turning out to be one more big, fat opportunity to let go of expectations and simply be in the moment, to sit back and enjoy the ride instead of insisting on steering.

In other words, it's been extremely difficult!

A lot of speeches I've made in the past about what's helpful and what isn't are coming back to bite me on the keister. How often have I said something along the lines of, "Well, it's really only helpful if people do what you actually want them to do, not what they think would be helpful to do."

For example, I am moderately famous in my circle of friends for frequently rearranging the furniture at my house, and I like to think I'm rather good at it. So when my father-in-law asked me to draw around the little cardboard furniture cut-outs he'd taped onto a floor plan of the new apartment, my eyes lit up. Why, not only could I draw around those furniture cut-outs, I could also come up with several other possibilities for arranging the furniture in the new space. When it comes to arranging furniture, there are always myriad options! You just have to be open to--

No.

He really, truly only wanted me to draw around the furniture cut-outs so he could un-stick them from the floor plan. That was all the help he needed. More help than that was actually perceived as being, um, not helpful.

So I need to look at this more in terms of being on stand-by than piloting the plane. This huge task of moving will all get done, one way or another, even if it's not done the way I would do it. I'm here to help as needed, even if it's only by baking blueberry muffins or drawing around furniture cut-outs. I'm learning that sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to stop trying to be helpful.

(But just between you and me, I still think that recliner would work better in the corner of the living room.)