Picture this.
It’s 2013, and Michael and I are in France.
We’d flown there so I could get treatment for my injuries at a rehabilitation facility.
It was tucked away in a small village called Lamalou-les-Bains.
The villagers of Lamalou are used to seeing all sorts of injuries, because people travel from all over the world to go to the rehabilitation centre. So, I felt comfortable enough to go out for dinner with Michael without my compression mask.
And because Michael was with me, on weekends we’d try and go exploring. One weekend we got a car and drove out to Cirque de Navacelles.
Cirques are really cool. They’re like amphitheater shaped valleys. And this cirque was even cooler, because it had a little hill inside the cirque. It’s called ‘the oyster’ by locals.
Anyway, the drive to the bottom of the cirque takes ages. So we’re driving slowly in our rental car with our windows down and I’m marvelling at this astonishing geological formation.
Mind blowing for a geology nerd like me!
We get to the bottom and I’m like “WOW THAT WAS AMAZING!”.
And Michael replies “Yeah! By the way, we’re almost out of petrol”.
Now, Michael is a super relaxed person.
So, if I say “Hey Michael, I’m gonna go to a skateboarding camp!”, he’ll usually reply “Yeah no worries darl, sounds good!”.
If I say “Hey, I have to do a live call for my running program so you and the boys need to stay in this room until I’m finished”, he’s also relaxed.
(Meanwhile my two children WILL escape from the room, run down the stairs to where I am, ignore my eye contact and start commando crawling their way towards me, whilst giggling. It is inevitable).
With my accident, his calm and relaxed demeanour was excellent. He was so reassuring for everyone in the family. When the doctors said they might have to amputate my hands, he didn’t flip out. He had the attitude of “Well, it is what it is”.
When he was told that recovery from burns takes years, again, he didn’t flip out. He was like “Yep all good, if Turia can deal with the pain, then of course it’s not hard for me to come to the hospital every day”.
So his calm demeanour is an asset.
But.
His calm demeanour also means that he’s not so meticulous with planning.
So, if we’re in a foreign country, and we’ve just spent three hours getting to the bottom of a valley, it’s not improbable that Michael would turn to me and say “oh yeah, we’re almost out of petrol”.
Just to put this in perspective, I was still in my compression suit, my black compression mask, and I had a specially designed air pillow that I would sit on – because my skin was so fragile that being in contact with something would cause my skin to flower open and create a wound.
So I wasn’t stoked by this turn of events.
But Michael reckons we can make it back up to a petrol station. So we start puttering back up the windy hill.
A quarter of the way up, the car starts to splutter and jerk and in a hundred more metres, it’s out. The tank is empty. Michael pulls over on the side.
“Hmmm” he says. “I reckon we might need to get some help”.
Did I feel like screaming? Like saying “WHY DID YOU NOT CHECK THE PETROL GAUGE?”
Yes.
Yes, I did feel like doing that.
But I was tired, and vulnerable, and didn’t have a lot of fight in me back in those days so I said, “OK, let’s go find help”.
I go with Michael, because he doesn’t speak French, and although I’m not fluent by any stretch, I can speak it better than Michael.
So up the side of the winding valley we walk. Me, slowly shuffling in my crocs, the steep incline stretching the skin on the back of my achilles and calves.
Around the bend we see a farm, and a Monsieur, and we wave to him and communicate that we need petrol. He thinks it’s a real laugh, and is talking super fast in French. He gets into his car and motions for us to follow him.
“Great”, I think glumly. “We are about to get murdered”.
He drives us to the top of the valley, to a petrol station. Michael hops out and buys a fuel caddy and fills it with fuel. The Monsieur knows about Lamalou. If you get past the beret and moustache, he seems really nice. We try to give him money, but he won’t accept. He holds up a beer coaster, and communicates that he collects them. And asks if we can send him some from Australia.
That, I can do. We get his address, return to our car, and wave goodbye to our saviour, his Citroen car slowly disappearing into the mist.
Six weeks later, when we’re back in Australia, I go to our local pub – the Marlin Hotel – and grab some coasters and post them to our French saviour.
All of this is to say I’m kinda of glad we didn’t have a perfectly laid-out plan that day in the French countryside. It’s a great story, right?! I wouldn’t be able to tell it if Michael was hung-up on the ‘perfect’ plan.
Here’s the thing:
When we get caught up in the teeny, tiny details of a plan, we give value to the things that don’t matter all that much. Arriving at a restaurant at 10:10am instead of 10:00am on-the dot isn’t going to ruin the holiday. Don’t stress about it.
Remember that, while plans provide us with a roadmap, it’s the detours that add colour to our lives.
Try not to sweat the small stuff, and try not to dwell on a plan gone wrong.
Oh, and keep an eye out for cool beer coasters. You never know who might collect them! And if you’re navigating a few unexpected detours of your own, you can find out more about my keynote on resilience here.
