It’s Just Tuesday...

Most of life isn't a crisis. It's just life asking us to stay steady.

My favorite commercials right now are the ads where they try to stop people from turning into their parents.

You’ve seen them.

A guy correcting strangers in the checkout line. Overseeing construction sites that aren’t their property. Announcing coffee orders that are not theirs.

They are funny.

They also hit a little closer to home than I would like to admit.

I feel young. I feel strong. No health problems. Life is good.

But my youngest son, my baby, starts 10th grade this fall. He is driving.

Another one is graduating high school. Another is finishing college. One is tremendously successful and fully independent. Another is married with a baby of their own.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped being the young dad in the room and became the guy watching those commercials thinking, “That’s funny...oh wait. I am kind of that guy.”

If you asked my kids what dad says that makes them roll their eyes, I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

It has to be my reaction anytime somebody uses the word “crisis.”

I have become insufferable about that word.

Someone says, “this is a crisis,” and I can feel the old man speech rising:

“There I was outside Fallujah at 3 a.m., stuck in a minefield, three Humvees on fire, guys bleeding out of their ears, taking mortars and small arms fire, not sure any air support was coming. Let me tell you, son, that is a crisis.”

All of that happened. And yes, it shapes how I think about the word crisis.

I am not sure anyone going through something short of that really cares to hear my hot take.

But more importantly, sometimes I need to heed my own advice.

Because I have lived through enough real crises to know the difference.

And somehow I can still catch myself sometimes treating a canceled flight like a personal attack. Or accidentally cutting the fiber optic line that brings internet to the ranch and feeling like civilization itself had collapsed.

That is probably why I am writing this.

Not because I have mastered it. Because I haven’t.

I’m guessing I am not the only one.

The car won’t start. Traffic makes you late. You spend an hour on customer service hold, after arguing with a robot that nothing on the website will fix your problem, only to have the call drop the second a real person comes on the line.

Life is full of these things.

Annoying.

Inconvenient.

But not every inconvenience is a crisis.

I have written a lot about the big things.

War. Shame. Addiction. Recovery. Public failure.

The kind of moments where life breaks you open and you have to decide whether you are going to crawl out or stay there.

Those are real. They deserve reflection.

But most days don’t include a catastrophe.

Most days just have some friction. It’s just Tuesday.

That is where I think a lot of us get ourselves into trouble. We lose the perspective to size things correctly. Something that should be an hour-long detour gets promoted to ruining the whole day.

But there is something underneath my insufferable old man speech worth holding onto.

Even in that real crisis, even in those awful moments outside Fallujah, we did not get to flail around and make it worse. We did not get to scream our way into clarity.

We had to look at what actually happened and calmly ask the questions that mattered.

That is not just a lesson for war.

It is a lesson for whatever bullshit Tuesday throws at you.

Over time, I’ve found myself returning to this simple framework.

1. Start with what actually happened.

Not the story you immediately tell yourself. Not the insult you attach to it. Not the assumption. Just the simple reality. The appointment was not in the system. The car is not ready. Someone had the meeting on a different date. Most of us skip right past the fact and start adding intentions. Nobody respects my time. Nothing ever works out. This always happens to me. But the person at the car dealership did not wake up that morning and say, “Let me screw Nathan today.” Something just happened. Start there.

2. Then ask the question that matters.

What can I do? What are my options? Is there a problem I can solve? Or is this just a fact I have to deal with? Most of the time, there are not good options. Just available ones. Lay them out. Pick the least bad one. Move on.

3. Size the issue correctly.

My wife has a line I love. “No one’s dead. No one’s going to jail. We’re going to be okay.” That may not solve the problem, but it usually puts it back in its proper place. That doesn’t mean the problem is fake. It is certainly frustrating. It may cost money. It may throw off your plans. But frustration is not a catastrophe. Inconvenience is not a collapse.

This is not the same as pretending everything happens for a reason.

I do not believe someone backing into you is a spiritual assignment. But if you are stuck waiting for the tow truck, you still get to decide what to do with that time. Call an old friend. Take a breath. Think about how much worse it could have been. If you are stuck overnight in a city you never planned to visit, find one thing worth seeing. Eat somewhere local. Walk around. Make a memory out of what was supposed to be dead time.

But find pride in being steady. There is a quiet kind of strength in those who take things in stride.

Not indifference and not because nothing bothers you.

But because you have learned not to hand every inconvenience the keys to your nervous system.

It is a skill.

And like any skill, it can be practiced, refined, and strengthened over time.

Trust me, life will give you plenty of opportunities to practice.

I admire people who can do that consistently. They get bad news, take a breath, look around, and say, “Okay. What now?”

They are steady.

And steady is strong.

Maybe that is the lesson I am still working on. What I am striving to do better at.

Not just how to survive the worst days. But how to live better inside the ordinary ones.

I think back to that night outside Fallujah.

At the time, the whole world narrowed down to fire, dust, blood and bullets.

It was a crisis. A real one.

But when all was said and done, none of those young Marines died.

We got air support. We got the wounded out.

They lived. And we continued our mission.

We had to deal with reality as it actually was.

We had to look at our options.

We had to size the problem accurately.

We had to make the best decisions available with the information we had.

And keep moving.

That does not make what happened easy.

It just means the moment did not get the final word.

It rarely does. Unless you let it.

Maybe that is why I have become so insufferable about the word crisis.

Because most things are not.

Most things are just life asking us to practice the same skills on a smaller scale.

The flight gets canceled.

The truck will not start.

The day goes sideways.

Deal with reality.

Look at your options.

Stay steady.

Keep moving.

Most of life is not Fallujah.

It’s just Tuesday.

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