Problem Solver
There is much to learn by solving our problems
I wanted to sleep this afternoon. My back ached and my body felt sore. But my mind couldn’t shut down. I remembered something from a conversation with a friend. We met up here in Dubai, a while back, after years. M had got busy with her career and me, with my family. M was telling me how and why she learned to drive a car.
I wanted to get some courage, hopefully from her experience, I thought it would change my mind, and would shake away the tension I feel around my eyebrows each time I think about driving a car in Dubai.
She had learnt to drive a while back. We drove in her car from a café to her home. I was amazed. This woman was so young in college, I thought. Yet here she was driving me around, without any discomfort.
I was looking for something that would make me feel normal like we shared the same weakness. Driving around 100- 120km/hour should have made her scared too. After all, you might bang into a pathway if you don’t apply the breaks in time. The car would topple around, and bang other cars on the road, leaving so many people and yourself injured.
There are few accidents in this part of the world, but they look and sound the worst. My husband was narrating recently how a Mercedes-Benz jeep, very common in Dubai, met with an accident.
He said the car toppled, turned into a box, the bonnet got smashed and the tires were facing the sky. When I asked him about the person inside, he said I wasn’t there when it happened but he caught a glimpse of the car, the police, as he passed through the same road, on his way back home.
Yet, this woman, a decade smaller than me, drove without any issue of confidence. She played it cool when she told me she didn’t want to be that type of woman when I asked her why she learned to drive in the first place. After all her husband had her car and could drive her around.
She said she had felt stuck one day, and then that was it, she had decided on that very day to learn to drive.
She trailed off the conversation with that type of woman, for me to fill in the blanks. A sophisticated woman — she left out the messy parts.
What she meant was that she didn’t want to be a nagging bitch to her partner. I pondered this subject but it quickly faded away as I got busy with my kids that evening.
The lesson I learnt was this: She had taken the steering wheels in her hands. She didn’t want to depend on her husband to take her around. Sometimes husbands are not in the mood to drop us someplace. Sometimes men aren’t gentle and sometimes they do want to be your chauffeur. I understood what she meant.
I had a lot of experience in this matter, but it hit me today. I could relate to her in so many ways.
Today when I put up the lighting for our Christmas tree at home, I didn’t want to be that type of woman. I asked my partner a couple of times but I heard nothing from him.
Men always have to be the handymen. I know it can be annoying for someone to be the handyman of the house because I have lived with my mother who always wanted me to help her use her mail as she kept forgetting her earlier passwords.
So, I put the lighting up myself. I was a bit hesitant to get my sleeves dirty, but I wanted to succeed in doing it. Even if it is the smallest simplest thing for most people, it was big for me.
I thought about it, how to put the lighting around the Christmas Tree?
I tried to put the lighting from down to top where the gifts are put, and from top to down where the star is.
But here was the problem: The lighting was too long. It wasn’t the sophisticated Ikea ones, it was the outdoor ones, the blink-blink-colourful ones. (Thankfully the lights were those that take a few seconds to blink or our hall would look like a discotheque.)
We could buy new ones, but these were the ones we had at home (Jugaad, something most Indians are good at, including me). I had to use what I had. So, I ran the lights around the tree from top to down and put the extra 1–2 meters of lighting in a zipper bag at the bottom.
The Christmas tree didn't look chic of course, but I was happy with my effort.
My husband was pleasantly surprised, although I knew he wanted to put up the lighting or participate in putting up the Christmas decorations as a family this year, I couldn’t wait any longer as Christmas is fast approaching.
As a third and the last child of my family, I learned I could always ask for help. It became a way of living. Not solving my problems but getting someone to fix it for me.
It's a quick fix. And I don’t have to break my head on the details. But I didn’t realize how good a kick it is to solve my problems.
I have seen many of my girlfriends behave in the same manner. No offense but we women rely on others a lot to get our work done. There is nothing wrong in asking for help, except that it denies you of something big. Empower. When you learn to do something at home yourself, you feel capable of bigger things.
You want to see something to the end. You feel responsible for every part. Also, no one can act smart with you because you know how to do things. You wear the cap, the cap to solve your problems.
I learnt this lesson, some parts, in a course I had taken up last year. It was a virtual assistant course I had taken up online. I didn’t end up completing the course, but I learnt a good lesson from it. The lady was a popular YouTuber.
What she said was that you can figure out a way to help your client. Her point was to never say no, or not agree to work that comes your way, even when you might not know the nitty-gritty of things.
Everything can be figured out, except when you are in a profession where small mistakes can lead to a huge disaster, such as a pilot, everything else is doable, researchable and practice-able when you have the internet at your disposal.
You just need to have the attitude of a problem solver.
For the next few months, I tried out her advice in my house. When my landline fell from the top of the fridge, its batteries were scattered around, I tried fixing it myself. I didn’t call my husband or wait for him to return in the evening to do it.
I didn’t give him the pleasure of helping a damsel in distress. When I couldn’t get it, I checked a video and fixed it. When it worked, and I could hear the phone was alive, I was relieved. I didn’t allow anyone to babysit me (Even though my partner was gentle each time, I asked him to be the handyman), I didn’t want to hear that voice in my head go, oh, it was so simple, and yet you couldn’t figure it out.
I learnt what my elder sister was doing throughout. She was independent to a T.
The power to solve your problems makes you independent and gives you a high like no other.
You may ask why not ask someone, your husband, dad or any man to help you out, like open a tightly sealed pickle jar cover. You could, if you want to, but knowing that you can solve your problems, makes you a confident woman.
The fact that you don’t have to rely on someone to help you out as a woman, makes you courageous to go on to do more. You become visible, even when people don’t see you, you see yourself. There is a strange feeling of pride you would feel in yourself, that others won’t know how and when you changed for the good.
There is something you would have that many women probably may not have. Confidence. The ability to solve problems. The ability to be independent. It sparks feelings of happiness and positivity in you, you would feel it when people like you and want to be around you.
You start to believe in yourself, and your capabilities. There is nothing wrong with asking someone for help, but it denies you the opportunity to believe in yourself, one more time. When you feel stronger, you can go on to crack more problems for yourself, you won’t need rescuing unless you want it.
https://medium.com/modern-women/modern-women-december-writing-prompts-9f87214a2325
