A bumper sticker from:
http://www.cafepress.com/+catchy-phra...

My husband and I were talking about the sad fact that even when we’re warned ahead of time that something might be difficult, we often don’t really believe it until experiencing it ourselves. I guess that’s where another saying comes from, the one about experience being the best teacher.

Here are a few examples we came up with:

Parenting. Everyone says it’s the hardest job on earth, but until we realize just how much love is involved we don’t really know how hard it can be to watch someone we love go through life’s difficulties. (We also start with a lot of expectations, which all too often don’t turn out to be very accurate.)

Bullying. I think at some point almost all of us have been bullied in one form or another. If someone said to us: You’re going to be bullied, so this is how you prepare for it—starting with not giving the bully emotional satisfaction of seeing how much their negative attention can hurt. But when it happens, guess what? It hurts. Not long ago, I made the mistake of using a private driveway to turn my car around—a circular private drive, with two entrances from the street. Just as I was putting my car into reverse, the owner of the home returned, barreling into his driveway from the other direction and aiming his much larger vehicle right at me. If I hadn’t reversed and backed out quickly (so afraid he’d hit me I didn’t even look to see if someone was on the street behind me) I was convinced he’d plow right into me to get me off of his property. Thankfully no one was in the street and I got away, but even in my mid-fifties it reminded me of what it felt like to be bullied. Not fun, even when I assured myself his behavior was at best rude and at worst dangerous. Was my crime of using his driveway so bad? Perhaps it might have been had I run over his lawn, but I hadn’t. So now every time I pass that house I think to myself: “A bully lives there.”

Rejection/failure. This is a broad topic and in our family it takes on various faces. In science, my husband has learned when he’s creating a new project—an electric car, a robot, a new computer program demonstrating one law of physics or another—he’s learned it’s going to take failure first to come out with something that really works. Try one idea, then another and another and another until he gets the result he’s hoping for, even if the original idea need adjusting along the way.

With writing, rejection is similar. I’ve often told newer writers that the first book a person writes, or at least the first version of the first book, isn’t likely the one that sells to a traditional publisher. That’s because, as in science, writing is a learning process. We get better at it the more we do it, but all writers—new or experienced—must work at it to create a story that sparkles.

And yet with both kinds of rejection, neither is personal—for example, if a robot doesn’t work, is my husband failing, or is the robot rejecting its maker? Of course not. And when an editor rejects a proposal he or she isn’t rejecting the person or, often enough, even the talent. They’re making an impersonal business decision that this project isn’t right for their business. Not personal . . . and yet yowsa, it hurts!

This week marks the beginning of summer vacation around here. I already know the added time my handicapped son will be at home will bring new challenges, because we face this every summer. I want to keep him busy yet it’s difficult to interact with him. I also know I won’t get much work done, so frustration is part of the mix. I’m forewarned that time will slow down a little, and not always in a pleasant way.

At least now I know to be forewarned won’t make the frustration go away.