There is a natural tendency when we undertake anything to want things to go perfectly.  No problems or hitches.  Smooth as glass. But looking back at my own life and the experiences of others, the real stories are not in moments of perfection but when things go sideways.

I came to this conclusion last January.  I am a volunteer jump judge for horse events.  It was a very cold and cloudy day but no precipitation was expected.  As the riders warmed up, I noticed that the sky was getting ominous, the kind of sky right before it snows.  Then it did.  Just a snow squall.  Not heavy snow just lots of flurries blowing around with no significant accumulation.   I noticed one of the young riders was sitting on his horse, his mother standing next to him.  He was shivering as she tried to put her gloves over his already-gloved hands.  I walked over to check on them.  The young man said he wanted to leave without riding; he wanted out of the cold.  It was a small division (no more than 8 riders) and he was the first rider in the ring.  In less than 15 minutes he would be done with his ride and could pop back into a warm car to head home.  I convinced him to hang in there to get his ride completed.  He was already there on his horse all tacked up to ride.  No sense wasting the day. [And for anyone concerned that this was dangerous, there was no risk of anything bad happening such as a fall.  The jumps were just poles on the ground.]

After clearing the ring of the other riders, I started him on his ride.  He cleared the jumps easily despite the snow flurries.  I cheered him as he crossed the finish line.  I later learned he won the division.  Had he left before his ride he wouldn’t have had the experience nor would he have earned that blue ribbon.  It occurred to me he would have some good stories to tell about the time he rode his horse in the snow and won.  It wasn’t a picture perfect day for a horse competition but he shook off the weather and came out on top.

As I thought about this life lesson, I remembered my own experiences. The first to pop in my mind was an 18-mile training run I did one December.  I was training with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training to run the Goofy Challenge at Walt Disney World in Florida.  We started out under cloudy skies but then it started to rain then sleet and finally snow.  My coach ran alongside me for part of the run.  He said we were smart for continuing to run.  Other runners would probably look out the window and head for the treadmill.  But you never know what the weather will be on race day and you need to be prepared for anything.  I was skeptical.  The race would be in Florida and I couldn’t think of any news reports of snow in Orlando.  When I finished my training run that day, there was 4 inches of wet snow on the ground.  I scraped the snow from the brim of my running hat as I headed for home and a warm shower.

The next day I attended an event where I shared my experience from the previous day with my friends.  For some of them the thought of running 18 miles alone was difficult to comprehend but doing it in a snow storm was more than they could imagine.  Had it been a sunny day I doubt people would have been interested in hearing about my run. 

As luck would have it, the following month when we headed to Orlando for race weekend, Florida was experiencing the coldest weather in many years.  The national news reported iguanas (a cold-blooded species) were stunned by the cold, causing their limbs to stop working at which point they fell out of trees.  Race day wasn’t much better.  At the water stops any spilled water on the roadway quickly became black ice. I had to walk carefully through each water stop to avoid falling.  In some cases the water in the cups had frozen completely; there wasn’t any liquid to drink.  The weather made me think back to that 18-mile run in the snow.  Coach had been right.  You never know what the weather will be on race day.  Best to prepare for anything.

Instead of complaining when things don’t go as planned, roll with the situation and see where it takes you.  Because the real stories, the ones that people lean in to hear, are not when things go perfect.  They come out of the situations you never expected. That’s where the adventure begins.