I always felt vaguely frustrated by the phrase “expect the worst but prepare for the best”. How do you prepare for the best if you’re expecting the worst? Shouldn’t you be preparing for the worst? And why even bother preparing for the best if you’re expecting the worst?
I have a dog. Her name is Persie. She is a rescue pup with a missing front paw that is simultaneously very obedient and willing and also very troublesome. Much like my children. I assume much like me.
I did not get Persie. My wife got Persie. She’d been wishing for a dog since we moved to Del Rio, and finally saw this beautiful fluff ball and said “I’m getting this dog, unless you have a really good reason not to.”
Persie is not our first dog. We had a dog in Utah named Gracie. She was not exactly a rescue. The neighbor’s dog had accidental puppies, and we managed to snag one. She was an adorable spaniel-bernedoodle mix that I loved. While I was at officer training, about halfway through, my wife decided she just couldn’t manage the dog and a child with her mental health problems. It was heart-wrenching for both of us, but we were fortunate enough to have a neighbor who really wanted her so she ended up in a loving home.
So we got Persie at the beginning of February. It was the day before snowstorms shut down the town of Del Rio for a week, and about a month before my wife hit her lowest mental health point. She was still riding the tail end of a 6-month-long manic episode and thought she was managing her depression better because we did not yet know it was bipolar. So she decided she could handle a dog.
I have a huge passion for dog training. I wish I had more time to dedicate to it, but I do my best. Between that and my wife’s tanking mental health, Persie became my dog. She listens to my wife fairly well, but since my wife doesn’t have the mental energy to train consistently it’s not the best. Some things Persie does drive my wife crazy. She can’t stand how her nails click on the bottom of the crate. She hates the sound of Persie chewing or licking herself. These are mostly true when she is in a depressive phase, but that doesn’t really change the point.
I’d been thinking the other day that maybe it would be a bad idea to take Persie with us to Japan. It will be a huge ordeal to get her there, and then rehoming her while in Japan would be a much more difficult problem. And if I’m deployed for 6 months, or even just gone frequently, how is my wife going to handle her and give her a good life?
Then my wife came to me with the same thoughts. While we were talking about it my dad, who was visiting, mentioned he’d had the same thought as well. You can’t just ignore that many people having the same thought at the same time. So after a very brief discussion I managed to convinve my wife it would be ok as long as we could find a good home for her. I would be heartbroken, but only until she moved on. I’d done this before.
And then we were on a walk yesterday. And I said “Wife, I’m really sad that we’re getting rid of Persie.” And she said “Me too.” And then we proceeded to discuss what we could do over the next 6 months to prepare me, her, and Persie so we could keep her.
We haven’t decided to keep her for sure. We still have a plan in place for rehoming her (it will be easier in a bigger city anyway). But wouldn’t it be great if we could figure out how to keep her and not lose part of our family?
And then this phrase clicked a little bit. We have a plan for the worst case scenario. We’ve accepted that outcome. And by accepting and planning for that outcome, we can focus all our attention on bringing the best case scenario to life. Instead of wondering what’s going to happen, we can spend our time on trianing us and her more. And the worst case of our preparations for the best case is that we train her and prepare her more for success in her next home.
To apply it to another area: the worst case scenario for my logging project Mouseion is that I build it and nobody uses it. I quietly shut it down and call it a day. Great. Now I can focus on making it work instead.
So I guess just make that contingency for the worst place, work for the best, and go do something great.