My last time out on the golf course made The Bishop’s round in Caddyshack seem like a light drizzle. By the time we hydroplaned back to the clubhouse, we were drowned rats. My golf bag was soaked, along with my headcovers, gloves, and beloved Koozies—which somehow felt like the greatest dignity of all. Everything went into the basement wet, where, with more rain predicted, I knew it would remain wet until mildew officially claimed it as its own.
A few days later, the sun finally came out. The forecast called for beautiful blue skies, so before leaving for work, I set my clubs and assorted golf gear on our front porch to dry.
But when I got home that evening, the clubs were gone. No big deal. My wife must have brought them inside, right? She hadn’t.
Rut-Roh.
We don’t live in the kind of neighborhood where someone casually walks onto your porch in broad daylight and steals a set of golf clubs. It just didn’t make sense.
But the fact remained that my clubs had vanished. So, channeling my best Jim Rockford, I began my investigation.
I questioned the family. Nobody had seen them. I retraced my steps. I re-checked the basement. I checked places where I hadn’t been in years.
I was about to file a police report when I conducted one final interrogation of the household.
My wife casually mentioned something.
“Oh, I did schedule a charity pickup today.”
Interesting. Tell me more.
“But I never got a chance to put the clothes outside.”
Even more interesting. Say less.
I looked toward the porch. She looked toward the porch. There was a pause. Hmmm.
“No chance they thought I was donating my golf clubs, right?”
The next morning, I called the charity. There was indeed a record of a pickup at our address.
Serenity now! Somewhere out there, a homeless guy might be swinging my precious driver.
I was angry. Confused. Frustrated. But here’s what made the whole thing strangely difficult.
There wasn’t really anyone to blame.
My wife hadn’t done anything wrong. She had scheduled a charitable donation—a decidedly nice thing to do. The charity hadn’t done anything wrong. They arrived at an address where they were supposed to collect a donation and found something sitting exactly where donations are normally left. I hadn’t really done anything wrong. I put wet golf clubs outside to dry on a beautiful sunny day.
Everybody had good intentions. And yet, something had gone terribly wrong. And doesn’t that happen too often in our work and personal lives?
We Can’t Play the Blame Game
Our work lives are filled with situations like this. A colleague thinks someone else is handling something. A manager gives instructions that seem perfectly clear to them but aren’t clear to anyone else. Someone makes a reasonable decision based on incomplete information. Someone misinterprets a deadline and the project fails. And immediately we want to know: Whose fault is this?
Sometimes that is an important question. Accountability matters. But sometimes there simply isn’t a clean answer.
There are gray areas in life where good people make reasonable decisions, and something still goes wrong. Resilient people understand the difference between accountability and blame. Accountability asks: What happened, what can we learn, and what should we do differently next time?
Blame asks: Who can I be angry at?
Only one of those questions moves us forward.
What Can We Control?
The same thing happens in our personal lives.
Relationships get tangled in misunderstandings. Someone says the wrong thing with the right intention. Plans fall apart based on miscommunication. And sometimes we contribute to our own problems.
Maybe we worked too much. Spent too much. Drank too much. Took something—or someone—for granted.
Resilience isn’t pretending those things didn’t happen. And it isn’t searching endlessly for somebody to blame. It’s recognizing what we can control now.
We can apologize. We can change a habit. We can have the difficult conversation. We can learn to appreciate the people who are still sitting beside us after we’ve made a mess of things.
We spend an awful lot of time mourning what we’ve lost instead of appreciating what remains.
Let It Go
At the time of this writing, I still do not have my golf clubs.
I have no idea where they are. I hope they’re doing well. Perhaps my driver is finally being used by someone capable of finding a fairway.
But if those clubs somehow find their way home, I’m going to appreciate them a little more. And even if they don’t, I still have so much in my life to appreciate.
And that’s the point. Because resilience isn’t about finding someone to blame for what we’ve lost; it’s about learning from it, letting it go, and appreciating what—and who—is still right in front of us.