365 Lessons

(Critical Thinking About What The World Is Teaching Me Every Day)

#34 A Great Partnership Can Make Complex Challenges Seem Less Complex

[Lesson Break Down]

Life ain’t easy.  In fact, as wonderful as it can be, it’s downright complex and intensely challenging at times.  The right partnerships can make that complexity and those challenges easier to manage.

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I’ve been trying to get over a lingering head cold for the past few weeks.  It’s the type of thing that wakes me up with sore throats and stuffy sinuses just enough so that I don’t get the sleep I need to shake it.  I feel better during the day and fade fast at night.  My wife is pregnant with our third child.  The first two keep us pretty busy and now that she’s going on thirty weeks the countdown is at hand.  Two nights ago as I sat in the bathroom with hot shower steam clearing my 2-year-old’s croupy lungs at two o’clock in the morning while my wife retrieved and set up a humidifier in his bedroom I thought, “Wow…we have a great partnership going here!”

This past weekend was filled with surprises.  Yesterday I was home sick with both of the boys.  Even when everyone in our house is healthy our lives are a wonderful whirlwind of constant motion.  We love it and we wouldn’t want it any other way, but it is relatively challenging.  I’ve spoken to parents who think that parenting is easy.  Once, I even heard a father refer to his child as “pet rock” with a shrug of his shoulders.  My children are more like pet rock stars!  They wrestle, they shout, they run in circles for what seems like impossible amounts of time, they can turn a perfectly intact room completely upside down in a matter of minutes…boys!

I have tons of respect for single parents.  I honestly don’t know how they do it!  Like parenting, other complex things are made easier and better when the right partnerships are formed and nurtured.  Today I had cause to make the connection between my marriage as an incredible partnership and the incredible partnerships that have served to enhance learning for my students, my colleagues, and me over the years.  The more I learn the more I realize that not nearly enough can be said about effective collaboration as the only option for maximizing growth and achievement.  There’s a reason why clichés are clichés – two heads ARE better than one!