Stop Filling Other People’s Baskets

For thirty years, I thought “I have a problem” was just shorthand for, “Would you mind fixing it?”

Duhhhhhh…

I came into this world with exactly one factory setting.

Don’t whine. Do something.

No software updates.

No owner’s manual.

No customer support line.

That’s just how I shipped.

My brain hears the word “problem” the way a dog hears a can opener.

Not because I’m trying to run your life.

I have enough trouble running my own.

I just have this overwhelming urge to reduce unnecessary suffering.

For over thirty years, people have been bringing me broken things.

Careers.

Marriages.

Businesses.

The occasional family implosion.

Thankfully, when people hire me professionally, they actually want something fixed.

They arrive with what’s essentially an axe sticking out of their forehead and say,

“Could you remove this? Preferably before lunch?”

Those are my people.

They didn’t hire me to admire the axe.

They hired me to remove it.

Then there’s… the rest of my life.

I’ve started thinking that life is a lot like a grocery store.

We all push our carts through the same aisles.

We all choose what goes into our baskets.

And every once in a while…

there’s a spill.

Someone says,

“There’s a spill in Aisle 11,” and my brain is already halfway to the janitor’s closet.

“Somebody’s going to slip.”

“This is a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

None of that is the assignment.

They don’t want me to clean up the spill.

They don’t want management.

They don’t want me figuring out how it happened.

They don’t want me launching a regional spill prevention initiative.

They just want to talk about the spill.

Again.

Then revisit it from another angle.

Then compare it to the spill from 2018.

At absolutely no point does anyone suggest the wildly controversial idea that perhaps…

…we get a mop.

For fixers, this is basically psychological waterboarding.

Around minute twelve, my left eye starts twitching.

By minute twenty, I’m competing in the Olympic finals of self-restraint.

On the outside, I’m nodding compassionately.

On the inside, every fixer molecule in my body is screaming,

“THE MOP IS TEN FEET AWAY!”

Years ago, a friend of mine who described herself as clairvoyant said something that took me a decade to understand.

Before you roll your eyes, I did too.

Then she accurately described the pink dog brush in the third drawer of my laundry room despite never having been inside my house.

I crossed “having private thoughts” off my list of future hobbies.

After that, I figured I should probably keep listening.

She said,

“Stop filling other people’s baskets.”

Everyone, she explained, gets to choose what goes into their own basket.

Stop adding things.

Stop taking things out.

It’s their basket.

Then, somewhere between my twitching left eye and my imaginary regional spill prevention initiative, I realized something.

People would say,

“I have a problem.”

My brain quietly inserted,

“…and I’d like you to fix it.”

nobody had actually said those words.

I’d supplied them myself.

I wasn’t a bad listener.

I was just listening for the wrong assignment.

Professionally, people usually hire me because they want the problem solved.

Personally…

Nobody actually hired me.

Many people simply wanted someone willing to stand in Aisle 11 with them.

It took me thirty years to understand that not everyone experiences relief the same way.

My version of relief is making the problem smaller.

For someone else, relief comes from making the loneliness smaller.

We so often offer the kind of relief we’d want…
instead of the kind of relief the other person needs.

That may be why love misses the mark so often.

Not because we don’t care enough.

Because we’re speaking different dialects of caring.

I’m still a fixer. I’ll probably always be a fixer.

If you ever notice my left eye twitching while you’re telling me about the spill in Aisle 11, don’t worry.

I’m not having a medical emergency.

I’m just trying to remember that not everyone invited me to bring a mop.

Sometimes they just need you to stand with them in the aisle.