Something I Learned From Wally
For those who know me, I love chocolate. Like, I LOVE it! There isn’t much that I love more than chocolate, except for my loves….my hubby and Wally. Our son Wally is our miracle baby where doctors told me I wouldn’t be able to carry a child. And here he is!
We recently cut Wally’s hair. Like first major cut ‘we need to save it in an album’ kind of cut. I booked it at a salon that we were familiar with, and Wally was so incredibly excited! We had let his hair grow out long – His first few years we never cut his hair, we trimmed it, but we let it get long and boy did we live on those man buns for him. I think he reached a point however where he was getting his hair stuck on the zippers, it was getting in his face all the time…and he just wanted a change. He and I spent a couple days looking at styles together so that I could understand what he wanted and in turn show the stylist the look we were after.
We showed up to the salon and Wally was ready. Mommy was freaking out a bit, Dad had a camera ready to document our first major event and Wally was all smiles. They take him to the back to wash his hair and then starts the process. I may or may not have cried during this time, but man was it emotional. Haircuts can change someone so much so to see my son cut off his long locks was like someone changing the same face I had seen for the last few years. Anyways, so they stylist starts to cut his hair. And as she starts gets close to being done I begin to realize that the cut doesn’t look anything like the picture. The stylist did not know how to do a fade at all (I should have known better) …but the haircut was not what we showed her. And guess who picked up on that? Yup. Wally. It could have been worse…at least we still had hair on him, but it just was not what we had asked for.
It broke my heart when Wally said, “Mommy, why doesn’t my hair look like the picture?” Like, how could I respond to that? I had promised him that it would come out like the picture and it didn’t. But isn’t that like life?
In life, we walk around holding on to a picture expecting the scenario to play out a certain way….and then it doesn’t happen like that. Some of us continue this cycle of holding on to the same picture, going to the same place with the same people and expecting different results. But, if you want something different, then you must be willing to do something different. The same event and the same reaction are not working in your favor. When you can’t change the circumstance – because not all circumstances are in our control – then the only thing we control is how we react to the circumstance. Take the time to ‘feel’ the emotion, but then make a decision to let it go so that you can make space for your creativity, passion, peace and love to be the thing to empower your leadership and your reach. Do not allow what your feeling to halt your continued growth.
The lesson I learned was this: there was nothing I could do to change the outcome. In that moment when Wally’s haircut did not turn out how we expected, there was nothing I could do to change the outcome. Like nothing. I couldn’t add more hair to his head. I couldn’t reverse time and go back. I couldn’t take back the decision to cut his hair. I couldn't exempt us from this uncomfortable feeling….we just had to walk through it. There was no other choice for us at all. And you know what? Wally took it like a champ. It bothered him for like one day or two, but then everything was okay. He was okay and you will be okay too.
