McQueen

Pixar’s Cars came out the year my oldest was born. As soon as he could, he fell in love. We had Cars books, blankets, and Cars character toy cars. We were late getting them. So, we had to drive all over the metroplex to collect each character toy car.

For his birthday, he got a Lightning McQueen ride-on car. His excitement was electric as he tore the paper away and saw Lightning on the box. He wanted to ride it immediately. We helped him open the box, and that is when we found out it was, “Some assembly required.”

Since we were at home, loose pieces typically meant it stayed in the box. He begged, and his grandfather gave in. My father-in-law started to assemble it. There were more parts than expected. The birthday boy moved on to the next thing. My dad, friend, and brother-in-law all pitched in. We got it mostly done, but the rear axle and wheels weren’t working right.

I thought maybe we switched up the axles. It took some force, but we got the frontend disassembled. I held the two axles together, and they were the same length. So that wasn’t it. I swapped them anyway. I got the front put back together, and the backend still wouldn’t assemble. We pressed on and missed the rest of the gift exchange.

Five smart, capable, relatively handy adults, and we could not get this simple toy together. We twisted, turned, forced… nothing was working. We finally gave up and decided to return it.

When we took it to the store, we ended up exchanging it for another one. Once I got the replacement car home, it went together in no time at all.

It turns out we had two front axles and were missing the special one for the rear.

We knew this car was supposed to go together. It had not been opened, so we knew we had all the parts. The axles were identical, so we never suspected one was wrong. It wasn’t until we gave up and decided to return it that I learned we would always be unsuccessful. We only found the real problem after we stopped trying to fix the wrong one.

Sometimes I get fixated on the same things other people give their attention to. It might be the news, the government, or just a general worry about the future. These things might be big, but my actions, effort, worry, and energy won’t fix them. I very likely am focused on the wrong thing, perhaps even the wrong problem. The hardest question is, can I step outside of the situation long enough to realize where I should really invest my energy?

Am I working hard to solve the wrong problem? Which of my assumptions are so natural that they are invisible? Where am I forcing something that will never fit?

Be curious, be kind, be whole, do good things.