Moving can be traumatic. I was especially unhappy with our new (used) stacking washer/dryer. The tubs are smaller, and it takes 90 minutes to dry a load that the old dryer could do in 45 minutes. I made sure that my husband knew that the dryer needed to be fixed. Several times.
Finally, he said "Adapt or die". Then he rolled over and went to sleep.
I was very, very upset. I didn't sleep well. I could not understand why my husband, usually such a team player, would so coldly dismiss the urgency of the problematic dryer.
The next morning, we had an opportunity to discuss "Adapt or die", as he used the phrase again, this time in regards to something that he couldn't find. I asked him to ban the phrase from his vocabulary - it was too extreme, too unkind, too upsetting. Not to mention, that the phrase neatly avoided addressing the problem that I wanted fixed.
He shook his head - "It's a really kind thing to say! Sometimes you don't get want you want. Get over it, move on. Don't get stuck."
I then became weepy and over-reactive, since I do have a tendency to get stuck. The rest of the conversation was pretty much downhill, as tears don't play well in our house, but his exasperated remark that made it through my upset was:
"I don't know why you're so upset. I thought we were on the same page, going with the flow, being flexible with what came up. You're stuck."
My response was, "Well if you had said that, I could have adjusted. I do agree to try to be flexible and go with the flow. If you had said "it's just different, give it a few days, and you'll get used to it." I would have been able to try that. However, "adapt or die" just felt so aggressive and unkind. I felt like you didn't care and didn't understand that this is important to me."
He just shook his head. "You're still stuck."
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I'm not writing this to get suggestions of how my husband should or should not have answered my request to fix the dryer. That's not the point.
The point is that my initial reaction to the simple phrase "Adapt or Die" was very interesting. Why did I react that way? I felt threatened, abandoned, unheard. It was a pretty big response! Why was it so huge? Why did "try to be flexible" feel safe while "adapt or die" felt scary? Obviously, these are programmed reactions from prior life experiences. In reality, I don't even need to know the answers to those questions. I need to know if I want to continue to get stuck in such a pointless and upsetting emotional loop.
Let's call my knee-jerk upset reaction a "default program", since it kicked in automatically and co-opted the system for a good 8 or 9 hours until I was able to take it off line.
When I have a default program that is not helping me and which is not creating the outcome that I want, then it's probably malware.
Do I have to live with the malware, or can I debug the system, and replace it with a better program?
I don't believe in victimhood, so I'm going to step up to the plate and work on debugging the system.
I guess I'm going to be living the "adapt or die" life after all.
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