What are you doing my love?
The pantry cupboard is wide open when I discover my grandson, Mister Two, lost inside its contents.
‘Dunno’ he said with a barefaced, cheeky grin on his face,
He was caught just before he was going to pull the contents from the not available section. And he knew he was caught.
So he smiled, stepped away from the area and surrendered to what comes next. Usually a chat about things being out of bounds, but this time, just a chuckle from me and a diversion to his toy box.
But it started me thinking about what we say and how we act when we are caught doing something we shouldn’t be doing, or when we make a mistake. Do we surrender to the fate of a correction and move on, or do we try to cover up or deny that we were even in there in the first place?
Denial just takes us further and further into the problem, doesn’t it?
Many companies complain of cover-ups, of staff spending more time covering up their mistakes than fixing them. Denying what they have done, rather than solving the problem, learning from it then moving forward.
How does denial impact us as individuals? When we are misdirected or found in the wrong place, can we just say, ‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ then own up and figure out where and how to go forward. Isn’t that the healthy option?
‘Come on darling,’ I say to Mister Two, ‘let’s get some of those ginger biscuits out of the cupboard and have morning tea, my beautiful boy.’ He smiles and rushes to his cooking stool to climb up and help prepare our feast. Both of us happy to move onto the next adventure together.