Putting Spilled Milk Back into the Glass

 The title of this blog entry comes from a similar vignette in Terry Orlick's book, where he talks about a young student who became upset when she spilled a can of paint on the floor. Orlick advises the distressed student that the paint cannot be put back into the jar, so why fret about what has already happened? Accidents can happen as quickly as one split second, and there are moments when a person simply does not have the time or even the awareness to stop something from happening when it does. Yet, as typically does happen in these cases, the person has plenty of time, it seems, to keep going back to the same situation to see if they can put the paint back into the jar, or the spilled milk back into the glass.
   When something painful happens,  such as an accident or something unforeseen, it's fine to logically think about what one could have done or could do better in the future. However, what I sometimes think this situation calls for is a kind of presence of mind that neither goes back to the past nor tries to rush into an imagined future where there are no spills or accidents whatsoever. One has to be strong and present to the situation to be able to face it wholly, rather than putting all their energies into a fictional time when everything is completely fixed. In working with the energies of regret and disappointment, we learn to live with such feelings without fueling the kind of aggrandizing thoughts that come in their wake. For every regret or disappointment, there is a kind of semblance of omniscience: thinking that our stories should never contain accidents, as well as a desire to make sure there are never any opportunities to feel such things again. Now, is that realistic? I say perhaps not.
  As Orlick suggests, the best a person can do is to accept the fact that the paint and the milk are already spilled: trying to put them back is counterproductive and does not reveal a key lesson, which is how to remain resilient in these times or situations. When I can really know that hearkening back to the past is no way to handle the present problem, I have more energy to face the problem now and try to do something to make it better. But that doesn't mean trying to get things back to the way they were before.

Orlick, T. (1993) Free to Feel Great: Teaching Children to Excel By Living.