One Box At A Time
My mom recently bought a new home, sold her previous house and has been moving between the two. I’ve been helping on weekends when my schedule allows, and the process has reinforced just how differently people can approach the same challenge, even when they share the same genetics.
I am a planner and a very task-oriented person. If I were buying a new house or moving, I would have a to-do list started, movers called, boxes purchased and a packing plan built around what needed to happen first, all within a day of deciding.
My mom approaches things quite differently.
For nearly a month, she has packed boxes with her belongings, loaded her car and driven them to her new place. There, she unloads the boxes, finds places for everything and then does it again the next day.
One load at a time. Maybe two if she’s really feeling it. And she doesn’t have a big car.
I’ve found myself wondering why she is putting herself through such a slow, drawn-out process. I’ll admit, I’ve even gotten frustrated while helping because, through my lens, it always felt like we were leaving so much unfinished.
Driving home from her house this past weekend, though, I realized something.
Maybe I had been looking at it all wrong.
What I had labeled as procrastination might actually be my mom’s way of managing something that feels enormous. Moving is a big undertaking. But moving a few boxes today? That’s manageable… and tomorrow she can do it again.
Along the way, she has had time to decide what to donate, what to get rid of and what she really wants to keep. With each trip, there is a little less left to do.
It got me thinking about resilience and how differently it can show up in each of us.
Some people face a challenge by creating a plan and attacking it head-on. Some need to talk it through. Some need time to absorb what’s happening before they can act. Some focus on the finish line, while others simply focus on what they can manage today.
Resilience isn’t about how quickly we overcome something. It’s about finding a way to keep moving through obstacles.
When we see someone navigating a challenge differently than we would, it can be easy to mistake their approach for avoidance, indecision or even weakness. But what looks slow from the outside may be the very thing making the situation manageable for them.
There are times in life when the whole challenge is simply too much to carry at once. A loss. A change we didn’t ask for. A new beginning. An enormous goal. A problem we don’t yet know how to solve.
In those moments, resilience may not look like conquering the whole thing. Sometimes it just looks like loading up the car. One box at a time. And coming back tomorrow to do it again.