You Have No Idea What You're Capable Of. Neither Did I.

Greetings Ambitious Achievers,

My house burned down in 2012. And I didn’t miss a single deadline. Still a couple of the weirdest sentences I’ve ever strung together.

True story, though. My house was one of more than 250 to burn in the High Park Fire in Colorado. Total loss. In its path: my Ducati, which still strikes me as an entirely unnecessary act of cruelty.

Cowboy hats? Check. House? Not so much.

My response to the devastation was to throw myself into work. Just sort of lose myself in words and stories. Act like a normal editor and things will be fine. Nothing to see here. Keep on pushing that rock up the hill, Sisyphus.

There were stories to finish, cover copy to write, pages to close and that’s what I did. Nothing really changed except I didn’t have a house. I even did an interview for a business program on Fox News from my computer in the only surviving structure on the property, my husband’s very manly man cave. What I failed to notice in the video frame was the mounted deer antlers directly behind my head. For the entire interview, I had a set of horns.

To top things off, during the final stages of home construction, we lived in a fifth-wheel trailer. A family of four, a dog, and a small kitty packed into a one-room house with wheels. I do not recommend this. Imagine telling your 11-year-old daughter to go to her room when you’re standing in it.

Then there was the insurance company. Fourteen years later, I still remember things I forgot to put on that content list. I’ll be doing something completely unrelated and suddenly think of some random object that burned up in 2012 and never made it onto the insurance spreadsheet. Did I remember to account for the padded coat hangers from Uncle Brian?

People have asked me how I managed it. I don’t have a terribly inspiring answer. I got up in the morning and did what needed doing. Some days I was fine. Some days I was exhausted. And some days I was preoccupied with the logistical absurdity of it all. And questions would swirl. Like, why do bed springs have such high tolerance for heat?

For years afterward, I had a recurring dream about wolves chasing me. Scary wolves. Not like nice Disney wolves. I don’t know what the wolves wanted, but my traumatized brain decided that losing a house wasn’t sufficiently dramatic and therefore pursuit by a pack of predators would make an even better story arc.

The nightmares eventually stopped. I think they had something to do with that fine line that separates getting through something from being finished with it.

It’s easy to make a permanent identity out of the things we survive. Defining moments, I think they’re called. We collect our injuries, disappointments and failures, and eventually they become part of the explanation for why we are the way we are. Some of those experiences deserve to be remembered. Others, not so much.

I’ve been thinking about that as we put together a series of stories on human potential. It’s an enormous subject, and I suspect most of us have a fairly limited understanding of what we’re capable of until circumstances demand it. I certainly didn’t know I could lose my home, move into a trailer, learn what the black tank is and keep meeting deadlines.

The fire was terrible. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. And yes, I’m aware I just wrote an entire newsletter about it. But it doesn’t get to be the most interesting thing about me or my story. The house was rebuilt. We gleefully moved out of the fifth-wheel. The deadlines kept coming. The wolves stopped chasing me. Every so often I still remember things I forgot to put on the content list. The brain works in mysterious ways.

The Resolutely Good Advice Part of This

You don’t have to turn every terrible experience into a triumph nor do you have to be grateful for what happened. Sometimes terrible things are simply terrible things.

But don’t let the worst thing that happened to you become the most important thing about you.

–Amy

amy.cosper@success.com