Parents in Business

Comment by Deb Ingino on July 31, 2009 at 5:57pm

Olympia
Boy this post is right on. It really is about balance isn’t it and of course that is more of an interpretive dance than science.

Each day we are faced with a new set of circumstances, new priorities, newly identified needs (both ours and others) and this of course forms our latest instinct. So each day we can find ourselves in an atmosphere potent for a new balance and we get to exercise this re-balancing muscle more often than we would want.

For each of us, it is a very customized answer. Oh the feelings are the same, it’s the action we take as a result that can differ so dramatically.

I remember getting ready to leave on a business trip to Asia a few years back and just hours before I was scheduled to depart, my daughter had suddenly come down with a high fever. What to do, what to do? Its Saturday, my meeting was Monday and the choice was looming over my head. Well looming is too kind a word, the choice was beating me over the head. Sure my husband could take her do the doctor, but I’m her Mom. Do I go on the flight for 15 some hours and hope all is well by the time I arrive. What if it isn’t? What if it is? So for the several hours, moment by moment I judged the situation. How bad does she seem? The doctors office will be open in the morning, if I stay to take her myself when is the next flight leaving? If I go, will she forgive me, will I forgive myself?

So after a few hours of fever reducer, a flashlight that illuminated a red throat with white patches indicating strep throat but seeing a listless little girl, I made the decision to stay back take her to the doctor the next morning and rebooked both my flight and my meeting for one day later. Not the decision you would read in the Harvard Business Journal but one that both at that moment and today was still the right call.

Oh and the illness was, as suspected, strep throat which Daddy helped her recover from and by the time I return she was better and the decision was validated by the hug I received.

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