A little slip-up at work this week has had me questioning that age-old adage we all know so well: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
It's a proverb that, I am guessing, is easily and frequently translated in most languages. Italians have it, too: Quando la vita ti offre limoni, fai una limonata.
In other words, make the best of a bad, unexpected, or undeserved situation.
I work at a private English after-school program for children from 18 months to ten years old. As you can imagine, there is no shortage of opportunities for me to make lemonade for, because of, or despite my little ones. The school is growing, in theory, but its materials are not multiplying. This means making up games on the fly when my flashcards are missing or have been lent out to another instructor without my knowledge or consent. Sometimes, the printer breaks or runs out of ink, which means drawing up my own written exercises by hand, or finding a simple craft or drawing activity to fill up the class time I would have spent on stencils. Kids have tantrums, cry, miss classes, or have to switch sections due to competing activities in the same time slot and the curriculum needs to be rearranged. Supplies are unavailable or too expensive for our programmed activities, so they change on the spot, too. Miscommunications arise - among instructors, between instructors and the owner of the school, between the owner of the school and parents, between parents and instructors - and concessions need to be made. These are common workplace perils and just part of the job -- no real lemons here and no real complaints, just a regular day at school.
But what happens when the lights go out one afternoon and there is no way to rectify the situation for a couple of days? How do you deal with lemons when they are compounded by the fear of "fare brutta figura" - or looking bad - second only to the fear of death in this country?
Linda Falcone, among other Italo-American writers living in Italy and coming to Italian culture from a completely different standpoint, has written about "fare brutta figura." Or, better, she's written about fare bella figura - making a good impression - and its importance to Italians all over the peninsula. Looking good, more than being good, is a priority to Italians. It's what so often explains and justifies the need to make lemonade out of lemons in this country. It's what explains how I was able to work without a legally-binding contract anywhere in Florence for a year. She's qualified .... she's good at her job .... she's here ... she's interested ... but she doesn't have a residency permit .... hrm. That's a big ole lemon. Let's just put her on a provisional contract/pay her under the table/ hire her as an "intern" and give her an almost- regular stipend anyway so we save face and make a good impression. Bad in the eyes of the law and government. Excellent in the eyes of the consumer/student/collaborating entity. Lemonade. Bella figura.
But does making a good impression also mean lying to the consumer? Does it also mean admitting and accepting defeat rather than truly trying to make the best of a bad situation and going on with the show? This is where I stumble.
During yesterday's power-outage, alone with ten or so children and their teams of parents until my colleague joined me, my knee-jerk reaction was to apologize to the parents, assure them we were working on sorting out the issue, clearly stating I had no definite idea if or when the lights would be back on .... then taking the students into one of the school's two classrooms with my flashlight, three books, and a list of Christmas songs in mind to go ahead with the lesson anyway. Some children stayed for the hour or two of in-the-dark learning. Others were taken away. The decision was left up to the parents' and caretakers' discretion.
The opted-for strategy today, with lights still out, was simply to cancel all classes. Parents were called and told the problem had persisted and both class and Christmas craft hour would be canceled for the day and made up for some other time.
Both are legitimate approaches, I think. In the first case, something difficult is carried out anyway despite external commentary and potentially negative opinions of the situation. In the second, the opportunity for judgment is perhaps preempted altogether, but a difficult decision with much longer and much heavier consequences is still made: calling parents with bad news is no easy or pleasant feat. Making up classes and craft hours is nearly impossible given the restraints of the public school schedule around which all private programming is run.
Ultimately, it makes no difference for the children: those who stayed for yesterday's improvised lesson had fun and learned something. Those who didn't perhaps had fun and learned something elsewhere. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that no one had fun or learned anything at our school today, in its closure.
So which version makes lemons out of lemonades? And which helps maintain a good impression? Does either approach do both? Does cancelling class look better than trying to move forward with the program despite the problem at hand? Or does it look better to attempt the impossible - and succeed, to some extent - when the obvious choice would have been to throw in the towel?
This, too, is a cultural construct, I think. The vast majority of parents yesterday responded to the power outage with a mixture of dissatisfaction and concern. While there was some, "let's try to fix this together. Where's your circuit board?" there was quite a bit more, "Well, we might as well leave, then. There's no point sticking around for a lesson in the dark, is there? You can read all you want, it won't bring the lights back on."
Coming from a nation with bitterly cold winters and a Catholic-school upbringing that very actively promoted and exemplified resilience and perseverance despite them, this concept is very new to me (though not so new now as it was a year and a half ago when I first moved here). Growing up, my friends and I would pray and pray endless hours for a snow day. In -30 degree weather. Under 5 feet of snow. It never came. My high school closed its doors for the first and only time in my years there three days into the 1998 Quebec ice storm that broke records and made headlines across the world, not because its power went out, but to help those whose power had. Going to school (or to work, or to an appointment, or out with your friends, even) was not something you did if all went well, if you felt like it, or in the absence of anything that might make your experience there negative. It was something you just did. Because it was expected of you. Because it was expected of your school (or work, or service supplier, or friends) to find solutions to problems when they arose. Because your parents - both of whom worked full time to maintain your peaceful and stable existence in the suburbs or in a residential area more than five minutes away from your school - simply didn't have the flexibility in their schedules required to deal with unforeseen closures or cancellations, if and when they could be avoided. Because advance notice meant 24 hours, or at least 12, not 2.
Adapting to this fundamentally different rhythm of life has been difficult for me. It continues to be difficult for me. It's a beautiful thing to be able to be spontaneous, flexible, and comprehensive of a trying situation unexpectedly. But it's also frustrating, upsetting, and demoralizing not knowing how to choose your battles, when to make lemonade out of lemons and when to leave the lemons alone - all in the interest of saving face. More than anything, learning and putting into practice the difference between looking good and being good often also means compromising any sense of righteousness, honesty, and work ethic I have cultivated up until this point in my life. Understanding that lemonade is to be made of lemons only when doing so would make the best impression means accepting that making lemonade of lemons is not a categorical imperative. It is not standard operating procedure. It does not qualify as the predictor of the best overall outcome. It can be a show of weakness in a game won by strategic withdrawal.
These are tough pills to swallow. With or without lemonade.
