Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

I hear the distant barking of dogs and the buzz of electric saws cutting through wood. I'm in shorts today. The sun is out and it's practically summer, though cooler than the summers I'm used to — 74 degrees in Daly City isn't quite the same as 89-plus and humid in the subtropics. But I'll take it. I'm even looking forward to it.

I'm at my desk again, and I need a break. I take in an episode of Reservation Dogs — a pause from spreadsheets, emails, phone calls. I've learned over the years that I get more done when I take purposeful breaks. Sometimes I head downstairs to where the team is baking and packing bread. Sometimes I open YouTube. Sometimes it's an episode of something, anything.

There's a scene in Sabrina — the remake, though the original is of course wonderful, but I love Harrison Ford so I gravitate to that one — where Sabrina talks about the French work ethic. Something about not taking themselves or life so seriously. That line has stuck with me for years.

I've also read somewhere about the owner of Toyota rewarding employees who stopped the line when they saw something wrong. He found that the workers who produced the most often skimped — when they noticed a problem, they hid it, because stopping the line meant slowing the count. So he flipped it. Reward the ones who stop. The line is better off for the pause.

So today, in the spirit of not taking myself too seriously, I took a break. Reservation Dogs, Season 3, Episode 9 — Elora's Dad. She finds her father after a long time of not knowing him. There's hesitation on both sides, the kind of held breath that comes before something that might break you or might heal you. And then they sit down together. And it works. I felt the satisfaction in my chest the way you do when something on screen earns the moment it asks for.

And I thought — if only life were as easy as that. Or maybe it is, and we're the ones who make it hard.

This morning, while we were getting ready for work, I got into it with my wife. She cried. I hate when that happens. After it cooled down, I sat with what happened and realized that my reaction could've been better. She had already apologized. I didn't need to keep going. I didn't need to point out the mistake again, and again, and again. But I did. Why?

That's what I mean about making life harder than it needs to be. I could've controlled that. I could've handled it better. And I didn't.

Life is already difficult enough — outside forces we can't control, things that arrive without warning, the slow weight of grief, the bills, the work, the world. Why push against something that's already moving? Why fight what doesn't need to be fought? Sometimes the right move is just to step aside and let it pass.

I'm a Marine. We're warfighters. We're trained to engage. To close with and destroy. To never give ground. That conditioning doesn't leave you when you take the uniform off — it shows up in conversations with your wife in the kitchen at 7am, in the way you respond to your kids, in the small daily skirmishes that don't actually need to be skirmishes.

But the Corps taught me something else too. Improvise, adapt, overcome. Read the terrain. Adjust to what's actually in front of you. Overcoming doesn't always mean charging the hill. Sometimes it means going around it. Sometimes it means realizing the hill isn't the objective.

There are moments to fight. I know what those look like. But there are far more moments where the right thing is to think, to pause, to recognize that fighting isn't always the answer. Sometimes the line is better off when someone stops it. Sometimes adapting is the win.

I'm still learning that. Slowly. With help.