Grey Squirrel – the forests of lost nuts.

I follow Sad Animal Facts on insta and so does my best friend.  (@sadanimalfacts – if you don’t you should). She will often send me a post that she thinks is timely, clever or just downright funny.  She is particularly clever this friend and this week @sadanimalfacts posted about grey squirrels.  The post was all of those things.  It was timely, clever and downright funny.

Sad Animal Facts’ wisdom on the animal kingdom relates to all of the sections of my human world. Sometimes more than I’d like to admit. This grey squirrel post was accompanied by a very profound statement from said best friend.  “I love this.  Unintended positive consequences of our mistakes.”  And that’s all she said.

My first reaction was to laugh at the squirrel.  All of that lunch turning into trees.  Poor buggers. No wonder they collect so many nuts. My second reaction was to her statement. Unintended positive consequences to my mistakes… Which mistakes have I made had positive consequences and how many mistakes have I made that I didn’t realise had positive consequences.  My guess is all of them.  And my new theory is that maybe I’ve been looking at my mistakes all wrong.

When I thought about my mistakes, I naturally thought of the misinvestment (it’s a word – I’m putting it in urban dictionary) of my emotions in a number of members of the male human species.  I’ve done it a lot.  Invested more than I have in a man for absolutely no return on that investment let alone a mutual investment from them.  It leaves me broken, empty and generally unwilling to open any kind of new account.  Right now, the idea of even considering an investment outside of myself or my kid has me in cold sweats and hiding all of my spare change.

Those mistakes have brought positive consequences but they came at such a cost in tears and heartbreak and the positive results can only be measured by self-reflection and modified future behaviour.  (I’m still waiting for that last bit – surely I’ve learnt this time!!) But none of those things are as obvious as a freaking forest from lost nuts.  So what about the other mistakes?

Crashing the car, losing things – everything, words that have come out of my mouth that should never have – all have pretty obvious negative consequences.  Doors didn’t open, sparkly earrings gone forever and people got hurt. All of which I would take back in a heartbeat if I could.  But if I grey squirrel the situation, change the perspective, is there anything positive that can help the guilt, shame and general negative vibes of all round fuck ups.

I scratched the car, tried to polish it out, felt bad, called mum, Mitch and Jeff to fix it, they did their best to fix it.  Within a week, I had a new car.  Are they related?  Maybe. But highly doubtful and now someone else has to fix the scratch I made. Unintended positive consequences… maybe.

When I lose things, and I can’t find them, ever again the initial disappointment is usually big.  And like any good ‘feeler’ I feel the loss all over. But I guess the positive to losing things is I get to buy new things and get that fresh new shiny thing feel all over again.  So much better than an incidental nut tree.  Unintended positive consequences, definitely.

The words though, we’re back to the only positive result being the growth and development of my character.  Generally learned through pain, tears and self-reflection and yes, they are all mutually exclusive. In my experience, one does not come without the others.  Unintended positive consequences.  Yes. Of course, but I’m still not sure the cost is worth it. But I guess you could ask the squirrels that starve to death because they’ve lost their nuts the same question.

But maybe, just maybe, if I grey squirrel those little mistakes more often then maybe that rollercoaster pitfall of disappointment will be shorter.  I might even gain a little perspective and save my big disappointment feelings for the things that are actually disappointing in my life. It’s a tall ask, but it might be worth a shot.  It might help if I just sing the grey squirrel song as well.  There’s no way that doesn’t make a shitty situation hilarious.