My Tao - Control and Understanding

Yesterday's success was short lived. The capacitor blew anyway, and had to be fixed.

Blown capacitor at the back

Our initial reaction was that we could have anticipated this. The fuse blew for a reason. Something was wrong, and the capacitors were old. Had we replaced the capacitors right away, we would have saved ourselves some time and bother. However, this ignores the fact that we did not know for sure if there was anything wrong. Had we fixed it right away, we would have acted without knowing for sure that we were doing the right thing. That would have left a feeling of uncertainty about the whole operation. We would have fixed the problem, but we wouldn't have had the benefit of knowing that there really was a problem and that we fixed it.

That distinction is important. Now that we know that we fixed the problem, we know that we did the right thing, and that we were in fact in control of the operation. Otherwise, we would have saved some time at the expense of not knowing if we really knew what we were doing.

Furthermore, the time saved would have been minimal. Having opened the knitting machine yesterday, we knew exactly what we were doing this time around. It took us less than ten minutes to get back to where we were when we replaced the fuse. Feeling more confident about what we were doing, my wife and I went about the business of replacing the capacitors. She held the circuit board and capacitors, and I held the soldering iron. We fiddled with the components that were smaller than the originals, but we found a way to put them into place anyway.

Capacitors replaced

We could have replaced the capacitors yesterday. However, that would have come with some anguish and possible regret due to the apparent extra work. The certainty we attained this morning when the capacitor blew, trumped the fact that everything could have been done marginally quicker.

This illustrates that it's not important to be the quickest or the best when faced with a challenge. What's important is control and the ease with which things flow when done in the proper order. Going forward, my wife and I now have the insight needed to make similar fixes with confidence. That would not have been the case had we done things quickly but with less control.

The slow and controlled is always better than the quick and perilous, because success is not a question of speed. While edgy agility may win in the short term, patience and sound understanding of situations are the essential ingredients to sustained success.