As you grow up, you will find yourself in a situation where you are the only person likely to extricate yourself from your problem. If you grew up with some good life-skills training, likely you will not have a problem.
From some people it is changing their flat tire on a car. For others it might be a broken water pipe in their first home. If you are lucky, maybe dad or mom taught you how to change a tire or explained where the main shut off valve is for the water. I guess in our Internet enabled age, there are people who would look for a YouTube video. While calling AAA is wise on many busy highways, in the areas where we have lived, if would be a long wait for AAA. It would have been really long in this spot a few miles off the road in Alaska where I was camping in my pickup with a roommate in 1970.
It is quicker and better for your own self-confidence if you step up to the plate and handle the situation on your own.
While I have nothing against YouTube videos for instruction, we should be careful not to lose our own ability to think and come up with solutions. I have gotten himself out of enough situations that challenges are just part of life for me. The satisfaction of solving a problem can be a powerful attraction to some of us.
I credit my problem solving ability to growing up with a single mother as my parent, being a Boy Scout, and making our living from a cattle farm for over ten years. Each of those situations gave me plenty of opportunity to learn and hone my problem-solving skills.
I started using tools early and because there was no one around to teach me, I learned how to figure out most things on my own. I do not remember anyone teaching me how to change a tire or fix a toilet, but I do remember teaching each of my three children how to change a tire. There were no YouTube videos about becoming a farmer in New Brunswick in the early 1970s so I read books and learned from those around me.
I had to come up with a way to put up a lot of hay without a farm family to chuck square bales so I became one of the first farmers in the province to use a round baler. They did not come with useful manuals on how to really make them work so it was trial and error for a while. They were also complex pieces of equipment which you had to fix on your own.
I needed a place to for cows to have their calves and stay dry in New Brunswick's snowy winters so I built a big pole barn. There were no books on building pole barns in New Brunswick's rocky soils so I adapted what I could learn to the situation at hand. Both barns I built are still standing forty-five years later.
Likely none of my solutions were close to perfect, but they solved the immediate problems and gave me valuable experience that helped when I faced my next challenge. I have been around people who shied away from making a decision because it looked to be a less than perfect answer to a problem. You do not have that luxury on a farm miles from town.
When your only hay grapple on your loader that you use to feed 2,000 pound round bales to two hundred head cattle has broken, you do not have time to worry about what is perfect. Whatever solution you can make out of scrap steel with a torch and welder is as perfect as it gets.
I still remember the first time I felt real pressure in problem solving. It was the summer of 1970 and my college roommate and I were on a driving trip to Alaska in my Dodge PowerWagon truck. It was back in the days of manual locking hubs on four wheel drive vehicles. We had driven five or six miles off the road somewhere in Alaska. It was all glacial till (rocks-pictured above) and we were in the middle of nowhere. The four wheel drive stopped working. I had to take the hub apart, adjust it, and put it back together. I managed to do it and I still remember the sense of satisfaction when we were able to get moving again and head back to the pavement.
In my current life on North Carolina's Crystal Coast I do not face a lot of mechanical challenges though I did have to change a tire last year on some very soft ground. I now carry a small piece of plywood in the trunk because of that experience. However, there are plenty of computer challenges around. Some of these technical challenges that I find still bring a sense of satisfaction when they are resolved. While some solutions are simply a matter of a Google search, their implementation can sometimes stretch even my inner Geek.
For nine months, I have been using a Chromebook for my main laptop. From day one I was unable to get it to access the Synology NAS (Network Attached Storage) that I have in my office. Repeated Google searches turned up the same useless suggestions. Recently I found a Reddit thread that told me to turn on SMB 3 on the Synology NAS. Once I figured out how to do that, my problem was solved.
One thing I have never done is create a problem, then solve it and finally claim victory. I have faced enough problems without having to create artificial ones.
I still believe Scouting and spending time camping can help our youth develop problem solving skills. If nothing else, make sure your teenagers get a lesson in changing a tire and make certain the lesson is hands-on. After college, if you want a life changing experience, take on a do-it-yourself project like remodeling a house. My first house experience has served me well over the years.
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