Let a falling iron fall.

On rare occasion I say something particularly profound giving the appearance of intelligence. This occasion of course was a complete accident. I was talking with my office manager about a burn on her thumb. She explained that she tried to catch an iron from falling after bumping the ironing board. That’s when it happened. The words spilled out without hesitation as if they had been trapped in some hidden part of my brain just waiting for their chance to escape from the cavern on the front of my face and impress the world. “You’ve got to let a falling iron fall,” I responded, forever recording myself in the annals of history. Years from now when you hear someone else say that, you’ll know that this is where it started. Okay, maybe not. But the phrase still got me thinking. I can look back to several times when I tried to help someone out of a problem that they didn’t even realize they were in and even more times when the same was being done for me. I can think of very few times when the helpee arose from the problem in better shape than they began and the helper arose as a hero. In fact most of the time the helpee still fell leaving the helper exhausted either mentally, spiritually, physically or financially. Still, it’s our nature to want to help others, especially if they’re going through something very similar to what we’ve been through in the past. As if vicariously solving their problems will help us rewrite our own history. So, to all of us out there trying to rewrite history, we need to remember that sometimes you’ve just got to let a falling iron fall. Chances are if you try to catch it it’s still going to fall and you’re going to get burned.