“Oh noooo, there are caterpillars on my precious new olive tree!” She could feel her pulse beginning to race, her breath getting shorter, that combination of helplessness, disappointment, and anger at the futility of things surging through her limbs. “Why couldn’t things just go smoothly for once! Why was there always a catch, a set back, a hurdle?” But this time she caught herself. She noticed the physiological symptoms that told her she was headed into catastrophic thinking. She paused long enough to step back and listen objectively to the voices inside her head telling her that it was “unfair,” “futile,” “doomed to the worst possible outcome.” She decided to leave the philosophical questions of “Why the world was this way” for another day, consciously slowed her breathing, sent a “Help me! Help me! help me!-prayer out into the Universe and set about trying to solve the problem at hand.

Google told her to fill a spray-bottle with water and dish soap and to spray the leaves and wipe off the critters, so that is what she did. It wasn’t fun, and it might not work, but at least it was something. She would probably have to keep at it the next few days, but it was a good feeling to know that she could do something. She wasn’t entirely at the mercy of the random, often unexplainable, and sometimes seemingly mischievous events happening all around her. She herself was a force of nature. She herself could make a difference. That was a good feeling. Yet, all that emotional commotion wanted out, so next she did the one, best, sensible, soothing thing a person can do:

She called her mother.