The superpower of the right reaction.

My son showed it to me at breakfast.

Morning.

Cereal with milk.

A new anime episode on his phone.

At some point, his phone drops straight into the bowl.

Three reactions at the same time.

My wife looks at him with outrage.

I observe the situation with curiosity.

My son, with a completely serious face, pulls the phone out of the milk, brings it to his mouth and says:

“yum yum yum.”

My wife walks off to another room.

I could not stop laughing.

There is an idea I heard a long time ago and keep coming back to:

To succeed, a person needs to be able to do just one thing: react correctly to whatever happens.

A problem rarely exists on its own.

It emerges from the combination of people’s reactions.

But if you can shift the course of events with your own response, a conflict turns into a joke.

Tension turns into laughter.

My son did not hesitate for a second.

He flipped the situation before it even had time to become a problem.

I decided not to forget this today.