Bob Marley: There Are No Problems, Only Situations

On a recent family Caribbean cruise, we chose the Bob Marley Excursion in Jamaica.  It was a day trip that would take us to “The Foundation,” Bob Marley’s modest childhood home and burial site of he and his mother.  The Zion bus picked us up at 8:30 am with rum punch and Bob Marley blasting.  Our tour guide was a gregarious, Jamaican woman wearing a bright blue polo shirt, matching blue eyeshadow and black slacks in the sweltering weather.  She faced us during the long, bumpy and treacherous (skinny roads with steep cliffs) ride up to The Foundation in Nine Mile.

The gates to The Bob Marley Foundation:

The house was so tiny.  It was just two small rooms, each barely bigger than the size of a twin bed.  Here is the “single bed,” from the song.  I don’t think those are the original linens.

Here was a man cooking soup in front of the Foundation.

Our tour guide gave us a quick Jamaican pigeon lesson.  “Here, when someone thinks you look good, they might say that you look like trash.” Trashy is good.  A “bumper” is another word for butt etc.  The coolest thing she told us was, “In Jamaica, there are no problems, man, only situations.”  I was so impressed by the Bob Marley mentality that we already kind of knew from his music.  His music in Jamaica was like a religion.  It happened to be Bob Marley’s birthday, February 6th, that day.  I loved learning about things like how he fell in love with his wife, Rita and relentlessly tried to woo her, eventually winning her over with the “Is This Love,” song.  I also didn’t know his father was white!

So, Chris has been calling this plant my, “Rasta plant.”  Well, the other day it started to look like THIS….and he said “That’s no situation, it’s a problem.”

The only bad thing about this trip was that Chris called me “trashy bumper” for 3 weeks straight.

Is there somewhere you could apply the “No problems only situations,” idea?  Does taking the charge out of something stressful and seeing it in a neutral way help?