The Power of Rachel Beckwith

Exerpted from Simon Sinek's Blog dated July 27, 2011: A few days ago, a 9-year-old girl named Rachel Beckwith died in a pileup on I-90 in Washington state. Her spinal chord was severed and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her life.


June 12th was her last birthday and for her birthday Rachel told everyone that she didn't want any presents and she didn't want a party. Instead, she wanted her friends to donate $9 to Charity Water." Her big crazy goal," said her pastor, "was to raise $300 so that 15 kids in Africa would have safe, clean water." At the time of her death, she was $80 short of her goal.

Inspired by her generosity, Rachel's church publicized her goal on their website...and the donations started rolling in.

When last I logged on, Rachel had raised over $300,000. And her wish to help 15 people will now help over 15,000 people.

Rachel Beckwith may be the most inspiring 9 year old I know and I'm proud to support her in her dream to give.

If you're interested in helping Rachel's cause, visit Charity Water.

If you'd like to donate to help her parents pay the medical bills, you can visit http://bobnw.org to donate.

May we all raise our children to think of others before themselves. May we all raise our children to by like Rachel Beckwith.

At this writing the fund is at $1,240,833 and growing.

Understanding Fear

In today's world there is a complexity to fear that can be mind boggling. We can find ourselves fearful of so many things coming from so many directions: fear of loss, fear of the unknown, fear of that which is out of our control, fear of emotional threats, fear of environmental threats, just to name a few. Fear can stop us from living our lives fully, can prevent us from reaping the bounty that life can be. To understand fear, you truly need to understand it's origins.

In the beginning, well before we were ever born, fear was the cornerstone to man's survival. Fear was the response that triggered our bodies to prepare for the three key survival responses: fight, flight, or fold. Fear resides in our emotional center - the part of our brain that held sway over our responses well before logic reared it's multidimensional head. Fear was king during a time when the human race focused 100% of it's time on food, water, and shelter/safety. Fear was key in ensuring that man lived to see another day. Then something happened.

Logic and language have taken the human race to places far beyond those early beginnings. We've been to the moon, we've cloned entire organisms, we've reordered our world in ways that were unimaginable to the original man. However, no matter how far we have come, no matter what the time and distance, fear is still with us. It is a part of our survival mechanism, and our bodies still react with the intent that fear has a purpose and that it's purpose embraces survival. The problem is, in today's world, fear can step in at the most inopportune and inappropriate moments. Where fear was once a welcome companion to survival, it has now become an obstacle to success and fulfillment.

There are no easy answers to this conundrum. For myself, just recognizing that fear, when it appears, can seem like a fish out of water. This recognition allows me to embrace it and, to some degree, put it to rest. You can give fear its due: I know that some people intentionally take risks and engage in risky behaviors. Fear and logic have the habit of dancing around each other, but logic can never truly touch fear, and when fear dominates, logic struggles for a hand hold. Awareness becomes the best determinant in managing fear. When fear is appropriate, let it lead you. When fear is not called for, honor that your body is responding in a way that has gotten mankind to this point. Give yourself the space and grace to move past fear, in these instances, into a place of logic. Make of your life what you want, fear should be your ally. You determine how it plays out in your life.

The Power of Believing in Yourself

In the late 1970s, sports psychologist Jim Fannin was coaching
Adriano Panatta, one of the top-ranked tennis players in the world
and a former French Open champion. He tells the story of Panatta's
quarterfinal match with one of the newcomers at an ATP tournament.

“As the match unfolded, this low-ranked, left-handed, red-headed jerk
of a guy has no respect for a top-ranked player in the world. He
stalls. He berates an umpire. He yells at a ball kid. He crushes my
player! We are humiliated!”

“Fourteen years later I’m at my home in Chicago having dinner with my
best friend Peter Fleming and his doubles partner, John McEnroe Jr. I
turned to John that night and said, “Do you remember when I met you
back in San Francisco?” He smirked and replied, “Oh, you mean when I
crushed your Italian boy?” We all started laughing.

And I said, “Yeah, how did you do that?” Your ranking
was so low. How did you play like that?” McEnroe
looked me cold in the eye and said, “I was number one
in the world. My ranking just hadn’t caught up yet.”

Wow. That’s self-belief.

Too many of us have it backwards. We think it’s when we reach the
milestone goal – the ideal weight, million-dollar income, major
promotion or championship trophy -- that we will finally become the
person we want to be.

In fact, it’s the opposite. We have to embrace our vision before it
actually happens. As Wayne Dyer says, “You’ll see it when you believe it.”

Quoted from The Flow Factor - Renita Kalhorn

What Makes A Good Leader

Leading others is about FIRST serving others. As a reference, I recommend Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, by Greanleaf, Spears, and Covey. Servant leadership is about working, as a leader, to enable those that you lead to have what they need in order to fully exercise their gifts, talents, and skills in accomplishing the organizations goals. As to those who are a member of the team that is lead by an individual who is truly modeling Servant Leadership, those team members are responsible for helping that leader to have what they need in order to execute to business goals (be successful): this can include information, perspectives, insights, feedback, etc. As an effective leader in my own right, and as someone who serves an individual who models Servant Leadership, I feel impelled to have fierce conversations about goals, objectives, and outcomes in the light of a people centric culture. It IS my responsibility to bring my gifts, talents, and skills to the table and to provide all of the information that I have at my disposal to strengthen my leader's position. This DOES NOT mean that I am a YES person, or coddle to his vanities or feed him what he wants to hear. I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THIS IS IN ANYONES BEST INTEREST! As a VALUED member of the team, it is my responsibility, my obligation, and my honor to share what I know, think, feel, and experience. "When the right people with the right mindset come together, you've a championship team."

With regards to Simon Sinek's Tweet: "A team's job is to provide their leader more options. The leader's job is to give his/her team the resources to do so." The options available are about the teams efforts to provide leadership with the input they need to be able to consider all viable options. It is in the role of best serving the team, that the leader willingly and open-mindedly considers the insights and ideas coming from the team. This support structure is SYMBIOTIC in nature and inclusive regarding the importance of the team to the ultimate success and viability of the outcomes.

As a part of an effective team, we must all engage in the kinds of sharing of information and unfiltered dialogue that challenges and strengthens each of us.

Degrees of Consciousness

I recently watched Simon Lewis's TED talk on "Don't Take Consciousness for Granted" - http://on.ted.com/9RQh , and it really impacted me as to the value of Consciousness and what Consciousness brings to my life. As I thought about how conscious I am at any given time, I realized I exhibit varying degrees of consciousness in any given time span. To be really conscious of what is going on around me, or of what is happening at any point in time, I find I have to "pull" myself back into that moment - I find that being in the NOW takes focus, for me. My natural state is for my consciousness to be occupied with the past, now, and the future. Often times, in fact, I find that NOW takes a back seat to what I am working through in my mind relative to the past or in anticipation of the future.

What an interesting thing to be doing with my mind! I believe, as I look at how my mind works, that, a good part of the time, I am most unconscious in the present. WOW! That's scary!

All I actually have, in reality, is NOW. Yesterday is gone; tomorrow doesn't exist; and yet I focus very little of my consciousness on the one point in time I REALLY have the opportunity to make a difference - NOW.

So, I ask myself WHY? Why do I focus so much energy on yesterday and tomorrow? What comes to mind as I ask these questions is that it is REALLY important to me to be able to "connect the dots" in my life - to see and understand how the past flows into the present, and then into the future. My mind is always looking for patterns that it can recognize in the evolution of time in order to facilitate, and/or guide the linear flow of events.

So, I ask myself WHY? Why is this approach so important? What comes to mind is that I am afraid of chaos, of a perceived regression into the primal state. As I look at this fear I realize that control is important to me. I have an understanding that having control in my life comes from this "mapping" process, and from pattern awareness. I look at this desire to have control and I realize that I am driven to not be a "victim" - of anything. WOW!

Victim is a state of mind. It isn't about linear process, or about preparing for any possible outcome, or about combing through the past. It isn't about pattern recognition and it isn't a result of chaos. It is a choice. Simon Lewis's TED talk touched me because it is proof positive of what that choice can do in one person's life - it is a powerful, life changing choice. WOW!

What Makes Things Special

I just read Simon's blog on his insights on what makes things special: http://sinekpartners.typepad.com/refocus/2011/07/small-is-special.html

I agree about the small part and about the making it personal. However, I have to say that I have had some really special personal moments that had more to do with where my head was at at the time I made a note of the specialness of the event, than the size of the event. For example, I took a trip to Vienna with my Mom before she was unable to travel. When I booked the trip, I didn't book it because Vienna was some place I wanted to go. I booked it because it was the place that my Mom had always dreamed about going. Because of her physical frailness at the time, we took a small trip in the AM, then would return to our Bed and Breakfast, lunch, and take a nap, and then we would take a trip in the evening. I went with no expectations except to make a dream of hers come true. I booked all the events she wanted to see, and yet, in the end, it was one of the most magical and special times that she and I were able to spend together before her death. We took the trip over Easter time. One of the events that I booked was a concert at St. Stephens Church featuring Kathleen Battle and the Vienna Boys Choir. I am not an Opera fan to speak of, though I have always enjoyed the Boys Choir. The concert was magical and the setting surreal. Another evening we were sitting outside our Bed and Breakfast, which happened to be right next to the Vienna School for the Arts. The sun was setting, we were having a glass of wine, and as we were sitting there just enjoying the evening a woman started singing an aria that was so touching, so beautiful and so unplanned. It brought my Mom to tears, and for me was one of the high-points of the myriad of unplanned but treasured memories that we amassed. I guess what I'm sharing is that there are so many ways to lend meaning to any given moment. I look for every opportunity to lend meaning to NOW, to make NOW special, magical, memorable. If I use only emails to bring meaning to NOW, then shame on me. I would hope that I am constantly building my resources to enrich what ever time I have left and to touch lives and lend dimension, including emails. I hope that, in the end, the math of my life adds up to positively impacting the lives of others, even if it's as small as 1+1+1, or on a larger scale.

The Story of The Tainted Well

There was once a wise king who ruled over a vast kingdom. Now, in the heart of the city, there was a well with pure and crystalline waters from which the king and all the inhabitants drank. When all were asleep, three witches entered the city and poured seven drops of a strange liquid into the well. They said that henceforth all who drink this water shall be “of a different mind”.

The next day, all the people drank of the water, but not the king. And the people began to say, "The king is ‘of a different mind’ and has lost his reason. Look how strangely he behaves. He is not like us any more."

The king, aware of what had transpired, was faced with a dilemma: drink from the well and become like the rest of his subjects, but remain king; or don’t drink from the well, remain “single minded”, but be swept from power by those who would view his very state of mind as a threat.

I have always loved this "parable". It is food for thought. There is a price to be paid for being of "a different mind".

A Letter to My Daughter

Sometimes when I look at you I see myself forty years ago. Yes, you are as complex and frustrating as I was, though, I don't believe as wild, or as angry. You don't have any of the aggression that I had - but then again, you haven't had to grow up competing with three brothers. I too, at the age of twenty, felt lost and purposeless. There is a curse in having a bright mind, a mind that can discern the emptiness that lies behind human existence. There has to be more. There has to be a transcending purpose, a thread the binds beyond the limits of life spans. It took me almost 30 years to discover my WHY. It may take you as long. In the meantime you may find yourself trying to fit in where you don't really feel that you fit. You may find yourself trying to dumb down that wonderful mind of yours in order to not offend and alienate, and you may, like myself, live half your life filled with frustration and a sense of isolation. I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be?...Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you."

You asked me, last night, if there was some way to become less intelligent, so that you might be able to enjoy life more, and fit in better. As I remember back to when I was your age, I too felt that way. I too wished there was a magic pill that would help me to be happy with the cards that I was dealt. Contentment is not in our makeup - not at your age. It is our blessing and our curse that we build, that we create, that we dream and struggle. To create greatness at times, but to never be satisfied, that is the driving force. Others may take what we create and turn it into profits and directions, but that is not WHY we do it, and that path does not interest us. The striving to create greatness is the drive to capture the best for one moment in time. The effects of time, the elements, and physics dictate that even the best degrades back to chaos;dissolves back into the primal state of potential. To have captured a moment of greatness, to have been a catalyst to a pinnacle of opportunity has become the fireworks in the emptiness. In the cracks between what has meaning for most people I have found peace; I have found contentment. I don't know where your life will take you. I can tell you it is going to be one hell of a ride. This world, this earth that we inhabit, this life that we lead, this body that our soul is at the wheel of, is all so vastly amazing; so miraculous. In truth, my days sparkle with a myriad of miracles that is the flow of existence. It's fascinating, at times frightening, always intriguing, and forever changing. It is my lover that I have courted for as long as I can remember. I wish, for you, many blessings and much love on your journey of discovery.

A Place of Balance

I have found that having a "place of balance" in my life is a powerful contributing factor to my sense of well being and ability to sustain what I am engaged in over an extended period of time. I have not always come from this perspective. In my youth I drove, with passion, towards my ends, exhausting myself, burning out, and often times crashing and burning. Somewhere I had come up with the idea that this kind of manic success/failure profile was the sign of a true artist or someone who passionately pursued their interests. I, of course, aligned myself with others of like mind, which resulted in a part of my early years being spent either in pitch black despair or in brilliant, blinding success. It had it's moments, but that was the problem - it only had moments, and the rest of the time was spent in either ascending or descending struggle. I am happy to say that this is no longer my modus operandi, though the experiences is certainly the stuff of many good stories.

What I discovered, along the way, is that moving in a chosen direction, towards goals that I connect with in a profound way, is about bringing my mind back to center, again, and again, and again. As diversions carry me away, as the path forward may become confusing at times, and I may make a wrong turn, yet, when I discover the need for correction, it is about just making it, and I return again to my center. The challenging part of this, for me, is moving away from or past that which is not in alignment with my center, but which I am drawn to for various reasons. I am human after all, and human frailty and wants are a part of my make up. I am always working at improving, at being a better person, and serving others in more effective ways. It all comes back to center and to the heart space that it springs from and returns to.

Connecting Passion with Reality

I recently attended a presentation by Simon Sinek. I first connected with Simon's message when I listened to and watched his presentation on TED (my all time favorite want to know something about anything site!)

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html.

What I took away from Simon's talk was very different than I think most people in the room took away. Those that were in attendance were all CEOs, COOs, Owners, and VPs of companies from all over Wisconsin and northern Illinois. What I took away from Simon had to do with a particular element of his TED WHY presentation and the presentation that I attended. What I took away had to do with how the brain works when it comes to connecting Passion, and particularly Passion associated with one's WHY, to the real world. Simon speaks to the two areas of the brain, the neocortex, and the limbic cortex, as playing key roles in connecting with your own WHY as well as connecting others with your WHY. What I came away with was that, because these two areas of the brain don't "get" each other, you have to build "bridges" to make those connections, and you have to do this regularly - almost like a drum beat.

Defining your WHY is just the first step. The definition of your WHY finds voice as a result of your neocortex, which is where your logic and language abilities reside. The heart of your WHY, the soul of your WHY, is fueled by the voiceless, logicless emotional center of your brain - your limbic cortex. It, unlike that which comes from logic and language, has no corporeal form - it is purely of spirit. It, by itself, also has little "staying power" in the realm of reality. There, then, is truly the rub! How do you take something of spirit and give it form? If you think of this question in terms of human existence, this has been the making and downfall through history of humankind. Simon has taken this age old struggle to connect spiritually with our world and distilled it down to ones own WHY.

Simon, during his presentation to this group, pointed to some of the "things" that he uses, on his person, to connect the spirit of his WHY to reality and to current events. Simon wears orange items that, when he sees them,feels them, and uses them, are reminders, are ties that connect the spirit and reality of his WHY. He developed and used these "shorthand things" as a conduit. They help to continually connect the emotional part of his WHY with the logic and language part of his WHY. People of like mind resonate with Simon's message in proportion to their own drive to make similar connections for themselves. So what exactly happens when this spirit/reality connection is made, nurtured and returned to the world? There are examples of those individuals who have been able to resonate over a continual period and time, and both spiritually and realistically connect with a powerful WHY: Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jacqueline Novogratz, Henry Ford, and Steve Jobs, to name a few. A truly powerful WHY transcends individuals, embraces possibilities not yet realized, and strives towards horizons yet unseen.

On The Path to Enlightenment

I had a tough week last week. There were a couple of things that came together that made me look, really look at my life and my choices and my WHY. I found it necessary to spend the weekend revisiting what I know to be my core purpose for being and to reconnect in order to move past the events of last week.

Last week brought tremendous disappointment in the company that I work for. I am seriously beginning to doubt that this company is the vehicle that will allow me to fully realize my WHY. We have a leadership that seems unable to stop lapsing into modes of communication and politicking that have no place in a truly people centric culture. Having leadership that BELIEVES in our WHY is an absolute requirement for us ever to have a chance of getting there. I just didn't see it this last week. Don't get me wrong - there are those leaders who live the vision, just not enough of them, and not enough at the top. It becomes really obvious when the going gets tough.

I really need to take into consideration how much time I realistically have left and how that has the potential of playing out given the current state. If I were to dream the dream, I need a vehicle that is solidly anchored to its WHY. I need people around me who are all rowing in the same direction with conviction, with enthusiasm and with a FAITH in the WHY that is unfaltering and unwavering. How we treat the least of us is a key to how people centric we truly are.

This weekend I spent with my daughter celebrating Mother's Day. Being a Mom has been an amazing adventure. My daughter has given me 20 years of growing and stretching and testing and change. She is my most valued teacher and my most beloved creation. "A child is someone who passes through your life and disappears into adulthood." My daughter is at that threshold. It is important to me, until I take my dying breath, that I model what it means to live life fully; to push the envelope, to challenge myself; and to be fearless in the pursuit of my WHY, not just for her, for for all of those in my circle of influence. I may not have a lot of time left, but what I have needs to count.

The Complexity of Relationships

I spend a good deal of my time focused on how people build, maintain, and strengthen relationships. The core of what I do focuses on the art and science of communications. In all honesty, as I work with others in understanding themselves, the messages they send, it amazes me that we are as successful as we are in communicating. There are so many combinations or behavior and character traits. There are so many familial, community, and cultural differences. There are so many levels of language and communications skills. It seems almost an impossibility that, with all of this variety and all these variations, two people can meet at a place of common understanding. I can tell you that time and again, I have seen two people work through issue after issue as their understanding of each other found a foothold. I have also seen two people so divided by their inability to connect that it causes them to become even more alienated, even more divided. Why do some people overcome their differences and find a way to connect and communicate, and other people seem to never breach the divide, but instead increase the chasm that lies between them? One word comes to mind as I consider this question: compassion. People who have a sense of compassion for others, who work to develop empathy and who are open to a world that isn't limited to black and white, but holds room for shades of gray: these people seem to be able to connect with others the most effectively, and in meaningful ways.

If we, as human beings, are to come together. If we are to create a world that is about developing deeper understandings and acceptance of the differences that span the human race, than it is imperative to develop and strengthen our collective capacity for compassion and empathy. We all have our lines in the sand. There may be times we, ourselves, are not willing to cross that line, but in that same awareness, we must be able to recognize that it is, in fact, a line in the sand.

So, when I find myself passing judgment - I stop, and I ask myself if I truly understand the person I am judging. When I want to get angry with someone for something that they did - I stop, and I ask myself if I truly understood what lay behind the behavior. My capacity for compassion continues to grow. My ability to empathize continues to expand to include more and more people. I wish the same for everyone. I believe in a world where we all get along. I believe that the road to this reality is paved with compassion and empathy.

The Minds Strange Landscape

It is 4AM and I just woke out of a great sleep with an idea that just wouldn't leave me. It drove me to get out of bed and to send it off to be shared. Now understand, I really like sleep. I spend so much of my time driven, regulated, structured, and limited, that, when I sleep, I feel that I am finally able to shed the boundaries of the physical world and to do things that I couldn't otherwise. Since I can remember, I have had dream awareness and control. One of my favorite reoccurring, self created dreams is flying, or more specifically, soaring beyond the atmosphere of earth, out into the amazing black spaces of our solar system. Out there, in my mind, the size of the landscape in terms of space and matter is massive. Out there I am the atom, one among countless, occupying the head of a pin. It is really fun to explore that space and to feel the level of freedom my mind allows. I have also traveled into the world of cells, in my dreams, and have been bowled over by the pulsing, driven nature of life at that level. It reminded me of a jam packed manufacturing facility with all hands on deck, all machining monuments going at the same time, people intently going here, going there, forklifts humming by, a bee hive of life. It is noisy, driven, frenetic at times, and never sleeps. If a cell reaches it's end, it's remains are carried off, and it is replaced. There is an imperative, in that dream world, and it is life.

So, to make a long story longer, it takes a rather strong thought/idea to pull me away from my love of exploring my dream state, and this morning was one of those mornings where one of those ideas did just that. Which leads me to share that, when a thought or idea commands that kind of attention, I make it a point to pay attention to it. To give it space to find voice and to explore possibilities. It seems only fair, in retrospect, that if the dream state gives my waking mind such pleasure, awe, and inspiration, that the dream mind wouldn't want to have similar opportunities, in return, in the waking state. In truth, it seems a rather simple and thoughtful thing to do, to give voice and possibly substance to the dream mind, and it has lead my waking state in directions I could never have imagined. It has also allowed me to experience my waking state through new eyes, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

How Serious Is too Serious?

It is important to be serious about what you believe in. It is also important to be able to laugh at yourself.

There are times, for myself, when I have to remind myself that I'm a finite being living in a finite world that is spinning in a comparably infinite universe. As serious as I take myself, I still need to laugh, and I still need to be open to others perspectives and ideas. There is nothing scarier that a person who takes themselves so seriously that they can't see the irony of their existence; that they can't laugh at themselves on occasion and make fun of themselves on occasion. In the end what I do will be the testimony to what I believe. Lip service is easy...living an exemplary life is the challenge. Real truth is never compromised because one person indulges their sense of humor or makes an off message choice. Real truth just is. It's people who pass judgments and hold expectations; it's people who exclude or include according to their rules and boundaries that can create artificial truths or truths that are merely situationally applicable.

Compassion becomes the salve that breaks down barriers and allows others to freely choose without past experiences weighing one down. It is compassion that lifts others up and holds them in a place that allows them to be all that they can be. So laugh a little; enjoy life; and know that everyone is exploring their boundaries and finding their comfort zones. I, for one, choose to see the best, laugh with the rest, and live my life in a way that I am at peace with it.

Even the Small Things

I was driving today, my daughter in the passenger seat, when we both spotted (almost at the same time) a robin huddled by the side of the road. As I drove by my daughter looked at me and said, "we can't leave it there, we have to go back". When I didn't turn around immediately she became even more insistent, "MOM! We HAVE to go back!"

What I found interesting about this was what went through my head. I heard my mother's voice saying, "that's life...." I remembered my Mom ignoring my pleas to turn around and rescue an animal I saw by the side of the road, and basically telling me I needed to "suck it up" as life was tough, and I wasn't going to make it far if I insisted on bemoaning the fate of every animal that was laying by the side of the road. Let me say that, once I was out on my own, and living my own life, I chose, and continue to choose to stop for animals that I see injured by the side of the road. That doesn't mean that I don't still hear her voice echoing from the past.

So we turned around and went back to pick up the Robin. I watched Jess rush from the car to the side of the injured bird and scoop it up, unhesitatingly, in her arms. Cradling the wounded bird, she came back to the car and gently eased into her seat. We are fortunate to have a wildlife sanctuary just on the other side of town that is open on Sundays, so we headed over there. Jess, immediately started talking about nursing it back to health; possibly keeping it; and this led us to have a conversation about what "quality of life" might look like from the perspective of a wild animal. As much as Jess wanted to domesticate the robin, she understood that, from the robin's point of view, given the life it had known up to that point, the wildlife sanctuary was the best bet.

The woman at the sanctuary was great. She carefully took the bird from Jess and took it back into their injured animal/quarantine area. After a quick assessment of the robin, she indicated that it had probably been hit by a car. There didn't seem to be any broken bones, but that the bird had taken a pretty good hit to the head. She explained that she would give the robin some medication to help with minimizing brain swelling and make sure that the bird was fed and watered, and that it would be about 24 hours before they'd know whether the robin would make it or not. She gave us her name and the number for the center and told us, if we would like to check back, she'd let us know how the bird was doing.

It was great for Jess to see that there are people who care and are willing to go out of their way to actually tackle dealing with the animals that need help. It felt good to, yet once again, follow my own heart instead of my parent's advice. I always think about that story about the hundreds of starfish washed up on the beach and the little boy walking along picking up starfish and throwing them back into the surf, and a man asking the boy why he bothered as there were so many starfish, and the little boy couldn't possibly save them all, and the little boy responded, as he tossed yet one more starfish back into the sea, "it made a difference to that starfish."

As I reflect of what happened today, I am made aware of the impact a parent's outlook can have on the life of their children. Like the little boy with the starfish, I want to make a positive impact on my daughters future. I want to always encourage her to grow and become more than she thinks she is, in the moment, and to stay connected in a very visceral way, to this fragile world in which we live.

What Dreams May Come

In all truth, most of my dreams have come true. An interesting thing about dreams and reality is that, for me, there is a place where they meet. There is a place where the dynamic potential that is life finds full expression in the dream/reality marriage. It is that place that fascinates me. Even as I realize dreams, new ones form. New possibilities take hold and I have no choice but to create. It is an imperative for me. I really have very little attachment for a dream lived to its natural end once that end is reached. The dynamics of one door closing and another one opening just draws me forward. Once in awhile I get an opportunity to visit one of those doors that has closed in my past and I wonder, briefly, what it might have been like to walk through that door. The interesting thing about life is that it is time and direction linear. I can't exist in multiple times and I can't choose everything. If everything is important, than nothing is important. I am at peace with my choices and I love my life. I guess in the end it is what I write on the hearts of others that will be my testimony to the choices I made.

I have about twenty something years left before I die. It's a count down. What will I do with those twenty something years? How many lives can I positively impact and how many doors will open and close? God only knows. And that is the way it should be.

"For all of the peoples and the nations of the earth, may not even the names disease, famine, war, and suffering be heard, but rather may their moral conduct, merit, wealth and prosperity increase and may supreme good fortune and well being always arise for them."

That is my ultimate dream.

A Life of Passion and Purpose

When I think of how I want to shape my life; how I want to feel when I get out of bed every morning; how I want to feel as I engage with people and what I do each day; the words Passion and Purpose color what I see, what I feel, what I live. It hasn't always been like that. I have lost my way more than once, and sometimes for long periods of time. Living a life of immersion even if it marginalizes, is the most tantalizing concept I have discovered. For ones life to become a total and complete expression of that which springs from ones core, from ones heart is the pinnacle of accomplishment. How it takes shape is the magic of working with what you have. Start where you are. The beauty of the process is that the truth of your undertaking is self evident. When what you are doing feels right, when you can see the results in the lives that you have lifted up, in the communities you have enriched, that is the reward.

"When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world." Poet Mary Oliver from When Death Comes

Let me write my epitaph on the hearts of the people I touch.

Now is All I Have

Someone who took the time to talk to me today said that life is short, and the future an uncertainty, and it's important to take the time to engage each other when the opportunity arises,it's important to see each other in that moment. How many people did I rush by today? How many faces went unseen? How many conversations didn't happen, because I was late, because I had an agenda, because time waits for no man. What I do to make a living is important to me, and it's important to those people that I work with who depend on me, and all the people that make up the company that I work for to show up, to execute their work with excellence, to contribute to the support of families and all of the lives that are touched by what we do. It is because of the opportunity to connect with these people, to have these conversations, that I get out of bed each morning and spend 8 hours a day doing what I do. These people are important to me - all of them. I sometimes find myself, in the moment, wondering if collectively we are really aware of each other - aware of how important we all are to each other. For all of the dehumanizing things we do to each other to simplify processes, or to distance ourselves from our emotions in order to make logical decisions, in the end it is about people. When I look at engineers packed into cubicles, or Customer Service associates with the phone glued to their ear, I see a myriad of connections, to children sitting at desks in schools, to spouses, to life styles, to hopes, to dreams...I see communities and businesses, churches and social organizations. I see a complex and intricate web or relationships and dependencies, and it is all so frail. As robust as it is, it can all end in a moment.

Lately I have been spending a lot of time thinking about Japan and the devastation that has taken place there. In a relatively short period of time, due to an unforeseen natural disaster, the lives of countless people have changed. What they had is just like what I have. Their lives were part of an intricate fabric of relationships just like mine. For myself, this event has lent a real imperative for me to appreciate what I have in this moment, and in each and every moment. For me this event has shaken my sense of permanence to it's core.

In the end, it's not going to matter how many breaths I take, but how many moments take my breath away. I wish to be breathless with awe for whatever time I have left, reveling in each moment, and at each person that graces my life, in amazement and joy.

Lines in the Sand

I had an interesting conversation today with a leader in our Cultural Development office. This department has been hard at work, for over a year, developing classes and on-line offerings for our associates. I teach one of these offerings and I was asked if I had any reservations regarding the classes or the "professors". I have to be honest that I shared my thoughts and they are similar to my thoughts regarding any "course of study". At best, when we create learnings, when we develop common language, when we align people to enable them to all be able to row in the same direction, it's important to not loose sight of the lines in the sand that we have created and of the freedom of choice that is a God given right of each and every person we connect with. I understand the imperative that our Corporate offices feel in bringing our people centered culture to our divisions, however, I am also aware that you can not make someone change, you can only create an environment that invites them to change. The challenge for all organizations driven to create alignment, is that the imperative of their "truth" becomes so strong that the people fueling the initiative start herding instead of inviting; start creating pressures to force change instead of resting in the faith that real power lies not in what you can control, but in what you can unleash.

I have core values that are quintessential to who I see myself as being - they are what my behaviors and choices spring from. They are not, necessarily, exactly the same as anybody else. From experience, I can say with certainty that there are communities of people with which I strongly align, and others with which I do not. I choose to make no judgment based on this except to say that I choose to engage with and be included in communities that allow me to thrive - that are in alignment with my core values. This being said, I also like to challenge myself to in-bed in communities that are somewhat alien to me and to work to come to understand and appreciate what they bring to humanity. We are not intended to be all alike. In music, harmony is about the blending of different notes. The same can be said of humanity - our challenge is to discover how to blend to create harmony.

So, back to my original topic. Teaching subjects, learning subjects, and creating curriculum is about expanding the human experience. People will not move towards words that pursue them. If what is being taught is valid, it doesn't matter how many doors and windows are thrown open - the truth becomes self evident. For myself, I want no part of that which can not hold it's own under scrutiny - all else is a line in the sand.

Our Job is Not to be Perfect but to be Human

I have to say that there were many times during my day today, when being perfect took precedence over being human. If we are to truly send our people home fulfilled each and every day we need to embrace their "humanness" and then figure out how to "error proof" our processes so that we don't keep frustrating ourselves in attempting to circumvent our human qualities.

That is the rub in a work environment where standards dictate perfection, or at least near perfection.

I love what I have seen in the development of gas caps on cars. I can't tell you how many times, in my 58 years of existence, that I have forgotten my gas cap at the pump. I was delighted when car manufacturers started tethering those suckers right to the car. But still, there were more than a few times that little tether got in the way of easily putting the cap back on. Now, I am even more pleased with the self-sealing fill port. If you haven't seen one, it is very cool. There is a spring loaded seal that gives when you insert the fuel nozzle and then pops back into place when the nozzle is removed. I love it! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I can continue to be the fallible, absent minded person that I am, and I still can be sure, each and every time, that my gas port is sealed and ready to go.

Error proofing of procedures is happening more and more: I no longer loose the cap on the tooth paste since I started buying my toothpaste in a pump dispenser. I no longer have to worry about the cleanliness of a bar of hand soap, as I buy my hand soap in a pump dispenser. I no longer have to look for a rag to apply my Armour All to the interior of my car, as Armour All now comes in a wet-wipe dispenser. With as many things that we now have that now allow us to be the people we are, forgetfulness and all, there are still areas that could use some improvement and error proofing: ways to reduce our carbon footprint; ways to execute our economic initiatives as communities and nations without polluting our environment.

I like the idea that you can be who you are without your humanity being a challenge to living with excellence.

Social Ties: Miss Eva (Eva Roberson) by Samuel D. Henry

For weeks before Greg, her very practical youngest son took her from her 27th Street gingerbread home of plastic seat covers and walnut wood originals, some would even call ‘perfectly preserved antiques’, she had refused to wear the medical alert medallion. Now, at eighty-seven years, her forearms grown progressively brittle and rusty like brown sticks were unable to break the falls that more frequently came, and Miss Eva went into the hospital and soon passed away last fall. It was just about two and a half weeks before my father, Dudley Henry, also entered the hospital and passed away. He, too, was done before I was ready to accept it. Miss Eva and my dad are parallel stories in my life, one of at least a dozen mentors in the village that raised a child. I am that child, and the connections between them and me, I call ‘string’. Her presence fueled my social consciousness and much of my writing, so I start with her to try illuminate the relationships between myself and the world.
Since I was a undersized, quietly observant and inwardly focused six year old, Miss Eva had continually awed me because she was both so prolific a writer, and because she was so human. Greg, her son who is one month younger than me, was the first connection between us, although we had our own relationship over the years. She was, at barely five feet tall, never remote, even in 1953, when I first met her. But, then, I was not intimidated by my own father’s towering height of over six feet—it seemed natural to interact with them even while other adults seemed so remote. In truth, I was never very cowed by any adults, which mystified my peers a bit over my willingness to intrude on the adult world with my own ideas and sense of what should be. But tiny Miss Eva was more than special. She, like my paternal grandfather and a half dozen authors I read, opened me to the world.
First, there were topics of conversation: a world view quite different from, but strongly connecting with my home, church and family life. Conversation immersed in the delight of language; richly peppered with verse, allusion and alliteration and flowing and surging like the tidewater. Then, there was music from outside the walls of the church: Ray Charles and Brook Benton and Miles Davis and hundreds more, on heavy black rubber-like discs that overburdened the arm of her fancy brown and gold record player. Music that was so much more life-like than the Church music diet of my home. Where church music gave the spirit lift, this music’s lyrics gave voice to the twisting of internal organs, wings to the tears of humanity and heartache and balm to the loneliness that etched consciousness into the psyche of a growing boy. It was the knowing escape from existentialism accessible even for a six year old.
On the mahogany rack beside the plaid couch, and next to the stack of LPs, lay the latest issue of Jet, and later, Ebony Magazine, talking about people who looked like us with all the similarity of ‘us’ with ‘others’. Music and magazines all radiated a consciousness about ‘Blackness’ that anchored my life to a the local community and to the world. In my home we had religious books and encyclopedias, we had chemistry and science books, and sometimes even a current Life Magazine, none of which had any black faces to feel connected with. We even had a few classical music records, but race and color were never the topic of overt conversation, even when we went to downtown Washington DC with its restrooms and water fountains labeled “white” and “colored”, and the restaurants we could not eat in unless we went over to the corner counter to stand. When desegregation came and I was sent off to the neighborhood school where I was only one of four black children, the home avoided conversations about race. After a year or two the connection with Miss Eva rushed into that void.
But Miss Eva was more than that to me. When Greg had his annual birthday party just about Thanksgiving, Miss Eva would have the rambunctious boys calmed down by playing a bingo game with language manipulation, I was always happy to win many of these games, I now suspect it was jigged for a boost in my self confidence. And when, at 16 I broke my jaw playing football in summer camp, it was her house that I took refuge in—my mother has said that I was not to get hurt, and I knew that this injury could end my playing days if Mom found out.
Even in mid-June, the last time that I would see her in life, Miss Eva asked me questions about race and culture while she bustled around her house preparing me a piece of my favorite cake--part of a forty-four year ritual of food, pleasure and sustenance for the spirit. She was curious about Oregon, where I now live, and she wanted comparisons of it with California, especially the diversity. She asked me about raising my daughter in a very ‘white bread’ community. But she almost never offered advice, preferring to let me discover places for expansion.
As I understand it, Miss Eva published more than 500 short stories and poems over a fifty year writing span, and as one whose hubris is tied to his intellect even as his profession insists upon publish or perish, the volume and quality of her writing is stupifying. I also know that she expected me to write—although she never said so-- and I had always assumed it was to do professional writing. Coming to the house about twenty years ago, looking for Greg, I sat on the ‘becoming antiques’ in her dining room and living room after my ritual piece of cake, and spent about three hours telling her about my dissertation research and writing of the manuscript. While she was attentive and probing with questions then, I believe now, that I was mistaken. Her urging to me was to the narrative, not the pretensions of scholarship writing. After some thought, I think I have unraveled some of what she was asking me for.
As I reflect, Miss Eva nurtured a response to the world that quite clearly, cannot be located in, or contained with, the styles and subjects of academia. Academic pursuit, at least in these United States, is far too linear. It is too anchored in white Northern European thought, too full of its own importance, and too ignorant about the lives of people from other cultures to even come close to comprehending that for many others on the planet, life is a confluence of rivers and, our spirit lives in the connections of the many facets; none of which can be understood without the other. In my fiftieth year as I struggled with the rejection and ill-consideration of my colleagues as I requested promotion to full professor, I came to understand, a bit better, that the story that Miss Eva wanted me to write was of ordinary people, of Black people, who live spectacularly even as they live quietly without much notice from the media or from white America.
Miss Eva caused me to understand that because our lives are full and rich and meaningful, we fight battles much of the society cannot fathom exist. For us, the whole, unabridged stories are important. In history, which I teach at the university, we are consumed with the stories of the famous, the rich, the generals and the presidents, but it is ordinary people that make history. So I set about to tell these stories as I hope Miss Eva might like to hear about and nurtured me to tell.

Shendrine B. Henry An Educator Building Social Capital by Samuel D. Henry

Shendrine B. Henry believed that a woman’s place was in the home, and in the chemistry lab, in the community and the science classroom, and so she achieved in each place for most of the 84 years of her life. Shendrine’s adoring father named her from a Portuguese name he had heard in his native Barbados, even before he immigrated to New York City with his new wife, Hortense. In 1915, when they had their first child--not the boy everyone thought she would be--they called her: ‘Shendrine Eugene’. Ezra gladly named her, and for the next 45 years he never called her a nickname—the family did not believe in nicknames, slang or baby talk.
Shendrine was the first child in the family born in the United States, but like a lot of Black immigrants, she was very proud of her Caribbean, Irish and African heritage. Black immigrant families often had extended families arrive intact, unlike the shattered families of slavery practiced here. Her family had been granted permission to immigrate because Ezra had worked for the US building the building of the Panama Canal. Ezra wanted his children to have educational opportunities in this country; Hortense also searched for economic betterment. Shendrine’s parents were also glad that because of Ezra’s work, each of his children could have dual citizenship in the US and Barbados. Like many of almost 1 million West Indian immigrants of the WWI period, they maintained frequent contact, through trips and letters, with relatives back in the Islands. Also like many immigrant West Indians, they highly valued school success, speaking multiple languages, and culture contact with those who were different from them.
By the time Shendrine had two bothers and two sisters, including the twins: Felix and Eunice, and went to Girls High in New York City, her multi-ethnic group of friends from the immigrant neighborhoods of Brooklyn NY, often called her: “Sherry”, especially since she was active playing tennis, participating in her church and the Black immigrant community. Her dad encouraged her to read the newspaper daily; they often discussed local and international politics (he supported the Marcus Garvey Black Star project), and both parents supported her early achievement in school, where she was labeled as ‘gifted’. They hoped Shendrine would become the first doctor in the family, a dream spurred on by the ailments of her youngest sister, Leticia, who eventually died at 15 from a hole in her heart. The whole family was very saddened and stunned—one of her brothers felt he could never go to church again because the death of his sister was so cruel. Shendrine did not waver from her religious beliefs. In her quest to prepare for medicine, Shendrine attended Hunter College in NYC and graduated with a major in chemistry in 1940. During college years, at a church picnic, she had also met a tall young Black man from Washington, D.C., named Dudley Henry, and they were married about the same time as college graduation. Ezra liked the way Dudley supported Shendrine’s quest for knowledge and her community work through the church.
WWII and other family factors, including a pregnancy that miscarried, interrupted Shendrine’s dream of becoming a medical doctor, then came the birth of her daughter, Angelina. Six years later, and three years after Dudley had returned from serving in the Army, she gave birth to Samuel and while he was a toddler, she returned to school in the field of psychology. When a university professor told her that she shouldn’t be taking a psychology class because women, like her, took the seats of men that could be there in class, she was hurt but she persevered. A few years later, Shendrine became one of the first Black women chemists at the National Institutes for Health, NIH; and later, a founder of a national group of Black chemists. For several years Shendrine was recruited to become a chemist in France, but she decided not to transplant the family. After the Russians launched Sputnik, the US became very interested in improving science education and Shendrine, as well as a lot of scientists, became concerned and involved in secondary school curricula. With Dudley’s support, she went back to the university to earn a master’s degree in science education and she became a secondary school science teacher. She taught first in Baltimore, Maryland, then, in Washington DC: at the same high school her children had attended.
By now, Shendrine and Dudley had started an important enterprise. Given a rise in single female-headed households and the economic recessions of the 1950s, they began to feed ‘down and out’ families in the Washington, D.C. area. Taking donations from local merchants, and adding scarce funds of their own, they prepared food baskets weekly, often feeding as many as thirty families. When some other ministers told Dudley he should be concentrating on building his own church and collecting funds, Shendrine supported his efforts by helping put the packages together and getting driving directions for him. For almost 30 years they continued this ‘ministry’ together.
Once Shendrine had been teaching at McKinley Tech High School in Washington DC, for a few years, she put another set of talents to work. She enjoyed the church, she enjoyed music (she had played the piano since she was a child), and she really enjoyed teenagers, so she and a group of students started the high school Gospel Choir. There was some hesitation at first, some saw a problem with religious origin music in a public school, but Shendrine assured them that the choir was a good activity, that it was non-denominational, and it served to preserve a rich musical and communal connection for Black Americans-and anyone else who wanted to sing. Even though the school was about 90% Black, there were non-Black students in the choir at various times.
Shendrine also worked in the community insofar as politics was concerned. Her father, Ezra had been a Republican—recruited by the local politicians soon after he got off the boat. Shendrine was also a Republican, and she supported the party during the 1950s. She volunteered to be a civilian air spotter for several years, taking her duty turns during several periods of the Cold War Era. When President Eisenhower had a heart attack, she sent him a card and was most proud of Mamie Eisenhower’s thank-you note back. She was also proud of the Freedom’s Foundation medal she received. At the family dinner table politics was always served as well—Dudley was a New Deal Democrat, and discussions that the children were encouraged to participate in ranged from the accepting gifts scandal of Richard Nixon to the newly emerging countries of Africa and the Caribbean. Her usual goal was not to argue or change minds; it was to air opinions and discuss possibilities. In 1977, she was very pleased to attend the graduation of her son, Samuel, at Columbia University. He had fulfilled one of her dreams; even though it wasn’t medical, he had become a doctor. For her 40th wedding anniversary, Shendrine and Dudley traveled to Asia—she had always wanted to go, they enjoyed each other’s company even after their children had moved away from home.
In 1985, Shendrine retired from teaching high school, but over the next five years she would teach pre-school and design curriculum. In 1990, for their 50th anniversary, Dudley and Shendrine renewed their vows with almost 100 of the original wedding participants, and in the early 90s she greeted the birth of her only grand daughter, Antonia, with great joy. She lived simply with Dudley until he passed in September 1997, and unhappy to be without him, Alzheimer’s brought her to a quiet sigh of death in 1999.
Shendrine believed in the American Dream, and she lived a part of it. Like many Black immigrants, she valued and excelled in education. As a teacher she believed her role was to help students learn chemistry—more than three dozen former students came to her funeral to attest to her influence. She also held strong support for working with people of different cultures and valuing the African and Caribbean cultures here in the US. She was a patriot and a parent; an educator and a doer. She was very smart, but always found time to listen to new opinions. And she loved Dudley with all of her heart from the moment she saw him at that picnic until she died.

What We Really Yearn for, as Human Beings, Is To Be Visible to Each Other

My grandmother used to tell me that the greatest fear that children harbor is the fear of disappearing. Making simple human connections during the day to day things that we do can be a challenge. Jacqueline Novogratz speaks of a "life of immersion" in her TED presentation:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jacqueline_novogratz_inspiring_a_life_of_immersion.html

Jacqueline left a job on Wall Street to live a life of immersion. She speaks of people who have taken risks in the name of impacting the world in positive ways - some have lost their lives - have risked it all for a life of immersion. I love her story of the Blue Sweater:
http://www.acumenfund.org/bluesweater/

People operate under the misguided impression that there are measurable distances between "us" and "them", when the truth is there is no "us" and "them" - there is only us. When we fail to see and connect with others, we miss opportunities to celebrate us, and to change the world one relationship at a time. Immersion may be as simple as engaging in your community, in your work place. Celebrating the people who serve you - thanking the check-out person; recognizing the contribution of the person who serves as a crossing guard for our children; complimenting someone on their thoughtfulness, complimenting someone on their act of kindness - every day holds a myriad of opportunities to immerse yourself more fully in your community and bring a deeper meaning to your life. Try it - It's life changing!

Rachel Carson is One of My Heroes

Rachel was into the environment before it was cool to be into the environment. She was lobbying for environmental change before it was big business to lobby for environmental causes. She worked tirelessly to bring awareness to the effects of DDT and pesticides on the environment. Her pivotal work, "Silent Spring", spoke to the loss of our song bird population to the ravages of environmental pollutants. The sad truth is that pollution has become big business. Futures in emissions credits (the right to belch toxic pollutants into the atmosphere) are traded on the open market. Coal burning plants that exceed EPA emission standards can buy emission credits from those power facilities whose emissions are less, and who lie within the EPA requirements. This allows those less efficient plants to spew their toxic byproducts into the air. In addition, developed countries take advantage of third world countries, selling them their outdated equipment and technology that does not meet the pollution standards set by their government, locating manufacturing facilities in third world countries so that they can avoid having to meet stricter standards. The chemical disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984, brought to light what continues to go on today in third world countries.

Rachel Carson fought long and hard for what she believed in. She talked to anyone who would listen. She believed that she could make a difference. She continues to inspire me. Never underestimate the power of one person committed to success - committed to what they believe in.

Life's Little Challenges

I consider myself a fair minded person, for the most part. This week the lines I draw in the sand, that define my life, were challenged; more pointedly, they were offended. Now I am looking at what happened and asking myself "why"? Why did this event impact me to the degree that it did? A wise man I knew once told me that we, as individuals, have the power to disarm hurtful words that are sent our way. He described hurtful words as "arrows". He shared that we decide if we will let the arrows pierce us - or not. He shared that words are merely wind over vocal chords - nothing more. It is we, who give them meaning. It is we, who give them power. In this light, I let the words this person sent my way wound me. Initially I became angry with this person, but not so any more. I realize that he is who he is. I don't have to like him, or approve of him. He is not permanently a part of my life. Neither does he need to be. In truth, it wasn't his fault that our worlds momentarily collided. If the truth be told, I have a part of my life that isn't in a "state" that I would like to see it in. All the incident did was point this out. If my life had been where I would like it to be, I probably wouldn't have reacted as strongly as I did. The good news is I don't believe I let on that I was impacted to the level that I was. Bottom line: no harm, no foul.

As humans, we spend so much time and energy building the sand castles we call our lives. The truth is, the ocean of time will eventually wash it away. What then do we leave behind? What then is our legacy? For me, it is the one kind word that I can offer someone else; or the act of forgiveness, or compassion; it is the thoughtful deed that brightens one person's day, or lifts someone's spirits. It is my encouragement to everyone I have the opportunity to interact with in a positive way: in short, my legacy is to pass it on, to pay it forward. It is unlikely that I will be remembered long after I'm gone, or that history will record my deeds for posterity. But that in no way diminishes the lasting impact of the simple kindnesses that I can extend to others that can make a difference in their lives. If that is all I am able to accomplish, it is enough.

Attitudes are the Real Figures of Speach

"The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech." - Edwin H. Friedman

How one uses ones words, ones language skills can create first impressions just as impactful as the visual message. There is a science and an art to the use of words in conveying a message. The stronger the alignment between the verbal and the non-verbal the more powerful the message. Conversely, when ones words and non-verbals are not in alignment the message can be garbled, lost, and misinterpreted. How is it we can go through so much formal schooling and have so little formal training in the science and art of communication? How is it that we can spend so much time in frustrated miscommunication throughout our lives and still do nothing about it? If we continue doing the same thing, isn't it likely we are going to get the same results?

I was trying to convey a concept to someone, recently through a story I was telling. The person I was talking to didn't get it. He didn't see the parallel and he didn't draw the connection. He didn't get it. In order to get my point across I started speaking louder, and becoming more animated. At that moment, for me, the failure didn't lie in the fact that the message I was sending didn't match or parallel anything in his frame of reference. I just needed to be a little more graphic, more colorful, instill more emotion... Then I got it. I had an Ah Ha moment. As much as I loved the craft of my words, it didn't work for him. If my true intent was for a mutual understanding, it was I who had to change, not him.

WOW. Go Figure! Our relationship has changed. From that moment on we now try to find common ground before making a point, before seeking mutual understanding. WE GET that we don't get each other, and it's OK. It's even funny now. We laugh when one of us falls off the wagon and goes off on a tangent and looses the other person. We call each other back in good humor and in understanding. We have changed what was once painful into something that feels good for both of us. Most importantly we now are able to communicate in a way that allows us to connect on levels that neither of us thought was possible.

The Nature of Impermanence

This week has been cathartic in a number of ways. This week I found out that a good friend of mine has breast cancer. I spent the evening with her. We talked, we cried, we laughed and we commiserated on how life can spin out of control at any moment. For as solid as our persistence of vision is, in the end it's an illusion...like a lot of things we count on. Tomorrow she goes into surgery, and after that radiation therapy, and after that... We hope, we pray we try to see a straight line in the chaos of possible outcomes. In the end we hold on to each other for dear life. That is the one truth in this story - life is dear. It is the only medium we have to be impactful, or not. My friend is one of those people that you love, often times with intense frustration. That you admire, often times with total disbelief, and that you are absolutely sure is your hero except for her faults. That, too, is the human condition. It isn't always clean, or clear, or consistent. It doesn't always make sense, or endear itself to you, and, in the end, like my friend, humanity is my hero if it weren't for it's faults.

They have come to me today...those that she has helped...those that she has listened to...those that she has encouraged...asking how they can help...how they can be of service. These are the human qualities that I celebrate. This is what makes impermanence bearable. It is the small things that we do to improve the human condition, day in and day out, that tie us to the infinite good that lies at the heart of humanity.

"The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions -- the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimal of pleasurable and genial feeling."

The End Doesn't Have to Be The End

"When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world." Poet Mary Oliver from When Death Comes

How much of my time, attention, energy and resources is spent on things that are impermanent? More than I really want to admit. I recently watched a short video clip of Simon Sinek's from 2007:
http://www.captureyourflag.com/interview-library/how-to-set-life-goals-to-leave-a-personal-legacy-to-society.html

If I account for my age as a count down to zero, using standard life expectancy, I'm in my early twenties. When I think about how driven I was to discover my WHY in my twenties, I realize that I have become complacent, comparatively speaking. The good news is that I also have a good deal more knowledge and experience under my belt and, if I choose to, I can really make the next twenty something years count in a way that wasn't possible when I was twenty something. If I work smart and focus on service to others and on being the kind of leader who empowers and celebrates others. In truth, I am looking forward with anticipation to this part of my journey. There is comfort in knowing that life goes on, even as the count down continues. The imperative is not to leave my mark, but to pay it forward and to provide, where possible the step up that others may need in finding their voice and impacting their world in positive ways. It is a bright and inviting future that leads to the end!

The Unseen Depth and Breadth of the Lives of Those We Take for Granted

My Mom passed away this year. My Dad died at age 57 - over 25 years ago. So my Mom's death marked the end of my physical ties to my parents. I was having problems morning my Mom's passing. We had a complicated relationship. I needed to make peace with the past and at the same time I wanted to connect with my parents in ways that I hadn't while they were alive. So I took the time to copy her address book - all of the names and addresses of the people that my Mom and Dad had chosen to stay in touch with for over 65 years. I asked these people for stories about my Mom and Dad that would help me to understand the roles that they had played in their lives. The stories I got back weren't what I expected.

One of their friends from when my Dad was in the Air Force, stationed in the Marshall Islands, in 1953 wrote, "We are so sorry to hear of the death of your mother, a truly bright and lasting light in our lives." What an amazing opening to a window from the past into my parents lives. These beloved friends of my parents shared several stories that painted them as a charming and bright couple with two small children and the world at their feet. They close the letter with, "Those were good times that we will always remember. You had two of the nicest, most up-beat parents. We loved them, and will always love them." To have so impacted the lives of this couple to have endeared themselves so closely for so many years humbles me.

Another couple wrote, "Your mother and father came to Ithaca New York in August of 1954 so that your Dad could attend Cornell Law School starting in September of 1954. We arrived at the same time so that Peter could attend Cornell as well. Both families found apartments in old farm houses. Your Mom and Dad lived in one owned by a Professor Emeritus, and we lived in an old farm house owned by an officer of GLF (Agway). Going to school on the GI Bill monthly allotment is not an exercise in extravagant living, so your Mom got a job as a secretary for a Political Science Professor. I stayed home and watched both sets of children and we split your Mom's wages. That is, essentially, what both families had to live on, pay the rent, buy groceries and keep the used cars going."

I never knew that my parents struggled to that level to make ends meet. Their letter closes with, "The years at Cornell were busy, sometimes difficult but always, with our families, there was a close bond of friendship, caring and concern."

In another note that I received, a friend of my Dad's from his boyhood spoke to their lifelong friendship and how my Dad had been the one to introduce him to his wife of 60 years.

With these letters and notes, I was blessed with the opportunity to see into the impact that my parents had on the lives of others. It allowed me to see them in a different light and with a deeper appreciation for the richness of experiences that their lives were. I have made peace with my Mom's passing, and I have connected with people that I will continue to stay in touch with, as I have come to love my parents more through the stories shared by those who came to love them throughout their lives.

On My Core Values and Faith

“For all the peoples and nations of the earth, may not even the names disease, famine war and suffering be heard, but rather, may their moral conduct, merit, wealth and prosperity increase, and may supreme good fortune and well-being always arise for them.”
For the last 25 years this is the prayer that I have been aligning my values with and shaping the world around me to. I once heard a story, a long time ago, about true FAITH:
There was a man who had lived an exemplary life. He was generous, loving, kind, compassionate, and practiced his religion devoutly. One day, as he was praying to his God, his God spoke to him. “You are a good man, a man of principles, you are kind and generous, thoughtful and compassionate, but you are not yet a true man of Faith.”
The man responded, “How can you say that, what more do I need to do to prove myself to you?”
God replied, “You do not ever have to prove yourself to me. Nothing you have done, or can do, will ever change how I see you. Our relationship is eternal.”
“I don’t understand,” the man replied.
God lovingly answered, “Faith is like a hammock for which you are unable to understand or identify what it is anchored to. There are those who won’t venture onto the hammock at all, fearful of what they can’t see and have no perceivable control over. Then there are those who will pretend to be in the hammock, but in reality they have worked to maintain an infrastructure that will catch them if they fall. So too, there are those who trust the hammock, for the most part, but keep one foot on the ground ‘just in case’. True FAITH can be found in those who have both feet in the hammock.”
Every day is a celebration and a miracle in the lives of those with true FAITH. These individuals are connected and belong in ways that go far beyond what our five senses take in. The human spirit has the potential to be a conduit, and FAITH is that which allows the spirit to connect to something much bigger, enduring, and pervasive. “I believe” is the logical mind rationalizing the act of having both feet in the hammock.