Author: Ricardo

I find myself in a bona fide ethical dilemma.  I’ve obsessed about it over the weekend.  I’ve come up with what appears to be a suitable plan to address it, yet…something still just doesn’t feel right.

I can’t tell if I am over-reacting.  Perhaps I am blowing things out of proportion and just need to relax a bit.  I can’t be the only one who feels the same way I do about this situation.  Everyone else appears to be falling in line, towing the company line.  I am just having a hard time swallowing this.  At times it feels like more than I can stomach.

“Doubt means don’t.”  I’ve heard that before.  That’s usually a pretty good rule of thumb.  I just gave that advice to someone the other day.  If your gut, your intuition, is telling you that something isn’t right, then chances are…it isn’t right.  And this just isn’t right.

I understand that the needs of the many often must out weight the needs of the few.  At times, things have to be done in order to preserve the greater good.  It’s just that it probably doesn’t feel good for the few who get shafted.  

I know what I do for a living.  I know why I am here.  I know why I stuck with this.  I know that I am here to make a difference and to help build careers.  I know that what I do is bigger than me and is a part of a greater fabric.  Someone called me on the phone just this past Thursday to thank me.  For what?  For encouraging them.  For recognizing their effort.  For letting them know that I appreciate the way they go about their work. 

That’s why I am here.  That is why I go to work.

I find myself in a bona fide ethical dilemma.

Today, the question was posed: have you known that you are an artist since the beginning of time?

The immediate answer that sprung to mind: YES!

What is art?  Who determines what qualifies as art?

It wasn’t until the past few days that I realized that any act of creation is art, and that creation is in my blood.  My experience in working with other human beings over the years has taught me that everyone yearns to engage in that act, the act of creation.  To one extent or another, we are all artists.

When we are young, we believe we can create anything.  We believe that the world is ours for the molding.  Then, we get older and that goes away.  I’ve talked about that many times.  I maintain that it is true.  However, I reserve the right to change my ideas, and recent events have indeed changed my mind.  I believe that the yearning to create does not go away.  Like so many other aspects of our childhood, both good and bad, it buries itself deep behind the masks and facades of the adult ego.  From the recesses of our psyches, it contributes when it can.

In my life, it is time to change that situation.  Suddenly, there is a piece of my soul stirring after many, many years.  It is a piece to a puzzle that seems to make a little more sense every day.  Every day, I create.  I want to create more.  I want to create in different ways.  There are so many ways to create.  First, words.  Now what?  Smells are strong triggers of memory.  Few things smell as good to me as a freshly-opened box of pencils.  2H.  6B.  F.  

I found the pencil sharpener I used to sharpen my sketching pencils with when I was in high school.  High school, yo.

I lied to Mrs. Juliano the last time I saw her.  I told her that I was going to take a class at the Art Institute of Chicago.  I wanted to, really.  I think I even believed that I would…some day.  But the truth is that I told her I was going to when I knew that I wouldn’t.  I’ve never forgotten that lie.

Well, Mrs. Juliano, wherever you are, it may not be at the AIC but class begins on Monday.

It never ceases to amaze me how much some people love their own ideas.  Conversely, they seem to hate everyone else’s.

This is foreign to me.  I seldom find myself rejecting someone else’s ideas without at least listening to their rationale first.  If the idea is completely abhorrent to you, wouldn’t there be value in understanding the “why” behind the other side’s point of view?  Dunno; maybe not.  Maybe I am an idiot, a sucker, who allows himself to get pulled into the ideas of others.  I do so with the intent of mining whatever wisdom might be found there.  That’s just how I work.

I can live with people who don’t feel the same way I do.  Not a problem.  It would be a tad hypocritical not to!  My struggle lies in the need for some to ensure that others understand that they disagree.  I’ve heard of them referred to as “vampires” because they seek to suck the life out of others.  I find that such an accurate analogy.  I have to give Chris Guillebeau credit for it.  Check out his “279 Days to Overnight Success” manifesto on his website http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/overnight-success/.  Good stuff.  However, I digress.  The point is that I have a hard time trying to figure out what to do with people like this.  My Ego screams for verbal retribution.  I am clever.  I have good ideas.  I am smart.  Why not attack them back?  Then, a higher sense of self chimes in and reminds me that it doesn’t matter.  Let others speak their piece.  Again, more wisdom from Chris Guillebeau: don’t take it personally.  His advice is echoed elsewhere across the internets by those who make a living sharing their ideas.

So, I welcome the challenges.  They make me richer.  I have figured that much out.  Engaging in the debate might not always turn out well, but the process is what is most important.  It’s the journey, not the destination, as the cliche goes, right?  

Still, I can’t help but chuckle when the vampires who love their own ideas come out.  

Narcissus would be proud.

Sometimes, I have to sit through goofy stuff at work.  I’m talking about the kind of touchy-feely, woo-woo stuff that one would think I would like, but often turns out to totally miss the mark.  Those are hours of my life that I will never get back.  Of course, I really don’t feel that strongly about it because, after all, when is any experience not a learning experience?

Sometimes, though, I sit through a “feel good” sort of meeting and come away with a real insight that resonates with me and bounces around inside my head for hours afterward.  That happened today.

When today’s meeting was over and done with, I walked away feeling a little differently about the other leaders in my part of the company.  Most of the people I met today were people I hadn’t met before.  It drove home the fact that I work for a large company.  It also drove home the fact that this organization is filled with many undiscovered connections.  There are opportunities to reach out and do something different.  Like I said, this isn’t anything new.  There wasn’t a new batch of recruits indoctrinated into the corporation.  What was different was my perspective.  I chose to look at these people with different eyes, to listen with different ears.  And what I saw and heard…well, I guess I liked.

What does that mean for me?  I haven’t quite figured that out.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe something.  I just feel compelled to contemplate this, and, perhaps, do something with it.  

Today, I committed to begin a “work gratitude” journal.  Perhaps, I begin there.

I can’t help but be content with the passage of time.  

My oldest just celebrated a birthday yesterday.  I could say that time is passing too quickly, that he is growing up too fast.  But that would be a silly thing to say, really.  If I had a developmentally delayed child, I might secretly be wishing he were growing up more quickly.  I have seen enough in my lifetime to know that there is much to be grateful for.  I appreciate my child for the person that he is and the person into which he is developing.  I am thrilled, really.  Absolutely, positively thrilled.

We went to the movies on Saturday night to check out the latest kid-flick.  It was rated PG.  I remember when I did everything in my power to keep him away from PG movies.  I accidentally allowed him to watch “Shrek” on DVD only realizing the rating afterward.  That seems like a really long time ago.  He could barely talk when he saw “Shrek.”  But on Saturday night, we talked on the drive to the theater.  We talked while we waited for the movie to start.  We talked on the way home.  We laughed during the movie.  We laughed after the movie, remembering the stuff we laughed at during the movie.  We talked, and we laughed.  We had a good time.

Even though he’s my oldest, he’s still just a child.  I guard him fiercely.  I suspect I will for years to come.  His welfare and his happiness are so important to me.  I watch him struggle from time to time.  I watch his heart break.  I watch his trainwrecks and his triumphs.  I admire him a great deal.  It’s odd to say that, I know, but he approaches his life so differently than I did at his age.  He’s just a joy to observe.

He’s a pain in the ass, too.  Lots of questions; incessant teasing of his brother; expert button-pushing; bouts of whining.  He is, after all, still a child.  But there is even something reassuring about his childish behavior.  It means that I am watching him develop as a multi-faceted and complex human being.  Oddly enough, he inspires in me hope for myself.  For him, every morning is a doorway to all kinds of magical possibilities.  He wakes up with so much energy that he sometimes makes me instantly tired just waking up to his exuberance.  I know that the key is as much his perception of reality as it is anything else.  And if it is about perception, then it is something I can learn again, too.  He helps me never give up hope.

It’s unfair to burden a child with so much…responsibility?  What else would you call it?  I guess it doesn’t matter.  It’s a good thing I don’t burden him with it.  If he carried it, then it wouldn’t be nearly as powerful a thing.  For me, watching him grow up is just that: powerful.  I alone carry the “burden” of getting to watch this really good kid grow into a really good man.  

Some day.  Not yet, though.

For now, he still grabs my hand.  Just to hold it.

Children have an amazing ability to be completely and utterly honest while being completely and utterly gentle in their honesty.

Last year, my wife and I had a group of people over for our child’s birthday.  I made a vegetarian paella.  It was our first attempt at hosting a gathering after our decision to become vegetarians.  It was almost my first attempt at a vegetarian paella.  It wasn’t my best effort ever.  Vegetable broth doesn’t have quite the same bite as chicken broth, and it certainly doesn’t have quite the same sodium content.  Bland would be a nice word to describe the dish.

We served the paella as the main dish, and we served it to adults and children alike.  Everyone was polite, telling me how good it was and could I please pass the salt, pepper, and flavor.  That’s what the adults did, anyway.  The kids…well, the kids had their own way of communicating.  Some plates had little piles of untouched paella.  Some had piles that had been picked at.  My kids ate it all.  They roll that way.

But there was one little boy in particular who ever-so-sweetly let me know that I had made a valiant attempt at cooking paella but that I’d fallen a tad short.  He looked up at me with his beautiful, wide, and expressive eyes, and sincerely said, “It’s just a little bit not delicious.”  I had to choke back a laugh in the moment, of course, but I’ve thought about what he said many times since then.  It was really a beautiful moment, in my opinion.  Here’s this little boy, looking up at this tall adult, and basically providing me with the honest feedback that nobody else felt free to offer.  No criticism intended towards the adults.  I just marvel at the sincerity of children.

I often feel as if I am adrift in a sea of professional uncertainty.  Real, constructive feedback is so hard to come by, particularly at the moment it’s needed.  Instead, it’s pent up and released once or twice a year during reviews.  It sometimes seems like it’s used as justification for why someone is receiving this rating and this compensation for their troubles.  That is not feedback that I can use to create a better me.  A little sincerity can go a long way towards supporting some of that faith that I’ve been talking about.  

“It’s just a little bit not delicious”…now that I can use.  It lifts me up.  It tells me that I am close.  It encourages me.  It gives me hope that, with continued effort, I might get it right some day.  Considering the source, I can forgive the less-than-specific criticism.  

Sometimes those pick-me-ups come from the most unexpected places.

Having faith in someone else can be an immeasurably powerful act.  It is often most powerful when it comes from an unexpected source.  Today, I had a long, meandering conversation with someone who needed just needed someone to believe in him.  I did.  It has changed both of us.

Every time I can do this, I recognize it for the gift that it is.  It is easy to recognize when, months later, you can see the results speaking for themselves.  Confidence.  Knowledge.  Passion.  Happiness.  They don’t come from me, of course.  They were there all along, right within the individual’s reach.  All they needed was a little push to help them get started up the hill.  When you can help someone through a rough spot, watching them use their own strength to exceed your expectations and their own expectations is nothing short of joyous.  

We all need help getting up those hills.  And we can all help others during their struggles.  It takes a little compassion, a little love, and a little faith.  A little blind, selfless faith.  We can all give it when we see others in need, and we can all draw upon it when it is given by others.  When we give, we receive, and when we receive, we give right back.  

There are times when I doubt my ability as a leader.  I wonder if I have made the difference that I strive to make.  Sometimes, the people right in front of me let me know that I have.  Sometimes, I can’t seem to find what I am looking for.  Someone who used to report to me once wrote to me and told me that they sometimes ask themselves, “What would Ric do?”  When I feel the pity party picking up steam, I remind myself of that note.  It is my reminder that I did something right, at least once.  Besides, who do I know that the unwritten sentence wasn’t, “I ask myself that because I wan’t to make sure that I never do anything of the stupid shit I watched you do.”  I don’t.  And it doesn’t matter.  If my purpose in life is to serve as nothing more than a warning sign to others, then I humbly accept that role.  

I like to think that the faith I’ve had in others has made a difference to them.  Their faith in me has made a difference in mine.

I don’t believe that faith in our own abilities is wrong.  I don’t believe it is prideful.  It can be, but it doesn’t have to be.  Faith in our own abilities simply means that we acknowledge our potential to do things, to accomplish.  Whether you believe that potential flows from a Higher Source or from the neurons firing in our brains is irrelevant.  Being certain that we can get up each morning and perform the many tasks that fill our days is essential to a positive outlook on life.  It is the cornerstone of faith in self.

I observe far too many people second-guessing themselves, attaching self-deprecating disclaimers when they speak up, or even choosing not to speak up altogether.  As I’ve mentioned before, I believe fear lies at the heart of all such activity.  We undermine the things we do by focusing on our own fear of inadequacy, and this often leads to the self-fulfilling prophecy of our inevitable failure.  Nothing lasts forever, right?  All good things must come to an end?  Absolutely.  Especially when that is our expectation of life.

I believe that the desire to have faith in ourselves is inherent in all human beings.  We are born with it.  It can be observed in action in children, particularly younger children who have not yet felt the sting of disapproval or been corrected so many times that they begin to doubt their own abilities.  What was once possible yesterday now becomes impossible; such is the path out of childhood and into adolescence.  The pattern continues into adulthood…and beyond.

I do not believe that my abilities are greater than the forces at work in the Universe, the ones that mold and shape the destinies of the smallest microbes to the brightest stars.  Again, the point is not whether you believe the source of everything is a singularity that exploded into all matter in existence today, or a singular Divine Entity who created all that is in 6 days, or a Supreme Consciousness that simply wished long ago to know itself.  The point is that we wholly own and are completely accountable for the actions we take each moment we draw breath and interact with the world around us.  As fully-accountable beings, we have certain abilities.  When we are young, we have complete and utter faith in these abilities.  As we grow older, doubt shakes this faith.  We under-perform.  We slip.  We falter.  We trip.  We inevitably fail.  Each failure reinforces our doubt until we forget that we ever had faith in our ability to climb up a wall or swing from the high branches of a tree or even simply make it through the day with nothing but a smile on our faces.  This is the state of play we could use much more of in our lives.  Go forth and play!  You will recover faith in yourself in the process.

I don’t have a book of answers that I can share with everyone.  There are people who know me well enough to know that I am a human being who struggles with a great many personal demons.  Perhaps that robs me of credibility in their eyes.  But, maybe, just maybe, what I do have is the ability to put into words what is in my mind and in my heart.  I can write these things down, share my experiences, and write a book…a manual, if you will…about how to live life the only way that I know how: my way.  It’s not your way; it can’t be.  My trainwrecks and triumphs belong to ME.  Go make your own.

I was reminded of a great Oscar Wilde quote today: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”  Be you.  I will be me.  I will write about being me.  You can read my owner’s manual.  Maybe there will be something for you to write into the owner’s manual for you, maybe not.  Regardless, I have faith in my ability to write the best damn book about me that was ever written.  I roll that way.

And I have complete and utter faith in my ability to do so.

UPDATE: I love the fact that there are well-known, high-profile authors and thinkers out there who have the humility and the self-confidence to be able to acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers!  It’s about charting your own course and having the courage to share that with others.  As evidence, I offer this post from Seth Godin: http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b31569e201156f21e302970c.

I was cooking dinner on Easter Sunday, and it was coming down to the wire.  I do a pretty good job these days of timing things such that my dishes are all ready at the same time.  Easter turned out to be one of those times I cut it a little too.  I was multi-tasking, and I got a little distracted.  In the midst of moving my rice from pot to bowl, my beans were ready to be served.  I took the now-cool lid off the pot and ladled them into a serving bowl.  I grabbed that and the bowl of rice, and I carried them out to the table.  Dinner was almost ready to do.

I had gotten distracted, of course, with everything going on and all the people buzzing about, moving things from the kitchen to the table.  In my distraction, I failed to realize that I had left on the burner where my rice had been cooking…and placed the lid from my beans right on it.  As everyone was beginning to make their way to the table, I rushed into the kitchen to grab something.  I noticed the lid on the stove, the beans uncovered, so, naturally, I sought to keep my wonderful beans warm.  I reached for the lid.

I am, of course, grateful that I was the one who grabbed the lid and not my wife or my sister-in-law, or one of my boys.  Unfortunately, the sound of sizzling flesh on heated metal keeps such gratitude at bay in the moment.  The pain was instantaneous.  I was moving to quickly grab the lid and put it on the pot to begin with, so I was fully committed to my grip.  The natural course of action would have been to drop the lid, but someone, I can’t recall whom, was standing next to the stove precisely where the trajectory of a flung lid would have been.  So, I held on to it and put it on the pot.  Loudly.

The only time I can remember any of my grandmother’s yelling at me was when I was about ten years old or so.  She was making coffee on the stove using one of those iron stove-top percolators.  I wanted to help, so I grabbed the percolator when she asked my mother to remove it from the flame.  At the age of ten, you tend to care less about not dropping things than you do the searing pain in your hands.  So, I flung the percolator and coffee spilled all over the place.  I think my grandmother yelled at me more out of fear than anything else.  When I recall her face today, I have to laugh.  I don’t know who was more scared.  Or who was more relieved at the relatively tame reddening of my fingers.  After all, the percolators was more insulated, and the heat hadn’t crept quite as greedily up the side of the device as it would have on…say…a stainless steel pot lid.

The pain in my hand was like television “snow” in my brain.  The white noise filled my head.  I know I was talking to my wife…something about burning and pain…but I can’t really recall what was said.  I just know that I felt the pain coming in waves of ever-intensifying pain.  It would come, ebb, then come back more viciously.  Each time, it grew worse and worse.  And worse.  “Do this!”  And, “Do that!”  Maybe there was a, “I read you shouldn’t do that.”  I can’t remember.  I just remember the sizzling sound, the burning pain, and the waves.  

I ran my hand under cold water to ease the pain.  It helped.  The moment I removed my hand, though, the pain came roaring back.  And the noise started to fill my ears.  Mercifully, my thumb took the brunt of it.  Don’t ask me why, but it did.  My ring finger also felt like it was on fire.  I stole a look at my thumb, and I could see four distinct blisters already forming just minutes after the incident.  I remember thinking to myself, “This is going to be bad,” as cold sweat ran down the back of my neck.

That’s when I saw my wife’s hands around mine, gently cradling my pain.  I felt the warmth of her hands hovering a fraction of an inch above my skin.  From her skin, I felt a warm, steady…flow.  I don’t know what else to call it.  I felt her flowing into me.  I closed my eyes, and I attempted to feel her from inside my hand.  Crazy.  All I felt was the waves of pain.  Then, she called my boys over.  Together, the three of them laid their hands on mine, closed their eyes, and…made it all better.

The pain didn’t leave immediately, but I felt the waves begin to lessen in intensity.  I took a deep breath.  They smiled at me, sent loving energy my way, asked if it felt better.  I told them it did.  It didn’t at first, to be honest, but it got better with each minute.  We sat down to eat.  Later, as the meal drew to a close, I looked down at my finger.  The blisters that had been spreading in front of my eyes about an hour before had shrunk.  They were there, but they not longer threatened to merge into one.  The pain was a shadow of what it had been.

 I wouldn’t have believe it myself had I not experienced it first hand.  It is called Quantum Healing, and it operates on a level I do not understand.  I know it when I feel it, but I can’t tell you much more about it.  There’s a book somewhere here in my house that I feel compelled to read now.  Maybe I won’t.  Maybe this was just one of those moments of faith, where I believed in my family, and they believed in themselves.  Maybe I just over-estimated my injury.  Who knows.  All I know is that there isn’t so much as a scar on my hand.  The skin on my thumb is a little rough, but that’s it.  It has begun to peel away a little, like dry skin.  It’s no more than dry skin.  Not so much as a blister or an area of reddened flesh.  All evidence is gone.  Nothing ever happened.

It’s as if I’d never suffered burns to the hand.

 So much of life is made or broken in the details.

Think of your favorite website.  Or your favorite restaurant.  Or your favorite birthday.  It’s often about a detail, one moment or one thing that makes the memory come alive.  Sometimes, it’s the service you receive that makes you go back.  Or maybe it’s the quality of work that makes you buy one again.  Or maybe it’s the way she smiled at you that makes you remember that date above all others.  Or maybe it’s the way both of your little boys giggle that puts a smile on your face no matter the mood or the weather.  This is what I mean by “made or broken” in the details.

That’s not to say that we should allow one detail to ruin a day or soil a good deed.  On the contrary, I would offer that it is impossible to look upon something as wholly undesirable when considering the details.  I would offer that there is always some redeeming thing that can turn any dark day into something worth salvaging.  Both extremes represent a choice.  It’s the choice on how to judge our own lives.

In fact, I would offer that the tendency to allow a detail to sully something that is on the whole good, is a function of the Ego.  It is an attempt to undermine happiness, to sabotage enjoyment of life.  Why would we do such a thing to ourselves?  I don’t know.  I personally struggle with it myself, so I don’t have the complete answer.  What I will say is that I believe fear is at the heart of such self-sabotaging actions.  Fear?  Yes, fear.  I believe it is fear of being worthy to experience something good in life.  With one good thing, there exists the potential for others.  And what on Earth would we do if we failed to experience the next good thing?  Or if the next good thing took too long to come around?  Isn’t that something worth fearing?  Or, maybe even worse, what if we aren’t worthy of ever experiencing another good thing in our entire lives?  Isn’t that something worth fearing?  Why not sabotage life so that we never have to live with that uncertainty?  At least that way, we’ll understand, consciously or subconsciously, why life is so miserable.

But life isn’t miserable.  Life is pretty wonderful.  I can sit here and say that not because I’ve had an easy life but because I’ve had a life that is filled with details worth remembering.  There are far more good ones than bad ones.  At least, that’s how I choose to see things.

My life is wonderful, and it’s the details that make it.