Musings

OK, so this is the part where we stop and thread together a few pieces of information.

The use of antibiotics has lead to the development of more and more drug-resistant strains of our favorite microorganisms.  So, in modern human society, it would stand to reason that we should be rethinking our current application of antibiotics in the general population.  I think this is more or less happening as awareness of the misuse of antibiotics is really quite high.  I don’t think the medical establishment pretty much agrees on this.

It’s unfair to demonize antibiotics, though.  I think it’s more accurate to say that we, as a society, were largely ignorant of what we were doing.  Being more educated now, we can make different decisions, and, as a result, rectify past mistakes.  Besides, antibiotics save lives.  They decimate the microorganisms that result in disease when applied properly.  They make survival possible for people who might otherwise die from infection or disease.  In the very worst of situations, they allow humans to survive disgusting conditions that would otherwise kill them.  That’s what antibiotics do.

So, do you ever wonder why the meat that is served and sold to you “needs” to be grown with antibiotics?  Why are antibiotic-free meats an anomaly?  And why would dairy cattle need antibiotics?  How about egg-laying chickens?  How would farm animals become susceptible to wild, airborne diseases, anyway?  

The answer is simple.  Factory farmed animals are forced to live in such deplorable, disgusting conditions that the use of antibiotics is required to keep them alive.  Think about that.  And think about the fact that, although it turned out to be a false alarm, nobody in the scientific community found it hard to believe that the H1N1 flu virus might have originated on a pig farm in Mexico, a factory farm.  

Rampant antibiotic use.  Disease-friendly living conditions.  Plenty of animals to act as incubators for the next strain of drug-resistant microorganism.  I never liked meat THAT much.

 “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
  — Leonardo Da Vinci

I like the word “released” better than “abandoned.”  It aligns more fully with my personal, positive outlook on life.  However, at the heart of it, the meaning is the same: works of art are never completed by the artist, they are eventually allowed to exist in the world as they are.  There is always more to do; there is always another refinement to make.  

Today, I walked into a small, unassuming building in Naperville, IL.  I held in my hands a roll of paper towels, a box of old paintbrushes, a thermo-bag with my lunch…and a travel mug half-filled with coffee.  When I walked out, 6 1/2 hours later, I carried one extra item: an oil painting, freshly-painted and newly-released by the artist.  

My wife and my sons loved it.  They all said it was wonderful.  My oldest was in awe of it; he couldn’t believe what I brought home.  My youngest said it was beautiful.  My wife said, “It’s incredible.”  I had to smile, of course.  How could I not?  As if my family’s biased-yet-rave reviews weren’t enough, I had the knowledge that I finally, after almost 20 years, produced a completed work of art with my own hands.  Well, if not completed, then certainly released…

And that was the point all along, at least for me.  I cannot count the number of conversations I have had with friends, loved ones, coaches, and mentors in the past few weeks that have pointed me in the same directions.  All paths led to this today, to this exercise in release.

Greater than the fear of completing a thing is the fear of beginning.  If you never begin, then you can never be judged.  Without a commitment to start a project, one can never have the disappointment in knowing the commitment did not bare the fruit one anticipated.  Ultimately, it is judgment that I fear, and it is this fear of judgment that has kept this artist’s hands motionless.  I have been crippled for nearly 20 years.  And now, miraculously, I can paint.

My forearms ache, for no good reason.  My hands feel warm, tingly, like a current is running through them.  I look at the ends of my arms, and I see hands that I barely recognize.  They are my hands.  Yes. They are my hands.

But it was never about the work itself.  The subject could have been anything.  What did I paint?  It doesn’t matter…it’s irrelevant.  It didn’t come from my head.  I didn’t prime the canvas.  I didn’t mix the colors.  Someone else walked me through the process.  But none of that matters.  What matters is that I committed, I began, I worked through it, I came to a logical stopping point.  Most importantly, though, I released.

I released.

I released without someone else’s seal of approval.

I released without judgment.

I released, completely and utterly satisfied with the day’s efforts.  

Could I have done more?  Sure.  Could I still do more?  Sure.  Could it have been better?  Yes.  Could I have asked for more help?  Certainly.  But, none of that matters.  What happened…happened.  Nothing more, nothing less.  All was as it was meant to be.

And I released.

Today, there could not have been a greater victory.

I ws hammering away furiously at the keyboard, writing some crazy stuff about why I don’t eat eggs.  Then I hit the wrong stinkin’ combo of keys and lost it all.  I tried to get it back, but the moment was gone.  I lost my mojo.  I’ll write about the horrors of factory-farmed eggs another day.

I’m pissed.  It was sweet… 

I’ve had reason to contemplate personal “branding” recently, and I don’t mean the kind you do with a red-hot iron.  It reminded me of something I posted elsewhere…

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I had an interesting branding conversation with a friend a few weekends ago.   We’ll call her Rachel.  Rachel has a good friend…a good, beautiful, fit, beautiful, gorgeous, magnetic, beautiful friend…who is very beautiful, fit, gorgeous, and magnetic, yet she keeps finding herself in train-wreck after train-wreck when it comes to her relationships with men.  Rachel couldn’t understand why her friend winds up in these situations. My response to her was simple: it’s what she advertises. Rachel didn’t seem to take too kindly to this, thinking I was implying her friend somehow “asked for it.” I told her that I wasn’t necessarily going “The Law of Attraction” route. Instead, I found myself thinking more about what I went through creating a brand for myself at work. I told her that her friend isn’t secretly wishing for these things to happen (she has relationship issues with her dad, but that’s not the point), but what she is doing is dressing provocatively (did I mention she is very beautiful, fit, and gorgeous), acting flirtatious (that’s where the magnetic part comes in), and playing the “damsel in distress” card (which, of course, is attractive to most over-protective men). That, in a nutshell, is her brand. And her marketing plan? Nothing more than advertise at the local bar. So, her brand, in essence (and unconsciously) is “Young Hottie Looking for Macho Man,” and her market is guys at bars. Who exactly is surprised that these relationships are train-wrecks?

I am, by no means, a relationship expert, but my comments did give Rachel something to think about. What the whole interaction did for me was confirm something that I have known for a long time: that people advertise who they are, what they value. Working with a personal coach as part of my professional and personal development has just made it that much clearer to me how important branding yourself can be…both at the water cooler and at the local “watering hole.”

There’s been a lot of talk of death in the media lately.  Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense for both President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, died today at the age of 93.  Of all the stories we’ve been hearing about these past few weeks, his is the most intriguing to me.  Apart from his role in the Vietnam War, he was a man who repeatedly reinvented himself throughout his lifetime.  That concept resonates with me.

Reinvention.  Death and rebirth.  With the passing of each life, there is mourning.  Mourning is an essential part of the process of passing on.  We expect it.  When we experience it, we call it grieving, and it tugs on every last cell in our body.  It weighs us down.  It consumes us.  It hollows us from the inside out, and it leaves a wound that can feel like it never quite healed.  It haunts our thoughts.  Our memories echo like footsteps down empty halls.  It chills us as time goes by, and sometimes the slightest hint of yesteryear brings it all crashing back down on us.

That is grieving.  It can take a few days.  It can take a lifetime.  However long it takes, we are merciful when we see it in the eyes of others.  We try to be understanding, empathetic.  We let them experience those awful moments however they must.  After all, we know the feeling.  And when we feel it ourselves, we expect pity and compassion.  We excuse ourselves from acts we might otherwise not have committed.  When death comes, we make allowances for those who must grieve.

Talk of death is not only littered with metaphors, death itself is a metaphor.  When change comes calling, the passing from what was to what will be has been called death by more than just me.  However, this death does not always bring compassion.  Instead, it brings temporary tolerance which makes way for impatience, even annoyance.  We tend to shorten our time of forgiveness, of understanding.  Why should this be?  Is it that there are certain types of grieving processes that are acceptable while others are not?  I believe this to be the case.  I believe that not nearly enough people are as compassionate as they could be when allowing others to grieve change, myself included.  This has been one of the great lessons of my life: allow others to grieve as they must as what was passes into what will be.  

Which brings me to the best quote I’ve heard in the past two weeks: “Be doubly as compassionate to everyone you meet because you don’t know who is suffering twice as much as you.”

Take you time.  Grieve as you must.  Anyone who matters to you will be there when it is over.  Anyone else can suck an egg.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there really is very little “to lose” in life apart from health, happiness, and the people you love.  I participated in a fascinating discussion on risk the other day, and the interpretation of risk that kicked off the whole debate was essentially that risk is bullshit.  The truth is that in life there is simply choice and consequence.  I loved the perspective; it so jives with my own!

That got me thinking about why we fixate on risk.  It’s my opinion that we fixate so much on risk because risk is a way to justify our not choosing to do something outside of the status quo.  Status quo is neither good nor bad.  However, status quo can also be a trap, a way of not upsetting the “devil you know” in lieu of “the devil you don’t.”  By assessing risk, we find ways of avoiding a choice that might lead us down the path to a consequence that we really don’t like.  It’s fear.  It’s fear of winding up with something “worse” that we currently have, for example.  No matter how you spin it, I think it’s still fear.

In 1776, a bunch of British subjects decided that they’d had enough of living their lives as second-class citizens.  So, they got a bunch of people to buy into their underground rebellion and declared independence from their would-be oppressors.  The rest is history, as they say.  History is filled with moments where one person or a small group of people make a choice that has profound consequences for the course of a nation’s history.  Like that Continental Congress tipping over into open rebellion and signing a Declaration of Independence.  Their was no scientific measurement of risk; there was debate about the consequences of their actions.  Then, they chose.  They chose a course and lived with the consequences, fear be damned.  Perhaps not all of us can or will have such a profound effect on the course of human history, but maybe, just maybe, there is a lesson to be learned here about having the courage to make choices and live with them without becoming paralyzed with fear of what might or might not be.  

Besides, there is nothing to lose that God or the Universe cannot return to us.

The thing about revisiting your childhood is that you might actually find it.  In fact, what I found out is that it is still there, just as I left it.  Only it’s different.  It’s different in a cozy and not-so-cozy way.  The most startling yet soothing realization is that it’s all good, all as it should be.

Something I also discovered along the way is that immersing myself in my childhood deepened my connection to my parents, mainly my father.  That said, I could see my mother in my wife’s tears, and I wondered what it was like for them when they had young children as I do.  More than once, I felt my wife and I standing in the ghost-like shoes of my parents.  

And, above all, I saw myself in my boys.  Plural.  That surprised me.  I expected to see my reflection in my oldest, but finding a point of light in the eyes of my youngest that mirrored mine was unexpected.  I can’t say why.  It just was.  He still tests my patience more than anyone else on the globe, but I think I understand that a little better.  

It is amazing to me that I can feel as whole as I do yet exist simultaneously in both of my boys, in my adult mind and body, and in a shadowy remnant of myself that awakens each day and gleefully wanders the paths and corridors of this place I first visited when I was just a little boy.  I exist in all these forms, yet I can feel my connection to all of them.  They are extensions of me.  I just have to take the time to feel their existence.

In going back to I place I visited many times as a child, I felt peace as the man I am…husband, father, son, brother, grandson, friend.  And I understood my place in the continuum of life a little better.

The mouse ears never really come off, I guess.

 I haven’t quite known my wife for more than half of my life, but we’re almost there.  We’re adding yet another year to the tally, and it hardly seems possible.  We are certainly not the people that the other fell in love with any longer, but, in retrospect, that should have been expected.  It should have been a quality that we sought out…the desire and ability to grow as a human being.  I wasn’t looking out for that.  I guess I was fortunate!  I suppose there are other people out there with the same desire, but my wife is the unique set of possibilities that precisely fit the need I have in my life.  I think the same can be said for me when it comes to her needs.  We take it all, the good and the bad, because both sides form the one lucky coin that we’ll carry in our pockets for the rest of our lives.

I am grateful for you, my love.  Thank you for being here for me, for making me a more whole person, and for always pushing the envelope.  I’m much better for it.

Part of being credible as a leader is demonstrating that you have the right and the talent to lead.  In part, credibility is granted to you by those who you lead and in part by those who have given you the opportunity to lead.  At least that’s how it works at a Fortune 100.

For the rest of the world, it’s really about believing that you have the right and the talent to lead.  You seize credibility and walk in the door with it.  Nobody is going to just hand credibility to you.  You will it into existence, then keep your spot through the results of your action.  It’s unfortunate that this isn’t always the way it works in a rather large bureaucracy.  

That said, in the end, you can’t fake credibility.  You eventually have to show that you deserve to lead.  The paths to get their may differ according to who or what you are leading, but producing results always helps.

You can’t lead by love alone.