Musings

Fear is ultimately a poor motivator.  Fear causes resentment.  Fear causes hostility.  Fear erodes loyalty.  Fear erodes trust.  Fear promotes selfishness.  Fear promotes greed.  Fear destroys creativity.  Fear destroys hope.

And I have come to learn that hope is one of the most powerful motivators.

Hope leads to affection.  Hope leads to kindness.  Hope builds loyalty.  Hope builds trust.  Hope soothes selfishness.  Hope soothes greed.  Hope nourishes creativity.  Hope destroys fear.

Without hope, the human spirit withers.  Without hope, we cannot thrive.  Instead, we merely exist in the shadow of what could be.  Shadows are cold, dark places.

If the intent is to draw from others that which lies dormant, to tap the hidden potential, then hope cannot be extinguished.  And false hope cannot be sustained.  You can lead someone along for only so long.  Lies reveal themselves.  They demoralize others…and hope is lost.

We must live with the truth and with the very real possibility that every last person in an organization (in any population, really) can rise up to meet any bar that is raised.  What then?  How do you forcibly apply a statistical distribution without tearing at the fabric of everything that they have created on their own?  You don’t.  You can’t.  Without the right foundation, everything crumbles.

Naivete?  Stupidity?  Idealistic self-delusion?

No.  I call it hope.

I am over the goat urge.  I thought that today was supposed to be worse than yesterday.  It wasn’t.  It was actually easier.  Today was all about keeping intake up with burn.  I’m not sure I was entirely successful, but I definitely feel better today.  I’m tired, but that has more to do with going to bed at midnight, getting up at 4:45 AM, and following that up with going to bed at 11:30 then getting up at 4:45 AM once again.  That makes me tired not matter what I am eating.

The lesson today, though, is really about anticipating the worst.  I got myself all worked up last night anticipating that today would be pure HELL.  I anticipated all kinds of strange urges.  I anticipated a Cabinet of Carnage full of wonderful delicacies…pastries, donuts, and bagels…then more donuts, cake, and more cake.  It was empty again today.  I anticipated raging hunger pangs.  I anticipated smelling everyone around me eating lunch at their desks and me tackling someone to get at their styrofoam containers.  That didn’t happen.  I anticipated all kinds of horrible feelings, but none of them, NONE OF THEM, came.

And therein lies the message.

Tomorrow will only be as horrible as you make it.  You can’t possibly KNOW what tomorrow will bring today, so why bother sweating it?  I could have had a more pleasant night last night.  I probably could have gotten more sleep.  Yes, more sleep.  I think that is what I will do tonight.  I will get sleep.  I will not sweat tomorrow.  It will be what it will be, and, tonight, the only impact I can have on tomorrow is to iron my clothes so I don’t have to do it in the morning.  So there.

One of the highlights of the day?  I’m over the goat urge.

The problem that I have always had with goat is that it tastes like goat.  I imagine that if you licked a goat, it would taste like goat milk, goat yogurt, goat cheese, or a goat gyro.  That is the problem that I have always had with goat.  It tastes like goat.

Today, I had the urge to lick a goat.

I think this statement probably requires a little backstory.

Several months ago, my wife finally got the guts to do a detox.  We’d talked about it before.  I’d discussed it with my chiropractor.  She’s the one who finally got the nerve to do it.  Of course, in fashion that truly suits her style, she stumbles across this thing called “The Master Cleanse.”  And, of course, being who she is, she decides to take this path of most resistance and attempt the ten-day cleanse.

Calling it a cleanse is accurate.  It is accurate in ways that I will not explore with you, gentle reader.  Calling it The Master Cleanse may sound like hyperbole, but, truly, it is not.  It is the grandaddy of all cleanses.  Not that I’ve personally undertaken “others.”  However, I am beginning to feel the fury of THE MASTER CLEANSE.

It goes like this: for ten days, you eat nothing.  Instead, you drink lemonade all day long.  Sounds like a plan, no?  The lemons must be fresh.  The water must be purified.  To the lemonade, you add maple syrup.  Not the kind you get at Denny’s, mind you.  This stuff is REAL maple syrup.  It’s called “Grade B” or something like that.  It’s pure, and it doesn’t taste anything like Mrs. Butterworth.  To this concoction, you add cayenne pepper.  That’s right; cayenne pepper.  It’s not a secret recipe, folks.  Just Google it.

So, my wife does The Master Cleanse.  I get it into my thick head that I, too, should like to do The Master Cleanse.  However, the timing isn’t right.  So I wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Until, suddenly, I get the wild hair and decide that I should like to do this Master Cleanse now.  That is where I currently find myself: at the beginning of this ten-day journey.

So, it has been two days.  Two very long days.  I am already beginning to understand the mechanism of hunger.  It is much more psychological than anything else.  You see, the lemonade provides vitamins, minerals, and enough calories to sustain moderate human activity.  I won’t be working out too strenuously these next eight days.  So, I am truly not starving myself.  It’s more like…a less-than-nutritional diet.  Of course, I am not doing this to lose weight.  With day three on the horizon, I am simply trying to stick with it.

Day three is supposed to be the hardest day.  Today was hard.  Luckily, there was no free food on the Cabinet of Carnage at work, the resting place of all leftover food.  Fewer people at the meeting than you thought would come?  Leave the food on the Cabinet of Carnage.  Leftover pizza from a team recognition luncheon?  Leave the food on the Cabinet of Carnage.  A few surplus donuts after that breakfast presentation?  Leave the food on the Cabinet of Carnage.  This is how my world works.  And today, for a change, my vote was cast for an empty cabinet.  One day down, eight more to go.

Do you know what is amazing?  I’ll tell you.  When, for two days, you haven’t eaten anything solid or that doesn’t taste like lemonade with maple syrup and cayenne pepper, you notice how intricately linked your sense of smell is with your sense of taste.  When you breathe deeply enough of any aroma, you can actually taste that which you are smelling.  I came home to the smell of pasta with tomato sauce, and I could literally taste it in my mouth.  You know, the tongue of a snake actually picks particles up from the air.  The tongue is placed in a special organ in the roof of the snake’s mouth commonly referred to as “Jacobson’s Organ.”  I don’t know why.  The organ is actually comprised of two pits in the roof of the mouth.  They are separated, much like our nostrils are.  This is why reptile have forked tongues.  There; don’t say I never learned ya nuthin’.  In essence, they are tasting what they smell.  Or smelling what they taste.  Something like that.  Point being that the two sense are linked.  Intricately linked.  Remember that the next time you stand next to something, or someone, with an unpleasant aroma.

Hence, my goat theory.

With smell quickly replacing taste, I find that all this stuff happens in your brain more so than in the actual parts of your body.  Or, rather, I should say that the processing of these senses happens in the brain.  I know, not a huge or universe-changing revelation, but you become more acutely aware of how your body works when you push it outside normal operating parameters.  And that is precisely what I am discovering: that my physical body is something entirely different from and, perhaps, detached from my conscious self.

Damn, Erin was right.

Unfortunately, my conscious self wants a sandwich.  The only other thing, apart from the lemonade, which I am required to drink and which has a pleasant taste is tea.  Not any tea, of course.  This is a…laxative tea.  Called “Smooth Move.”  Seriously.

My mouth yearns to chew.  My tongue yearns to taste something other than lemonade with maple syrup and cayenne pepper.  And it’s only day two.

I want to lick a goat.

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.