A Woman, a Dog, a Stick and a Visionless Man

A visually impaired woman with her seeing-eye-dog on the corner of a busy city street.

A Woman, a Dog, a Stick and a Visionless Man

Snowflakes were flittering about.  I could see them through the windshield of the car I was driving.  We were going in the same direction. Down.  The snow was lightly falling from the sky and my car was pointed down a steep grade, away from the Wasatch Mountains.  My car and I came to rest at an intersection when the traffic signal changed from green to a brilliant red.  And, while I was stopped, the snow was still floating.  I watched it in wonder.

I also watched a woman and her dog begin to float from one side of the street to the other.  She was wearing a warm coat and was holding the harness of her companion, seeing-eye-dog, in one hand and a white stick, tipped with red paint in the other.  She carefully stepped off the curb and walked, along with the dancing snow, to cross the asphalt street.

That dance was a precursor to another dance that was about to begin.  As the woman and her dog drew near to the other side of the street my eyes were punched by the large orange construction barrels anticipating their arrival.  They defined that entire closed corner which was a mess of snow, dirt, barrels and broken concrete.  All of which the visually impaired woman couldn’t see.

She also couldn’t see a man, dressed in construction garb, standing at the corner waiting to greet her.  And he did greet her heartily.  I couldn’t hear their voices, but I could see him gesturing and pointing.

It caused me to laughed just a little.

“Who is the real blind person here?”  I asked myself, as the sighted man’s movements became more and more animated.  He just couldn’t understand why the woman wouldn’t follow the course this arms and hands were pointing toward safety.

The whole messy scene caused me to consider another question.

“How many times have I been blind to what kindly, patient others are working so hard to communicate, even when their good intentions are clearly focused on my wellbeing?”

Perhaps it was the beauty of the dancing, flittering snowflakes that somehow sharpened the visual impact of the scene.  I could see a woman, a dog, a stick, and a good-hearted-unseeing-man through the windshield of my car.  No matter how hard he tried, the man couldn’t see-to-understand that his animated gestures were never going to inspire a woman, with a visual disability, toward a safe direction.  And as if an accompanying beauty to the disorder, the snow continued its dancing during the entire unchoreographed interaction, on a roadside construction site near the base of the Wasatch Mountains.  It all joined together to inspire me with wonder.

And, I wonder still that it took a woman, a dog, a stick, and a good-hearted-unseeing-man to communicate that even when intentions are noble, it’s easy to be simply blind to the entirety and miss the important.

Clear-Sighted-Living

“As soon as we’re finished tonight I’m checking into the hospital.” – Suzi McDowell

Clear-Sighted-Living

“As soon as we’re finished tonight I’m checking into the hospital.”  Suzi said to me as we walked together.

“Is everything alright?”  I asked with concern streaked across my brow.

“Yes.  I go for the night at least once each month.  It’s no big deal.”  She responded in an unconcerned manner.

I hadn’t known any of this before last night when she let this bit of information out.  It isn’t like we haven’t been working together for quite some time.  That’s why I was so surprised.  I thought I knew a lot about Suzi and her husband Dave and I clearly didn’t and don’t know as much as I thought I did.  Yet, this tiny amount of additional information allowed me to begin to pull some pieces together.  

It’s funny how a person can think they understand the motives of another person without even having an inkling of what is really important to them.  Working with Suzi and Dave has offered some short questions which can illuminate a path to show how any person can master the art of living with clear sight.

“I wish I would have made different choices long ago.”  Suzi explained as we walked through a building together.  “I guess this is what it took for me to finally make better decisions for myself.  We all talk about having priorities, but I’ve come to understand that living with a ‘priorities’ belief is a myth.  All of these personal challenges have made me realize that many of us don’t understand the word, priority at all!”

She then went on to teach me about what prioritization is.

“You can really have one priority! It’s really about simplifying life down to what’s really important.  I thought I was doing that before.  But, being forced to deal with debilitating health issues has focused me like never before.  My life is much simpler now.”  She said just before she began to tell me how to she had to begin to ask herself a series of questions so she could figure out what her real priority was.

“A person’s priorities are hardly ever obvious!”  She said.  “So, here’s what I ask myself all of the time now.”

First.  Get to one. “If I could only do one thing today, or this week, what would it be?”

Second. Take another step.  “What is the one thing that will leave me the most satisfied?”

Third.  Three-step with yourself.  What will I care about in a week, a month, or 50 or 80 years from now?”

Finally!  “What one thing will make everything else easier?”

The answer wasn’t obvious as to why Suzi and Dave where making major changes in their life until Suzi said, “As soon as we’re finished tonight I’m checking into the hospital.”  Yet, that one statement was an opening, the beginning of a walk to discovery; discovering a path to Clear-Sighted-Living.

At first Suzi responded to my inquiry with, “It’s no big deal.”  

But living a life based on priority, satisfaction, design and ease is a really big deal!  It’s Clear Sighted Living!

Pen, Paper, Depth and Purpose

“I built all of my relationships through hand-written notes.” – Bob Gottdener

Pen, Paper, Depth and Purpose

I’ve heard Bob say over and over again that the most important thing a person can do to build a strong personal relationship is to simply pull out a pen and some stationery.  But, I guess I’ve never really believed it.  Until now!

The reason I believe it now is because I’ve spent the last year participating in virtual meetings.  And, today was another one of those meeting days.  I’m sure someone else can regale you with some kind of statistics about how valuable those meetings are, and have been, because of how much time and effort they save; how safe they’ve made our lives.  Maybe, but all I can do is to tell you that today, I sat in my car for the entirety of a virtual meeting, right in the parking lot adjoining my office building.  When it was over I got out of my car and walked through the office doors and as part of the real world.

“It was great to see you in the virtual meeting.”  I said to each of the three people I wanted to see face-to-face while handing each of them one of those hand-written notes Bob Gottdener has talked with me about all these years.

Yep!  Paper!  Pen!  My virtual communication device was buried deep in my pocket. And that’s exactly where I wanted it to be.  Because even after receiving all of the so-called benefits of our year-long virtual life, my preferred method of communication is still face-to-face and pen-to-paper.  It doesn’t save me time or effort, but it does something much more important. It lets me see and get a very personal feel for the people I’m communicating with.  In short, it’s much more satisfying.

“My territory used to include Alaska.”  Bob once said to me during dinner.  “You want to know why I was so successful there?  I’d get on that plane, head home to Los Angeles, and write a personal note to everyone I’d met with.  When I got off the plane I simply dropped each note into the post box at the airport.”

I remember teasing Bob about his airplane note writing scheme for weeks on end.  I’d tell him that I was sure he was right, that just writing notes would change the world!  Now, the funny thing is that when the world did virtually change, so did my belief about those same now-not-so-silly notes.

And today, rather than feeling silly after dropping those heart-felt notes into the hands of real live people, in the real world, I had to smile, and talk to myself, as I walked out of the building door.

“I guess you’ve been right after all, my friend!”  I said to Bob, while knowing he would never hear me across the deserts and mountains, as he was likely sitting in his home which is nestled on cliffs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. 

The vision of Bob sitting there made me want to drive right to the airport, get on an airplane, write a personal note of surrender and then rent a car so I could drive down the road, from LAX to Bob’s place.  Yet, I fought this desire, knowing I could still follow his example by writing the note in my car and then drop it in one of those big blue USPS post boxes.

“I built all of my relationships through hand-written notes.” Bob said to me over and over again through the many years of our association together.  He always said that the most important thing a person can do to build a strong personal relationship is to simply pull out a pen and some stationery, and then write.  But, I guess I’ve never really believed it.  Until now!

I believe it now because I just handed personalized notes to some colleagues.  It allowed me to see a smile radiating from their eyes.  I heard and felt the warmth from their voice.  But most importantly, I felt something more.  It wasn’t the glare from a screen.  It was honest to goodness friendship.  The kind that gives depth and purpose to a life.  Every life.

From Broken to Beautiful

“There are times when I don’t think I’ll ever be able to be healed!” – Gordon Harold

From Broken to Beautiful

“There are times when I don’t think I’ll ever be able to be healed!” He said to me.

The words were like a vice on my heart!  I knew what he’d been going through and I yearned for relief.  For him to have respite from his pain!

In this particular case the healing he needed was not physical, though there are aspects of his agony I watched affect his health.  What was really happening was an unrelenting emotional trauma.  Such seems to be endemic during our time.

In another time, during my childhood, my mother taught me a lesson about chickens.

“Why does that chicken have so many feathers missing?” I asked my mother as we stood looking at chickens in a yard near her Paragonah, Utah childhood home.

“One chicken starts to pick at another and soon all begin to pick at her.  Once they start, they often pick at her until she dies!”  My mother said, with sadness interwoven through her words.

That was just after she told me where the name Paragonah came from.  As a settlement, Paragonah was first known as Red Creek, but the name was later changed to Paragoonah and then Paragonah. There are conflicting sources as to the name's precise meaning, I’ve heard at least one other meaning, but the consensus is that it is of Southern Paiute origin meaning red water.  My mother explained that when it rains, which is not often, the flowing water picks up the red soil as it runs, turning the water red.  And, because she taught me both lessons at about the same time, I’ve always associated “hen-pecked” chickens and Paragonah together.  

I’ll never forget the feeling of despair and horror I felt as I watched that poor hen-pecked chicken running and running just to get away from her numerous attackers. It seemed to me that blood would soon be dripping from the victim-hen just as the red water sometimes flowed in that same town.

As my friend told me of his pain this childhood vision of chickens in Paragonah rushed into the forefront of my mind.  Luckily, my mother was kind enough to teach me that there could be more than one ending to the pain of a hen-pecked chicken.

“Once they start,” she continued, “they’ll often stay at her until she dies.  Once chickens smell blood they often turn cannibalistic.  But, we’re here and can offer a better solution.”

She went on to tell me that the better solution is to simply intercede on the victim’s behalf.

“We can go in there and remove her! If we do that and put her in a safe place where she can be nourished and cared for, she’ll regain her strength and her feathers will once again flourish after a time.”  She explained.  “Sometimes she can be reintroduced back into the flock.  Sometimes she can’t.  That’s not what matters right now.  What matters is that we can offer her respite!”

“I can offer him respite!”  I said to myself, as my flight with the chicken memory ended.

“There are times when I don’t think I’ll ever be able to be healed!” Gordon said to me.

“I understand!”  I said with warmth in my voice. “The first thing for you to know is that I’ve gone through what you’re experiencing.  You’re not alone!  I’m here for you!  It will take some time, but we can walk together from broken to beautiful!”

Know that when your feathers have been pecked away by the flocks of chickens in your life, and you feel as if the red water of Paragonah is rushing all over you, you can go from broken to beautiful again.  It will take time and refuge, but it can happen when you accept the respite offered by good friends and family.

A Small Sliver of Time

“I finally had to do the hard thing and take away his keys.” – Sterling Wilson

A Small Sliver of Time

I didn’t know Sterling before he made a phone call to me.  The caller ID that popped up on my phone read “Santa Rosa.”  During the much earlier days of number revelation, with many fewer and “line-bound” area codes, one could reliably know the location of the caller.  Those days are long past as mobility has become the rule of the day.

So, I asked, once I found out his current location is Utah, “What brought you to Utah from Santa Rosa?”

With that question, a key was turned.

“I grew up here, but when my father became ill I knew it was time to leave California.”  He said.

“How is your father now?”  I asked.

“Well, there are days when he’s lucid, but he spends most of his days watching television now.  He’s very clear about the past.  He just isn’t able to be in the present much anymore.”  Sterling continued.

“Wow!”  I replied.  “You’re dealing with a lot.  I understand because I’ve been through the same thing with members of my own family.”

“Thank you for your empathy! He said, before telling me more. “It’s hardest on my mom.  She’s struggling to take care of him every day.”

That description turned a couple of more keys in my heart, as I remembered that same situation occurring in the lives of some of my own loved-ones.  In each personally known case such caregivers passed away before the person they were tending to. It’s hard to watch a healthy partner give their lives in the service of one they hold so dear.  Yet, they do so willingly, out of love.

“My wife and I recently had a son.  We named him after my father.  It was to show our love; and we wanted to make it easier for my Dad to be able to remember his grandson’s name.”  Sterling said just before he halted.  “I finally had to do the hard thing and take away his car keys.”

“I’ve had that conversation!  If you ever need to talk with someone who understands, please call me again.”  I proffered.

I didn’t know Sterling before he made a phone call to me.  The caller ID that popped up on my phone read “Santa Rosa.”  In the much earlier days of number revelation, with many fewer and “line-bound” area codes, one could reliably know the location of the caller.  Those days are long past as mobility has become the rule of the day.  Yet, one essential rule hasn’t changed at all.

The “Golden Rule” is still “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  

We have much more in common with each other than we have difference.  To turn the key of understanding all we need to do is talk to each other for just a small sliver of time.