Hard Shell, Meekness Inside

Two turtles traversing a golf green

Hard Shell, Meekness Inside

The sun was just beginning to peek out above the trees.  After all, it was morning, and perhaps it was rising at this time just to illuminate the two large turtles crawling across the grass to my right.  They were making their way across a putting green.   

“I haven’t ever seen that before!”  I said to myself as I paused to relish the sight.  “It’s a two-some slowing down play!”  I laughed, just before I remembered a conversation with my friend and mentor J.K. Morrison.

“The trick is to be tough on the outside while remaining soft on the inside.”  Dr. Morrison said as he offered his final advice during our talk together as I prepared to leave graduate school. 

And, these turtles seemed to be the perfect personification of Dr. Morrison’s sage advice.  Yet, there are some who would characterize the turtle as a weak, slow creature, something to be tormented because of its inability to lash out and seek revenge.  Such people, influenced by our modern society, have yet to discovered the turtle’s inner characteristics of beauty, patience and hopeful endurance.  Turtles may be the personification of the virtue of meekness.

The human quality of meekness has lost favor during our lifetime because those exhibiting this trait are branded as vulnerable and weak.  But, the truly meek offer inward resilience and strength. Pure meekness does not identify the weak, but more precisely the strong.  Those who have been placed in a position of weakness, where they persevere without giving up. Earlier language definitions of the word made this clear.  It means "tame" when applied to wild animals. In other words, it recognizes the fact that once fierce animals have not lost their strength, but have learned to control the destructive instincts that would prevent them from living in harmony with others.

In my attempt to live in harmony with these traversing turtles I hung back, holding Harry Pupper tight on his leash, while watching them sort of scamper, turtle-style, along their chosen path. Watching their trek gave me a moment to think of how you and I could use the virtue of meekness as a way to strengthen our personal relationships. Here are the five suggestions that these turtles conveyed to my mind:

• Stop thinking you know everything, or stop pretending to.

• Be willing to be challenged and learn—let your loved ones push you.

• Don’t see difference as a challenge to your values.

• Be humble enough to admit your flaws, not just your failures.

• Collaborate and be willing to share credit and success with those you live and work with.

My collaboration with these two turtles finished about the time I finished making note of these suggestions.  Just as their shells disappeared down the slight hill they had climbed. The sun was beginning to fully shine then, well above the once silhouetted trees toward the east.  After all, it was morning, and perhaps the sun was rising higher, at this moment, to fully illuminate and imprint the importance of maintaining a hard shell on one’s outside while remaining soft, meek, on the inside.  As they continued their crawled across the grass and down the hill, now unseen, to my right, I understood that they had blazed a bright trail toward more understanding of the importance of being meek.

Neighborly Advice

The day I realized being an adult didn’t mean I have all of life’s answers

Neighborly Advice

“We all want the same thing.”  The voice said to me through the speaker of my phone.

I thought this was the case.  But, there were more people involved that just the two of us.  In fact, there were now six different people in the mix.  And, while five of us were working together there was one who seemed to be working toward an unknown objective.

I say an unknown objective quite loosely.  Because he knew his objective. It was just that the other five of us, all of whom shared one common goal, couldn’t comprehend what that other one’s, more and more, seemingly stand-alone objective was.  This caused the other five of us to become confused and feel helpless as we searched for a solution to our dilemma.  The dilemma of not knowing all of the answers.

Before I became old.  Before I was even sort of old, when I was a child, I thought adults had all of the answers.  Then I became one.  An adult, I mean.  I knew I still didn’t have all of the answers, but I thought as I aged that perhaps I’d awaked to a moment when I’d have them all.  And now that I can easily tell others that I look great for one-hundred and two years of age, and be believed, I still find myself in the same position.  I don’t have all of the answers!  Coincidentally, over the past two weeks, the four other people, working with me toward that common goal and at least one other adult have told me they don’t have all the answers either.

This dilemma is what my friend Ron Mitchell, one of the foremost experts in business development and entrepreneurship, calls “Unknown, Unknowns.”  And, over the years I’ve learned that Unknown, Unknowns aren’t exclusive to business.  They’re one of the constants we all share as humans.  So, here we go.  I’ve been thinking through the following five steps almost constantly over the past three weeks. I hope they help you stride into and through the darkness of the unknown as well. 

First.  Ask yourself, “What can I do?”  The often-unknown corollary here is to not simply ask the question, but to follow up with the “And-Thinking” that must be combined with doing to be effective.  For example, when the person, we’ve been working with, would’nt move forward with us we had to acknowledge that he wasn’t working with us, that we needed to continue to work with him, and we could move forward in other ways we hadn’t explored yet.  And-Thinking has a mind-expanding effect.  Give it a try.

Second. Take the initiative. That’s often hard to do when you’re thinking you may be stepping into the great abyss!  When that happens take a deep breath and remember that such thinking is a mind-trick.  My friend Anthony Browness vividly demonstrated this to me through virtual reality.  He put a 2X6 board flat on the floor of his game room, put a virtual reality headset on me and asked me to walk that “plank” between two skyscrapers, with helicopters buzzing me!  While experiencing this my mind knew I was only two inches off the floor, but all of my other senses would not believe it!  I had to take the initiative to keep walking.  Otherwise I would have been needlessly frozen on that board forever.  Taking the initiative to move forward confirms that you really do have the ability to succeed by moving forward.

Third.  Remind yourself of the good things.  Having an attitude of gratitude will keep you feeling good, even if you’re experiencing more challenge that good.  Make sure to set a specific time every day to simply relish the good you’re experiencing.  See how it makes you feel.

Fourth.  Recognize the power you feel as a result of your walk forward.  It’s one thing to feel good about external accomplishes, but there is nothing more powerful than allowing yourself to discover and take note of your internal accomplishments.  I’ve begun to keep an old photo of myself and a friend on my desk.  It was taken by Keith and Diane Merrill, two of my dearest friends, in their Santa Ana home in 1978.  They sent it to me recently and it reminds me of how much I’ve grown.  Keith and Diane, now in their eighties, told me that they’re still learning and growing every day when we talked on the phone just about one week ago.

Fifth.  Accept help from those around you!  Nothing makes you feel more alone than actually living alone.  I felt a huge rush of relief when my friend Scott Hanson ran interference for me earlier this week.  I marveled at his skill and clear-headed thinking.  He removed a huge burden by being in the moment with me.  His experience allowed him to say and do the right things when I was completely at a loss.  Don’t allow yourself to needlessly live alone accept help.

I wasn’t alone when I heard the voice say, “We all want the same thing.”  The voice was right!  We all want to know that even though we know we don’t have all of the answers.  Even though there will always be Unknown, Unknowns, we can conquer whatever we don’t know by following these five-known-steps.

They’re just a little Neighborly Advice.

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.