Filling the Cup

When I got hired at my first real job I was a couple of years older than you are now.  I am working as a temp and needed a full time job with benefits in the worse way.  One afternoon my boss calls me into his office, shakes my hands and tells me to get down to medical by the end of the day to get the required physical for a full time position.  I am on top of the world.   The only problem is that I do not have time to go home and get cleaned up.  My feet have been baking all day in my fake leather steel toed boots and I stink.  But I am dying to please, so I shake his hand and and say right after work is NO problem.   

I am self conscious when I get to medical.  The nurse who takes me back for the doctor is a small, iron jawed, unsmiling woman of about 50.  I try to apologize for not showering, trying to tell her about the last minute scheduling.  She gives me a scowl and without so much as a smile or any kind of small talk she starts to instruct me on what is going to be done.  Any attempt at small talk me is met with stoney silence.  My confidence about getting the job is starting to fade away and I am intimidated into embarrassed silence.   I am wondering what I did to set her off.  It never did occur to me that it was anything other than me.  

Towards the end of the physical, I am sitting on plastic chairs outside of a bathroom along with 4 or 5 other guys who are scared quiet and compliant like me.  She points at the chair closest to the bathroom and we go in one by one to fill up cups with urine.  I am looking at nothing except my hands, until it comes my turn.  She tells me cups are under the sink and to fill one up 3/4 full and bring it to her.  I walk in and under the sink there are small cups that are the size of containers for condiments at any fast food place.   I pick it up and study it and after a couple of minutes walk out and tell her the cups are really small.  Everyone in the place turns to look at me and then her.  She gives me a withering glance and says in a louder voice than she needed to...JUST-- FILL-- UP-- THE-- CUP-- ONE CUP-- 3/4 FULL.  I can feel my entire face flush and I can't believe a friggin physical for a job I wanted has turned out to be this walk on hot coals exercise.   I (in what I know now was a herculean feat) fill up that tiny cup without spilling a drop and present her with my cup.

Now her face is turning red and her eyes are tearing up and she bursts out laughing.  She is talking in one or two words between trying to catch her breath between hard laughing.  THAT IS--A--CON--TACT LENS---CUP.   She is wiping her eyes and reaches down under her desk and pulls out what looks like a gallon cup and tells me that is what I need to fill.  I did not run out of the building because my heart was on the desk next to the huge pee cup.

She knows, I know, and the guys waiting to pee know, there is no way to recover from this or even maintain a shred of dignity.  I can tell from her expression (and those of the guys that are waiting to pee) that I am the first one ever to make this error.   She gives me the gallon jug to fill and gives me a tiny cone paper cup and points me to a water cooler by the plastic chairs.   She is studying me and my paperwork because she has got to be wondering if I am special needs hire.  Not one of the other people will even look at me.   She looks at me with calmer curiosity, which seems worse than the indifference I was getting from her earlier.  What started out as only a painful afternoon turns into a excruciating endurance test.  I fill up the proper cup and left without a shred of dignity or confidence in my ability to do the most basic tasks. 

In hindsight there was a dozen things I could have done to avoided filling up the contact lens cup.  I now think almost everyone who pushes hard will fill up their own contact lens cup from time to time.  Maintaining your sense of humor when you have had you heart kicked out of your chest will always speed the healing process.

Love Dad

Exact Science

It is not an exact science.

In your formative years your parents instill in you the value of sticking things out.  And early on it is easy.  You learn first to stick with those things that are necessary that can be a pain in the ass but required of you.  They are the fundamentals like going to school and learning to navigate people and things outside of home while applying the work hard, play nice, play fair, and all the other things that are posted on the wall in your first classroom.

It is during this time where you start to recognize your strengths and skills.  And if it works like its supposed to (and in both of your cases it REALLY worked like it was supposed to) as you exercise these strengths and skills you begin to excel among your peers.  You are hardwired like you are at a much earlier age that you would guess or your parents would every admit to.  A lot of what parents do is provide logistics for the journeys you take.  When times are tough, we help you find the answers to the questions that you already know and in many cases have already answered yourselves.  That sincere belief that we have in you has been there for many years before there was a Dad Blog.  We got that way by watching you grow up.  You cannot yet fully appreciate the strength of character, heart, and conviction that you already have.  . 

In the later years we try to help you understand the basic principle of risk mitigation.  It is the opposite of sticking with it, it is learning when to step away when something has run its course.  It is one of those things that is so basic that most people unknowingly make if the most complex thing in their lives.  You just need to ask yourself what the risk you are taking is going to net our for you.  Make sure the risk is worth the resources you are investing in it.  People lose years and months to things that just do not deserve their resources because that first lesson you learn is not to quit and that is the one that sticks with you the most.   My only regret with the shit jobs and people I have known is that I stayed with them far longer than was needed.  When you are holding dog shit in your hand it does not change properties because of the length of time you hold it.  When you toss it back on the ground it will still be dog shit.

A Firefighter learns the basic rule that if you are risking your life it should be to save a life.  Risking your life to put out a fire in a building that is going to be torn down and rebuilt because of the fire damage is a poor return for your life.   Treat your life that same way.  Take risk in direct proportion to the return you will get. There are some fires that require you to go into a burning building.   Be careful that you are not finding a lot of fires that you believe need to be put out.  Some of them are supposed to burn, and some are just for sticks and marshmallows

Never forget how simple things can be.

Love Dad

Ying and Yang

We are flying out to see you this week.

There is a really interesting dynamic that happens between mom and I when these trips are planned. I have never been encumbered by the thought that I am not needed, wanted, or that my presence will not immediate shine light, happiness, and fix everything. Mom, on the other hand is much more introspective about these things. She always extends the courtesy of trying to understand what the need is and how the timing works for what is going on in your life. I have always had a deep appreciation for her doing this. It is a tremendous expression of faith in both of you and your ability to balance all the things that are going on in your life.

Ying and Yang translates into shadow and light. It is how seemingly opposite and contrary things are interdependent on each other and how they interact to make a greater whole. It is why if you talk to one of us more than another it will start to seem like giant pain in the ass. Without the contrast of light and shadow it is hard as hell to appreciate the depth of any one thing. Light and shadow give things their depth.

This is life lesson stuff. There are times when charging into the fray is the perfect thing to do. Making sure there is actual fray that needs to be charged into is an important life skill. Creating a fray (when there was not one prior to your arrival) is time consuming, hard on everyone, and depletes your key resources for no good reason.

Over the years your mom has given me a real appreciation for Ying and Yang. I am better at being able to see the depth of things that are outside of my immediate life experience. And as much as I love to charge headlong into the fray, I chose which ones to charge into instead of having them choose me.

Love Dad

I Built It

I cringe when I see all the signs of the political season.  The worst of these is "I built it".  The implication is that building something without the assistance of anyone else is the preferred way of doing things and the standard.  

Doing anything by yourself is never going to yield the results that working with someone else will.  Working alone will always make every task from the simple to complex harder than it needs to be.  All the tired old things you have heard forever about being part of team are very true.  If you look at any person you use as  a model for success behind them you will find a group of friends, family, and associates (team) that has helped move them along towards their goal.  Sir Edmund Hillary was the first man to touch the summit of Everest.  Behind him (literally steps) was Tenzing Norgay and a couple more steps behind an entire support team.  Sir Edmund did summit Everest alone.  There were legions of people who did small to negligible things for him that he accepted and as a consequence he was able to use his brain power towards the more critical aspects of his endeavor.  He would have not got any extra credit for hauling his own tent to base camp.

And so it is with everyone. Being able to accept help from the people that surround you is a strength not a weakness.  There are plenty of times in life that you are going to have traverse that last part of your journey on your own.  To have balanced everything around you so that you have the mental and physical strength to complete those last steps is what you need to shoot for.  So if you can take smaller stuff off of your plate, do it without apology and stay focused on the important things that really do require your angst and worry.

There is another important part of letting people help you, it lets them validate something important about who and what they are.  Like everything else in life, you have to understand this is not all about you.  It almost never is.  My dearest friend who has stage 4 bone cancer has a great grasp on this.  The small things we are able to do (and they are soo small compared to what he is going through) help us be a part of his journey.  It is not much different from the people that are trying to help you now.  In a small way they participate in your journey.

If you have every helped someone who needed it and they let you know they were genuinely grateful, nothing feels as good as that.  For me, it is my way of paying things forward, a way to say thanks for all of the amazing things in my life.   I still regret deeply that along the way I have pushed people away that wanted to and could have genuinely helped me along my journey.  It was one of those life skills I wish I would have learned a lot earlier in life.

Love Dad

Saying and Doing

With your birthdays happening in the next month, I always go back to the day you were both born.

As you both were delivered, I remember clearly when your face rotated towards mine and I saw you open your eyes for the first time and heard you cry.  It is at that moment, I understood that my life had irrevocably been changed.  When I looked down at your face, I felt like I was part of something much larger that I ever could have accomplished on my own.

You learn quickly that your children are not extensions of you, they are individuals.  It never ceased to amaze me how you both changed in ways that I did not anticipate or foresee.  As you grew older, I was really pleased that you managed to embrace all of the strong values that you were raised with and maintain your individuality.  Today I see more of you individually than I see anything that looks like mom or me. 

Until you have your own children (which should be YEARS away from now - these years are for your to chase your own dreams) you will not be able to fully appreciate the depth you have added to our lives.

So when it comes to you both, I have always looked more critically at what people do and what people say to you.  When what people say does not really align with the things they do, I treat them with a high degree of caution.  It is not hard when you like someone to try to make what they say and do align more than they actually do.  When saying and doing do not sound the same, treat that person with a high degree of caution.  It has been my experience that these people will continue to broaden the gap between saying and doing, not close it. 

Always invest in the people who do what they say and say what they do.   And do not lose sleep over the people you end up treating with a lot of caution.  You will learn more and more to trust your instincts.  If it smells like dog shit, looks like dog shit, or has a sign that says "Caution Dog Shit", you do not have to taste it to confirm that.

Also to the young man in Nazareth - well done.   She is one of the reasons I get up in the morning.

Inside Out

Life Lesson Here

We met a group of people for dinner at one of those patio restaurants where you sit outside and listen to music.  A huge place. 

It is loud and hard to hear and I am looking at mom who looks drop dead good looking in this blue shirt I have never seen her wear before.  About 30 minutes into dinner, I see the tag on the seam of her blue shirt outside of shirt at the waist.   I lean over and tell her that the shirt is inside out and pull gently on the white tag.

She looks down and without skipping a beat laughs and starts to eat french fries off of my plate.  It just did not matter to her, not a bit.  We walked around the patio listened to music for a while and left.   I swear after she laughed and smiled that frigging tag melted away.  She did not for a minute let it get in the way of her evening and if you looked at her all you saw was a damn good looking woman in a blue top.

Most people would have turned it right side out, done something with the tag, or would have spent some time worrying about what people would have thought.   You have to admire that perspective.  There was no way a 1 inch white square tag was going to loom larger than than where and who she was with at that exact moment. 

A lot of things are like that.   We are all quick to let that inside out shirt wreck our night, bruise our ego, or be the harbinger of a bad day/night.  One square inch of white tag can kill an evening an should never be allowed to do so.  So next time you find your literal or figurative tag on the outside instead of the inside follow the example of your mom the Zen master and let a 1 inch square be a scrap of cloth and nothing else.

Love Dad 

Beyond Measure

I read this almost every day, I am not sure if it is a poem or not.  When I first heard it I was struck by it.  The author is Marianne Wilson.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure,
It is our light,  not our darkness that most frightens,
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others won’t feel insecure around you,
We are all meant to shine as children do,
It is not just in some of us, its in everyone,
And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give others permission to do the same,
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others,

There is also a you tube video at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STp1UtMrKR4&noredirect=1 

Love Dad