Puzzle Piece

I was down with Chris at the Cancer Center at University Hospital last week.  He is getting the second of three cyber knife treatments.

The Cancer Center is an amazing place.  You will be sitting there and a Dad and his 8 year old kid will walk out of treatment area both bald and looking like hell and you are not sure who is the patient.  But you know that one of them is bald and does not have to be and they are hanging on to each other hands like there is no tomorrow.  People have life changing discussions about upcoming treatments and prognosis in the most matter of fact way that you can.   It is a humbling place because what ever you thought was a problem in your life becomes pretty insignificant. 

So when Chris goes in, I sit at a table with a puzzle on it that I was working on from last time.  After a short couple of minutes, I get a tap on the shoulder and a lady asks me if she can help me.   I tell her of course and pull up a chair for her.  She is engaging and a talker.  I do more listening than talking but I genuinely enjoy her company.  We are both nervous and it gives us a brief opportunity to not be in a waiting room in a Cancer Center.

As we are talking an older guy who is patient comes over and reaches between us (there are only about 15 puzzle pieces left) and he picks one up and goes back to his seat.  For me, anyone sitting in that waiting area has an automatic pass.  If he had elected to tip the table over, I would have quietly picked up the pieces and put them back in the box.  The lady I was with paused for a minute and then went right back to our conversation.  After a couple of minutes he old guys says "Aren't you going to ask me why I did that?"  He is grinning away and you cannot help but smile back at him.   I ask him why he did it and he said he always wanted to put the last piece of a puzzle in place.  He walks back over, looks at the board and puts the piece in the area that it looks like it belongs in, laughs again and sits down.

We get down to the last three pieces and the lady stops talking, winks at me and picks up a piece and walks over and hands it to the old guy.  He looks up at her and then the puzzle and says "really?".   And she says, yea, put the last piece in.

So the guy is beaming and he gets up puts in the last puzzle piece, puts his hands on his hips and he is beaming and he looks at us both and says 'thank you very much"

And for a brief minute all three of us are not in the waiting room at the Cancer Center at University Hospital.

It did not cure anyone, but it was a small moment of grace in a sea of crap that made a huge difference.   A life well lived is a collection of a lot of small moments of grace that are given and received.  It is equally important that you are able to receive them as well as give them.

Love Dad

A good job

You are at a time in your life when a lot of well meaning people will tell you what constitutes success in the area's of:

-Jobs
-Career
-Relationships
-Continuing Education
-Where you live
-Who you live with

Is is really as simple as doing what you love and doing the things that matter the most to you. 

The best possible outcome is that what you love and what matters to the most to you will grow and evolve as you learn more about everyone and everything around you.  That is a well lived life.

Love Dad

Big Feet

This is one that I have been meaning to write for some time.

In the FD, you never could determine ahead of time what kind of things would stick with you and which ones would not.  I have seen a wide variety of things and people in disrepair and I have yet to determine why some have faded from my memory and why some have not. 

It is not what you would think.  I have seen graphic traumatic injuries, impossible to describe here that did not linger in my memory.  Some have, but it is a very small percentage.  It is the everyday things in circumstances that are so far removed from everyday and normal that tend to stick.  When it rains and the pavement has been hot, I always seem to remember the young kid with big feet that died in an accident on Fathers Day.  You were little and I got home that morning before you woke up and just managed to get in bed before you woke up.  When you were running in with badly wrapped presents and busting out with smiles, I was having one of the best mornings of my life.  In another world, the Dad of the kid with the big feet was having the worst morning of his life. 

On days like that you have to make a conscious effort to not carry a weight that you are not supposed to carry.  And like a lot of things, those things that are of great impact to you, the whole thing may not really translate well to people that are outside your particular line of work.  This also extends to the people to the people who love you the most.  Somethings that impact you simply will not translate because other people cannot (despite their best efforts ) walk a mile in your shoes. 

This is a life lesson that applies to both of you.  There are events in your lives that will impact you to a large degree, things that will move and hurt your heart.  And despite our best efforts we will remain unaware of the impact to you.  And you certainly know how much you are loved.  Some things will escape even your significant other and it is not for a lack of love or trying.  They are weights that you have to make conscious efforts not to carry.  They will get lighter because you will talk to people who understand what it is to be in your shoes and it might not be the people who love you the most.  Talking about them deflates those big things to manageable bites of color that give you depth of character.  Never ignore them or suck it up and try to ride it out.  Embrace and deal with them, they will give you strength and character.

Never did tell mom the whole story of the kid with the big feet on Fathers Day.  Even now it does not translate well.  I don't carry the weight of the kid with big feet but I have not forgotten him.  He is part of my strength and character.  If you need to carry weight, they should be round black disks connected to a silver bar in a gym.

Don't forget to call mom for no reason whatsoever.

Love Dad

Abhorrent Behavior

I went to a class in the FD about workplace violence.  In almost every case, the people who worked closely with or knew the person (who committed the crime - the bad guy) said they could not believe that person was capable of doing such horrible things.

When they interviewed these people in depth, a different picture emerged.  The bad guy that everyone thought was harmless, had a series of escalating behaviors that people just disregarded.  The bad guy would make what people thought were harmless threats and people laughed at him.  They just said oh that is just him/her don't pay attention.  The bad guy would be at work at weird times (very early and late) and he started to dress strangely (a winter coat in the middle of summer).  He was the weird guy at work.  There is one in almost every workplace. 

This is real story.  It turns out the guy started toying with the idea of hurting or killing his co workers.  His escalating behavior was his way of testing the waters.  The last thing he did before actually shooting people was some test runs of bringing guns to work and seeing if he would get caught (winter coat in middle of summer).  He shot 4 people at his office.

The truth of things is that we all accept abhorrent behavior from people.  How do you get used to or accept abhorrent behavior?   The answer is so simple it is painful.  Simple repetition works all of the time.  People who abuse drugs or alcohol are adept at getting anyone to accept truly abhorrent behavior.  It is incremental, the person who throws up, passes out, has blackouts, or does really crappy, offensive things while under the influence does it repeatedly.  It gets incrementally worse and it gets harder to see that the more you are around it.  The worst part is that anyone can come to accept that as part of who the person is.  It stops being abhorrent and it just becomes a pain in the ass.  It is part of who they are.  It should NEVER stop being abhorrent.  Trust the voice in your head that tells you how abhorrent it is.

There are people in my life that I have had to walk away from.  You simply cannot threaten, cajole, or convince a hard core drug or alcohol user to stop.  Hard core users need reasons to stop that come from inside of themselves and they need the help of a professional.  You cannot stop or slow the decline for them.  You simply become a witness to a tragedy.  These people need a tragedy and they will always find someone to witness their self destruction.  For reasons I will never understand, people who are self destructive need people to witness them doing it.   

So what do you do?  You walk away and you don't look back.  And another hard truth is that while you are feeling crappy for doing that, they will be plugging someone else into your spot.  They will not feel bad at all, they will find another person to fill that need for a tragedy witness.

Some bridges need to be burned, so that person does not have the ability to follow you and suck more life out of you.  Give your life and love to the people who want to give the same to you.  These bottom feeders need you for a reason that has nothing to do with life or love.

Love Dad



 

Awkward

I remember when your mom first asked me to meet her father and extended family.  I was at first flattered but that gave way very quickly to an overwhelming feeling of dread.  People tend to either like me right away or think something is wrong with me.

When she started to introduce me to the important people in her life, she took a huge leap of faith.  You don't want people close to you to think the person you are hanging out with is wrong for you.  When you start those introductions, you expose yourself and that other person to scrutiny that you may not normally welcome.  Family, friends, and extended family are coincidentally those people who can really hurt your feelings because they have known you so long.  These are the people who really know how to hurt your feelings.

It is a part of having a new significant relationship that is a complete but necessary pain in the ass.

I first really met her Dad when I was putting in a flagstone walk at her house.  I shook his hand and while I was working made small talk so we could break the ice with each other.  About 10 minutes into small talk he asked what my intentions were regarding your mom.  It was like trying to open a window slowly and having someone opening the same window with a large brick.  After that uncomfortable pause (for me, not him) I told him that I liked her a lot and we were both figuring out where this was going to go.  He told me that I must be serious about her because I was putting in flagstone for her.  I repeated the same thing and your mom manged to come over and save me.  She was adept then (and now) at keeping me from falling in large holes that are hell to get out of. 

Meeting her older brothers and sisters for the first couple of times was a lot worse.  Her brothers and sisters were welcoming but regarded me with a healthy suspicion.  Nothing is more awkward than to be at a family or friend gathering and being the new guy.  Trying to participate and be part of conversation is like jumping rope with razor blades.  You can get chopped up to bits if you jump in at the wrong time. Your mom's brothers and sister had a sense of humor much like your mom and were OK with letting me sweat a little.  In their eyes, she was worth it.  Now that both of you are old enough to bring that person over, I understand (and appreciate) why they would have made me work for your mom.

Of course if I had stopped to realize that the one thing I had in common with them from the start was a deep and abiding love of your mom, all of those first awkward first meetings/holidays/occasions would have went much smoother for both of us.   Damn Occum and his razor for coming into my life so late. 

Love Dad

The worst thing I ever saw

I get asked from time to time what is the worst thing that I ever saw as a firefighter.  It is the kind of question that I never could answer very well.  It is impossible to describe a graphic traumatic injury and give it the appropriate amount of weight.  These traumatic injuries assault all of your senses at once in a way in a way that nothing else does.   It always seems that the worst of these incidents started with a person who made some incredibly bad decisions to start the chain of events.

The sense of fair play, what is right and what is wrong can be tossed out of the window in the blink of an eye.  Everyone finds there sense of balance in a different way.  It can become harder to do because we have preconceived notions about how we are supposed to process this kind of information. Note here that stiff upper lips and trying to sort it out on your own is the wrong thing to do every time.   Too many people love you for you have to do that.  People who believe they are unloved are self absorbed an ignoring the people who do love them.

There is a Yin and Yang aspect to almost everything.    Yin and Yang are the things that appear opposite to each other but are interrelated to each other (a shadow cannot exist without light).  This is true in all aspects of your life.  I found it especially true in the FD.


The day our engine crew was on the scene of an fatal accident involving a semi truck and bicyclist, there was two very distinct aspects to that day.  A very tough scene to manage and work through.  But along with that was a humbling display of courage by people whose lives changed in an agonizing instant that day.  Human beings have an amazing will to live and take care of each other when everything in their immediate lives goes to hell.  For me the quiet, selfless courage that people display under the worst case scenario affirms every good thing I believe about people.  You always have a choice on what you choose to see when things get bumpy.

People grieve, their hearts break, and it is not always fair but they keep pressing on for each other, that is the best of who everyone is. 

By the way the worst thing I ever saw as a firefighter was a mother crying at the loss of her son.

Love Dad

Force and Detail

You both were very stubborn and very curious as kids.

I still remember when (names withheld by request) getting you dressed was a 90 minute ordeal.  You just refused to wear the clothes that we tried to put on you.  It did not really matter if it was a dress (hint on who this was), pants, shorts, or God Forbid - shoes of any description.  After wrestling with you for an hour to get clothes on you and your hair brushed, the first minute we walked out of the room you took all of your clothes off.   The day it all came to a head, was an epic 2 hour battle to get you dressed.  It was so frustrating that day we had to take a break.   Sitting at the table we were planing our next strategy on how to trick, convince, or coerce you into clothes.   After settling on a plan we walked into your room prepared for battle and there you sat on the floor dressed like a circus clown.  Every piece of your clothing was a different color and on backwards and you were beaming.  From that point on you had a lot of latitude in what you wore and going places was a lot easier.  You always have had boundaries, but forcing you to wear cute matching outfits was never high on the list.  A side note, a lot of people who saw you then did not think there was anything wrong with you, they just assumed that something was wrong with us as parents because we dressed you like that.  Having a happy, really badly dressed kid was better choice than the alternative. 

When ever you force anyone to do something, you will always get the bare minimum results back.  That universal role extends to family, loved ones, work associates, and random strangers. 

I also remember (again names withheld by request) when you were sitting in your room in front of a large garden level window.  Your sister was out in the yard (hint on who this was) and I was sitting in your room with you.  You pointed to the window, broke out in a big grin and wobbled over to the window. I patiently explained the whole window thing and how you should not have lean on, push, or kick the window because it would hurt you.  You looked up at me and I was thinking I am a damn good Dad because I took all that time and explained it to you and I was sure by the look in your eyes that you understood completely.  I leave the room and was going to tell your mom what a great dad I was when I heard glass breaking in the room I just left you in.  My heart fell out of my chest.  We both ran back in the room and the glass in the window was broken, cracks from the center to the outer edges of the window.  I realized that I neglected to mention not to attempt to open the window with your forehead.  You were unharmed, I removed a small pin drop of glass from your forehead.  That was hard to do because you were laughing your ass off.  For reference this is the equivalent of watching a high speed car wreck happen in front of you and the driver stepping out of his car laughing.

More detail is not always the right thing.  The more detail the more limiting something becomes.  I realized after I spoke to you in your room your pea head only processed the first 4 or 5 words I said.  Remember the Occum's Razor rule.

Love Dad

Expert

I am an expert in most of the things I no longer actively do.

I was reminded of this when we were out having a couple of beers and eating out in Winter Park in a nicer brewery.  There was this 5 year old that was raising hell.  This kid was screaming his head off and the desperate mom was not sure quite how to handle him.  I remember thinking that I would know how to handle that, I would never let my kid do that in a public place.

Flash back to 1994.  A WalMart parking lot on a warm summer day.  I was looking at your angelic sleeping face in the car seat.  You fell asleep in the car a lot and your mom quietly shut the car off and rolled down all the windows.  She said she'd be right back and RAN (yes RAN) into the front entrance of the store.  The minute the automatic doors closed I had a pending sense of doom.  The wind was blowing your long bangs over your forhead and you looked so peaceful.  And then, your eyes opened with a start, and your head rotated a complete 360 degree's and your angelic brow furrowed. 

I knew what to do.  I reached through the open window, unbuckled you from the car seat and almost had you in my arms before you let loose.  You did not cry like a normal kid.  Honestly I do not know how to describe it and give it the right amount of weight.   I was not able to hold you to my chest because of how loud it was.  I pointed you away from me.  You are the only kid I ever knew who actually set off a car alarm (it happened that day).  Picture me the -original Cool Hand Luke -carrying you face out, bathed in sweat and trying every Dad trick in the book to slow you down or get you to breathe.  The Saturday Wal-Mart crowd actually parted and made a path for me up to the front door.  Moses and the Red Sea got nothing on me. 

Your mom heard you before I walked in the door in the back of the store and ran (yes RAN) to the front of the store.  Not for you, she was coming to save me. She simply said your name and held out her arms and the horns went back inside your head and that inhuman howl stopped as abruptly as it started and you smiled at her.  Your mom will never receive sufficient credit for those days.  At the age that you frequently scared the hell out of me, she had nerves of steel, nothing scared her.

We did the walk of shame out of the Wal-Mart (how many people can say they have done that?) and went home without the stuff we came for. 

And 19 years later (give or take) I am the expert.  I can watch another young couple take the walk of shame, secure in the knowledge I would know how to handle that.  I am an expert.

Be careful of experts.  If a person needs to convince you how expert they are, there is a good chance they are those hindsight kind of experts.  Always make the distinction between expertise and experts.  Expertise is the pursuit of excellence.  Experts are guys know everything about the stuff they no longer do.

Call your mom and thank her for all the hell you raised as a kid that you don't remember. 

Love Dad

Grandma

Grandma left for California today to see her older brother for the last time today.  They were very close in age and like you guys they were co conspirators in all of the trouble they got in when they were young kids.

He is diabetic, who has stopped his dialysis in the last couple of weeks.  He is having cardiac events every day now and prognosis has changed from weeks to days.  Grandma and her sister are racing the clock to get out to see him.  The best hope is that she can look into his eyes and that she can see him looking right back at her.

For all the people you love, you can never tell them how much you love them and be done.  You will always be at least one " I love you" short.  It is supposed to work that way.  Funny how things work, you know if you tell someone to *uck off, you can be completely done and finished with just one (you will never be short one *uck off).   It is always going to be more work to love someone.

So you need to call her in the next couple of days when she gets that brutal heart punch.  And if you ever wonder what to say, it is as simple as saying how deeply sorry for her loss and you offer to help her in any way you can.  The depth of another person's grief is something you will never be able to measure, prevent, or mitigate.  Profound grief is the most personal thing any one person will do and it is something that people come to terms in a way and time that is unique to them.  But when the cloud of grief clears momentarily and they understand that you are there, it makes all the difference in the world.

When people die, it is like cutting a hole in a wooden floor you are standing on.  The hole never goes away, it is always there.  You learn to step around it, it is an absence that you always deal with, every day.  For Grandma, she has a couple of big assed holes in her wood floor (my dad, her parents, and brother).  Calling her does not fix any one hole, but it does for a moment make her stop focusing on them.   

There is nothing so elegant as letting someone know you are thinking of them when the shit is hitting the fan.  You can't control the shit or the fan but you can assist with some of the clean up.

Love Dad

Good Time

Sometimes you got to pull a good time out of a crappy circumstance.  Because in each crappy circumstance there is always a good time trying to surface.  My motorcycle trip was like that this year.  It was a lot of ego induced headaches punctuated by amazing stretches of road.

We generally leave at 4AM to see the sun rise on a stretch of beautiful Wyoming road.  This year we were parked in front of a Motorcycle shop in town until noon, waiting on a repair for a friends new bike.  We all waited because we agreed that it was all or nothing.  All or nothing is almost always going to be a bad idea, even if is done with the best of intentions.  In this case, instead of one guy having a tough day, everyone had a tough day.  In retrospect it would have been so easy to divide and conquer.  When you chose All or Nothing and everyone is going to have a bad day, it is not a good choice....ever.

When we arrived at 8PM on a Friday night and the guy driving plugged in the RV, there was burning smell and a popping sound.  For the duration of the stay, the RV ran on a hour or two of generator.  Food in the refrigerator went bad, AC was sporadic, and none of the electronics worked.   And what did a bunch of type A people do drive the resolution of this?  We walked to town and had a couple of beers and when this did not fix it we sat around in folding chairs giving bad advice to the one guy who did try to do something.  These careful, detailed, concise observations of a problem without anyone taking any kind of tangible action is what I written about before - The Circle of Hope (COH).  One of the problems with the COH is that your observations become more insightful and detailed when you continue to fail to take any kind of action to resolve your issue.  If your observations about a problem in your life are becoming really insightful and powerful, you may be in a COH and not realize it.

There were of course the time when we elected to just enjoy the company we found ourselves in.  Surprizingly, these were the times when were sitting in a uncomfortable folding chairs, with warm beer, eating ears of corn boiled in a pan on a borrowed grill.  A great time despite all our attempts to be miserable.  I love it when that happens.

Today's crisis is tommorrows great story.

The Brick Revisited

Leaving on my annual motorcycle trip and couldn't resist sending you an old blog from 2011.  I will call you both from the badlands....

The Brick Revisited

There was the one remaining fly in the house.   Every house has a fly like that.  The one fly that hides out until December or January and looks like a bumble bee. 

I knew exactly what I had to do.  I went into the garage to get the big can of wasp spray and I grab the garage broom.  When I went back into the house, I also rolled up a big chunk of the Sunday paper.  I am standing there the the broom propped up against the counter, rolled up paper, and start shaking the wasp spray.

Your mom comes into the kitchen and asks me what I am doing.  It is cold here now and all the doors and windows are closed tight.  I tell her that I am going to kill the fly.  She shakes her head and walks over to the sliding glass door and opens it.  With a couple of waves of her hand the fly goes right through the open door.

I hate it when that happens.  

Killing a fly with a brick never really works out well.  You break a lot of things you never intended to break.   A lot of people like watching someone kill the fly with the brick.  But if you are the person throwing the brick, you end up being the entertainment in a way that is not good at all.  The brick thrower is the guy you want to watch but avoid. 

A measured response can be smart and elegant in a way that a brick just cannot.  So if you are faced with a shit eating, disease carrying pest, open the door. 

There are certainly times where the brick is needed...but they are few and far between.  More about that later.

Love Dad

Talking to Yourself

The things that you say to yourself have way more impact on you than the things you say out loud or that people say to you.  You tend to believe the things you say to yourself without qualifying them.  Get in the habit of saying the right things to yourself.  They do not have to be empty platitudes.  Just simply recall what you already are and what you have.

You are both smart, tough, and have a strong history of prevailing under tough circumstances.  You have strong support structures around you and a lot of people in your life who love you.  You have won far more than you have lost and more importantly learned from each time you fell flat on your face.  Your sense of humor always is key to being able to laugh at yourself.  When you can laugh at yourself, people will laugh with you and not at you. 

When you speak to yourself in a crappy way, you are taking the easy way out of a tough spot.  Falling down and staying down is way easier than not getting right back up again.  There are 10 easy reasons to not get back up and only 1 good one for getting right back up.  Use that innate stubbornness that you have to get up off the floor when you find yourself there.  

Saying the right things to yourself will always translate to how you deal with other people.   You are going to be more inclined to appreciate the people and things that get out of tough spots with a strong positive attitudes.  These are the people who you want to be drawn to and they are the people they need to find you. 


Make sure and call grandma.
Love Dad

You should know that

 I just asked a group of people in an instant message chat, what a technical term they were using meant.  After that 5 minute pause and no response, I pulled another woman in the chat who was able to answer the question.  After the question was answered, a lot of the people using the technical term hit me up in a private chat to tell me that was new information to them.

When I have people explain things to me that I do not know, I get one of three responses.  First is silence and it makes me wonder why people can't just say I don't know.  Second is a person who is a dick about providing the information and tries to make me feel that it is something I should have known or that they are bestowing a reluctant gift to me.  Third is a person who enthusiastically shares the information and answers all the stupid questions I ask (there are stupid questions by the way).  I love that guy and because he/she is that kind of person I will always reach out to them with any new information that I have that I think they can use. 

You need to understand the fundamental rule about Information being power (it is).  Information becomes powerful when you share it.  The person who metes out information to people to try to elevate their position will always be on the lowest rungs of the ladder. 

You don't gather knowledge, you obtain it.  Your position in any organization is elevated when you strive to pass along what you know to as many people as you can.  You will also find that hoarded information becomes obsolete really quickly.  

And if you really don't know, say that and find someone who can answer your questions.  One of these people will end up being one of your mentors.

Love Dad

Drama Revisited

My extended family (brothers and sisters) are going through some stressful times right now.  As much as my heart goes out to them, I want to punch them in the neck because they are adding to their own stress and they do not need to do that.  

When you are under stress you will process everything with a filter that is uniquely your own.  In times of great stress most people will default to falling back and defending themselves against anything that feels like a attack, threat, or slight.  And because we all hate for people to see us under stress, you are probably adept at hiding from most people when you are under stress.  So when people do not know you are under stress, they can easily say and do things that feel incredibly insensitive or insulting to you. 

If your default is to defend yourself first, without understanding what is going on, you are going to spend far more effort, time, and emotional time on things than you need to.  It is adding drama, when drama is the last thing that is needed.   

People resolve things for themselves when they go back to the beginning and understand what was going on then.  This can take days, weeks, or months to do and sometimes (sigh) much longer.  It almost always can be avoided with that up front effort of trying to understand what is going on before you act. Next time it comes around, take a couple of minutes and understand what is happening before you react, in a lot of cases it is not going to be just about you.

Do not participate in other people's drama.  If you need drama, spend the afternoon at a movie theater.  I don't share in the drama of my siblings because I understand it is made by them and not me.  I love them all without qualification.  Don't always like what they do, but always love them.  And as much as I hate to sound like a greeting card, love really does conquer all.

Make sure you call Uncle C.  He turns 50 today.

Love Dad

The New Guy

I believe in Karma.  You can plan that the things that you do in words and deeds, will be done to you in return.  Everytime you reach out to someone, someone will reach out to you.  For every punch in the head or heart you deliver, you will receive one in return.  The great part of Karma is that you are never, ever going to know when you are going to receive what you have given. 

It is said a dozen different ways in a dozen different religions but they are basically talking about Karma.  I found out about a great example of this.  I used to work for this guy that was a giant dick to everyone who worked for him and around him.  If you have not worked for this guy, you will.  It is a guy who believes that a position in an organization or a specific title gives him license to do this.   I did not know why he left the organization, but no one was sorry to see him go.  

I heard today that he was hired back in the same organization as a supplemental employee.  Supplemental employee's work under the direction of full time employee's.  He is back working for the people he treated the worst.  In the finest Buddhist tradition he has had a rebirth in his work life. 

I had a pang of empathy for him because he is not only the new guy, but he is going to have to work hard to erase the perception that he is still a giant dick.  I hope everyone recognizes that is the second chance that we all want.  I hope hope he takes advantage of the opportunity.  I also hope people do not look at it as a chance to get even, because like him, we are all going to be the new guy a lot of times in life. 

Sometimes you forgive people not because they deserve it, but because it gives you peace and is the right thing to do.  As good as punching someone in the head or heart feels, it is always temporary and like the fat kid eating cake it will cause you a lot of grief later.


Love Dad

Bum Fighting

We are all God's creatures.  God gets props for his infinite wisdom and his unqualified love for everyone.  He does not get enough recognition for the magnificent sense of humor that he has.  He will bring the occasional shitbag, dickhead, just plain mean, stupid, or clueless people into your life from time to time. This is to exercise your free will.  This is Gods way of seeing if you will participate in the spiritual form of Bum Fighting.  

When two bums fight, you never think that one of them is right, you only see a pathetic bum fight.  There are plenty of times to fight for what is right.  But most of us spend far too much time fighting or arguing with the people who are not the least bit interested in anything except being right.  Being right at the expense of another person, is never going to be the right thing.  Being right is always going to be a bit of a compromise.  It is not planting your flag at the top of the mountain, it is helping another fat ass climb the mountain.  You will see more bum fights in times of great stress or trial.  You can also be drawn  into a bum fight pretty quickly by the family and friends you love the most - be careful of that.  I have included here the Prayer of Saint Francis, who aside from being the patron saint for animals is also the patron saint of bum fights.  Prayer is good for pre and post bum fighting.  The only thing worse than bum fighting is not recognizing when you have been in one.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

 

Love Dad

 

Life Lesson - SP and Change

Stockdale Paradox - Life Lesson

I sent this out in January of last year but it bears repeating.  For most people, when they find themselves in tough or crappy situations they almost always know what needs to be done.  When you find yourself in this situation you have to make a difficult choice to act or to not act.  You should not confuse doing the very same thing as taking an action, nothing is further from the truth.  If you do the same thing (that is NOT working), it is inaction and you should not be surprised when your situation gets worse. 

Here is a tough truth, you will either opt to act to change your situation and attempt to manage the outcome or you will let the situation run over you and things will change as a result of that.  Another hard truth is that people who have what you want are doing things differently than you are.  And if you are pointing to the person who does not have the same challenges that you do, you are conveniently ignoring the other 95% of people who have the same set of challenges that you do.

Being tough and having courage...having grit is NOT doing the same thing the same way.  It is making hard, tough changes when they are needed.  So if you are lamenting being without something, do something tangible and different.  Here is Stockdale Paradox posting from January:

Admiral James Stockdale was the highest ranking POW in the Vietnam War, he was held for 8 years and tortured brutally over 20 times.  When he was asked which kind of prisoners perished in Vietnam, he said that is easy, it was the optimists.  These were the prisoners who said they would be out by Christmas or Thanksgiving and those days would come and go and eventually enough milestones passed that they lost that essential faith needed to survive and die.  The optimists failed to confront the the reality of their situation and when they were forced to do so it simply became too much for them.

Stockdale accepted the reality of the situation.  He knew he was in hell but rather than failing to confront the reality of the situation he accepted it.  He stepped up and did everything he could do to lift the morale and prolong the lives of fellow prisoners.  He developed communication and milestones that help them communicate and survive.    Here is the Stockdale Paradox:

You must retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties.
AND at the same time…
You must confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

Here is the take away for you.  YOU MUST COMBINE OPTIMISM (SINCERE BELIEF) WITH BRUTAL HONESTY AND A STRONG WILLINGNESS TO TAKE ACTION.

James Stockdale quote "I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

Very important life lesson here.  Face any trial you have head on and make them defining moments in your life.  Bloody but unbowed.

Kick Ass - Love Dad

Karma II

I am a believer in Karma.  Your actions and words will always carry the weight of consequence for you.

I am also a firm believer that there are things and people I cannot make better by extending myself to them.  In order for me to reach out to you, you have got to be able to reach back in a meaningful way.  Reaching out to someone implies that you are attempting to connect with them.  Connecting to people is as simple as a smile or word that leaves a door open for that person to try and get to know you.

There is a subset of people you will reach out to that are huge mistakes.  When you peel back the onion, you will occasionally not find the beautiful human you expected, you will find a person with significant personal  deficits that should never be part of your life.  It seems like almost simultaneously when you are finding how much they do not belong in your life -  they will find a pressing need to become part of your life.  

There are connections that should be broken, doors that should be closed, and times when you need to have people get out of your life, who are starting to suck the life out of you.  From a Karma standpoint you only owe these people the honesty of clearly stepping away from them.  

Most people know when you are clearly stepping away from them.  For them not to acknowledge that you are stepping away is a form of manipulation they use to keep in contact with you.   Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to be firm and honest. 

There are people in my life who I thought would be good or casual friends that were train wrecks.  They had to go through their own journey to find their own self worth.  These journeys frequently involved a series of destructive behaviors that involved bad relationships, drug and alcohol abuse and bad personal decisions.  I would have not helped them or me to have been a witness to that journey. 

So use your good deeds at a time, a place, and  a person where they will find some purchase.  Never dump your good deeds into the black hole of someone else's destructive behavior.

Convention

When I was younger than you are now, I decided I was going to be a Professional Rodeo Cowboy.  It is funny now to remember the look my parents had.  I remember my mom writing something on the calendar that day and I don't think she wrote "best day ever" on the calendar.

This was before there was a Facebook, Skype, or Reddit.  Hell, this was before email.  In the absence of any real social media you could ride off into the sunset.  Conversely you could ride into a new town and reinvent yourself.  There are a couple of reasons that this worked so well back in the day.  No one was really aware of how much and how often you actually fell on your face. 

We were born in a time where the goal out of high school was stability.  A good job, a nice car, and the ability to get some of the nicer things.  You felt like people were PROUD of you when you had that good job, apartment, and car. When you decided to depart from that you had to have a sincere belief in yourself.  Because if you step out of what you think is conventional, you are going to be the target of some tongue wagging and finger pointing.  People who followed convention, also want you to follow convention.  


When I left to be a Professional Rodeo Cowboy it was something I was proud of and believed in.  And while it sounds glamorous in print and paper, it was about working a lot of day jobs to make entry fee's. A lot of traveling to paths of the beaten trail and living (this is a huge understatement) modestly.  While I was doing this a lot of my peers were getting jobs and earning a decent living.  And while my parents firmly believed what I did was akin to running away to join the circus, it was an amazing experience and journey that I would not have traded for the world.

I did not make my living as a Professional Rodeo Cowboy.  I did learn more than my peers who opted for the more conventional definition of success.  I learned how to believe in and trust myself and that has served me really well all these years.  If given the choice of having money or a great passion, I would always pick the passion.  Even at the tender age of 52, I am really happy to know that I do not ever have to wonder if I could have made it as a Professional Rodeo Cowboy.  The pursuit of a passion is never going to be a losing proposition.  Because you find out one of the most essential things you can do in life is to be proud of yourself first before worrying if people are proud of you.

So if you start to worrying about where you are in the pecking order of your peers...don't.  Always have the stones to look your peers in the eye and tell them exactly what you are doing.  Especially if it is not the conventional path.  You owe that to them and mostly to yourself.

Give them all hell
Love Dad

Remission

Remission

I was told last Wednesday that Chris is officially in remission.  His cancer is not gone, but it is smaller and stable.  Chemo/Radiation started in August, it seems like a lifetime ago.   Here are my cancer notes for you.  He reminds me of some of the important stuff.

Measured Grace - Every time someone offered him the best seat, offered to drive him to chemo, shovel a walk, or some other everyday task, he accepted the offers of help with a lot of appreciation and grace.   He came to understand that by gratefully accepting these gestures, it allowed people to do something when there was really nothing to be done.  The truth is that most of these gestures, while made with the greatest of intentions were difficult reminders to him of what he could not do himself.  So the people that were afraid and feeling helpless were able to feel like they contributed in a small way to the most important journey of his life.  Nothing is more gut churning than to feel like a helpless bystander when a life is changing before your eyes.  By putting his ego aside he was able let a lot of people be a small part in the fight for his life.  SO the next time that well meaning person (family/friend/stranger) reaches out to you, consider putting your ego aside and put them ahead of yourself.  By accepting that small bit of help, they will feel infinitely better because they will feel in a small way, that they have been a part of your journey.   Remember, that hard and fast rule -it is not always about just you.

Accepting Incremental Wins - His cancer is smaller and stable not gone - this is considered remission.  So for the next 90 days he is officially stable with no drugs or treatments.  He will have to be checked for the rest of his life (at this point being able to say the rest of his life is outstanding) .  But today he is in remission and every single day should be a celebration of life.  I am not going to wait for the train to run over him again, I am going to take these days for what they are...a gift.  SO DO NOT spend a lot of time lamenting the train that may or may not run over you.  Every day you have is a gift.  Make sure you use every day.  The train that runs people over is often discussed, planned for, and searched for.  The truth is the train runs over a small percent of people and it always because the elect to not step out of its path.
  
Courage - Chris was a constant reminder to me that courage is the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other in the most dire circumstances imaginable.  Most of the amazing acts of courage will never see the light of day and it does not for a minute diminish them.  It is never a single act of courage that defines you.  It is a compilation of courageous acts that will surface when you (or someone else) needs them the most.   Like everything else you learn to be courageous.  SO all of those times you put one foot in front of the other when it you have no reason to COUNT big time.  That is your portfolio of courage, never get concerned that no one see's them.  When you are called on to be courageous in a public way, it will be second nature to you.

Love Dad