Monthly Archives: August 2011

This Train is Departing. Please Hold On.

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The old couple stepped onto the train tentatively.

Frail and unsure, they inched their way onto the people mover at the Atlanta airport that would take them to Terminal A. They made it on just as the androgynous computer voice warned, “The doors are closing….. Stop…… Do not enter.”

The passengers scooted back, adjusting their carry-on luggage to make room for the late arrivals.

Moments before, a mother cradling a newborn baby had boarded the train with her sister, who was pushing a toddler in a stroller.

Standing in the middle of the train car, out of reach of the vertical poles, the older man motioned for his wife to hold onto one of the straps hanging from the ceiling for balance.

Just as she reached up for a strap that was high above her — too high — the next digitized voice announcement came on:

“This train is departing….Please hold on.”

In a flash, it was clear what was about to happen.

The Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, besides having a name that is three words too long, is the world’s busiest airport. At 90 million passengers annually, that’s about 250,000 travelers each day.

A system of multi-car people movers is used to transport this mass of humanity efficiently through the airport’s six concourses. In service for 30 years, the train recently was the subject of an official naming contest.

Airport authorities wanted to differentiate it from the two other trains operating at the airport — the new ATL SkyTrain, which connects the terminal to the rental car center, and the MARTA train station, which connects to the citywide transit system.

So what was the winning entry that netted the train-namer a $100 American Express gift card?

The “Plane Train.” Kind of a plain name.

I would have preferred the submission from a fan of “The Colbert Report,” the Comedy Central news program, who proposed the train be dubbed COLBERT – Carrier of Lovely Beautiful Excited Ready Travelers.

But there was nothing plain about the scene I witnessed on the Plane Train this morning.

As if choreographed, the train accelerated abruptly at the precise moment the old woman reached up for the elusive ceiling strap. In slow motion, she lost her balance and fell back against her husband who was also without any support.

He fell backward onto the stroller of the toddler who was terrified by the sense of his world crashing in on him.

Faster than I could see it happen, hands reached out from every direction. Arms supported the old man and kept him from falling further onto the shrieking toddler.

The man and his wife hung suspended above the floor, in a net of arms of all colors.

 

As my eyes followed that human chain of arms back to the source of its stability, I saw one man who was making all this possible.

He was holding onto a vertical pole with his left hand, and with his right he had reached out and made a firm connection, anchoring the entire chain of supporters.

This time, it was his calm, human voice, reassuringly announcing, “It’s okay. I have you.”

For reasons I don’t fully understand, my eyes are welling up again as I type this on the plane home – touched deeply as I have been each time my mind has gone back to that moment.

I guess it is the power of being profoundly reminded once again of two simple truths:

In the blink of an eye, things fall apart.
But just as quickly, people extend a hand to people in need.

This train has departed. Someone will need your steadying hand. Please hold on.

Why I Write

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Having just finished Jack Kerouac’s book, Dharma Bums, I moved to the next book on the shelf, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig. Both books provide a picture of zen practice in daily life, and Pirsig credits Kerouac as having a strong influence on his writing and thinking.

At the beginning of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there is a passage in which Pirsig captures succinctly why I have begun this website:

What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get a chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. Now that we do have some time, and I know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seems important.

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua — that’s the only name I can think of for it — like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts to the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me that the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks.

In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into the old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. “What’s new?” is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question “What is best?,” a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. 

There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and “best” was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.

I think this passage summarizes my intent for this site.

In just one short month, the experience of putting down thoughts — attempting to deepen the channel — on things that I thing are important has been very rewarding for me. I am so grateful for the words of encouragement that many people have provided on this site, on FaceBook and LinkedIn.

I stole the “Why I Write” blog title from George Orwell’s famous 1946 essay. I have been writing for many years but I’ll never forget my first experience with being edited. I was in junior high school and my English teacher, Kirby Lee, marked up something I had written. As a teenager, I was fairly convinced my writing was flawless and without peer, so red ink on my paper was not a welcome sight.

But as I reviewed his edits, I realized he had not just made comments in the margins; he had used his red pen to excise my superfluous words, leaving behind a much clearer message. At that moment, I realized the truth of what I would read later in William Zinsser’s classic book, On Writing Well, “‘Rewriting is the essence of writing.”

And it was also Zinsser who later wrote in his enlightening book, Writing to Learn, that it is only through putting pen to paper — or fingers to keyboard — that we clarify what we think about an issue. The act of trying to make a point in writing forces us to crystalize our thinking.

Or, in short, you don’t know it until you try to write it.

Let me extend the offer to you to contribute to this website. You don’t have to sign on as an indentured servant for the rest of your natural life. You can share your thoughts randomly, sporadically or as frequently as you want.

As Isaac Asimov once said, “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” Help yourself clarify your thinking on issues you’re facing, thoughts you’re having.

And help me deepen the channel.

And I Love You So

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After more than 29 years of marriage, my wife Lea and I have come to the conclusion that for a marriage to be successful – only one person can be crazy at a time. You can alternate who’s being crazy, but it’s a one- at-a-time thing. If she’s acting loony, I just have to wait my turn.

Another realization has been that it helps if you agree on the big stuff. For us, our half-joking mantra of, “no pets, no plants, no kids” has served us pretty well.

It’s amazing, really, to think that a couple — both at the ripe old age of 22 — could make an informed decision about how they want to spend their next 60 or 70 years. The key to that leap of faith has to be a willingness to let each other grow and evolve.

A friend wrote this toast recently for his son’s wedding that says it well:

Dance and play and rejoice in life. In your togetherness, let there be space.

Love each other unconditionally and steadfastly, but embrace the person they are, not who you want them to be. Let your love be like the moving seas between the shores of your souls.

As I reflect back on the role models I had for matrimony, the influences for a successful relationship go back a long way.

Going through files of my parents’ old photos and cards, I recently found a handwritten note from my dad to my mom. It was a love note – pure and simple.

It touched me for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that my dad was shy and not prone to talk about his feelings.

Dearest Evelyn,

I’ve decided to try and write on paper how I feel about you. I remember our courting days – when I could hardly wait to come and see you and didn’t want to leave you when it was time to go. Even now I hate to leave to go to work, and I can hardly wait to get home to see you.

I know we don’t have much money, but that’s not as important as being with you.

Eddie

I’m not sure what the occasion was; maybe it was a note slipped inside an anniversary card. I’ll never know, but I certainly understand why my mom kept it.

It reminds me of the lyrics from Bless My Soul, a song from Jeff Black’s wonderful CD, B Sides and Confessions:

I know why the baby cries
its way into the arms of a mother’s love.
I know why true love survives
and it is more than the red hot fire of another’s touch.

Sometimes life takes unanticipated turns, and you find yourself married but physically apart. There have been a few occasions in which a new job took me to a different city and Lea stayed behind to complete a teaching contract. For those who have done it, you know the difficulty of being apart for an extended period.

I will always remember the long summer of 1988, when Lea was studying for several weeks in Costa Rica on a Fulbright grant. It was 1,843 miles from San Jose to Russellville, Arkansas, and with no cell phones and limited ability to communicate, it felt further. During that time, I decided to record a version of And I Love You So, a Don McLean song sung at our wedding. The project filled my nights and weekends and hearing that recording today still brings back that sense of separation and longing for reconnection.

Shortly after my grandfather died, I remember talking with my Grandma Nola on the front porch of my uncle’s house. It was evening and the cars and trucks were traveling along I-70 in the distance. I asked her if she was going to be okay, and my diminutive grandmother said, “I’ll be fine. I have broad shoulders.”

This was just a few days after I had stood next to her at my grandfather’s casket. As she wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, she said, “I don’t regret a thing.” I realize now she wasn’t talking to me.

In the end, it wasn’t a decision we made 29 years ago to stay together no matter what. It was about choosing a person you loved, looking forward to who they would become and deciding day after day to continue the adventure. It is this same reaffirmation that Kentucky poet Wendell Berry makes in a poem to his wife entitled, The Wild Rose:

Sometimes, hidden from me in daily custom and in ritual
I live by you unaware, as if by the beating of my heart.

Suddenly you flare again in my sight
A wild rose at the edge of the thicket

where yesterday there was only shade

And I am blessed and choose again,
That which I chose before.

Employee Engagement Meets Cool Hand Luke

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“What we’ve got here is…. failure to communicate.”

That iconic line – first uttered by the prison warden in the 1967 Paul Newman movie Cool Hand Luke – is the fundamental reason corporations across the nation fail to engage employees.

Communication is the most important element of employee engagement – and the most overlooked. People want their work to mean something. They want to know what they contribute really matters. And to know that, they need context – the context that comes from communication of how their work fits into the company’s bigger picture.

Research from Hay Group, the global management consulting firm, shows that highly engaged employees can improve business performance by up to 30 percent and that fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their “disengaged” colleagues.

Many things contribute to employee engagement – decision making authority, the opportunity to learn and advance, variety, and respect. But nothing engages employees more than a clear line of sight between their individual performance goals and the strategic priorities of the organization. And that line of sight is best crafted through face-to-face communication between employees and their supervisors.

But too often the process stops here and short shrift is given to developing solid metrics that determine how well those goals are being met.

In a classic comic strip, Charlie Brown is shooting arrows into a fence. After each snap of the bow, he runs to the fence and draws a target around the arrow.

Lucy, of course, becomes hysterical.

“That’s not the way to practice, you blockhead,” she shouts. “You’re supposed to draw the target and then shoot at it.”

With typical round-headed logic, Charlie Brown responds, “If you do it my way, you never miss.”

If only measurement were that easy.

As usual, Lucy is the voice of reason. A key step to achieving employee engagement is collaboratively setting goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely). And frequent communication about progress toward those goals conveys to employees that their work really does matter.

In today’s competitive marketplace, engaging employees means unlocking the discretionary effort every employee possesses but chooses to give or withhold.

And communication is the key.

Mending Your Japanese Bowl

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Everybody hurts – REM drummer Bill Berry.
Everything hurts – Italian filmmaker Michaelangelo Antonioni.
Everywhere it hurts, put an end to painful cracking – Internet ad for IncrediCreme.

Back in 2007, in the short span of 43 days: my father died, my wife had brain surgery, and my mother died. It occurred to me I should just stop answering the phone because it seemed each call just brought more painful news.

I met a woman last week whose husband once faced the dilemma of being with his father who was having surgery for a brain aneurysm or with her as she was giving birth to their second child.

You could insert your own story here – or ones of people you know. And every saga would support Thomas Hobbes’ assertion in his work Leviathan that the life of man is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”

But Minnesota singer-songwriter Peter Mayer puts a different spin on life’s calamities. His new CD, Heaven Below, includes a song called Japanese Bowl, in which he compares the results of ordeals he has endured to kintsugi, the Japanese craft of mending ceramics with gold lacquer resin. Here’s my version of Mayer’s song:

Rather than attempting to repair a cracked bowl in a way that hides the flaw, a Japanese kintsugi craftsman would use the shiny compound to repair the cracks while leaving behind a decorative history of the bowl’s damage. Here are examples: http://www.kintsugi.jp/gallery.html.

Mayer contends that, as with people, no two bowls fracture exactly the same way, so the repairs accentuated by the gold lines set each piece apart as unique – and more valuable as a result.

More valuable because of the cracks? Not a concept likely to catch on in our disposable culture.

But a 2009 exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum, “Golden Seams: The Japanese Art of Mending Ceramics,” revealed just how beautifully pottery shards could be reconstructed. It is said this repair technique was so highly esteemed in 15th century Japan that some actually broke their best ceramics on purpose just so they could be mended in gold.

Cracks? Yeah, I’ve got a few. So do you. Sometimes our painful experiences leave visible reminders, but more often than not we work hard to keep them beneath the surface. I suppose it’s an attempt to maintain the illusion we’re passing through this great ordeal unscathed.

And that’s often fairly easy to pull off, as C.S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, “Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.” When injured, we’re taught early to “walk it off,” a playground version of Nietzsche’s adage, “that which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

My wife broke her foot several years ago in a misstep off a street curb in New Orleans. The day is memorable for many reasons – but especially for the otherworldly Cirque du Soleil performers milling about the lobby of our hotel where my wife waited for me to transport her to the trauma center of the Tulane University Hospital – where we spent hours.

On a recent visit to a podiatrist, she saw the tell-tale remnants of that old injury on an x-ray of her foot – the area of the break had a “fracture callus” a little larger than the surrounding bone.

Internet discussions drone on about whether broken bones actually knit back stronger at the point of the break. The bottom line from orthopedic studies is that the fracture site is no more or less likely to break again.

This leads me to question Hemingway’s message in A Farewell to Arms that, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Our strength isn’t at our broken places – our strength comes from the realization that it is the same thread of gold that knits together my brokenness and yours.

Or to put it another way – taking liberties with the meaning of Namaste – that which is broken in me recognizes that which is broken in you as well – and in that we can find strength.