The guy on the next barstool is curious about the photos I’m taking, so I explain it’s an exercise I do every so often, sitting in one place and finding something picworthy from wherever I’m perched. I show him the shot I took of the champagne flutes, refracted through a water glass, and then we veer off into a conversation about cameras, motorcycles, politics, and abortion. Turns out, he owns one of the condos in the hotel complex where we’re staying and he sells motorcycles, among other things, to put food on the table. I get the feeling he can afford much fancier food than he’s munching on at the moment, but he also seems to enjoy being in a place where everybody knows his name. He took some photos when he was younger, drifted away from it, has considered getting back into it, but life intervenes and you move in different directions. We talk about our kids, who are relatively close in age, their careers and life choices, the way our roles change as we and our children get older, and the complexities of business. I tell him a bit about my career and he gives me a brief tutorial on the motorcycle industry, which leads us into the challenges of updating a brand and appealing to a new generation of buyers. Then we're deep into marketing, supply chain management and the damage that the finance guys have wreaked on American industry. I tell him re-shoring and the rebuilding of infrastructure are big investment themes for me, now that the Chips and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are generating results. His state is one of the bigger beneficiaries, but he isn’t all that familiar with them, and I’m not surprised. Based on some of the phrases he uses, I know at least one source of his news, and Biden successes aren’t a primary topic over there. So, now we’re talking politics, focusing on the misplaced incentives that make it more profitable, literally, to create problems than to solve them. We agree that Congress is pretty ineffective at addressing the issues that are most critical, that there’s more grandstanding than real effort in political circles, and there's a gigantic gap where common sense should be. Inevitably, it seems, we end up on abortion. Both of us believe life begins at conception, but neither of us thinks a woman should be forced to carry a dead fetus to term. He said he was opposed to all the proposals for post-birth abortions and I said I would be opposed, too, if that really was a thing. Between those points of agreement, we didn’t quite find a bright line that divides what’s acceptable or not for the two of us. And by “us,” I’m talking about two men sitting at a bar...pretty much a textbook definition of having no skin in the game. Ninety minutes later, we both have somewhere else to be and some of the world’s problems will need to wait until another pair of old guys grab our stools. As I’m heading out, it occurs to me that it’s incredibly easy to have a congenial conversation with a stranger, to talk about challenging issues without getting angry, to see things differently without seeing an enemy. Clearly, I should spend more time in saloons.
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I’m doing a good job of keeping up on the news these days, but I’m not completely sure that any of it makes sense. For instance…
A friend of mine died more than a year ago, but I was too busy to notice. We worked together for a while, stayed in touch over the years, saw each other every six months or so, and then the visits became less frequent. We moved into the city, he and his wife moved farther into the suburbs, we’d find opportunities to meet in the middle somewhere, but neither of us pursued the connection with the utmost zeal. Then he took ill, an increasingly common development as my friends and I get older. I went out to visit, as he couldn’t drive anymore, and we had a couples dinner or two, but that was clearly a long, long time ago. I knew he was getting worse, I wrote myself a note to check in on him, and then I made another note and another. I never actually checked in, but I was very diligent about writing new notes. And one day, it was too late. Not that I knew about it, since I was so busy writing reminder notes. I thought about the challenges his wife was facing, I thought about his descent into a hellish disease, I thought about the small support a check-in call might offer. But there’s a huge difference between thinking and doing and I didn't bridge the gap. Since the days when everyone lived in the same cave and spoke the same five words, it has never been easier to stay in touch than it is today. We can Zoom or conference, text or email, make a phone call or jump in a ride-share 24/7. And yet, it seems we are more distanced in many ways, unable to find the time or the drive to connect. Sometimes we spend more time making the plans than we actually spend together. Sometimes, we spend more time writing reminders to ourselves than we’d need to make the damned call. There’s always tomorrow, until there isn’t. In this case, nearly 600 tomorrows have elapsed since the last one that might have mattered. I have no idea what I would have said on the call I never made. People sometimes say it’s important to say goodbye, but that always seems more of a benefit to the person who’s staying than for the one about to depart. The visitor checks a box, while the patient knows they will never hear from their contact for as long as they live. I’ve done the last-goodbye visit more than once and I’ve always felt it was the right thing to do in the specific circumstances with the specific people. Usually, I try to avoid any indication that I don’t expect to return, even if we both know it’s the final conversation. This time was different, because I didn’t bother at all. Now I’m wondering if I should do anything or let it lie. Should I call his widow and express condolences, or does my lengthy absence make things worse? “Yes, I ignored you and your husband, my friend, for so long that he died more than a year ago and I never even noticed, but isn’t it great that I’m noticing now?” Does it reopen a wound to remind her of the people who didn’t show up when it mattered? Am I calling to help her or just to assuage my own guilt? Or, does any expression of sympathy help with the healing, even if it comes much too late from a pretty crappy friend? Gotta ponder that for a while. Maybe I’ll write myself a note. It turns out I owe Betty an apology. A few weeks ago, I railed about her and how she was treated so much better than I am and I admitted to my absolute jealousy over the special opportunities people were strewing at her feet. Since then, I’ve taken a look at my spam folder and it turns out I’m the lucky one, not her, and everybody, including Betty, should be jealous of me, me, me. As I was scrolling through my junk mail, it occurred to me that it’s much more compelling than the stuff I end up reading in my real messages. (Sorry, friends, but you’re really boring.) Even better, I can get much better deals than Betty and I don’t even need to take any classes at those schools that want her as a student. I am so special… Nothing indicates an investment that’s geared specifically for my parameters than: Good day. I found your email address in the Google database. Is your email address still valid? I have a good business proposal for you. Of course, there’s the traditional alert that I’m in for a big bequest: Hello, a donation of € 1,700,000.00 has been made for you. And then there are people who don’t know the difference between a benefactor and a beneficiary, although I suspect I would end up as more of the former than the latter if I clicked on the link: You have been selected as benefactor of $1,000,000.00 million dollars from our personal donation in the year 2023. A trillion dollars? That’s even more than Elon Musk lost on Twitter. I’ve got to temper my excitement, though, because I might not be the real beneficiary. Not only are they confusing me with Betty all the time, some of them now think I’m Ed, who is an even better credit risk than Betty or I will ever be: Hi Ed, If you'd like to get fast flexible funding for your business then a business cash advance could be the perfect solution. Get From $5,000 to $1 Million in as little as 24 hours. $1 Million? I could be in Tahiti before they find out I’m not Ed. Or Betty. Or that I don’t live in New York. That’s a good thing, really, since New Yorkers appear to be all wrinkly and saggy and vastly overweight, according to all of these messages:
Not only am I not Betty, or Ed, or a New Yawker, I’m not a Brit, either, but you wouldn’t know it from these greetings from friends:
I’ve also discovered that power tools are considered the most appealing gifts:
So, all this scrolling has me thinking. With all these special deals just for me, it isn’t possible that all of them are fake. There must be at least a few offers that are legit in here and I’m missing out by ignoring them. Maybe I should just click on a few an One of the guys who used to work for me turned out to be the world’s most obsessive clock-watcher. If I asked him to come in for a discussion at 4:45, he’d begin squirming and glancing at the clock before 4:46. And I’m not talking about someone casually checking the time; this guy couldn’t sit still for a moment as he focused on the approaching hour. One day, I had to catch the 5:30 train on the way to a parent-teacher conference or something and we ended up on the same bus. I was already ticked at the work he hadn’t finished and the extra time I was needing to put in to keep the clients satisfied, but he was simply delighted to note that we were “a couple of Type As heading home.” Two days later, I fired him. He was surprised, of course, because he thought he was doing great. In spite of frequent meetings and prodding to get the work out on time, he left people hanging and caused extra challenges for everyone on the team. The only deadline he could meet was the 5:30 train whistle. Still, everyone is a hero in their own story. Whether you’re a cop in Uvalde or a Type A on a bus, you’re the story of America, the strong and capable leader who rises to the occasion. At least you know you would rise to the occasion if it presented itself, so you’re already a hero without having to do the work. It’s like giving yourself a participation trophy without showing up to participate. I’m not saying we’re way too easy on ourselves these days, but, wait, yes, I’m absolutely saying we’re way too easy on ourselves these days. We forgive ourselves for everything, or we would if we ever entertained the idea that we have any flaws. We’re late because we there was too much traffic, not because we left too late to allow for traffic. We got fat because the food companies hid so much sugar in our Twinkies, not because we ignored the label and ate a dozen in one sitting. We can’t afford a vacation because plane fares are too high, not because we’re spending $700/month on streaming. We’re all victims of the powers that be, including the hidden, secret cabals who conspire endlessly to stymie our advancement. I guess it’s liberating in a way, but it's also a bit of infantilizing we do to ourselves. I’ve always been self-aware enough to recognize when I’ve screwed up, even if it isn't the most comfortable feeling. I don’t have to look far for the person who’s causing me so much grief because it’s almost always me. It’s depressing, at times, to recognize how often I have built my own guillotine, but it’s oddly empowering. If I’m the one who caused the problem, I can be the one to fix it. If I’m the victim of unknown and unseen powers, I can’t make any progress. I’m stuck until they let me go. Worse, I can’t even ask them to set me free when I don’t really know who they are or what they want with me. That’s the choice, really: to shoulder the burden while retaining our sense of control or to reject our culpability by denying our own agency. We can be the heroes in our stories, but only if we give up our super powers. Next time I screw up really badly, probably in the next day or two, I’ll tell our subscribers all about it. Click here and you won’t miss a single hilarious setback. I’ll really miss those nipples. The sippy cups? Not so much. I finally got around to clearing some old junk from the kitchen cabinets, which meant it was finally time to toss the relics of infancy and toddlerhood. The grandkids are older now and they’ve mastered the arts of fine dining, or at least the use of flatware. We’ve even made the last transition from those 50-pound car seats that can withstand both crashes and nuclear blasts, downshifting to the much lighter and, probably deadlier, boosters they can secure on their own. It’s a rite of passage for each of them, of course, but it’s also another passage for me, one of those moments in life that announces the closing of a door that is almost certainly not going to open again. I love it when they announce that they can handle some task on their own and no longer need any assistance, with toilet training very high on that list, but it’s also another notch in my own timeline, a milestone on that other path. Almost all the time, I take it in stride. I’m energized by their joy, their growth, their discoveries and achievements, and I really feel younger when I get a chance to join them on their much newer journey. There's almost never any melancholy as I give away their childish things, whether it’s toys or clothes or books or car seats. But the nipples are somehow more difficult, the symbol of a moment that is so precious, so overwhelming, that it's almost sacred. Because I have never been as connected to another human being, never as absorbed in the miracle of life, never as overwhelmed by the possibilities of the future, as when I have bottle-fed an infant. I have never had someone look into my eyes as steadily and without affect, an eternal moment without distraction. I have never been as separated from the world, existing in a space where nothing else exists, as when I have lost myself in their gaze, and they in mine. Maybe I’m overly romantic about it, assigning a meaning and a connection that’s far beyond reality. Maybe they were just staring at this big lump at the other end of the bottle and worrying that I’d leave before they’d had enough to eat, or that I would fall over and crush them. Maybe they were wishing they knew how to speak so they could tell me I was doing it wrong. But they couldn’t speak, so I get to be the one telling this story and I’m focusing on the sacred moments. Life is filled with all kinds of great experiences, joyful times, powerful moments when there is nothing but the now, the connection, the infinite measure of a priceless memory. I’m not likely to have this experience again, so this memory needs to survive as long as I do. Even without the nipples, I’m pretty sure it will. If I ever have an experience like this again, I’ll let you know, but only if you click here to subscribe. |
Who writes this stuff?Dadwrites oozes from the warped mind of Michael Rosenbaum, an award-winning author who spends most of his time these days as a start-up business mentor, book coach, photographer and, mostly, a grandfather. All views are his alone, largely due to the fact that he can’t find anyone who agrees with him. Archives
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