I got to attend an exclusive event a while back, with a promise that I’d get an inside look at an organization that is big heat in our area. How could I resist? So I took a shower and put on clean underwear and combed my hair and shared the secret word with the security guard to gain entry to the super-special event. OMG, it was absolutely… … a gigantic waste of time. Everything was a platitude, a generic comment, a flowery statement that was supposed to sound like it had great meaning even if there was no there there. Over the course of an hour, I learned that:
I wanted to leap to my feet and do my best Clara Peller impression as I shouted, “Where’s the beef?” I held back, though, and just listened, waiting in vain for a fact or an insight or a bit of wisdom that would justify the environmental impact of my commute. It never arrived. I started squirming in my seat as I looked at the door and wondered how much longer this parade of pablum would continue, but then I noticed something. All around me, people were nodding and smiling. Not nodding off, though; nodding in agreement. When the speaker said it’s important to meet challenges, everyone but me was thinking, “Oh, yeah, you got that right.” I was a bit confused, at first. Why was the audience enthused about a pile of word salad that could be applied by anyone to any situation in life? Why wasn’t everyone else staring at the door and wondering how quickly they could get to their cars? At first, I thought I must be missing something, but then I realized I was viewing it all through a different filter than the smiling throng at the other tables. While I was curious about the organization on display, I had no particular emotional attachment to them, their success, their past or their future. I was merely interested in gaining some understanding about a local institution. At the worst, I’d have some newsy tidbits to impress my friends at a party, if I ever made any friends or got invited to a party. Pretty much everyone else in the audience felt more of a connection to the organization, or at least that’s how it appeared. They had an emotional or financial investment in the history and opportunity, the success and failure, of the people on stage. They came to see someone smart and decisive and strategic and that is apparently what they saw. I’d like to feel superior about the whole thing and think of them as saps who’ll fall for anything, but that would be unfair. In fact, they’re probably smarter than I am, because they found a way to gain more enjoyment and a greater sense of intimacy from their engagement. Maybe I can still salvage something from the experience. Next time someone mentions the organization, I can relate that I actually spent some time with their leaders. I can relate that they need to get the entire team involved to make the tough decisions that can be hard to make because you can’t predict the future on your way to improvement. I'm sure those insights will make me sound like a real insider. If I ever attend a program where I actually learn something, I’ll be sure to share it with all the people who click here to subscribe.
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While I was posting this, I noticed that half of it focuses on stuff we don't know and never care about, except that we should...
I met a guy who achieved some great success about 40 years ago and he couldn’t tell me much about himself beyond that moment. It was very sad. His achievement was pretty impressive, so I can understand why he was proud of his accomplishments. Certainly, he was more famous than I’ll ever be and he has fascinating stories to tell about reaching to top of his profession. And yet, he has lived more than half of his life in the afterwards, apparently unable to appreciate what’s happened since his apotheosis. I tried to draw him out about his life today, his interests and his activities, and it turns out he’s doing some good in his current journey. By many measures, he’s doing more to make the world a better place today, to improve the lives of the next generation, than was the case when he was at the public apex of his career. He didn’t seem to see it that way, and it’s probably understandable. The spotlight, the adoration of the public, the accolades…it must all be intoxicating in a way that becomes addictive. It must be difficult to give it up, to accept that the moment is gone and never to return. I’ve written before about how difficult it is for normal people to move on, to redefine themselves after their everyday careers. It must be even rougher for people who have scaled the peaks. As sad as that is, though, it’s even sadder for those who cannot get past the nadir of their lives, the moments of defeat that become the frame for viewing everything that follows. We all know someone who defines themselves in terms of the almost, the didn’t, the couldn’t. In the never-ending loop of memory, everything returns to the time when they weren’t enough, the time that convinces them they cannot become enough. At least my new friend was fixated on a major success. People who say they have no regrets in life are absolutely not paying enough attention to their own actions. Regret is evidence that we have a conscience and a concern for others. Regret is proof that we are learning from our missteps, that we’ve crossed one more error off the list of things we plan to avoid in the future. Whether our regrets stem from our failures or our successes, though, they’re the speed bumps that block our growth, our progress, our opportunity to build a future. Memories are a great place to visit, but a terrible place to live. Yes, I’ve been waiting 70 years to use the word apotheosis in a blog post and now my life is complete. But I’m moving forward in life, as you’ll see in future weeks after you click here to subscribe. The best dinner, stud fees, and the times I bring joy to the repairmen in my life, all from a deep dive into the shallowest of minds…
Not only is this America, but it’s also the internet, where you can get a free subscription to Dad Writes simply by clicking right here. I turned 70 yesterday and I recognized my actual birthday for the first time in a decade. It’s not that I’ve been pretending to be young for the last bunch of years, as if anyone would be fooled by my futile imitation of youth. Instead, I opted ten years ago to move my officially sanctioned birthday from May to June, forsaking the day that mom chose to toss me into the world. Mostly, it’s been a nice shift. I get to pay lots of attention to all the moms on my roster on Mother’s Day and I have my own little moment for celebration that I don’t have to share with anyone else. There have been complications, though, including the fact that I can’t always remember exactly which date I picked for my new birthday observance. So, when people ask me to remind them of my new date, I have to stop and look it up. As I get older, this situation is not likely to improve. Then there’s the issue of social media, with Facebook inviting people to send me greetings on my actual nativity date and declining my attempts to change their records to acknowledge my new benchmark. I suspect they’d allow me to change my gender at this point, but birthdays are absolutely non-fluid. So, on May 13, I get B-Day wishes from some people and questions about the “real” date from others and I get the feeling people think I am even weirder than they thought before. As if that was possible. And it has become just a bit uncomfortable when I exchange greetings with people who have the same birthday as me, including one of my cousins. They all know I’ve deserted them and, TBH, I’ve started to feel just a bit guilty about my betrayal. The final straw, though, is the aging process itself. I’m not quite at the point where George Burns announced, “At my age, I don’t buy green bananas,” but I’m getting closer all the time. The idea of delaying a birthday celebration, even if only for a few weeks, just keeps getting dumber and dumber. So it’s back to Friday the 13th and conflicts with Mothers’ Day and weather that isn’t nearly as warm as it is in June and restaurants that haven’t opened their patios yet, because this is my day of infamy and I can rely on Facebook to remind me when it arrives. Of course, my reversal of my reversal is turning a lot of people into really bad friends. If you didn’t wish me a happy birthday yesterday, you are seriously late and there is no excuse for your failure to remember my very special day. Yeah, you’re going to whine that you didn’t know and I just told you today, but the truth is that you were never a good person to begin with and you’ve let me down yet again. Honestly, I don’t know what I ever saw in you. Of course, you can make it up to me with a belated birthday gift that reflects the level of your remorse at your transgression. Just as a reminder, I wear a size 42 Armani or a 911 Porsche. Avoid the embarrassment of missing the news if/when I change my birthday again by clicking here to subscribe to future posts. At some point in my life, more than a few people suggested that I was an introvert. I don’t remember exactly when it was, but it was around the time that everyone started getting caught up in psychology, Rorschach tests, and the color of their parachutes. None of the people who diagnosed me was licensed to practice psychology, or even yoga, but that’s what they said and I believed them. To be fair, I wasn’t exactly the life of the party. I’d been sick as a kid, missing out on those socialization skills you pick up in adolescence, and I was more interested in schoolwork than extra-curriculars. When people told me I was hard-wired that way, it seemed to fit. Even better, it gave me a reason to conclude I couldn’t change and didn’t need to try. So I lived my life as an introvert, with solitary hobbies like bike riding, photography, and coin collecting. Later, when I was around 45, I took a Meyers-Briggs test and the results were pretty shocking. According to the test, I wasn’t actually an introvert. In fact, the test concluded that I was comfortable across a broad range from Intro- to Extro- on the -Vert Continuum. As a result, my filter began to change and I saw the world, including myself, just a bit differently. Slowly, over many years, I became more outgoing, more sociable, more comfortable with strangers. I’m okay with traveling or dining alone and I still enjoy biking and photography, but I would rather be paired up with somebody, or somebodies, to share the experience. The teenage me would be surprised to see how much I enjoy being with people, engaging with them, entertaining them, and learning from them. Or, maybe, the teenage me would remember the sadness of being alone far too much. Because, in fact, I was sad to be alone as a teen and I was mistaken in my belief that sadness was the inevitable companion of introverts. Instead, it was the inevitable result of a faulty diagnosis. I simply accepted what other people said about me and followed their prescription to guide much of my life. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it’s pretty common for people to shove you into a box and put a label on it, even though they aren’t going to move into that box with you or help you to work your way out of it. And if they make the wrong diagnosis, they’ll give you an ailment you didn’t have already, without offering a cure. I can’t go back, of course, and my regret is softened by the knowledge that painful experiences teach us how to cope later in life. The people who put me in the wrong box when I was younger did me no favor, but they did give me an insight I can pass on to another generation. I’m not exactly gleeful for the lesson, but perhaps someone can benefit from my education. Now that I’m not afraid of people any more, I’m happy to invite you to join the party by clicking here to subscribe to Dad Writes. |
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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