Improvisational Travel

One of the best tips that I have read about travel is that before you go somewhere new, read all the guidebooks you want as well as study options online. Find out the lay of the land, sights to see and experiences to explore.

And then leave it all behind when you arrive at your destination. Trust that you have internalized the important things and be open to what is in front of you. Yes, you will likely check off some of the preordained boxes and you will also discover things that you would have missed if tied too tightly to numerous pre-set plans.

You Are The Wow, Wow, Wow!

I saw this sign on the stage door of a NYC theatre. This greets every employee as they enter the theatre for work, reminding them of the magic that they can offer their audience each performance, if they accept that they are the wow, wow, wow.

This of course is recognizing the specialness of each person that enters. It also reflects the impact and reaction that everyone connected with the show is striving to have on the audience leading to a felt — and sometimes spoken — WOW!

What if this sign was on your workplace entrance, whether in physical form or in your mind’s eye?

What would you do differently? What is the “wow” that you want your audience or customers to experience? And how will you uniquely contribute towards this?

The sign merely serves as a reminder of the role that everyone plays, the attitude to bring and the decision you make as you engage your audience, customers and colleagues.

Missing Belt

A few years ago my wife and I traveled to Italy for a couple weeks. When it was time to leave, we took a cab to Amerigo Vespucci Airport in Florence, and made our way to the labyrinth of lines to get to the gate.

The security line actually seemed relatively short. After going through the identification process, the only thing standing between us and our gate was the screening process. I dutifully took off my shoes, jacket and removed my belt. I took my liquids out as well as my laptop, and put everything in bins and on the conveyer belt. And then, when instructed, by mostly hand signals, as I didn’t understand what they were saying, I entered the area for them to scan my body. I passed through and then there is the mad dash to put everything back together.

And here is where the trouble started.

I always feel rushed in these put-back-together situations. All of my stuff is in 3 or 4 bins, and I think there must be a way for me to do this that makes more logical sense. As fast as I could I pulled my stuff off the conveyer and looked for a place to put them. Over to the side was a heater that formed a convenient shelf about 3 feet off the ground where I put everything. I put my shoes and jacket back on and repacked my backpack. I was all set except for my belt which was nowhere to be found. The missing belt was an adjustable one made of blue and gray canvas material with a gold buckle that adjusts to any waist, very helpful as my waist expands (mostly) and contracts (seldom). I have worn this so much that it is fraying. In short, it is only utilitarian, definitely not a fashion statement.

I looked all over. Where could it have gone? I must have inadvertently put in in my backpack along with everything else. So I emptied the backpack but it wasn’t there. By this time my wife was already through the line and waiting for me at the other side. I signaled to her that I was looking for my belt. Finally, I noticed that on the edge of the heater, where I had placed my belt, it looked like there was an opening. And sure enough, there was a 12 inch portion the metal on a hinge that you could push on either side and it would open to a space down below. As it was dark, I couldn’t see but immediately wondered if my belt could have fallen down there?

I had now reached a fork in the road where I could go one of two ways: forget the belt or look for it. At the time, however, I saw only one path. I wanted the belt back. While I had only paid $10 for it, and it was virtually worthless, I had had it for so long I never considered leaving it.

I was already attracting some attention and I realized that it might look suspicious if I just whipped out my iPhone and shined a light down in the heater to see if the belt was there. So I motioned for a security guard to come over and tried to explain what happened, using hand motions to describe the belt (picture Aaron Rodgers’ discount double check). I showed him my phone and tried to ask permission to use the flashlight to look down into he heater. I am not sure how much sense I was making but I proceeded and he didn’t stop me. There it was a the bottom of the heater. Now all we had to do was to get it out.

I tried to reach my hand down there but I quite couldn’t reach the belt. At this time another guard came over and the first one explained in Italian my dilemma . They looked at each other and then at me. They shined a flashlight down there and saw my prized possession. He went and got a broom, accompanied by another guard. By now, it felt like everyone in the room was looking at me. Nothing to see here; just 3 security guards, a distressed American and a broom! And no luck with the broom.

At this point, I tried to say we’ll just leave it and I can go. However, they weren’t having any of that as now they wanted to get to the bottom of whatever I had lost or placed in the heater. They called their supervisor over, and explained to her what had happened and again they all looked at me. She went away and returned with a claw like device and reached down and pulled out my belt, covered in dust.

I am not sure if I can fully describe the embarrassment that I felt. On so many levels. First, I had effectively tied up 4 security officers in search of my belt. I am sure that there were more important security risks for them to attend to. And other passengers were undoubtedly slowed as I had pulled away a quarter of the staff looking for my belt. And finally, this is Italy, where craftsmen labor to make beautiful leather belts and here we had devoted this time to rescue this old shredded canvas belt covered in dust.

On this last point, the security officers looked incredulous as they held up the belt, shook off the dust, and looked at each other and then me as if to say “this” is what we were looking for?

I said grazie, grabbed the belt and headed to the gate.

When I reached my wife and tried to explain what happened she smiled and said something about putting the belt in the nearest garbage can. I said I now have to keep this forever.

Working with Fear

Over 30 years ago I participated in a team building and personal development experience with my work group that took place near the Pecos River in New Mexico. This was basically a “ropes” course that included outdoor exercises as well as classroom activities and personal reflection.

The most daunting and scary exercise for most of us was the Zip Line. Picture a cable stretching across two cliffs over rocks on each side and a river in the middle. Hundreds of feet above ground. The idea was that we would leap off one cliff and be carried over the rocks and the river to the other side.

On an intellectual level, we “knew” that we were safe. After all, it would be bad business to have customers hurt or worse while attending the course. And the usual precautions were taken: we wore a helmet and would be strapped in securely. Still, for most of us, there was some hesitation. When was the last time the line was inspected? It didn’t help when there was a slight malfunction for one person in our group who for whatever reason didn’t get to the other side and had to be manually pulled across.

We lined up in a single file to make the ascent to the top of the cliff. One by one we made our way slowly to the top. After one person would make the jump we would each take a couple steps upward. Was there a way out? Maybe they would say we were done for the day before we reached the precipice. The top of the cliff had room for only a few people: the current jumper, the one on deck and the facilitator. As we are making our way to the top we can hear the facilitator in muffled sounds, not making out what he is saying, but assuming/hoping that he is giving important life saving instructions. Wait — is this something we need to be skilled for? How did I get myself into this?

I am now four away, almost to the top of the cliff. I can feel my heart beating as I try to breathe calm into by body and mind. It’s not working. I just want to get this over with. Three away. Two away. Wow, we are really high up. It looks much higher from this vantage point. My turn. The facilitator — is he trained for this? — straps me in and I scoot myself to the edge ready to just jump and get this over with.

However, the facilitator stops me. Where I wanted to bypass my emotions and rush through what I was feeling, he wanted me to slow down. He said, “Before you jump, I want you to take all this in, what the fear feels like, and where you find the courage to step into this.” He realized that to gain the most from this experience, it would be important to feel what it is like to be scared and at the same time be able to take the next step.

And I did. The first movement was 30 feet straight down and was sheer terror. Then, miraculously, it seemed, the zip line “caught” and then feeling like I had been rescued it was pure exhilaration as I safely made my way across the river to the other side. I tried to take it all in, the beauty of the mountains and the river, and of course that I was alive.

I still remember that feeling at the top of the cliff before I jumped, and think about it sometimes when there is some fear about the next step. And rather than pretend it doesn’t exist (as I tried to initially), sit with it and then go forward.

I am glad that I did the zip line. Once. I don’t ever need to do it again, however.

Clarity and Trust

Mother Teresa is a hero to me. One of my favorite stories about her took place many years ago when she was visited in Calcutta by a seeker, John F. Kavanaugh, trying to figure out his direction in life while serving for about a month at her mission in India. On his first day there he met Mother Teresa, who asked him what she could do for him? He later related their conversation:

I asked her to pray for me. “What do you want me to pray for?” I voiced the request I had borne thousands of miles: “Pray that I have clarity.” She said no. That was that. When I asked why, she announced that clarity was the last thing that I was clinging to and had to let go of. When I commented that she herself always seemed to have the clarity I longed for, she laughed: “I have never had clarity; what I’ve always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust.” *

I think Mother Teresa, like Jesus, recognized that different individuals at different times in their lives need different things to move forward. At various points, clarity may be exactly what is needed to move forward.

Sometimes, however, the lack of clarity may be by design in order for the experience to become rooted in us in order to bear fruit. And at the same time, sometimes even without clarity, we can take the first steps while trusting that God will guide us once we are on the way.

* I read this in I Am a Follower, by Leonard Sweet, page 124. It originated from John F. Kavanaugh’s The Word Engaged: Meditations on the Sunday Scriptures: Cycle C, p 91.

Whatever! Enough!

I ran across across a story about prayer in AA circles. It goes like this: “Every morning look up at the sky and say, ‘Whatever.’ And then at night, just before you go to sleep, say ‘Enough.’ “ *

To expand on this, each morning we can wake up and say that we are open to “whatever” God has in store for us. This may mean shelving well-laid plans and at a minimum it means being attentive to those whom God has placed in our path that day.

And at the end of the day, we can say “enough.” We did not accomplish everything we intended. And if we could do it all over again, in a perfect world, there are some things we would do differently. For today, however, it is enough.

And tomorrow we will have another opportunity to begin the day with “Whatever.”

* Thanks to Three Simple Rules, by Michael Graubart, pages 113-115.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! Thank you for checking this out and I hope you will return!

This has been a long time in coming. I have thought about writing a blog for a long time and definitely planned on starting this in January 2018, when I left a corporate career to determine what is next. I will share more of my journey to where I am today along the way.

Why a blog? I have written extensively over the years, mostly in journal form (both paper and digital) and while that is primarily private, it will undoubtedly serve as a foundation for future posts as well. As much as the private journal has been helpful to me personally I have also wanted to begin to share some of my thoughts and ideas with others as well. In addition, I have been reading Seth Godin’s blog and books for years and have been inspired by his recommendation to start a blog to both change how you “see” the world and to build the discipline of “shipping,” in this case, putting my words out into the world.

I expect that this will be a work in progress both in terms of content and design, sharing personal reflections, experiences and opinions. It may be that over time, themes will emerge and my focus may spotlight some areas more than others, based on events, interests and feedback. But for now, I am going to keep it wide ranging. Part of that is very practical, for me anyway. One of the reasons for waiting so long to start is that I was trying to figure out all of that in advance, and in doing so, I never started. So today I just decided to start and take one step at a time. Not sure why it took me so long to remember that that is the only thing that has ever worked for me anyway.

Again, welcome and thank you for reading!