The Butcher...

“Problems are nothing but wake-up calls for creativity”

~ Gerhard Gschwandtner ~

Before I get into this weeks Substack, I just wanted to mention it’s been awhile since my last post on July 31st. Starting on August 6th I’ve been at Marin General Hospital dealing with my kidneys failing.

My stage five kidney disease began about a year ago and just now is reaching the point where I had to be hospitalized and receive daily dialysis to remove the toxins building up in my body

Hopefully, I will go home in next week or so and start every other day dialysis and get back to living my life. I appreciate everyone’s support and patience while I complete my recovery. Thank you.

I have been thinking about various posts to write. So here we go with the latest one.

This is another nod to my parents style of raising me to be an independent thinker.

When I was little, my Mother would bring me to the Cedarhurst barbershop to get my haircut. She would drop me off and then go down the street to go shopping, usually food shopping. Then she would be back to pick me up and we would go home.

One time when I was six years old, she dropped me off. The barbershop was run by several old men who wore blue smocks and had scissors in their breast pockets. There was also a weird glass container with some mysterious blue fluid where all the black combs resided.

The barber would lift the lid and reach in and pull one out. He would cut and comb in a process of reducing my hair mass to a shorter version of itself.

All the barbers constantly did the cutting motion both when they were actually cutting my hair and when they lifted the scissors a few inches above my head they would keep just cutting at the air as they inspected their work and deciding where to go next.

The final tricky part was when he had to trim the curve around each ear. He would hold my ear in his left fingers pulling it down while he slid the point of the scissor in a semicircle. The tip of the lower cutting edge gently sliding on my skin. Just the slightest extra pressure and the tip of the scissor would cut my head.

He’s holding my ear in his fingers and it suddenly slipped out of his fingers and snapped back to my head. He was in mid cut as my ear flew between his blades and he cut my ear.

I yelped and jumped clean out of the chair. Put my hand up to my ear, when I brought back down it was all red. I grabbed one of the small white towels they had lying about and wrapped my head ilike a big headband with my ears inside. Then I ran out the door and all the way home just a mile away.

Eventually my Mother came home. With the makeshift bandage I made I must have looked like a bunny with one big leg red ear. My Mother removed the towel, the bleeding had stopped, she cleaned the wound with iodine, which really stings.

She inspected my haircut which was 3/4 done. She carefully trimmed away until it didn’t look so lopsided.

Time goes by and several months later my hair is longer and my Mother says it’s time for a haircut again. I responded strongly, “No way. Those guys are butchers.” Fortunately my Mother accepted this and said “Okay will see again in a few more months.” I was relieved but if she had insisted I was well prepared to throw down a full on tantrum on the floor.

Time flew by faster and each time my Mother asked me about getting haircut and I would refuse. Finally she said, “Okay you can let it grow as long as you like, but you must keep it clean and neat.” I happily accepted her terms.

A year and a half later my hair was well past my shoulders and usually wore it in a ponytail. That coming September I started third grade. My teacher was going to be Mrs. Preller.

As I walked through her door she looked and saw me and said, “What the hell is that!?” I turned to look behind me at what she was referring too. She continued, “You are not coming into my classroom with hair looking like girl.”

I said, “I beg to differ. My mother said that as long as I kept it clean and neat, I could have any length I want.” Mrs. Preller told all of us to take our seats. She then called on me to come to the front if the class and sit on her desk facing everyone.

It was clear to me that I was about to be embarrassed and humiliated. She said, “Okay, if you’re going to have hair like a girl, then you will have to make it look that way.” She then proceeded to undo my ponytail and rearrange my hair like girls would wear with some bobby-pins. She told me I had to leave it this way the rest of the day.

I went back to my seat doing everything in my power not to cry in front of everyone.

I told my Mother as soon as I got home. I could see she was doing everything in her power not to blow a gasket. That night after dinner my parents sat me down to have a conversation.

The essence of that conversation was that they wanted me to have chance to come up with my on solution to this situation. They thought a week would be an opportunity for me to think for myself and problem solve. If I didn’t come up with anything they would intercede the following Monday.

Sure enough the next day when I arrived in the classroom, Mrs. Preller had me come up front, sit on her desk facing everyone and put my hair up again in a girls style. This happened everyday that week and Friday I was still at a loss for any ideas to change this situation.

Over the weekend I continued to ponder my fate searching for any idea that might have potential. On Saturday I saw my older sister getting ready to go to a friends house, probably a sleep over. Part of her ritual was doing her hair up. She had dozens of hair accessories, a variety of pins, clips, barrettes, hair ties, etc. I asked her if I could borrow a few things for school on Monday. She was very accommodating.

So that Monday I showed up for school prepared to try my solution. As usual, after everyone settled in their seats Mrs. Preller called me up front to sit on her desk facing the class. I came running up the aisle with my accessories saying, “Mrs. Preller look at all this cool stuff I found... could you maybe do my hair in a fancy French Bun!?”

Her face went through several emotions and it seemed like she settled on an extremely concerned/frightened look. I think she thought she could just break me and I would give up and get a haircut. Now she looked at me like she had pushed to hard and sent me over a cliff where you transform from being a boy to a girl or at least I was now to effeminate.

She asked me to return to my seat and never bothered me again. My solution had worked!

Having grown up with my sister I had seen her go to the salon. Girls had their own place and language: hair styling; colored or treated. The woman who did these things was called a hairdresser or a hairstylist, not a barber like I went to, who I still refer to as the butcher!

Ten years later I’m a senior in high school and I’m heading down the empty hallway to Mothers office. Coming in the opposite direction is a little old lady. As she got closer I recognized her and asked, “Mrs. Preller?” She looked up and said, “Billy?” It was clear that we did recognize each other. Considering in third grade I was a little kid and all teachers were huge adults and a bit intimidating. But she was maybe 5’ 2” and was towering over her being 6’ tall. I said, “I can’t believe I was so afraid of you back then.” She had no response but just kept walking as I did. We were just two ships passing each other with just a quick communication.

I’m grateful that my parents gave me opportunities to think for myself, in many different facets of life. It is one of the critical skills to develop as you live your life.

“There is no problem outside of you that is superior to the power within you.”

~ Bob Proctor ~

“Grilling takes the formality out of entertaining. Everyone wants to get involved.”

~ Bobby Flay ~

Does it sound yummy or disgusting? I had to find out!

As a kid our family spent the Summers at Silver Point Beach Club at the tip of Atlantic Beach.

One of the highlights was having grilled steaks on the barbecue grill. There was a whole process of watching my Father wheel the grill down to the area allowed for cooking. Filling it with charcoal and lighter fluid and setting in ablaze.

Once the charcoal was at the right temperature, the steaks went on the grill. There might also be some corn wrapped in aluminum foil sitting under the grill on the coals directly.

My father would poke and prod the steaks and turn them over a few times. Juice from the steak with drip down onto the coals and instantly vaporize which seemed to add flavor to the steak, but was probably not healthy for you.

He was on the last turn of the steaks and had cut them up into some smaller pieces. I asked him which one was mine. He pointed to a small piece and I just smiled.

When he turned his back to talk to someone, I pulled out my Nestlé crunch bar, unwrapped it, and put it right on my piece of steak. My father turned around and said, ”What the hell are you doing?!”

I told him, “I love steak and I love my chocolate bar and I figured that they would be great together.” He laughed and said, “Okay, mister science experiment chef. But you have to eat the whole thing and no scrapping the chocolate off the steak!” His clarity did not reassure me about whether I had made a good choice or not.

The first bite was shocking… it was awful. How could two things I love so much be this awful when combined, yuck. My Father watched me cut and eat each piece, yuck each bite. There was not going to be any wasted food.

Fortunately this experience did not stop me from trying weird combinations of food. I still enjoy tartar sauce on my French fries. Using red licorice as straws for drinks. Lately putting raw red onions on just about everything.

“That would be cool if you could eat a good food with a bad food and the good food would cover for the bad food when it got to your stomach. Like you could eat a carrot with an onion ring and they would travel down to your stomach, then they would get there, and the carrot would say, It’s cool, he’s with me.”

~ Mitch Hedberg ~

“To be interesting, be interested.”

~ Dale Carnegie ~

I grew up having family dinner every night. My dog Duchess always sat under my legs as I would give her scraps while I ate.

During the week the dinner talk was mostly about things that had happened that day. But on the weekends we were allowed to bring up unresolved issues we were dealing with.

I never had much to say, as things were moving along pretty well in my life. One day I definitely had an issue I thought I could bring up. I said to my Father, “I have an important question.” My Father said, “Well, before you ask your question will it be impactful to everyone at the table?” I thought about it and said, “Maybe, but I’m not sure.” My Father said, “Okay, you work on it and come back when your question will impact everyone.” I said, “Okay.”

At first, I wasn’t happy about not being able to ask my question. However, I could see my father’s point and used my time to fine tune my question.

It took me a few weeks to restructure my question so it could impact everyone at the table. I was ready and said, “Right now little league baseball is the most important thing to me and it seems like no one else cares about it at all, why?”

My Father said, “Excellent question and there’s a good lesson to be learned here for everyone. You see, everyone has different priorities of what’s important to them. The top three for me are: raising the family; loving your Mother and sailing.” My Mother said,” Mine are: raising the family; loving your Father and being a nurse.” My older sister said, “Mine are: the Beatles, playing piano and singing and my friends.” My older brother said, “Mine are: reading; my chemistry lab and sailing with my Father.” So I added to mine too and said, “little league baseball; loving Duchess and riding my bicycle.”

My Father pointed out that sometimes people’s priorities and interests overlap and many times they don’t. That when I was older and meeting people at various events to know that each person brings their top priorities and interests with them. And my job was to ask questions and find out what they are. This fosters trust and connection.

The task was to be interested, not interesting. Following that path would get others to speak more freely about their priorities and interests. In turn, after you “break the ice” the others would then be more interested in you as well.

Because this conversation happened over dinner, it was a great learning lesson for all of us. I am sure it benefited my sister and brother in their lives as much as it did in my life.

“The more you are interested in others the more interesting they’ll find you.”

~ Kevin Kelly ~

“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.”

~ Rumi ~

Remember you are born with balance. You don’t learn balance, you have balance. Balance is a state of equilibrium where different forces, weights, or elements are equally distributed, resulting in stability.

Everything you do… from sitting to standing, walking to running, swimming to dancing, riding a bike to driving a car, etc. everything requires balance.

Balance allows for the flow of movement. All the muscles in your body just contract or relax and they do that in a smooth process.

The greatest example of this fluidity of movement on a tennis court is Roger Federer. If you haven’t already seen him play, please watch a few You Tubes of him in action.

I’d like you to try an exercise on the tennis court, I call it the pose. The task is to move to the tennis ball and after you have hit the ball and finish your follow through… just pose in the final position and hold it for three seconds.

At first you may notice it’s hard to pose. In fact, you might feel a little wobble or completely fall out of the pose.

That is okay. This is your body finding its balance points so you can remain stable. Do it over again and again. Within a few shots you’ll have less and less wobble. Eventually your body finds its balance points and you can pose easily. You will look like an old hood ornament on a car.

You see, you start out balanced in the ready position. Once the ball is on its way, you determine if it’s a forehand or backhand. You then turn and move to the ball, hit the ball and then recover for the next shot.

All this action happens under complete balance. The pose exaggerates the moment of hitting and finds out whether you were still in balance during the hit or wobbly.

Some of the actions that players take during the swing itself fight their own body, forcing the muscles to flow awkwardly, hence making you wobble when you first start to pose.

But each time you pose for three seconds your body is trying to figure out its balance during the swing. Your body will make adjustments and corrections to find and stay balanced during the swing.

Once you find that balance, you only have to pose for an instant when you hit the ball. There are two cues you can use to know when you’ve completed the pose well, in real time. (1) you see the ball leaving the racket and it’s a few feet in front of you and (2) you feel the vibration in your hand from hitting the ball. When you feel that vibration in your hand, the ball is already gone.

The objective here is to do everything under balance. To get that little bit of wobble out of your body during the hit. To bring the great balance you have moving to the ball and recovering from hitting the ball, to also be there as you hit the ball.

You have to finish what you’re doing before you move onto the next thing. This applies to everything on and off the court.

“Next to love, balance is the most important thing.”

~ John Wooden ~

“If the lives of men can be measured in terms of years, ideologies in decades, and nations in centuries, then the unit measuring civilizations, born of the interaction among peoples, would be the millennium.”

~ Abdelaziz Bouteflika ~

Long before I knew what a bucket list was, I was just living my life. Now, how many years later I can look back and see that there were some major events I attended, which would be on most people’s bucket list.

It was the winter of 1999. Almost everyone was scared of Y2K. That’s something awful was going to happen with the clocks pissed tick past midnight on 12/31/99.

Billy Joel was going to do a millennium concert at Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve. I knew I was definitely going, but I invited several friends to join me. Unfortunately they’re afraid of Y2K and that they might get stuck in New York or the planes might fall out of the sky, etc.

After New Year’s occurred in Samoa and Tonga, that was 5 AM in New York City. It would be another 19 hours before it was midnight in New York City. I figured if Y2K was gonna happen, it would occur all over the world long before it reached New York City.

As I expected, nothing happened. Y2K had come and gone without much incident.

So there I am in Madison Square Garden about to watch Billy Joel for the next several hours. He was magnificent in between songs he talked to the audience. “He thanked everyone for showing up and for not being chicken shits.”

Sometime after 11:30 PM he took a short break and came back out in a tuxedo, ready for ringing in the New Year.

In the last few minutes he played Two Thousand Years from his River of Dreams album. The song was incredible. He finished with about ten seconds before Midnight and counted down from 10 to the New Year and the New Millennium.

A few people live to see the change of a century, even less to see the change of a Millennium. I don’t know what the last one was like 1000 years ago. But this time we had Billy Joel.

In fact, one of the biggest events in the year 1000 for us here, was that the Vikings are the first Europeans to settle in America.

Billy Joel’s song is so incredible, here are the lyrics.

Two Thousand Years”

In the beginning

There was the cold and the night

Prophets and angels gave us the fire and the light

Man was triumphant

Armed with the faith and the will

That even the darkest ages couldn’t kill

Too many kingdoms

Too many flags on the field

So many battles, so many wounds to be healed

Time is relentless

Only true love perseveres

It’s been a long time and now I’m with you

After two thousand years

This is our moment

Here at the crossroads of time

We hope our children carry our dreams down the line

They are the vintage

What kind of life will they live?

Is this a curse or a blessing that we give?

Sometimes I wonder

Why are we so blind to fate?

Without compassion, there can be no end to hate

No end to sorrow

Caused by the same endless fears

Why can’t we learn from all we’ve been through

After two thousand years?

There will be miracles

After the last war is won

Science and poetry ruling the new world to come

Prophets and angels

Gave us the power to see

What an amazing future there will be

And in the evening

After the fire and the light

One thing is certain: Nothing can hold back the night

Time is relentless

And as the past disappears

We’re on the verge of all things new

We are two thousand years

One Sunday in 1995 my daughter said, “Papa I’m now three years old can I come with you to the Zen Center?” I said, “Sure, yes.”

Once we arrived we found our spot to sit and meditate. Later we walked around the Zendo with the others chanting. Then returned to our seats for the Dharma talk.

We had two teachers, Elisabeth and Bill. Once they entered the room and took their positions in front of us, they noticed my daughter for the first time.

Elisabeth asked, “What’s your name?” My daughter piped up, “Sasha.” Elisabeth continued, “And who do you belong too?” She turned and pointed at me and said, “That’s my Papa.”

Elisabeth then said, “Well, given it’s your first day... I have a question for you. She picked up her water glass and asked Sasha was it half full or half empty?”

Sasha giggled and waved her hand at Elisabeth and said, “Don’t be silly!” Elisabeth laughed and said, “Okay, but can you answer my question?”

Sasha said, “ Of course, it’s full!” Elisabeth asked her, “ How is it full?” Sasha said, “ It’s half full with water and half full with air.” Elisabeth gave a hearty “Ahaaa…” to Sasha and thanked her for her wisdom.

As Elisabeth began the Dharma talk, Sasha raised her hand. Elisabeth noticed and said, “Something else you want to add?” Sasha said, “Yes, also the glass is two sizes to big!” This got a nice giggle from everyone there.

After the Dharma talk when everyone was saying their goodbyes, several members came up to me and said, “wow your daughter was amazing. You must be teaching her Zen at home.” I said, “Thank you but no. Today is her first day and this is just how a three year old sees things. She has an untarnished view of the world with great clarity.”

It is clear to me that we are all born enlightened and then through our upbringing of family, friends and school we become endarkened. A few of us get re-enlightened again when we’re older.

In fact, if when you’re older you do have an enlightenment experience, in rings true to your self, as I say you are back in touch with the original enlightenment you started with as a child.

“What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi ~

“One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.”

~ Arthur Ashe ~

Whether you’re on a tennis court or out in life in the work you do. Each of us has a tool bag of skills we utilize in our actions.

Quite often few skills can crossover between different activities. An example as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post; How Does Learning Occur? Here’s a section:

The best part for me is almost every student within a few weeks or months says, “I have been really practicing my focus on the court to improve my tennis… but I’ve noticed my focus off the court has been improving too. I’m doing better at work, my health, with my family and my other relationships. So now I’m playing tennis to improve my focus. Focus is the most important thing in making my whole life better.”

This is a major shift from practicing focus to improve tennis to practicing tennis to improve focus.

On the tennis court you have a tool bag of skills both mental and physical. Focus is a mental skill. The variety of shots you possess is a physical skill.

You will only be as good as the shots you practice. Most players hit tons of forehands and backhands. They hit a few volleys and serves. The other more specialized shots, overheads, lobs, drop shots, return of serves, half volleys, drop volleys and approach shots, usually don’t get enough practice.

It would be wise to set aside practice time for each of these specialized shots to gain some mastery in each of them.

Because in the course of playing a match you are constantly adapting to the incoming shot. If you only have a couple of good shots in your tool bag you are very limited in your ability to respond well. If you are approaching the net and your opponent hits a great shot at your feet, you need a half volley. Well if it’s not in your tool bag you will be in big trouble.

In golf the USGA rules allow a maximum of 14 clubs in a bag, a standard full set generally includes 10 to 12 clubs: 1 driver, 1-2 fairway woods, 1-2 hybrids, a set of irons (often #6 through #9), 2-3 wedges, and a putter.

Imagine if you only had half, a third or a quarter of those clubs, that would constitute a different kind of handicap (pun intended).

Even if you have the full set of clubs you still have to go practice each of them to become proficient to use them at the appropriate time.

So don’t just practice your favorite shots or just your strengths, rather find time to practice all the speciality shots such that you can reach into your tool bag and choose the best one for each moment.

“The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.”

~ Confucius ~

“Tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love – the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence because every match is a life in miniature.”

~ Andre Agassi ~

“Life is always lived in the eye-of-the-storm.”

~ Jonathan Huie ~

I could sail before I could walk. I remember laying under the stern and seeing my Fathers legs as he sat on the deck above me steering the boat with the tiller.

This was on the family boat we used most often. A twenty foot planing hull sloop model, called the Highlander.

A planing hull sailboat is designed to lift and ride on the water rather than pushing through it. Unlike traditional displacement boats limited by their length, these lightweight vessels accelerate to generate hydrodynamic lift, drastically reducing drag to achieve high speeds. In fact, at high speed the boat lays flat the centerboard vibrates and hums.

When just tacking and zig-zagging towards your destination the boat will heal over and you have a high side and a low side. So as a toddler I would crawl from the high side to the low side each time we tacked. In time our dog would cuddle with me and we would move together from starboard to port and back again.

Years later as a teenager my Father informed us that a hurricane was on its way. If our boat stayed at the marina odds were that it would be smashed into the other boats and destroyed.

The plan was to take the boat offshore several miles and ride out the storm. This was to be exciting and scary at the same time.

Once out in the Atlantic Ocean we trimmed the jib sail down to just a few feet for steering and stability. No main sheet at all and a sea anchor out behind us.

A sea anchor (also known as a para-anchor) acts as a giant underwater parachute to stabilize a vessel in deep water. It creates hydrodynamic drag to significantly slow the boat’s drift and keeps the bow facing into the wind and waves. During heavy weather, it prevents the boat from turning sideways (which is known as broaching) or being rolled by large, crashing waves.

He we are and the hurricane is approaching and the wind keeps increasing and the waves are getting bigger and quite erratic.

I had been through some gale winds close to 50 mph. Hurricane winds were going to be 75 mph plus. This day they were close to 100 mph.

The interesting and weird part of hurricanes is… picture a big swirl of wind, shaped like an old LP record spinning. As the edge approaches the winds increase and as you move towards the center they grow faster and faster. But then you enter the eye of the storm.

The eye can be a small as 5 miles in diameter and as big as 120 miles in diameter. But most range in the 20 to 40 mile diameter.

Once in the eye the hurricane’s center is a relatively calm, generally a clear area of sinking air and light winds that usually do not exceed 15 mph. However the waves are still pretty large and choppy. Because the eyewall, which is the edge of the eye, where the winds are fastest, that day it was 100 mph.

That is a very unique and wierd situation. To be inside the eye which is relatively calm and a few yards away is the edge if the eyewall with 100 mph winds. It’s not a gradual process of increased wind rather a shear edge of calm next to chaos.

As I’m experiencing this phenomenon my Father says to me, “This is what life is like. You are centered and calm and everything around you is crazy fast and chaotic. If you’re lucky you learn to manage both yourself and all the chaos around you. This is the best way to move (sail) through life.”

This was one of the more powerful lessons my Father guided me through to learn.

“I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.”

~ Saul Bellow ~

“As coaches we talk about two things: offense and defense. There is a third phase we neglect, which is more important. It’s conversion from offense to defense and defense to offense.”

~ Bobby Knight ~

When I was young and became a good player, I was figuring out how to approach match play. Please check out my Game Plans post for my initial thoughts.

In looking at other sports I decided that basketball was the best one to correlate to tennis. Obviously it’s not the team sport versus the individual sport, nor the size of the ball.

Rather it was that each player on the basketball team had to play offense and defense. The player has to switch in an instant as the play unfolds. As Bobby Knight said… it’s the conversion between them, which is more important.

This is true in tennis. As a player I am constantly switching between offensive and defensive play. At times you might say there are some shots that could be considered neutral. I prefer to keep my focus on the offense and defense as it allows me to play with more intention.

As a young player I would wait to see the incoming shot and then quickly decide if I needed to play offense or defense. This seemed to work very well, at the time.

Now as an older and perhaps wiser player I see there is a better approach. That is to have defense be the default starting position. I say this is a step beyond just the conversion between the two.

Here is my reasoning. Against big servers if I’m in defense I will get more returns into play. At high incoming speeds to try to choose between offense and defense, most of the time there just isn’t enough time to choose and react well.

Once a rally begins, if my opponent hits a great offensive shot, it’s probably going to require me to hit a defensive shot to get it back in play. If I’m already in the defensive position I’m ready to deal with the offensive shot coming at me.

A great benefit to this approach is that In time my defensive shots had become so good, they start winning points outright.

So my only concern when I’m in defensive mode is to identify an incoming shot as one I can switch to offense.

I allow myself to start rallies from defense knowing that in an instant I can switch to offense. This seems to happen when I recognize my opponent is in trouble with my previous shot.

By that I mean, for whatever reason my opponent suddenly seems to be in trouble. This often happens if I’ve hit a great shot, but sometimes even on a relatively easy shot they look in trouble. Whatever the reason is their next shot will be weaker and I can switch to offense and attack with a high probability of success.

As a player I’m still switching between offense and defense, but rather than being in neutral deciding which way to go… I default and start in defense and just look for opportunities to switch to offense.

This approach cuts down my decision time and gaining those few milliseconds makes the difference in my quality of play.

“Defense is the best offense.”

~ Red Auerbach ~

“Offense wins games, but defense wins championships.”

~ Bear Bryant ~

“It’s what you learn after you think you know it all that really counts.”

~ John Wooden ~

My family was a musical one. We loved to listen to music and we loved to play music. I grew up hearing my mother play piano and sing. My sister played flute and piano too and sang really well. My brother played the cello. My father played harmonica. I wound up playing the French Horn.

Like any endeavor you pursue to master there is a lot of time practicing and a little time performing. But it’s not just any old practice. It is disciplined practice. My mother said, “Practice makes perfect… only when it’s perfect practice.” She continued, “Otherwise you just practice poorly and develop bad habits that can be difficult to undo.” I agree with my mother.

The 10,000-hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, suggests that roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are required to master complex skills.

The key distinction that Mr. Gladwell suggested was that of deliberate practice. Without deliberate practice it’s just lots of quantity with very little quality. Quality outweighs quantity every time, when it comes to learning something better.

Quality requires a commitment of focused, feedback-driven training. Whereas quantity is just passive repetition.

The focus should be on how one practices rather than just the amount of time.

For me the focus of my practice was to aim towards improvement.

Deliberate practice is often guided by a skilled coach, someone with an expert eye. This coach offers input on specific ways to improve.

Each student has great potential to learn and achieve. Everyone brings their potential with them, such that they already perform many aspects of a skill already. The coaches job is to look at the whole picture being presented and to find the most critical variable that is hindering the students full expression.

If the student can accept this input and focus on that one critical variable there is significant change that occurs rather quickly. The student spends some time integrating this new learned behavior until it’s integrated into their skill set. Then the coach looks at the new whole presentation and identifies the next critical variable to be focused on to improve.

It then becomes each students task to accept the input, adapt to the new information, allow change to flow and express this refinement in their skill set.

When I switched from music to tennis when I was almost 16 years old. I took the great discipline for practicing and learning from my musical training and applied it to learning tennis.

This discipline allowed me to excel my learning curve for tennis and I become an excellent player in less than two years. I was able to shorten the learning time by inventing new ways of quality training for tennis.

Unfortunately, various injuries I sustained kept me from achieving certain things on the tennis court… but I never lost my focus and passion for learning.

“There’s no way around hard work. Embrace it. You have to put in the hours because there is always something you can improve on”

~ Roger Federer ~

If I could reach the stars

Pull one down for you

Shine it on my heart

So you could see the truth

That this love I have inside

Is everything it seems

But for now I find

It’s only in my dreams

And I can change the world

I will be the sunlight in your universe

You would think my love was really something good

Baby, if I could change the world…

~ Eric Clapton ~

In 1980, before the Internet, ATM’s, CD’s, iPhones, PC’s, etc. however there was TV and Radio.

On the night of December 8th, 1980 around 10:50pm John Lennon was shot in front of his home, The Dakota. Less than half an hour later he was pronounced dead in the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital. Fifteen minutes after that it was announced on TV as a breaking news story around 11:45pm.

Sometimes after midnight my phone rang. My friend told me John Lennon had been shot and to turn on my radio.

Daniel Elsa was on the air on WNEW-FM in New York during the 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift on December 8, 1980, the night John Lennon was shot. Elsas was in the middle of playing Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland” when he received the news from a station desk assistant.

Upon hearing the news, Elsas and other WNEW-FM personalities, including Scott Muni, Dave Herman and Vin Scelsa, reportedly converged on the station for an impromptu, emotional tribute.

New York rock station WNEW-FM immediately suspended all programming and opened its lines to calls from listeners. Stations throughout the country switched to special programming devoted to Lennon or Beatles music.

I tuned in while the DJ’s (disc jockeys) were taking calls from the listeners. At first I thought this was a hoax, like the War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938.

I kept listening, more friends were calling me in the phone and eventually I accepted this was real news. But why?! Why would someone shoot John Lennon? What was the point? The answers were not coming.

I kept listening… callers were very emotional and stating how they would miss him, pray for him and light a candle everyday,

Some were so distraught they couldn’t move, couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t feed their families, weren’t going to work or school and that John Lennon was so influential in their lives, they took it as a personal loss.

I kept listening… sometime around 3:30am I called in too. Besides being sad I was also angry and I said, “Most of us know the Golden Rule, which is the ethical principle of treating others as you would want to be treated yourself. You mentioned that with radio and tv at least half of the world was aware of what happened tonight. Well, if those billions of people decided tonight that in the aftermath of this tragic event that they could each choose to change their lives and give peace a chance now, the world would be a different and better place tomorrow. I’m sure a few of us will make that choice, but most won’t. We are still to individualistic and our personal concerns outweigh the good of mankind. Sadly within a week or so this will jest be another news story and something else will replace it. So instead of having a “new world” tomorrow it will still be a few hundred years before we choose brotherhood over personalhood. In Lennon’s own words from Imagine;”

‘You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one

I eventually fell asleep. The next day I choose to be a dreamer and make the world a better place, one baby step at a time.

I decided most of our issues, worldwide were man-made. At the same time that we are also part of nature. Even if we were dumb enough one day to blow it all up with nuclear bombs, in the aftermath we’d be gone and nature would continue and the Earth would heal itself.

To help counteract the man-made issues, each of us must reconnect on a daily basis with nature. To notice everything around you that is not man-made. Particularly at night, the moon, the other planets and the stars, which will forever be there no matter what we do in the realm of the man-made.

“Life is like a tennis match. If you want to win, you must serve well, return well, play coolly and always remember that the game begins with ‘love all’”

It was the Spring of 1974. My friend Lloyd and I had just spent a week trying to learn tennis by hitting on the wall. We were total beginners and had only practiced forehands and backhands. We didn’t practice the other shots because we didn’t know they existed.

We were to meet our history teacher, Mr. Cole and a girl I liked, Julie,at North Woodmere park to play a doubles match.

We got there early and observed four women playing doubles and hitting shots we didn’t know about. Much later I would come to find out the shots were called volleys, lobs and serves.

After observing this Lloyd turned to me and said, “I knew we were in trouble and now it’s worse!” I agreed, but I said, “That shot they hit out if the air (volley) looks easier than the ground strokes, you just have to block the incoming ball or give it a little push.”

The shot they hit over their opponents head (lob) just looked like a ground stroke you could hit as high as you wanted and hoped it still landed in.

The one they tossed and hit (serve) looked the most complicated, but I thought we could break it down to three steps; racket back and up, toss with my left hand and then reach up and hit it, again hopefully in.

We were confident we could fake it until we make it. What we weren’t prepared for was what turned out to be the weird and goofy scoring of tennis.

Mr. Cole served, won the point and said, “15-love.” I turned to Lloyd and said, “15? That was just 1 point?” Lloyd shushed me and said, “So it’s 15, when we play football a touchdown is 6 points, so I guess in tennis they’re doing 15.”

I said, “Alright, that’s seems excessive and what’s this love stuff? I mean I like the guy, but love?” Lloyd just shrugged his shoulders and told me to get ready first the next point.

Mr. Cole won the next point to, “30-love.” He won the next point, “40-love.” I turned to Lloyd and said, “Why 40 now, just 10 points that time, why wasn’t it still 15 points?”

We went on to lose 6-0, 6-0 that day. Yeah we were pretty hopeless, but determined to get better. But the weird scoring sent me home with a new research project to find out why tennis scoring is so strange.

Unsurprisingly there is no definitive history of what tennis scoring is the way that it is, rather there are a few theories about it.

Tennis scoring originated in France sometime between the 13th and 16th centuries. It was an earlier version of tennis called jeu de paume. Which was first played with only your hand, then a glove and eventually a racket. The early game was like hand ball with wild names for the shots you could hit. To name a few shots there was the; railroad, bobble, underarm twist, giraffe, drag, boomerang, caterpillar and the African hunting dog. You can look these all up and they have fascinating descriptions of each of these shots.

The Clock Face. In Medieval times they may have used a clock face on court, marking 15, 30, 45 and 60, with the click hand moving a quarter of a turn for each point.

The 40 vs 45. The original 45 was simplified to 40 to make the game flow better and ensure the game could not be won by a one point difference. Plus 15, 30 and 40:were each two syllable words, where 45 was three syllables. A weird but consistent idea.

Love for Zero (0). It was either attributed to the French word l’oeuf (egg), which represents the the shape of a zero. The other idea is it may come from the world of betting which existed then to and it likely stems from “playing for love,” a term for playing for nothing or without monetary stakes.

Deuce. This comes from the French phrase deux de jeu (”two of the game”), indicating the requirement to win two consecutive points

Distance. Another idea is that the court was 45 feet long on each side, and players moved forward 15 feet to 15, then another 15 to 30, and finally only 10 feet to 40 (to avoid being too close to the net).

These are the major theories so far. Given how weird the tennis scoring system is today it’s no accident that there is no exact history that we can agree upon.

For me the most interesting g part of tennis today is deuce. Even though tennis is played one point at a time. If all things are equal and you have two players of similar abilities, you arrive at deuce quite a bit.

In a game deuce could go back and forth from deuce to ad over and over. A quick service game is a minute or two. Multiple deuces in a game can be several minutes or even more.

The key is that someone has to win two points in a row to win a game. Now that two point margin doesn’t have to wait for deuce. If you can win two points in a row and then just stay even after that you will win the game. Example if you win the first two points and then alternate; 15-love, 30-love, 30-15, 40-15, 40-30, you win the next point, you win the game.

Another example you alternate for the beginning of the game and win the two points later, Love-15, 15-15, 15-30, 30-30, 40-30, you win the next point, you win the game.

This two points in a row is a minimum way to win but is not a guarantee. There are times when you’ve won two points in a row but then your opponent could win two, three or four points in a row and they would win the game.

So the challenge is to recognize at a minimum when all things are equal to accept you might have to alternate winning and losing each point, until you can win two points in a row.

Looking at one if the greatest achievements in tennis, Rafael Nadals 14 titles at the French Open. He finished his legendary French Open career with an unparalleled 112–4 match record(96.6% winning percentage) and a record 14 singles titles. In terms of point-level efficiency, Nadal won approximately 54% of all points played across his career at Roland Garros.

You read that right… of all the points played he won 54% of them. So it’s not about winning every point in tennis it’s just about winning a few more than half to win matches.

“Enduring means accepting. Accepting things as they are and not as you wish them to be. And then looking ahead. And not behind.”

~ Rafael Nadal ~

“The lengths the Haves will go in order to deprive the Have Nots boggles the mind.”

~ Stacey Lee ~

Roughly about 11,000 to 12,000 years ago mankind began their transition from being hunter-gathers to an agriculturally based civilization. This is know as the Neolithic Revolution.

Given how wide spread groups of people were this was a transition that took around 4,000 to 5,000 years to move around the world.

Once we became more proficient at agriculture the population density increased. Not only could we grow food like wheat, rice, potatoes and barley, we learned how to store it to have food for later when we needed it.

Having larger groups of people living together made hunting-gathering an unsustainable way to feed everyone.

Agricultural created two new things for civilization; abundance and surplus. Two ideas hunter-gathers never had.

I’m putting my consciousness back in time to imagine what it was like during that transition. I imagine a small group of hunter-gatherers approaches a larger group of agriculturalists. They ask “Could you share some food with us?” I’m sure a few said “Sure”, but I believe most said no.

Despite having some surplus and abundance the agriculturalists still had the intrinsic memory of being hunter-gathers which was inherited through our own evolution through the previous 2 million years, the paradigm of scarcity.

When the agriculturalists said no to sharing that was the beginning of the haves and the have nots, which over the last 11,000 years has taken root in our culture… and still to this day.

We still have the haves and have nots. In many places it’s still food based. Around 9 million people die a year from hunger related causes. Even though there is sufficient global food production, around 750 million people experience daily hunger.

We have sufficient global food production and it’s not being shared in, then the haves are now withholding it from the have nots.

You can also see this playing out economically as well. The top 1% of the population controls nearly half of the world’s total accumulated wealth.

A 2021 Oxfam report found that collectively, the 10 richest men in the world owned more than the combined wealth of the bottom 3.1 billion people. Their combined wealth doubled during the pandemic.

This is a huge gap of wealth between the haves and the have nots. This paradigm is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

If you believe in evolution it goes back to 2.1 billion years for multi-cellular life, then back to 3.7 billion years for one-celled organisms. The driving force was survival and now 3.7 billion years later can we choose to live our lives for something beyond survival?

If not, this will lead to more wars where we will fight over food, water, land, money and all other natural resources.

Fortunately we had the Industrial Revolution. Some of the captains of industry; Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller created and amassed great wealth and were wise enough when they were older to become philanthropists. Their huge donations helped reshape our societal landscape.

Their example is still followed today including Michael Bloomberg, Bill and Melinda Gates, Paul Allen, George Soros and Warren Buffett. Yet there are still many other wealthy individuals who do not give in the ways these people do.

Hopefully more leaders will arrive on the scene and shift this paradigm of scarcity towards a world that can work for all of us.

Nowadays this is called the political will. This is the commitment of key-decision makers in various world governments to implement new policies, even when it’s challenging and faces strong opposition.

Can our current leaders or the next upcoming group of leaders have the courage to overcome the paradigm of the haves and the have nots (scarcity) and reinforce this new paradigm of sharing the wealth… where we all stand for the public good.

Bucky Fuller believed that modern technology made it possible to provide for all of humanity, making scarcity an outdated concept.

Bucky Fuller quotes:

• “It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a ‘higher standard of living than any have ever known.’ It no longer has to be you or me”.

• “There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance”.

I think Jean Luc Picard says it best in Star Trek: First Contact...

“The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century... The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”

“There’s a story burgomaster of a piece of chalk and a blackboard. For many years the piece of chalk had written so many things on the blackboard that it began to believe that it knew all about everything. Of course this made the blackboard very angry because the blackboard felt that without her to write upon nobody would know anything, and she was the one who really knew it all. Well one day, quite by accident, the Schoolmaster broke the piece of chalk and tossed it out of the window and it fell right beside a pencil that the piece of chalk always admired because a pencil to a piece of chalk is something very special and what do you supposed happened...”

~ Danny Kaye as Hans Christian Anderson ~

This was an unfinished story in the film. I would love to know how it turned out.

For me, I love using the pencil. First for what I’m writing is not permanent and second that it has an eraser, which may be one of the greatest tools for creativity.

The eraser allows me to erase something and replace it with something better. This can also be done over and over again.

It would be nice if there was a type of eraser I could use to undo some of the things from my past.

I think being present is the eraser.

Only when I’m present do I have clarity of thought. With this clarity I can see into and through things. I can see things just as they are, without my opinion or judgement about them, I then make better choices.

It’s allowing oneself to start in space of “not knowing.” Not knowing takes you outside the box of what is known. Hence the idea of thinking outside the box.

This place outside the box is where all innovation and creativity lives. If you choose to live there too, at least once in a while, new ideas will come to you.

Access requires mindfulness. Because whether you are following your breathing, or a mantra or your beating heart. All roads of mindfulness lead to the body and the mind being in sync.

To be in sync, means you are Being Here Now in all your capacities.

These moments of synchronicity are when you are open to the Universe, which allows you to discover more of its secrets.

“As we have come to understand, there is no such thing as the unknown, only the temporarily hidden.”

~ Captain Kirk in Star Trek Beyond ~

“Your true evolution is not what you do out there. That’s secondary. Your true evolution has to do with the arising of awareness in you as you go about your life.”

~ Eckhart Tolle ~

“You will be Presented with Lessons: You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called ‘life.’ Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.”

~ Cherie Carter-Scott ~

There are many different reasons one can give to the meaning of life or why we are here. It could be a happy family life. Making a difference. Being of service. Mastering a skill… etc.

The list of possibilities is wide open and each are equally valid. Whether your focus is on scientific, theological or a philosophical outlook.

Today I want to consider that we are here to learn lessons. Again this is just one of the many different ways you can look at the question of why we are here.

As I mentioned in the T-bird post, there are billions of people you will never ever meet. So for the handful you do it’s interesting to apply the filter that I am meeting these individuals such that I and they can learn some lesson.

It’s clear to me there are many lessons to be learned. The idea that each person I know is put on my path to help guide me and ease the learning process is a relief.

We’ve each had someone pass away that we were close to. My first memory is of my grandfather passing when I was a young child. It clearly didn’t register much at the time. When I was 22 when my mother passed, I handled it a little better but it wasn’t until I was 32 and my father passed away did I start to get a glimmer of learning about death and how to deal with it well.

Sometimes the lesson in a friendship might be about betrayal and the loss of trust. Another one might be about learning to open up and express your feelings. One might be about learning to care for someone, more than yourself.

Again the list of lessons is endless and it’s not about which ones in specific you are here to learn. Rather just looking from the perspective that the people you know are catalysts to the lessons you will learn.

I’m not making a list of lessons to learn and then seeking out people to help me. Rather I’m trusting that the Universe has individuals who cross my path and we become related. The lessons to be learned reveal themselves. They’re helping me and I’m helping them. Could be the same or a different lesson.

I’m also not worried about lessons being good or bad, this is a subjective view and not as important. As a “bad” lesson from your point of view can also be considered a “good” lesson by someone else.

If there is something to be learned from a relationship you’re in, then you are either the student or the teacher. You will notice when you flow between which hat you are wearing that day.

“In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.”

~ Tom Bodett ~

“Just the facts, ma’am”. famous quote by Detective Joe Friday on Dragnet.

In my first year of college I was in search of the “facts” about teachers. I was in a wonderful class called Cultural Anthropology. I decided to create simple survey about teachers.

Question 1: please figure out how many teachers you had from K through 12th grade? Depending on your school system this number could vary. For myself it was a total of 46 teachers until I graduated high school.

Question 2: out of your total, how many great teachers did you have? By great I meant that they made a huge difference in your life. They made you eager to go to their class and to learn.

Question 3: how many teachers “grokked” you? Please see previous post: Grok...

Now many teachers were effective at teaching their subjects, but they didn’t rise to the level of being great teachers.

For myself, I had four in total. One is 3rd grade, one in 5th grade, one in 8th grade and one in 10th grade. Well 4 out if 46 is not a very good statistic.

I was fortunate to have a few thousand of my peers at college answer my survey. The total number of teachers varied as there were students from all over the country and from different types of school systems.

There were some students who had as many as 6 great teachers, some as low as only 1 or 0. The overall average turned out to be 3. Which was a very low statistic no matter what the total number of teachers had been.

So I looked into the research at the time which sited the major causes of teachers not teaching well.

1. Teachers were rated around 60% to 65% by their peers and by parents. (Not consistent with my data from the students).

2. Administrators rate their teachers even higher from 90% to 98%. (I think they’re just delusional).

3. Teachers themselves site: Stress, burnout, insufficient compensation, lack of administrative support, challenging student behavior, excessive workload and unrealistic expectations.

For me, number 3 carries the most validity. The first two are way too subjective and seem skewed to be of any value. However, I think that all teachers are dealing with number 3, so how do a few of them with the same restrictions and constraints rise above this muck to become great teachers.

These great teachers find ways to take the same circumstances they all share but see them as opportunities.

Opportunities for creativity. To prioritize building personal relationships with their students versus teaching content only. Creating a positive climate so the classroom is a safe space and welcoming. Push for more interactive learning and less lecturing. Great teachers practice self-reflection looking for new ways to improve. Collaborate with other teachers, sharing resources and strategies.

All the above actions are great. But I was interested in the underlying context which empowered these great teachers to take those actions.

My conclusion was that they didn’t treat teaching just as a job, but rather as a commitment to impacting the lives of young people. To recognizing the importance of teaching the next generation so they had the tools and wherewithal to transform the future.

That context fueled their passion for teaching. That passion comes through in their presence. That is what made a few of them great teachers.

“Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honor for me.”

~ P. J. Abdul Kalam ~

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

~ William Arthur Ward ~

“Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth.”

~ Helen Caldicott ~

“I touch the future. I teach.”

~ Christa McAuliffe ~

Teacher and Astronaut

Space Shuttle Challenger

In 1985, McAuliffe was selected from more than 11,000 applicants to NASA‘s Teacher in Space Projectand was scheduled to become the first teacher to fly in space.

NASA official Alan Ladwig said “she had an infectious enthusiasm”

“I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies. I will never give up.”

Running away was easy; not knowing what to do next was the hard part.

~ Glenda Millard ~

Another great story about my dog Duchess happened about two weeks before she had her litter and I was 9 years old.

My Father had built a walled off area in our den using 2“ by 6” boards stacked twice. It was a nice one foot tall wall where the puppies could be contained. This was to be Duchess’s nest. My mother gave her old towels and old tee shirts. Duchess sniffed and poked at this pile without much interest.

A few days later we came downstairs on a Saturday morning to find Duchess in the middle of the living room sitting proudly on her alternative homemade nest. It was an interesting mound of green fabric, wood chips and spongy foam pieces. To the right of the mound along the wall were four sets of metal springs that used to be the base and back of my Mother’s family heirloom sofa.

The sofa had been beautiful. It had nice little wooden sculpted legs. Even sculpted wood on the upright edges of the arm rests and a long piece along the top of the backrest. I thought it was the nicest piece of furniture in our house.

We all stood there for an instant and then my Mother lost it and start screaming, first at the dog and then at my Father. I had never seen my Mother lose it before that moment, I was terrified.

My Mother yelled at my Father to take the dog down to the veterinarian and have her put down immediately! As my Father attempted to calm my Mother down. I took Duchess out of the living room and down the hall to the den where she spent much of her time.

My only thought was to protect Duchess, so I put her leash on and went out our back door and we ran away. This was a spur of the moment idea not something I thought out.

We cut through our neighbors backyard. Worked our way across the street to get to the the railroad tracks, which ran behind the houses directly across the street from our front side of our home.

There was room on either side of the tracks and then fences along peoples backyards. Each fence had a doorway for access.

Duchess and I set up camp between two garages with a nice row of bushes to hide behind. I had a clear view of our front door from about 50 yards away.

Some time went by and eventually my parents came out the front door looked around and starting calling my name, “Wiliam!!”

A few more hours passed and then a police car pulled up. Two officers approached our front door and knocked. My parents met them and it looked like they were giving the police pictures of Duchess and I.

After the police left my Mother and sister got in one of our cars and my Father and brother got in the other one. They took off down the street yelling my name out the windows.

Once they left Duchess and I immediately ran into the house. I fed her a can of Alpo wet dog food. I made myself the one thing I was good at, an American cheese sandwich on Wonder bread. This was the Kraft American cheese that came in individually wrapped slices in cellophane.

I gathered up some treats for Duchess and I, plus my sleeping bag. We then returned to our hiding spot. This went on for a couple of days. Each time my family went out looking for us, we’d come in an eat and resupply ourselves.

Eventually my Father noticed that there were empty dog food cans in the trash, several cellophane wrappers and the American cheese and the Wonder bread were almost finished. My Father realized that me (the little rat) was sneaking into the house whenever they went out looking for me. So they got in their cars and drove off, but just pretending.

Duchess and I did our routine and as we were eating my family returned and caught us. Duchess kept on eating until she finished her bowl and I just stopped in mid-bite.

The only good news was that my Mother had calmed down. She came over to me and we sat together at the kitchen table. She was glad I was home and that both Duchess and I were okay.

She then asked, “I have just one question for you… if you had to choose between the family or the dog, what would you choose?” Without any hesitation I said, “The dog of course!”

My Mother sat back and gave me a good look over and said, “Well, okay, I hope you keep that level of clarity and passion when you get older.” Only thing I could say to that was, “Deal.”

Everything went back to normal. Duchess stayed and had her puppies a week later. I wasn’t grounded or sent to my room. I was just lucky that my parents were interested in how I saw things and would honor my choices, no matter how strange they might seem to them.

“I find the best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves.”

~ Dr. Steve Maraboli ~

Now(here) Man…

He’s a real nowhere man

Sitting in his nowhere land

Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

Doesn’t have a point of view

Knows not where he’s going to

Isn’t he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere man, please listen

You don’t know what you’re missing

Nowhere man

The world is at your command

~ Paul McCartney / John Lennon ~

There is this interesting sentence…⤵️

helpisnowhere

Depending on your own perception you might read this as; help is “no where” or help is “now here.”

You could say this illicits your cognitive bias towards pessimism or optimism.

The task is to notice which way you lean. Both ways are equally good. Generally optimists do better in situations than pessimists. But both views have valid arguments, yet neither way sees the whole picture. They each see their half... ie. the glass is half full or the glass is half empty.

Sitting in the middle and being a realist, one can move between the two extremes and choose the best information from both sides in finding solutions.

As I mentioned in an early post Yes, Maybe and No, specifically regarding the Apollo moon project. The Yes group (optimists) went to the No group (pessimists) to learn what was missing and needed to have a successful mission.

The pessimists were able to point out all the areas that needed development and the optimists went into action to make it happen.

So the realist takes an objective, practical approach, gathering both positive and negative possibilities.

When I was CEO of an aerospace company, we had a team of highly trained engineers. We built a better air cargo shipping container. Federal Express had several units they were testing in their trucking fleet as the units were not certified yet by the FAA to go inside aircraft.

Both the pessimistic and optimistic views were that we had to wait until we were certified by the FAA. It was going to be a least a year. Each side had various pros and cons to having to wait a year. There was a huge amount of historical evidence that this was how it was going to be.

But I had no historical history with the industry nor any engineering training or business school training either. For me any area of expertise creates “blinders” like horses wear creating “tunnel vision”, which is in many cases useful, but not always.

Given I had a strong team of specialists, that allowed me to do some thinking outside the box. I trusted my “peripheral visionary” approach, which includes being a “realist”.

What I saw was that I could mechanically disconnect the top of the cargo container from its base. Then using a rope like netting used to hold odd shaped items onto shipping pallets. I was able to just tie down the top to the base and transform my top into being listed as a package.

This innovation allowed Federal Express to flight test the containers, as it met the existing FAA requirements for shipping “packages” on a pallet.

Seeing solutions becomes much easier the more present you become, hence being a “Now Here Man”.

“Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment... Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life – and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you”.

~ Eckhart Tolle ~

“The secret is not to find the meaning of life, but to use your life to make things that are meaningful.”

~ James Clear ~

My mother taught. me a great lesson as a child regarding emotions and moods.

Emotions were quick responses you had to whatever is coming at you. They were also short lived but would usually be of high intensity. Strong emotions would trigger reactions.

Moods were slower and non-specific to what they were connected to. They were longer lasting and would occur with lower intensity. Moods could last for hours or days. Moods colored one’s perception and would have you consider things before choosing an appropriate action.

At the time my mother used the example of 10 specific basic emotions: fear, anger surprise, sadness, joy, interest, disgust, contempt, guilt and shame. She thought these were pretty hard wired and probably took there place in the emotional palate through our species evolutionary journey.

More recently. A 2017 University of California, Berkeley study identified 27 distinct categories of emotion that map human emotional experiences beyond basic joy or sadness. These emotions, which range from admiration and awe to tension and craving and are interconnected, forming a complex multidimensional map rather than simple isolated categories.

The 27 Emotions List (UC Berkeley Study)

1. Admiration

2. Adoration

3. Aesthetic Appreciation

4. Amusement

5. Anger

6. Anxiety

7. Awe

8. Awkwardness

9. Boredom

10. Calmness

11. Confusion

12. Craving

13. Disgust

14. Empathetic Pain

15. Entrancement

16. Envy

17. Excitement

18. Fear

19. Horror

20. Interest

21. Joy

22. Nostalgia

23. Relief

24. Romance

25. Sadness

26. Satisfaction

27. Sexual Desire

On the other hand moods were usually broken into being positive or being negative. Positive ones like being joyful, energetic or calm and negative ones like being angry, anxious or sad. My mother said the big difference between emotions and moods was that moods were “enduring” emotional states.

This was all the history of emotions and moods. Her lesson was how to interact with others and to affect moods.

She told me that everyone has all the emotions but their capacities could differ. Meaning that everyone could feel emotions and on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being weak and 10 being strong, everyone would be somewhere on that scale.

This scale would vary with each emotion. For example, you might see someone struggling with an issue and you feel compassion for them. Some people feel just a little compassion like a 2 or 3 while someone else might feel a lot of compassion Iike a 7 or 8. They both feel compassion but one was weak and the other was strong.

My favorite example was if you’re watching puppies playing and you feel joy. Again it’s joy but it could be a weak or strong feeling.

Now, this is the best part. She told me if you bump into your friend and he’s in a mood where he’s angry like a 6 and you’re happy like a 4. Within a few seconds or for sure in a minute or two you will be drawn towards his stronger mood and find yourself becoming angry too.

However, if you up your happiness to a 7, your friend will be drawn towards your mood of being happy. If your friend starts feeling this change and doesn’t want to be happy he will up his anger to a 8 and you will be drawn towards anger again.

This escalation of moods can go back and forth. I can take my happiness to a 8.5, he can take his anger to a 9.0, etc.

The lesson was who ever stopped first would be drawn into the other’s mood. The challenge was to not stop and draw the other person towards your mood.

This would be an excellent way to bring others out of their negative moods into more positive ones.

Please challenge yourself to get stronger at your positive moods. It’s just like making a muscle stronger with exercise and increasing the load you can bear.

When you have powerful positive moods those around you will be drawn towards those moods, in turn this makes your life and the lives around you better.

“Children are extremely perceptive and absorb what goes on around them long before they can talk or even comprehend language. They are like finely tuned receivers that pick up much more than is merely said. They are receptive and attuned to every mood, feeling, and change that goes on in people around them.”

~ Theodore Isaac Rubin ~

Grok: “to drink” (symbolizing deep merging and integration). To understand profoundly, emphatically, intuitively and completely, beyond simple comprehension.

The greatest moments we have are when we are truly present and our actions are perfectly correlated to what’s happening. We are in the zone or in the flow.

In the zone/flow state you are not consciously aware of what you are doing. In fact, you only notice the zone/flow as you come out of that state and are looking back at what just happened.

When you are in the zone/flow state you are in action without conscious direction. Because you are “not there” you don’t experience or remember what it was like when you were in that state.

Therefore you were successful and have no idea how it happened. You will try to explain it or come up with some plan or way to reproduce it again, but in truth you can’t.

If people could come up with a plan or formula for success, we would all know it by now and be doing it ourselves.

You can read almost anyone’s book on how they succeeded at something. But once you finish reading their book you don’t have any new skills or abilities to do what they did. It’s because the author didn’t really know how his success happened, but everyone else wanted to know, so the author wrote a book explaining what he thought he did.

Explain: means to make a concept, idea, or situation clear, intelligible, or known in detail by providing reasons or descriptions.

The author attempts to account for their success by explaining what happened. Unfortunately the explanations of what happened are not how it actually happened when you were in the zone/flow state.

Explanations are at the level of effect, what you see after the result. They don’t give you access to the cause which produced the effect noticed.

What allows for success is mastering being present.

Being present is not doing present or having present. It’s a living thing. Just keep reminding yourself that all there is, is being present.

It is a place you come from, not one you get to.

Because the past and future thoughts are a constant stream of words in your head and feelings in your body, they tend to overwhelm the present and become solid. The truth is they are malleable.

Start focusing on the moments of silence during the day. Choose to stretch out those times of silence. As the space of silence expands so will your access to being more present.

All this requires a little mindfulness. You become an observer, observing your own self. As the observer you pay more attention moment to moment of thoughts, feelings, body sensations and your surrounding environment. You strive to do this without any judgement. Without labeling what you observe as good or bad, just what is going on which will “ring true” for your self.

An analogy of this would be, if you asked a fish, “How’s the water?” The fish would say, “What water?” The fish is so one with his environment, the environment doesn’t exist as something separate. Because of this relationship with water, you can’t ask him if the water is cold or hot, because the water doesn’t exist for him, so there can’t be a secondary question about it at all.

This is what non-judgement looks like, it’s beyond defining what you are observing, just observing and noticing what occurs and you just don’t add meaning to what you’re observing.

In time this practice shifts your predisposition from stressful patterns and reactions to encouraging observations instead.

The better you observe things, the more data you can absorb. More data gives you more options to choose from for a more appropriate response to what’s happening.

Remember there is nothing wrong with past and future, particularly if you “grok” that both occur only in the present. Whenever you are in the past or the future, the underlying understanding is that you are still in the present. This is what provides a foundation for being.

“I never learned from a man who agreed with me.”

~ Robert A. Heinlein ~