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Torching the Gasoline for Explosive Success

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2009

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JANUARY, 2008

Happy New Year! Here's my New Year's Challenge: Change the world by loving the people in it. By love, I don't mean having a nice warm feeling about them (though a warm feeling's not bad). I mean actually caring about people as individuals. Seeing each person you encounter as a unique and valuable creation not just as a cog in the gears of your life. It's easy to see people only in light of their usefulness (or lack thereof) to us. A conscious or unconscious second-by-second evaluation of "Are you doing something good for me right now and if not, why not?" When you change to asking "How can I make this person's life better right now?" and then act on it you open the door to a fulfilling life. Accept this New Year's Challenge and you'll experience joy beyond measure.
Another of my 2007 favorites. I wrote this for a friend on the day she started x-ray technician school. It's called "Fractured: A Poem for Annette". I'm in a terrible fix. My body placed always at risk. Broken bones are now my ambition. I'm in love with an x-ray technician. Off roofs I cheerfully jump. Down the stairs I fall and go thump. I seek fractures and have no contrition. I'm in love with an x-ray technician. Large men I challenge to fight. Drive high speed with my eyes closed at night. "Did something snap?" Oh, that's what I'm wishin'. I'm in love with an x-ray technician. Will she love me before it's too late. Of bones, I've just two hundred eight. Every one I'll dislodge from position. I'm in love with an x-ray technician. Oh, Annette you'll be hard to pursue, When I'm casted from my head to my shoes. But my heart won't surrender the mission: Win the love of my x-ray technician
I made my one and only attempt at roller skating when I was in law school. A bunch of my fellow students decided it would be fun and I succumbed to peer pressure. I proved that I was "unbalanced" in more ways than one. I was incapable of moving any direction but down. I was saved by a blind woman (one of my classmates) who kindly asked if I would skate with her since she couldn't see her way around. What she was actually doing was offering to hold me up. It was much appreciated. We spent the rest of the evening with her skating and me clinging desperately to her. Maybe I was some help to her. I don't really remember. All I remember is her saving me from a long, painful, embarassing and un-fun night. She probably doesn't remember it at all. The receiver remembers a kindness long after the giver has forgotten.
Check-up time. Did you take time to make a life goals list? Did you pick a couple goals to start working on? Did you break them down into small steps and start doing a step per day? If yes, good job! If no, don't procrastinate. Do it now or set a time now when you're going to do it.
I love being me. Our garage door opener is broken. As I was getting in the car I started whining to myself about what a pain it was to have to manually open the gargage door. Poor, poor, pitiful me. I had to walk all the way to the door, pull the cord to disconnect it from the broken electric door-opener, grab the handle and lift the door, get in the car, back it out, get out, and close the door. Wow. Is that tough. What a whiner! ["Mark, here are 100 solid gold bars. A gift for you." "Oh, but they're sooo heavy."] I could be happy that I have a house, with a gargage, and a car in it, and a place to go or that I don't live in a place where people are chasing me through the streets with machetes because my ancestors did something bad to their ancestors 600 years ago. But no, that would be the smart thing to do. Why would I want to do that when I could feel sorry for myself for some trivial inconvenience instead?
Today is the Christian feast of the Epiphany commemorating the revelation to the three wise men that the Messiah had arrived. It's a good time for all Christians to ask themselves whether other people are seeing Christ revealed in them. Chances are the answer is not nearly as much as we'd like. Christ is giving up everything for the good of somebody else. We aren't very good at this. We're better at observing what other people need to do differently. Francis of Assisi is quoted as saying "Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." The more we live as Christ the less we'll need to say to convince people who He is.
Just saw someone I hadn't seen in a quite awhile. As soon as she caught sight of me she took off in the opposite direction and never reappeared. This happened a lot more when I was single and looking for dates. Those women could have won the international "hide and seek" championships if I was "it". This is a little more strange. I don't quite get it but that's life isn't it? Somethings just don't add up and you never know why. I don't like not knowing but I've come to accept that I can't obsess about what I don't know about other people. They get to be free. Sometimes that's the only answer you get.
"The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them." (Jim Rohn) When you reach a goal, you have changed and you retain that change. When you climb the mountain, or earn the black belt, or write the novel, you're different than you were before. You've persevered, endured difficulties, overcome obstacles. Your ability to do these things is confirmed in you and can be drawn on to meet anything else that comes along. You become more effective at everything whenever you achieve something.
I like to say that relating to people is a lot like burglary. You've got to check for open windows. Most of the time people will be locked up and you won't get inside. But, you have to keep checking. Every now and then they'll be open and you can reach the valuables inside them. Never give up. Just because they've never been open before doesn't mean they won't be now. Engage them. Ask questions. Be ready.
The coverage of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary was amusing to me. A candidate finishes third in Iowa. The polls show the Iowa winner surging to a big lead in New Hampshire. The third place candidate is written off as defeated. The third place candidate then surprisingly wins in New Hampshire. Everyone talks about the amazing comeback. In basketball, if a team scored the first 6 points of the game, nobody would say "it's over" or say it was amazing if the other team scored the next 8. Why is politics different? Maybe there's too much time to talk between plays. The dead time gets filled with hopes and fears being put into words and broadcast far, wide, and incessantly. Lack of action leads to overanalyzing, over-talking, and making things seem more significant then they are. The same holds true in real life. The more you think without acting the more confused you're going to get.
One of the Japanese students who stayed with us arrived one November and left in September. Along about August he asked "When is the weather here ever good?" I said, "We're almost there. Mid-September to mid-October is usually perfect." Perception is an interesting thing. If we remember the negative things more than the positive, we'll perceive life as not good even though it's likely that the good things far outnumber the bad. We just aren't seeing and remembering them. We're focused on the things that bring us down rather than those that uplift. Like all the days with great weather we've had in the Midwest this winter. Oh wait. Bad example!!
My neighbors own electric palm trees. A few times during the year I'll be driving down the street at night and the electric palm trees will be set up and lit up in the yards of two houses across the street from each other. A party is going on. An "Electric Palm Tree Party". I'm always extremely jealous when I see the electric palm trees. I wish I had thought of something that zany. I wish I'd been invited to the Electric Palm Tree Party. I wish I were a member of the Clan of the Electric Palm Tree. It's just got to be fun. I don't know the story behind the electric palm trees. Did they take a trip to Puerto Rico and decide to recreate it occasionally in their front yards? Did one of them buy the other an electric palm tree as a gag gift and the other retaliated and they decided to turn it into an excuse for a party? The possibilities are endless. That's why I've never asked. Imagining the possible explanations is so much fun. Knowing the truth might ruin it.
Working on putting together a book of poetry. Too lazy to write anything different today so here's one of the poems: Sometimes Sometimes she's a panther Striding strongly through the night. Supple, lithe and shimmering An awesome gorgeous sight. Sometimes she's a flower, Fragile in the rain. Her beauty sometimes nourished- Sometimes battered by wind's strain. Sometimes she's a monkey Acrobatic in a tree. Her playful circus talents A wonderment to see. Sometimes she's a wee mouse Tormented by a cat. Toyed with in it ego-feeding Pawed hard and then pinned flat. But- really-she's a woman And they're not made any finer. If I could special order one, She's just what I'd desire. Smart and strong and beautiful, Funny, wise and deep, Passion-filled creative, As a woman she's complete. She's someone that I treasure. She brings richness to my life. Not sure she knows her value, But it's beyond any humanly known price.
Watching the Packers and Seahawks play football in a snowstorm Saturday reminded me of how much fun I used to have playing football in the snow. We'd jump and slide around and get soaking wet. I don't remember ever being cold playing football though I remember being cold standing in line waiting to get into school. When you're having fun, adversity is just part of the fun. Something to laugh about or be proud you overcame. When you're not having fun, everything seems like a sharp rock in your shoe. It may not be fatal but it's painful and annoying. If you're feeling that rock this morning, chances are you are not being grateful for the good things. Stop right now and think of 5 things you're grateful for. Gratitude makes life a lot more fun.
How much of what you do is motivated by what you think other people want from you? Are your expectations of yourself driven by your perception of other people's expectations of you? Lincoln said: "You can't fool all the people all the time." It's also true you can't please all the people all the time. Some people just don't want to be happy. It's not your fault. Don't make your own happiness contingent on making a person who doesn't want to be happy happy. That's like deciding "I'll be happy when Mark grows hair." It's just not going to happen no matter what you do.
You are the receiver. The football is your dream. You need to get some space between yourself and the cornerback (the people who are trying to keep you from catching your dream.) There are any number of people who will tell you why what you want to do isn't going to work. You need to create some mental distance from them so you can focus on making the catch.
What kind of royalty do you get for licensing your mega-hit to Alvin and the Chipmunks? This was my first thought (after bringing my insane laughter under control) as Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" rolled out of my car stereo in the distinctive timbre of the Chipmunks. Sometimes I fool myself into believing being a lawyer hasn't permanently warped the way I think but then I get hit between the eyes with thoughts like the above. (See it's even warped the way I write as evidenced by the previous sentence -- and this parenthetical.) Oh well. Here's further proof that I'm not right in the head. [If you don't know the song, you might want to find it on YouTube and listen to it first.] You had a bad day You're taking one down They sing your sad song In that Chipmunky sound You say you don't know Don't tell me a lie You sold them your work Lost your sense for a time You had a bad day The Ipod don't lie Your royalty checks by 3 rodents are signed You had a bad day
Secretariat, the great thoroughbred, won the Belmont Stakes by an amazing 31 lengths setting the world record for a mile and a half race and winning horse racing's Triple Crown. If Secretariat had been like a player in the NFL, instead of a race horse, he would have stopped before the finish line, turned around, waited for the other horses to get closer, and then backed across the finish line while sticking out his tongue. Horses like to win as much as people do but they haven't had to create a penalty for taunting for the horses in horse racing. When did the NFL become All-Star Wrestling?
As I stood frozen this morning at the pump filling the gas tank, I got a whiff of the gasoline vapors. It reminded me how much I enjoyed that smell when I was a kid and how bad it must have been for me to inhale those lead-filled fumes. This led to thoughts about how we've created things that shorten our lives in some ways but, on balance, have improved and lengthened them, which lead to thinking how much I take for granted. I thought of making a list of everything I take for granted but that would be a full time job. So, I took a few seconds there at the pump and came up with: my car, that someone designed and built it, that it gets warm inside, that someone figured out how to extract oil from the ground, refine it to burn to run an engine, that I was driving to a building someone designed and built that would be warm inside (do you see a theme developing here?!) This was a good exercise because it made me grateful for all those things and made me forget how stinking cold I was standing there! Give it a try sometime.
Today I am a model. Fashion model that is. The picture this creates in your mind should produce enough laughter that I shouldn't really have to write anything else. But, I will. Today it's tuxedos. I figure it's only a matter of time before you see me posing on the cover of some romance novel with my shirt off (there's a mind picture you could do without). We had a rehearsal last night. I got all excited when I overheard one of the organizers say "show up at 12:30 for hair." Then I realized they were probably just styling it-- not dispensing it. Why am I doing this? A friend needed a "father of the bride" for the show. I figured I make a fool of myself for no particular reason quite a bit of the time. Why not do it to help a friend? Friendship calls for getting out of your comfort zone. Embarassment's a small price to pay for a friend. And, there's always a benefit to giving you never expect. I'm showing up at "12:30 for hair". Hey, you never know!
My modeling gig was great. Everyone said I was fabulous. Ok, no one really "said" that but I'm sure everyone "thought" it! Before my turn to go on, I served as the doorman for the real models to get from the runway back to their dressing room. One stunningly beautiful "bride" after another passed by. This was a very good job. God certainly knew what he was doing when He created women. The Bible reports Adam's words on first seeing Eve but it doesn't report how long it took him to speak. I'm sure there was a long, stunned, awestruck silence-- an amazement at the perfect beauty of this new creation. Guys, if you see the women in your lives with this same sense of awe, wonder and appreciation, you'll live a very happy life. If you don't, you're mostly cheating yourselves.
We have more talent than we have time to use it. A friend showed me some drawings she'd done years ago. They were excellent sketches of people. She hasn't drawn in years. She's been doing other valuable things: pursuing other goals, using other talents, caring for people. You could look at this as sad, having a talent for something, enjoying it, but never doing it. Or you could think how wonderful it is to have a surplus of talent. We humans are remarkable creatures capable of virtually limitless achievements. If you're feeling like you're not utilizing all your talents take heart. You can re-prioritize or you can relax and wait till the time is right to use that dormant talent. You get to pick.
My auto-pilot was not working this morning. I started driving and realized I was headed to the office not the coffee shop (office before coffee is a prescription for productivity problems!!). After I corrected and got coffee, the next thing I knew I was pulling up to my house ("Boy, the day sure flew by! Oh, wait . . .) While auto-pilot usually works for mundane tasks, like driving to work, it can be disasterous for things that actually require personal attention, like relationships. Following the same non-thinking routine, will get you lost. A relationship is more like a trip out of town. You need to constantly be looking for signs that show you need to make a turn, or slow down, or take a rest. If we think we're going the same old place everyday in our relationships, we're going to suddenly find ourselves in a place we don't want to be.
My wife is fluent in Spanish. She and another interpreter were interpreting for a deposition. The lawyer asked in English "Did he leave the car running?" The other interpreter put the question into Spanish but for "running" used the Spanish verb meaning to run as in "sprinting". My wife asked: "Don't you mean ___? [whatever the Spanish word for an engine being "on" is]" Everybody laughed. Obviously, "running" as in "running away" versus "leaving the engine on" paints an entirely different picture of what happened. Unfortunately, we can have these problems even when foreign languages aren't involved. Our words can have meanings to the listener that we don't intend. The question "Why did you do that?" is almost always going to be interpreted as a criticism of what the person did as opposed to a genuine inquiry into the reasons for the action. Try to avoid delivering criticism in the form of a question. If you can establish with people that your questions are really questions and not criticisms in disguise, it'll be a lot easier to get straight answers.
Just saw a hilarious cartoon. A doctor is looking at an xray. Across the desk is his patient, Kermit the Frog. The doctor says "What I'm about to tell you may come as a big shock . . .". The xray, which Kermit can't see yet, shows the outline of Kermit's body, and inside it the skeltal image of a human arm and hand, the puppeteer who causes Kermit's every move. Poor Kermit, he's about to learn someone else is running his life. How about you? Is someone else inside your head directing your actions? Some voice from the past (or the present) telling you that you can't achieve something you want to achieve? Kermit is pretty well stuck. He really is just a puppet. You don't have to suffer the same fate.
The store was out of ice scrapers. [For my beloved Hawaiian and other tropical zone readers, an ice scraper is NOT the device you use to carefully and artistically shape blocks of ice into awe-inspiring sculptures of palm trees or tropical birds to adorn resort hotel bars where you go to sip umbrella drinks to cool off from your long day of baking in the sun. No, it's a device to scrape off the layer of ice that's bonded to your car's windshield after it's been sitting outside for awhile in the winter. You have to scrape off the ice in order to see out your windshield to drive your car. Otherwise, we'd all be driving around running into things, rendering our cars inoperable and freezing to death waiting for the tow truck.] I broke mine (remember I'm talking about ice scrapers) using it for a purpose for which it was not intended-- trying to dislodge the block of ice that formed in the wheel well from the snow kicked up by the rotation of the tires while driving on snowy roads. [Again, for those of you in the tropics, the snow freezes to the wheel well and builds up to the point that the block of ice it forms makes it so you can't turn the wheels because they collide with the block of ice.] The correct tool for this is steel-toed boots-- but-- I wasn't wearing any. The moral of the story is: it's fine to experiment-- doing something in an unconventional way to see if it works-- just have a back up plan in case it doesn't. Or, at least, scrape the windshield first.
Mozart's Birthday today. The guy was in a class by himself. It would take me longer to make a list of his great works than it took him to compose them. I would love to be able to listen to the orchestra inside his head as he conceived his masterpieces. Can you imagine the sound? He had an amazing gift and he used it generously. I'm not going to pretend we can all be Mozart. His level of talent is extraordinarily rare. But, just because you're not Mozart doesn't mean you get to be nothing. What's your calling? Your purpose? Pursue it. Don't leave it to rot because you don't think you're good enough to do it.
I was describing myself to a guy over the phone so he'd recognize me when we met for the first time the next day. I said "I'm bald, glasses, with a reddish-brown beard." Then I realized my mistake. "No, I've got a grayish-brown beard." (or is it brownish-gray? or "gray with faint rememberances of brown?") Somehow, in describing my appearance, I had reverted to the 1980's version of me. This was kind of funny (I mean the story, but the 1980's version of me was pretty funny too) but if your image of yourself is stuck in the past it could be hampering you. How many "I can'ts" that you started carrying when you were a kid are still holding you back? If you were 5'6" when you were 14 and discovered "I can't dunk a basketball", you may still be thinking that's true even though you're now 21 and 6'7". We all change. Things that may have been impossible to the you of the past may now be easily in reach. Don't saddle yourself with your perceptions of your past failures or inadequacies. Today is a new day. Grab the ball, put on your sneakers, and go out and jam it. At least give it a try. Who knows what the new you can do?
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, life turns into a bar fight. Something smacks you hard from the blind side and you end up on the floor. The last thing you want to do is lie there wondering what happened. Get up and start fighting your way toward the exit. Unexpected, unfortunate events happen. There's no point in thinking "if only I had . . ." You didn't. You have to focus on now. Lying there wishing you hadn't come is not going to stop the large man from kicking you repeatedly in the head. You've got to move. You have to act in the present and you have to do it quick. Dwelling on "if onlys" is only going to prolong the beating.
I workout at a gym. It's always interesting to see the expressions on people's faces there. Some have a stony gaze. Nothing will distract them from their workout. Some look pained. Like they are being beaten with a club. Others look distracted. They're going through the motions but they aren't mentally engaged. A few look like they are having a great time. Smiling-- even while they're running on a treadmill. The gym members attitudes toward exercise are written on their faces. So too with the rest of life. What's written on your face right now?
Jackie Robinson's birthday today. He's an historic figure because he broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was also an amazing athlete. Because breaking the color barrier was so historically important, we tend to remember Jack Robinson only for that and forget the playing greatness that landed him in the Hall of Fame. It's not good to pigeon-hole people even if it's based on something extraordinarily good. We miss the whole person by doing this. It's like looking at Michaelangelo's statue of David and only focusing on the vein in his neck. Michaelangelo did an amazing job sculpting that vein but it would be a big loss if you didn't take in the rest of the statue.