Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The Next Generation: Our Story Continues


My grandsons visited tonight.


As with anyone my age, I have become increasingly aware of how time advances over the course of a lifetime.



When you're a child, a "Grandpa" is an unimaginably old creature. For my three grandsons, I realize I am that creature now.



Of course, as these things go, I'm still a relatively young unimaginably old creature, at least in my own eyes.



They can't understand that many of the people I knew in my youth are gone. More pass away every year. In fact, several have died recently. But none of this is knowable to the babies, nor should it be.



The day will come, according to the natural order of things, when they'll lose me. But they don't need to know about that for years yet. And I'll do my best to help them create memories of time with me that allows the Grandpa image to settle into their memories, as my grandfather occupies mine.

He was a forbidding figure, but those were different times, he was an immigrant, and I was probably an overly sensitive kid to any sign of disapproval from others.

My grandsons need not worry about a repeat performance; I couldn't be my grandfather, as I viewed him -- so remote and alien -- as I look down into their upturned faces, meeting their questioning eyes.

"Who are you, Grandpa?"

"Let me tell you a story. It begins a long time ago in a place that's quite far away called Michigan. One time there was another little boy, not so different from the way you are, actually. Shall I continue?"

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Heart Persists



The past week, life may have knocked me around a bit, like it did to my tire (above), which is my only explanation for being unable to write as much or as often as I aspire to lately.

Although blogs are nothing new, and I've posted thousands of articles to various blog sites over the years, this is the only one that lasts, because this is mine.

Each big change that sweeps into your life, especially of the losing kind (losing a job, a special friend, a house) creates a grieving period but also opens up new possibilities for your future.

This is obvious, of course, and I am not a self-help guru, so I won't condescend to anyone by offering cliches about how to deal with such situations.

But I will note that, in my case, when someone takes something away from me (typically a job), afterward I'm sad and perhaps mad for a bit, then I inevitably feel that a great burden has lifted.

After all, it really wasn't so great, once you come to reflect upon it. Somebody paid you to do something, they told you what to do and how to do it, they indicated displeasure but rarely pleasure -- you know the routine.

In American business culture, kindness is a lost art. The idea is to be direct. That's fine, I'm not particularly indirect myself.

But opportunities to provide what in HR parlance are "strokes" have been largely eschewed in recent times. The assumption is you should feel lucky to even have a job -- and there is a great deal of truth to that.

We all should feel lucky to even have a job.

Plus the world is changing, especially for middle-class Americans, as I've previously noted. Our position of relative privilege in the world is flattening out as we increasingly integrate our economy with the emerging global system.

There are some who would use our power, including our military power, to resist this adjustment in relative privilege. They believe we have a God-given right to being "number one" and other people should not be allowed to catch up unless they do so at no cost to us.

It doesn't work that way, sadly. The world as we know it is a finite place. There are only so many resources. They have to go around, according to some sort of system of equity, or monstrous disparities will persist between the rich and the poor.

There are those among us who defend such disparities, of course, and would fight to the death presumably (or more likely send others to fight to their death) in order to defend them.

Not me. I recognize my relative wealth in a world of poverty, illness, and shortened expectations. It doesn't make me feel better, although I am grateful that my parents immigrated to America, and that I am an American.

But the political discourse is so poisoned in this country I cannot bring myself to participate in it at this point. I wrote a lot leading up to the last Presidential election, but I may have very little to say this year, unless a measure of civility and sanity returns to the debate.

In my view, those who hold political power at this point should exercise it fully with little regard to the political consequences. Though that's easy for me to say; I'm not in the business of politics.

Yet I have a feeling some very good people have been making some very tough political calls lately; taking positions that may indeed shorten their careers to do what they think is best for the nation.

I'm not in a position to evaluate complex policy matters and not inclined to do so. But I do hope things get better for the millions of us who have been and are still being abused by the health insurance companies. We deserve better.

Beyond that, in my own universe, I'm hard at work on some new projects, things I'll perhaps discuss here in the days and weeks ahead. My writing may rarely touch on national policy or the business world these days, but it will touch on the human heart.

That is the topic I care far more about in the end. Others can debate their own hearts out. My own aches at times and at others it soars. This journal charts those vibrations, even as the larger world does what it wishes to the likes of you and me.

-30-

Sunday, March 21, 2010

The Nerve



The kids were nervous yesterday. It's the start of spring soccer season, and the beginning of track season. Young athletes get jumpy ahead of the time to compete; as the games begin they instantly calm and become focused.

It's always inspiring for me to see.



Witness.

Much of parenting is bearing witness. I was talking during the long, slow waiting period at the track meet to another parent about how confusing the teenage years are; how opaque high school culture remains to us, the parents; how much we still want and need to do the right things as parents but we are no longer sure what those are, exactly.

Maybe it's time to let go.?

Maybe it's time to hold on?

Maybe it's just to be there.



The phone call I'd been dreading for 24 hours came just as the night soccer match got underway. "We're sorry but..."

More financial bad news. More stress. More worries about a future already wracked by uncertainty.

For now, I was powerless to do anything about it. Maybe, as it happens, I will be powerless altogether. I took a short, lonely walk to the other side of the field, where the shadows were spreading from the sun setting to the west.

I returned to the sideline to watch my son play. At one point, with his goalie down, the other team's kick was heading directly into his team's net when he streaked out of nowhere to intercept the sphere and redirect it far out of bounds.

I heard myself break out into a loud, hoarse cheer; then I felt tears on my cheeks.

Afterward, I told him my news, which he somehow, on some level, already seemed to know. As I dropped him at his mother's, he took me aside, gave me a hug, and said, "Thanks for coming to my game, Dad. Thanks for coming to all my games."