Hope

Hope

For those born before November 22, 1963, there was hope.  The world was changing, but everyone felt that our best days were ahead, and in that there was hope.  But then came that fateful day, and hope didn’t seem so eternal.

For those alive on this date 50 years ago, where we were and what we were doing became forever etched in our memories when word of the assassination of JFK flashed across the news.  That memory became mingled with other images of those times: a young President and his wife beginning their day in Dallas; an open limo passing a building; a club owner in a hat shooting the alleged assassin; a young son saluting his fallen father; and an eternal flame.  The nation optimistically supported their leaders and new styles of music, clothes, cars and culture pointed us hopefully towards the future.  And then hope seemed to come to a halt.

Walter Cronkite cried on TV, regular people cried on the street, and we sat in front of our TVs and cried while we watched this incredible event unfold.  Those next 4 days were filled with shock and sadness: if you weren’t there, it’s hard to imagine how stunned and shocked the nation was, or how a single tragic act could so totally change our outlook on life and…. hope.

It’s been 50 years, and yet after all this time the memory of that day still looms large in our minds.  And even though there have been other shocking events since then: the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Vietnam war, the Iranian hostages, the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, and so many more (both big and small), the one that happened on this day 50 years ago today seems to represent “the day, the music died” (thank you Don McLean and Bye Bye Miss American Pie).

But all the recent documentaries on the life and legacy of JFK remind us that hope really is resilient.  The images from that event so long ago faded quickly as life went on, and over time those were replaced by the ebb and flow of the regular things that happen, and because we’re all optimists at heart, hope was re-born, re-kindled, and re-established – life does go on after terrible events, and while the memories never go away, the challenge and belief in new horizons help us to go on. Because no matter how long or short a life, it’s only one of many in our vast universe, and if any of those lives is well lived, then, like a comet, it leaves a bright streak across the sky to help light the way for the rest of us.  And in that light there is: hope.

My message this week is based on one of the many quotes from JFK:

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.” John F. Kennedy

We still mourn the death of JFK all those years ago and still marvel at the affect his words continue to have on us after all these years:  asking not what the country can do for us but rather what we can do for the country, responding to the cold war by challenging America to put a man on the moon; and asking us to overcome our prejudices and promote civil rights.  Those were different and difficult times, and as shocking and riveting as those events were, they quickly became part of the larger and continuing patchwork that represented all the times of our lives.  

Looking back now it’s amazing how things like the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show just 3 short months later helped us to go on and focus on both the here and now and the future. In hindsight is the understanding that all of the things we experience allow us to keep going and to have hope. The people we meet, the friends and colleagues we have, and the families we love: they all form the nucleus of the lives we lead. And the lesson is this is that no matter what, we must always find time to thank the people who make a difference in our lives.

Stay well!

50

50

I was born in 1950, and for years dreamed of being 50 at the turn of the 21^st century.  I imagined there would be immense personal and world changes when the clock stuck 12 on that millennium; but as we all now know, the hype was more than the reality.  But what’s happened since then has been pretty amazing and fulfilling.

In the intervening years, I opened more hotels, spent time in Las Vegas, China, Laguna Beach, New York City, and the Adirondack Mountains, met lots of interesting people and clients, played a ton of music, became an avid blogger, read voraciously, and enjoyed the arrival of a granddaughter. 

And now, 13 years after that millennial milestone, it’s the 50^th anniversary of my bar mitzvah; in fact, I celebrated that momentous event 50 years ago this weekend.  50 years ago tonight I began the transition from being a boy to becoming a man.  That ritual, which most young Jewish men and women go through on their 13^th birthday, is similar in many ways to other rituals that mark the passage to adulthood.  And while it was cool to think that adulthood starts at 13, I’ve since realized that it only begins then. 

For me that beginning began by reading from the Holy Scriptures in Hebrew, then making a speech, opening lots of presents and having a fun party.  But now I realize that the best part of that event was the awakening of my sense of religion, and then learning things that have stayed with me all these years.  On that weekend so long ago, I read the only portion of the Torah named for a woman (Sarah, the wife of Abraham), and how she shaped the history of the Jews. I recently found the speech about this that I gave back then, and it spurred lots of memories and got me thinking about the richness of life after all these years.

And now, on this 50^th anniversary of that long ago event, I’m literally standing by for the arrival of my second granddaughter.  As I write this, my daughter is down the Hospital hall giving birth…. to a girl, and this is reminding me about the women in my life and the woman in that Torah reading.  Sometime tonight my 92 year-old Mother will have a new great granddaughter, and my wife of 37 years will have a new granddaughter, and my 34-year old daughter will have a second daughter, and her 18 month-old Daughter will have a sister.  Life really does go on, and truly is a blessing!

My message this week is about enjoying the wonders of life:

“Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.” Ruth Reichl

Every day is full of experiences, challenges, and opportunities.  Those experiences are nothing if you aren’t aware of them, and wide open to their breadth and depth, and possibilities.  They often present challenges because without a crystal ball we can’t predict what’s going to happen, and must be ready to react appropriately and effectively.  And rather than thinking of these as distractions, we should see them as opportunities to do great things.  There’s rarely a day that isn’t filled with one or all of these elements, and there’s excitement and renewal in each and every one of them.  If you find a day that’s missing one or more of these, it’s probably something lacking in you rather than the day itself.  If that happens, stop and examine what in you may be obscuring them.  Then pull up a chair, take a taste, and join fully in your endlessly delicious life!

Stay well!

Mid Terms

I know…. it’s been a while since my last blog and people are starting to ask if everything’s okay.  The short answer is “yes”; it’s just that every time I start to write, all the things that are happening in my life distract me.  So let me stop and tell you what’s been going on:

I’ve joined the faculty at the UNLV Hotel School as a Visiting Professor.  I am really enjoying this new gig, but getting assigned to a class two weeks before it began was tough and it disrupted my normal routine.  I had to stop everything I had been doing and figure out a syllabus, start lesson plans, research the topic, develop power points, create tests, devise exercises, post assignments, learn new computer applications, find my way around campus, and try to understand a public education world that is markedly different than the corporate world I came from.

But even so, I love it.  Being around students, telling my stories, explaining to them the difference between being a student (which is pretty much all they’ve ever known) and a real-world worker (which they will soon be), discovering all the wonders of campus life and getting engaged in a whole new set of things is exhilarating.  I am teaching Strategic Management: it’s a course that every senior in the UNLV Hotel School has to take to graduate, so I’ve got their attention. 

That’s the good news; the bad news is that a last semester college senior is pulled in lots of directions and seems to have a limited attention span for classes and learning. They’ve got so much to do and so much on their minds, and here I am talking about a subject that doesn’t seem to have much connection to them.  But as I weave tales in class each week and get them working in teams, the light starts to shine in their eyes. 

Strategic thinking and strategic planning seem like obscure concepts until I tell them to drop the term “strategic” and think of this subject as relating to things they do everyday.  Like: thinking and planning what to do this weekend or what to do after this semester ends.  Or: soon they’ll have a boss coming to them and exclaiming: “we have a problem that needs to get fixed”, and they’ll be the ones faced with determining what needs to be done about that.  Those are realities they understand.

And now it’s the mid-point in this semester – I’ve never really thought of time in terms of semesters, but my ‘when in Rome’ mindset here has me devising mid-term exams and beginning to think about how to conduct the remainder of this course.  I know what I want to tell them but have to remember that they’re getting ready to conclude the part of their lives that immediately precedes growing up and joining the real world.  So maybe I’ll just get them to think about how a sustainable competitive advantage can apply to them as much as it does to companies out there in the real world.  That’s something I hope will get their attention.

My message this week is simple: plan for the future and the future will take care of you.

“A canvas isn’t empty. It’s full of whatever you imagine it to be full of.”  Jarod Kintz

How active is your imagination? Just like dreams, an active imagination helps promote creativity and innovation.  Your mind’s eye has to be able to see things as you want them to be, and then you need patience and dedication to bring that vision to life.  This applies to the things you make and do, the services you provide, the way you treat others, the attitude you portray when working with colleagues, and the way you plan your life.  You start with a blank canvas, but it’s not empty – it’s full of the possibilities of whatever you imagine it to be full of, and then your efforts bring those things to life, and your energy infuses them with passion and personality.  So let your imagination fill your canvas today with all of the colorful ideas you need to be successful.

Stay well!

Patchy Ground Fog

                           Patchy Ground Fog      

Yesterday morning I took a last summer ride past Adirondack lakes, streams and meadows, which were all obscured by some patchy ground fog.  And today I am back in Las Vegas getting set to be a visiting professor at UNLV.  That fog was tricky – I could almost see through it, but not clearly enough to be certain what was really on the other side.  And that was how I felt making this trip from all that I've known before into the unknowns of academia.

I guess it’s always like that when you start something new – new house, new pets, new friends, new colleagues, new relationships, or a new job.  While I sort of know what’s coming, I can’t yet see everything clearly enough to feel competent or confident: academia is certainly different from my corporate past, and students are similar but different from children and employees.   And while I think I know what’s ahead, I can’t see things clearly enough to entirely alleviate the natural anxiety associated with trying or starting something new. It really is like peering through the fog.

So even though I’d driven those same roads many times and knew where they ultimately ended up, I was still uncertain about what was ahead through that fog. Similarly, I can see the connections between all I’ve done in the past and what I might teach in the classroom, but not having been at this school or on this faculty before I am uncertain what this will really be like. Isn’t that always the case when trying something new?  And isn’t something new, by its very nature, somewhat obscured (like looking through a fog)?

The answer is yes – but that should never stop us from taking on new challenges and opportunities, and striking out into the unknown.  Because if we never try something new we’ll never know how far we can really go; if we never walk into the fog, we’ll never know what’s really out there.  Those are the challenges, and blessings, of life.  I am thrilled, excited, and a little nervous about what it will all look or be like when the patchy ground fog of this transition burns off in the rays of tomorrow’s sun.

My message this week is about having the courage to try new things:

“You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Andre Gide

Discover anything new lately? Most of us spend our days and nights reliving and repeating the same lessons we learned long ago, but if we’re lucky something new and exciting sometimes comes along.  When that happens, we have a chance to learn new lessons and practice new techniques.  You have to be open to these new lessons, and not afraid to admit what you don’t know: the only chance you’ll ever have to create and discover new opportunities is when you leave the known behind and strike out in search of the unknown.   So learn something new today, and then use that new-found knowledge to do something great!

Stay well!

Remembering a Best Friend

                  Remembering a Best Friend

Willie was a great dog.  I say “was” because we had to put him to sleep this week: he bit someone for the second time, and dogs only get one bite at that kind of apple.

Willie was a Jack Russell terrier: full of life….maybe too full.  They are a rather precocious and assertive breed, and he was the prototypical alpha male dog:

• Had to do things his way: touchy to the point of being spooky, almost like telling us his was the only way. 
• He was smart: so smart that he only would do the things that he chose to do, and he had his way of letting us know just what those things were. 
• He expected small treats for nearly everything, and if you didn’t comply, he’d wait until forever until you did. 
• He was always worried about missing out on something – and every time we’d get ready to go for a walk he had to run back inside to have one more morsel of the food in his dish.
• He always let you know that his job was to clean the dinner plates, and he’d climb into the dishwasher if you forgot to include him in that chore.
• He slept on the pillows rather than on all the doggie beds we bought….to him, those were for, well, dogs. 
• And he surely never thought of himself as a dog - in his mind, he was as human as the rest of us, and he was always reminding us of that….in his own unique language. 

Sometimes he got jumpy when someone would invade his space.  It wasn’t all the time, or with everyone, and we were never able to figure out when he would arbitrarily decide to enforce that inner rule.  That was when his bite got worse than his bark. Over the years he bit us, but I guess we were willing to accept that as we would any other regular family fight.  At those times he’d be contrite, and because of his unquestioned devotion to us we forgave him, even though deep down we were unable to forget.

The first time he bit one of our nieces, we tried to modify his behavior: medicine, muzzles, stern lectures……none of those worked on Willie (and come to think of it, those same kinds of remedies never seem to work on any of the other alpha-type people we know either).  The second time, this past week, we came face to face with the limited choices left open to us: once was maybe okay; but twice was too many.  That’s a rule that applies to so many things in life, for dogs and humans alike.

So we took him to a wise and trusted Vet, and after much discussion we realized what had to be done.  We cried at the choices left open to us, because to us he was, and would always be, the best friend who loved us unconditionally. 

We are stunned at how quickly he left us, and we’re surely going to miss him.   As we drove home in silence we couldn’t help but wonder why these same kinds of rules don’t apply to all the other alpha people in life?  But be that as it may, life, and the memories he left us, will go on.

So instead of a message this week, here are a few quotes to tell you how we feel about losing a cool dog, a close companion, and a real best friend:

“. . . owning a dog always ends with sadness because dogs just don't live as long as people do.” John Grogan, Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog

and:

“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” Roger A. Caras

and:

“When it comes time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.” Henry David Thoreau

and lastly:

“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” Dr. Seuss

Thanks for the memories Willie. 

Stay well!

The Fog

                                   The Fog

I awoke this morning to what looked like another fine summer day. There was a mist coming off the lake at dawn as the warm water met air that had cooled after yesterday’s rain. And before I knew it that mist became a thick fog.

As I sat blinking away the sleep, the growing fog seemed to be pulling me backwards into sleep.  And like the momentary confusion that happens when you’re in a stopped car and the one next to you starts moving, this thick and fog had me momentarily disoriented.  I wasn’t sure if I were awake or asleep….or somewhere in between.

Summer can make you feel that way.  Whether it’s seeing things through a mist or fog, or refracted by the shimmering sunlight, there are signs everywhere of the season: the buzzing of the  insects, the wind blowing through the fields of grass, the dancing light on the water, the twinkle of fireflies, a moon shining through the clouds and then through the trees, the lapping of the water on the shoreline, and the smell of things growing in the yards and fields. These mid-summer days are filled with wild flowers blooming where just yesterday there were none, corn and blueberries and fields of hay growing in front of our eyes, and frogs and other night critters announcing their place in the eco-system.  All of these were crystal clear in my mind’s eye as I stared into that fog.

And I realized that all of this sensory awareness was real as well as magnified by all the things I’d experienced in all my summer’s past.  Our lives are like that: what we see and feel today is shaped by all that we’ve seen and felt before.  And as I looked into that fog I could almost see and feel all the people, places and things from all those years gone by.  I blinked a few times and refocused on today’s fog – and knew that past memories are always just below the surface and shaping all of my senses and experiences today.

My message this week is about using all of our knowledge and experience to be what we want to be:

“We choose what attitudes we have right now. And it’s a continuing choice.” John C. Maxwell

Do you have an attitude?  A question like this most often refers to a negative attitude, but it doesn’t have to.  Your attitude is a composite of all that you are, and based all you’ve learned and experienced in your life. You can use all of that to choose the attitude that others will see: positive and upbeat – the kind others like to be around; challenging and contentious – the kind others like to avoid; neutral and passive – the kind others have a hard time understanding; loud and boisterous – the kind that ends up grating on others’ nerves; or kind and understanding – the kind others want more of.  Each of these, and so many others, are all available for choosing – you just have to think what’s best for you, and then focus on showing the attitude you want others to see.  Remember: you get to make that choice every day, so take the opportunity to choose what’s best for making you be seen as the person you really want to be!

Stay Well!