Looking for Answers, and Questions

There’s a trick buried in today’s title. So many of us spend our lives finding answers to problems, questions and enigmas. So few of us give much thought to defining the right questions to ask. The latter leads to research and discovery. Those results not only answer the carefully crafted questions, but they lead to formation of additional questions, more research and an unlimited array of progress going into the future.

Unbridled seeking of answers begins with the right questions.

My consulting career came to this conclusion early on. Most of my clients asked how they could succeed in specific ways in the near term. I counseled focusing on the long term to more properly guide their progress forward.

Who did they wish to be in 10 years or 20? What would their industry look like then?  What currents of change would alter their industry? How reliable were those currents of change? Would they be replaced by other agents of change, too? Would a revolutionary shift in methods, outcomes, even services and products replace everything they know today?

Heady questions? You bet! But they need to be asked if we are certain that we are on the journey of being the best business model in the market. That’s what builds success. Long term success. This commitment to the long term prepares us for being alert to what changes we need to adapt to and adopt as well. Being knowledgeable in these matters will make adjusting to the short term a snap.

Short term investments in long term visions build success. It doesn't work in reverse, however. Short term investments for short term results spends a lot of money for little payback in the long run. Only if we can use long term what we are investing in today do the results warrant the expense. A new computer system today will produce the capability tomorrow to adapt to new products and services. It will even create the new products and services. Just remember the transistor. It caused a revolution to occur in nearly every industry. So too their products and services.

I remember desiring a quality turntable for my stereo system. I recall spending premium dollars on stylus and premium head cartridge. Then it was a heavily weighted turntable that had superb motors that were governed precisely for replay speeds.

Remember those days? We spent fortunes to get sparkling sound reproduction. Then came tape decks and cassette players, and finally today’s compact disks. I have yet to find a better reproduction method than CD's and their players.  Of course there are the speakers, and the resulting quest for the best of those!

Technology has changed much of the hardware and software of our lives. We no longer speak over wired phones, or wired networks. The devices are wireless over Wi-Fi networks. Speed of light transmissions make our communications girdle the globe in a nanosecond. So too our TV transmissions and viewing. The transistor opened Pandora’s Box of technology -- the good and the bad! And it was an outcome of research to support military and space activities by the federal government.

Technology has revolutionized automobiles, too. Sound systems. Safety features (brakes, transmissions, back-up cameras, lane encroachment signals, front and rear encroachment signals with responding braking power, electronically controlled ignitions, heating and air conditioning systems, door locks, power windows – the list goes on and on. Hands free phones as well as emergency communications in case of accident (impact originates call, or you do depending upon circumstance), directions by phone, automotive diagnoses by computer and phone, as well as GPS and its the related services.

The cars we drive today are technological wonders. And that doesn't even address materials engineering that strengthen the car while reducing its weight for fuel efficiency and auto pollution controls. Hybrid propulsion models are yet another technological advance we take for granted.

All of this is a result of research and follow-up research begun for different purposes.

What about medical advancements? That’s a whole different area of inquiry and discovery American technology has tackled and continues to do so. Much better diagnostic tools, patient care, and health tracking systems to monitor ups and downs. So much is now deliverable in our homes than in hospitals. So much more is available long distance to areas with sparse clinics, specialties and hospital care. So much technology with so much far reaching results.

Imagine the world with or without technology. Imagine your family or personal life with or without it. And now imagine your career organization or firm with or without that technology.

What other aspects of operations will change overnight or over the long term? How might it impact your life and career?

Finding the right questions is at the heart of all research and learning. It is also the first step in discovering the right answers. Any answers!

February 3, 2015

Being True

Being true to oneself, actually, is the theme of this posting. It is also the over arching theme of this entire blog – View From Here.

I have used the image of journey to describe life. Nowhere better than here is where we discover the roots of that journey. From birth to death is a span of time uncertain, but it is a daily trek through existence, surviving the bad, and sometimes the good, the challenges that test our ability to adapt and adopt and to eventually become the real person we are.

The journey follows a path often not straight. Zigs and zags aplenty! Detours, too! Some of these are long, others short. Each is a test that niggles the real ‘who’ centered in our being. With joy and a leap, the excited who, or ebullient one, emerges. All too often though, the cowardly ‘who’ controls the scene. We shirk full identity. We skirt the truth. We hide in order to get by.

I heard a TED lecture on the internet the other day. The woman presenter was speaking about personal honesty and how that affects the lives of others. Eventually she shared her personal truth of being gay and how hiding that fact had affected her life and those around her. Even further than that, the presenter claims her untruth caused society at large to be untruthful and hurtful.

She wanted to get along with others. She wanted to be respected fully as her whole person. Yet she judged others would not accept her as gay and thus hid that fact from them. Her journey took her to significant friendships including the daughter of a state legislator who, not confronted by gay issues in the past, supported legislation to deny equal access to restaurant services to gay persons. This was a nod to businesses that followed their Christian beliefs and felt serving gays was against their religion.

The legislator might have changed his position on the issue and his vote for hideous legislation had he known gay people and their personal struggles to fit in, as well as the normalness of gay orientation and how it does not deform gay people.

It is hiding the truth that deforms. So our TED presenter acknowledged that she was not truthful, the legislator was truthful to his context but had been denied fuller knowledge because too many gays simply hid who they were – are. How can any of us truly know the world around us if much of its significance is in hiding – whether through politeness, fear or ignorance?

A good question. A very good question.

I was in hiding for decades. At times I hid from myself. It took many years for me to understand I was/am gay. I didn’t want to be gay. There were no role models to guide me along the way. I took that context to mean gay was wrong. Gay was evil and to be shunned. It was not a large leap to deduce that I, therefore, must be evil and shunnable.

Many years of this dark struggle produced a duality in my inner ‘who’. One time I would be the inveterate searcher for facts and knowledge (the inner student), another time I would be the emotionally questioning child, still another time I would be the physically/sexually searching adolescent wondering who he really is.

Not confident enough to ask the right questions, I got by on half truths and half answers.

Decades later I know it is not the answers that matter. It is the questions we ask that matter most. Asking the question, indeed defining the question to be asked, is the hard work that requires honesty and courage. As those questions are formed and asked, we learn more and more who the real ‘who’ is.

I am gay. Reluctantly so given the context of my life. But truly, this reluctance has made me an unreliable truth giver at critical times of my life. Dating women, falling in love, getting married, having children, counseling young people, being a role model (faulty as that has been at times), and finally becoming the whole me. And open to any and all that surrounds me.

Being true to who I am is at the core of a life fully lived. If we have trouble doing that, being that, then we cannot very well expect others to adapt to our unique ‘who’s’ either. It is pretty simple. One becomes knowledgeable and wise by being fully exposed to truth and honest searching for the truth. Hiding any portion of it to anyone keeps them from fully knowing.

So, being gay is not the sin so many assumed it was. Nor is being gay an evil or psychiatric disease. It is a natural sexual orientation present in all of life on the planet from day one. It is not an aberration. It is a statistical fact and very real.

With that statement guiding us, let us be honest with ourselves and each other. And then get on with the work at hand.

There is much to do. It requires honest people in every walk of life to do that work.

I’m gay and can do my share of the work. I’ll even help others do it. Being gay doesn't make me better or different from others. It just is part of me. It ought not have any effect on my value or potential.

So there. Being true is more than being me. It is being us that ultimately matters.

In truth!

February 2, 2015

Thought for the Day

Ponder what is important in your life. Is it the Super Bowl and the social gathering it affords at this time of year? Or is it the people in your life who give your life dimension and meaning?

Think about that this weekend. People or things. Peace of mind or materialistic goods. Place or frame of mind?

Useful soundings from time to time. May this weekend be that for you!

January 31, 2015

What Goes Around

We are fans of HGTV – Home and Garden Television. We watch it during the day. We follow our favorite shows, mostly Fixer Upper from Waco, Texas, House Hunters – both domestic and international, and many other programs. We miss seeing the Kitchen Cousins but have faith they will return soon. Also David Bromstad them first Design Star winner is one of our favorites and hope he will have a new show soon. Then too there is Scott McGillivry Income Property, and John Giddings of Curb Appeal.

All of these shows are inventive, creative and somehow personal. The show hosts are personable and friendly. In someway they allow us to be up close and personal, friends of some kind. They draw out a positive facet or two from within ourselves.

Of course not all guests on the shows are personable or even lovable!  We especially react to the young home buyers who feel everything is too ‘dated’ or passé. And they often feel the price is too high for ‘that’. Hmm. Where have they been one wonders?

A common complaint from these youngsters is ‘too much gold’ when there is no gold in evidence. Brass maybe in the light fixtures and highlights in plumbing fixtures and faucets. Also door knobs and handles are often done in brass. Rather than a style or fashion, brass is an architectural feature. Maybe its popularity has its ups and downs, but as an architectural element it is always in for some contexts. Georgian design requires brass – some shiny bright while others are dulled and matte finish. But brass there is aplenty in early American architecture, 17^th century, 18^th century, even 19^th century designs.

We visited the Habitat for Humanity ‘store’ recently. What a treasure trove of goodies! It seemed like a garage sale on steroids to us. Copious supplies of used lighting fixtures, and much of them brass! Tons of gently used kitchen cabinets, odds and ends, counter tops, plumbing fixtures and much more. Retrofitting a home from these supplies would be fun and easy. And cheap!

Then in today’s press we learned that brass is making a comeback in plumbing fixtures AND lighting, too! Well, imagine that!

Fashion is like fad. It comes and goes. Style remains steady. It is a real component of a real design genre. Popularity of some styles come and go, but really, now, style is mostly an ‘in’ thing.

We like brass fittings. Whether bright or antiqued, brass has a solid heft that says quality and permanence. We are not talking cheap brass, now, but quality brass that shows its character and quality.

Perhaps brushed chrome and nickel fixtures were the fad? Just remember that if brass is permanent, and nickel is a fad, then there is a commodious supply of cheap brass fixtures available to be snapped up cheap. One era’s loss is another’s gain.

Get in a fresh supply of Brasso and soft rags. The brass needs polishing! Thank God we held on to ours.

January 30, 2015

Spying/Life-giving?

Rocky and I have turned into intrepid marathon viewers of recorded TV series. We like those series that may very well be off the air now, but ran successfully for several years. At their time of currency we did not watch for any number of reasons. As we get older we don’t want current shows because we are avoiding incessant advertising.

Yes, the marathon reruns are our own to program. We get the Netflix spooling download and watch at our convenience. Sometimes 6 shows in a row; other times only one or two. All without ads. All with continuity of plot well and fully played, connected. It makes sense this way. One wonders how the plots could possibly be understood with ad breaks?

So we've plodded our way through these shows in the past two years: Grey’s Anatomy; Bones; Crossing Jordan; House; Blue Bloods; Numbers; Modern Family; and others. You see some of the trajectory or theme here – mysteries, who-dun-its, medical mysteries. Currently we are well into the fourth season of CSI-New York.

One reality we have noticed is the speed the actors demonstrate in solving the current mystery. They think on their feet very quickly. They reference computer systems for data bases and consider possibilities and eliminate the unlikely options quickly. They have massive data archives at their fingertips. Technology on steroids is working for them! Only at times of heightened drama do they experience tech failures or temporary break downs. It fits into their plot, don't you know?

How unlike my real life! I can’t get the phone to finish making the connection. The battery dies in mid conversation. The data base fails to respond or demonstrates enormous gaps of information not yet entered to the system. That’s how technology interacts with my life. Not perfectly as in the TV shows. This is my drama!

And then there is the other issue unspoken – data gathering to fill the data bases in the first place.

All the history in the world has not yet been coded and entered to computer data bases. A lot has been, but not all. And not likely to be either. That is a reality we must accept and deal with.

Meanwhile data archives are building – license plates, GPS signals of our whereabouts from cell phones and accident recorders in our automobiles, public traffic cameras, crime surveillance cameras, private security cameras, networks of video data collected and shared. Then too we have the National Security Agency’s (NSA) and military data collectors in so many fine points of our daily lives. We do not know the extent of these data collections and interactions with other systems.

On TV they are instant, knowable and addressable. The detective keys in queries, shifts some assumptions and instantly knows the fact that was once elusive. He now knows the missing piece that solves the mystery.

If we are fans of mystery shows and police crime fighting shows, then we understand the need for the public sector to know the private sector data.

But a public policy issue is deeply embedded in this discussion. Who has the right to gather this data? For what end? How private must the data be maintained and not shared in order to protect the innocent? How costly is this gathering of bits and pieces of our lives? How valuable is this information? How useful is it for the common good of society? And what is its cost on the privacy of the people?

What balance is maintained in such matters? How do we protect and serve the masses while protecting and serving the individual?

A big question. No easy answer.

Public policy is like that. The common good weighed in the balance with private good. How do we decide? And at what cost?

It is easy for a pundit to deliver a sound bite here. For the more serious minded, it is not easy to utter a single word. Perhaps the latter is what we should be listening to.

January 29, 2015

  

Living Fully

Each day we live out our routine. Each day we have time gaps that allow us to do something different than on other days. But few of us alter our routines or make conscious choice to live differently or more fully than we did on other days. 

It’s OK. It’s how we humans live our lives. Routine helps us get through less pleasant tasks and obstacles. We do what we have to do. That’s the way life is. You sleep in a bed, you make it in the morning (or not!). You like to eat; you have either dishes to wash or a diner’s tab to pay. It is what it is.

For a moment, however, I want the reader to stop and cool it. I want you to pay attention to the words that follow. Fair enough?  Hear me out!

Let’s pretend for a few moments that you've just run into a major problem. You can’t ignore it. Maybe it’s a family member who has taken ill quite suddenly and a trip to the emergency room is the best option. You drop everything. You have little time to react and/or take care of other issues. You do what you have to do and make your way to the car and then off to the hospital.

At the hospital, you submit to the prevailing protocol (bureaucracy?) and let the process work. You follow orders. You watch the goings on around you. You are part of the goings on. You are a player with a role to act out; you are not directing the action. Your routine is broken. This is someone else’s field of play.

At these moments we wonder what is going on and how it will affect me, our lives, our future. We conjure the worst ends. We reject those. Now becomes a moment of value. Dear; precise somehow.  We want things to return to normal. But then the conjured thought re-enters our thinking. What if? What if things changed at this moment to the worst outcome? What then do we do with our lives? Or life?

Those moments have seminal impact. The ‘now’ is changed to a new paradigm and we see life differently.

If we have our old life back what will we do with it? Will we enjoy it more? Or just differently? Or will we slip back into the old routines and habits?

A disciplined life includes deep thinking, I think. It allows us the freedom to see things differently from time to time and to ‘try on’ new thoughts, viewpoints and practices. We grow in those moments. We become more fully human and experience things differently.

This is exciting stuff! This is exploration and discovery and change all in the same breath.

How sad there are those who cannot participate in life in this way. They see the good and bad in immutable pairings that cannot be changed. They are managed by this hierarchy. They are controlled, too. Depression is a ‘must’, you see; they have the dark abyss calling and they enter it, with some trepidation but also with familiarity. They have been here before. It is an odd home but it is home none the same. The down slope of life calls these people; and they give in to it because they know no other way to live.

We live with these people in all of our walkways of life. They are our work colleagues, our family members, neighbors, friends and fellow members of church or other organizations. They appear and disappear from time to time, not fully present or a part of us. We begin to see the cracks between their normal and ours. Then they disappear for a day, a week, maybe a month or more.

They do reappear. Sometimes sadder; sometimes wiser. They have been on a special journey whereof we know nothing.

We continue our exploration and discovery journey. We are living life openly and expectantly.

They do as well but in a cramped, dark and special place that cannot be shared. There is a wall between us, subtle at times but stark at other times. This is mental illness. This is the face of an America we do not often admit to.

Strange and lonely. But very real.

How do we help them?

January 28, 2015

Patterned Memories

Do others experience this sort of thing? A movement, routine nearly on a daily basis, triggers a moment once experienced years ago?

For example my morning shave recalls a number of ‘packaged’ memories. At one moment of the razor’s facial journey I remember a morning in Durango, Colorado when preparing for the day with my family. We were in a motel and were getting ready to go for breakfast, then on to a train ride on the Silverton/Durango Railroad. It was a beautiful day in late summer. The sky was blue and the air calm and comfortable. We were excited about the train tour. We were in the final week of a 3-week vacation which would take us on a total trip of nearly 7000 miles when finished. All by mini van and trekking through deserts high and low, mountainous regions (three of them!) and a lot of coastal sight seeing in California as well.

That morning in Durango was not super special. But the memory remains. Always triggered by a brief moment of the daily shave.

Another example: positioning the shower curtain so it will not leak shower spray, I’m bending down and sealing the curtain against the shower wall and I recall a small home we considered buying in Oregon, Illinois about two years ago. I have no idea why I think of that house or its shower at that exact repeated motion. But I do! Of course that gives me the urge to take a drive to Oregon, Illinois! For no good reason other than that past house hunting trip was an adventure in pursuit of a future life outside metro Chicago, and the prospect of country living, new friends, and new routines.

Rides during that period of our lives was focused on finding the next phase of our life. It was a bittersweet time; we didn't really want to leave our home, neighborhood and community, but financial realities said we needed to. So we looked far and wide for possibilities. We even considered Salt Lake City, for God’s sake. Not a happy place for a gay couple! Mormons don’t care for our kind.

Changing life phases is drudgery if you don’t capture the excitement of potential in it. Although not always welcome, a life change is an adventure and exciting. It is a pulling toward a new future. I find that interesting and energy boosting.

Two specific memories – well formed and often repeated. Nearly always triggered by the same motions and routines. Odd or interesting or both? Do other folks experience this sort of thing.

If I put my mind to it I will most likely recall more such triggers and memories. Certain aromas take me back many years to a time I lived in another region of the country. The sound of traffic, the smell of passing traffic, the waft of a breeze…that sort of thing triggers a memory of a morning in Pasadena, California.

Or passing a diner at a specific time of day will place me in a small western town once visited on a family vacation – road trip – when I was 9 years old. Very specific memory. Repeated in nearly identical fashion. From one very specific trigger.

This is not déjà vu. It is trigger and recall. Carbon copy memory of a long ago moment.

Why that trigger? Why that particular memory? What made the moment in past time so special to be remembered in this way? I don’t recall the specialness now. I doubt it was special, just a memory of a time of contentment and calm, perhaps?

If anyone has these same experiences, let me know. And if anyone in the readership has an explanation of this phenomenon, please share with the rest of us?

For now I am not in a panic. I see this as normal. I’m not calling a psychiatrist anytime soon. Or might I?

January 27, 2015