Indispensable or Legacy

I find it curious that people want to be indispensable; that they would want to be so important, so key to any organization that, should they leave, that organization’s survival would be in jeopardy.  Not only is it short sighted, it runs contrary to how our nation itself developed, both politically and industrially.

Imagine, if you will, the difference in direction our country might have taken based on the choices of two men:

First, in the political realm, let us consider George Washington.  He was in the unique position to help define forever more the direction our country would grow and evolve and he recognized this.  To his friend James Madison he wrote “To the first of everything, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent.  It is devoutly wished on my part that these precedents be fixed on true principles.”   He knew that every step he made, every decision, every act would be looked at hence as the baseline and foundation for every future step, decision, and act.  Imagine, if you will, if President Washington, or any of the other founding fathers felt like he needed to be indispensible.  I think it unlikely that the new democracy would have flourished.  In that day and age, our representatives in congress felt a duty and a desire to serve the greater good.  It was not about serving their own good.  It was not about being the lynchpin, that once removed, caused the system to collapse like a house of cards.  Their intent was to forge a lasting government that would survive the test of time, long after they were dead and gone.  That was their legacy. 

Now that we have the country well and truly built on sound principles, let’s look at another man. He was not a politician, but along with his contemporaries, he gave us the foundations for industry and several inventions that dramatically changed lives.  Thomas Edison spent a good bit of his time building companies around his inventions.  His research and development complex in West Orange New Jersey became a vast industrial complex manufacturing and working in tandem with Edison’s laboratory.   At its peak, the facility employed as many as 10,000 people. As time went on, he left more and more of the day to day work of running the businesses to others as he pursued other interests, including other inventions.  He had built a company that could run without him babysitting it every step of the way.  He had built a legacy.

It was in George Washington’s nature to lead.  It was in Thomas Edison’s nature to invent.   When I look around now at industry leaders, I don’t see any similarities.  I see a need to be indispensible, whether as a football player, CEO, or political servant.  I see a hunger for money, power, and notoriety at the expense of everyone else.

I see politicians, wrapping themselves in the flag while spending ungodly sums of money, insulting those of us who put them there (and are supplying the funds they’re spending),  collecting salaries and retirement that only the privileged few can come close, and telling us that without them, we will descend into anarchy.

 I see iron-fisted CEOs, company owners, managers, team “leaders” ( a term which I use quite loosely here) who micromanage every decision, every step, every aspect of their companies.  These hard-driving individuals are driving their organizations right into the ground at an astonishing rate.

In recent times, I’ve seen very few, most notably Richard Branson and Herb Kelleher, who seemed to defy this trend.  They, I believe, understand the fundamental basics: create a sound business model, hire the best people you can find to run it, pay them a fair wage, and then get the hell out of their way and watch success happen.

I grow increasingly weary of political and corporate claims about how we would all be lost without them leading the way out of the darkness, all while they are hoarding the matches.  Maybe they could just light a candle and pass it on – like so many strong and successful leaders before them. 

Lunch with Channing

We've eaten sandwiches for lunch all week, and being a little tired of them, I thought we'd run out for something quick.  So I ask Channing, who is five, where she wants to eat lunch and she immediately responds with Jack in the Box.

“What do you want from there?” I ask her.

“Fried cheese. With ranch.”

I see it as my parental duty to forestall the clogging of her arteries until she is at least ten.   “You can’t have fried cheese for lunch, you’ll need to pick something else.”

“Can we go to Sonic?” she asks, referring to the drive-in style fast food joint.

“Okay, what do you want at Sonic.”

“Cheese sticks. With ranch. And french  fries.”

I sprained my eyes in the ensuing eyeball roll.  I don't think her arteries are going to make it to ten.

Blindfolded at the Crossroads

Some days I am unsettled and disjointed. My crystal ball is murky. My faith, fate, and future are in question, if only to me. I am blindfolded at the crossroads again with no idea which path to take.

Remember the story of the gladiator who must choose between two doors? Behind one is freedom and behind the other is a lion ready to kill him. The situation is complicated by the woman who tells him which one he should choose, but even more so because he does not really know if he can trust his life to her.

We are all, I believe, like that gladiator. The choices we make are heavily influenced by those around us. What we don’t know is if the decision that they want us to make is for our benefit or for theirs. Consider a parent helping their son or daughter select classes for high school. The parent undeniably wants what’s best for their child, but other things come into play. Mom really wants her daughter to be a doctor, while dad thinks engineering is the way to go. Dad was the captain of the high school football team and wants to relive his glory days again through his son. Pragmatic Mom wants excellent grades for a better shot at college scholarships to help ease the financial burden. Can Junior and Juniorette trust their lives to that parental advice?

I find that my family is guilty too. Mom thinks it would be great fun for Reed to be in the FFA because he loves animals so much, but he’s a really a motor head. Dad wants him to learn to fly, but his backside is firmly planted in the seats of ground bound vehicles. Channing is too young for such nonsense, but Mom's pretty sure horses figure prominently in her future.  Dad hides his wallet.

What advice on the future should we give? On the one hand, I wish I knew then, what I know now – that every decision from your first day of high school forward either expands or limits your choices going forward. On the other hand, what I really wish was that someone could have helped me define realistic goals – without the parental baggage – and helped me determine for myself the direction I wanted to take.

Flash forward some decades, and here I am trying to decide what path I need to take from where I now stand. I have, for many years, wandered all over the sky looking for the right place to land. Sometimes I just make a quick fuel stop as that particular airstrip doesn’t appeal to me as a long term prospect. Occasionally I do find a nice place to land and spend some time there. But invariably I get restless after a while and feel the need to move on. I’ve never really found the one place I belong. And all the helpful people around me give advice – “go here and do this, I really liked it and you will too,” or go over there and do that, I always wished I had done that.” Despite their best intentions, it is always colored with their own desires and experiences which are so foreign to my own.

So here I stand, still blindfolded, the paths into dim futures yet unseen, knowing I am the only one who can choose my next direction. My worst fear? Decision by indecision.

To start with...

I'd like to be able to say that I will post reliably and regularly about things that matter.  I'd like to, but I can't.  I am neither reliable, nor regular (in writing, that is), and I can't imagine that eveything I post will matter to anyone but me.  I can tell you this, though:  I won't bore you with what I had for dinner last night, unless it is material to the topic discussed, or what I wore, or drop names, or tell you every last detail of my existance.  I don't want that much information about me out  in the world anyway. 

My intent is to bore you with things that are either burning inside my brain, or that I thing are just too much fun not to share.

As for the title of the blog, it is almost random.  I tried several different titles, but most of them were already taken, although not necessarily used.  I like shadows, and clouds, and airplanes, amongst other things.  I like to look up at the sky; I am utterly facinated by the never-ending movements and illusions of clouds.  I like to look down and see the same movements and illusions echoed on the ground. And I like to fly.  But this blog isn't about those things.  Okay, sometimes it is.