Greatest Speech I Ever Heard

I'm generally not the type of person who goes in for motivational speakers. I find them trite and formulaic and a bit too flashy for my taste. Consequently I have avoided them for most of my life, with one notable exception. I was in Atlanta, probably twenty years ago, attending a Million Dollar Round Table meeting...something else I have tried to avoid for most of my life. I was with my friend, Doug Greenwood and we had both signed up to go to an evening breakout session with some guy named Jim Rohn. I can't remember why we had chosen him, since I had never heard of the man, but nevertheless, there we were at 7:00 in the evening walking into a standing room only ballroom with two thousand other people. We were stunned at the size of the crowd and surprised at the buzz flying around in the atmosphere as we waited. I kept hearing the descriptor, great man, wafting in the air. I remember thinking, who is this guy?

He walked out onto the small stage to thunderous applause. Apparently, we were amongst a pack of Jim Rohn groupies, I thought. I immediately noticed how small and unimpressive he was except for a shock of white hair, mostly on the sides of his head. His attraction came from somewhere besides his looks. Then I noticed that there was no podium. He carried nothing in his hands, no notes of any kind. There was no TelePrompTer. The only prop anywhere to be found was an old school easel holding one of those giant flip pads of plain white paper. He began his talk by walking up to the easel and drawing a sail boat and a couple of swooping lines to indicate windy conditions. Then he stepped away and turned to all of us and spoke these words:

"It's not the blowing of the wind that matters, it's the setting of the sail."

Thus began an incredible fireside chat filled to the brim with the wisdom of the ages. This was a man with almost Godly gifts of story telling who stood alone and almost immobile at the front of a room filled with two thousand type A personalities without a single note and held us in the palm of his hand for the better part of two hours. It may sound a bit overwrought, but that speech changed my life. The things I learned that night have stayed with me. I used many of his insights to teach teenagers at my church for ten years. I have applied lessons learned there to my professional no personl life ever since I got back home. The funny thing was, even though I didn't take any notes, I remember almost everything he said. Some of the highlights:

Success is something you attract by the person you become.

If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.

Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better.

You are ultimately the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

No one else "makes us angry." We make ourselves angry when we surrender control of our attitude.

Stand guard at the door of your mind.

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

Things don't cost too much. You just can't afford them!

Be strong, but not rude; kind, but not weak; bold, but no bully; thoughtful, but not lazy; humble, but not timid; have humor, without folly.


He delivered all of this wisdom seemingly from memory while making it all seem like a spontaneous conversation with not a syllable rehearsed. Every so often he would go off in an odd direction almost like an aside to himself, like he was thinking out loud. One of the greatest such asides was when he was trying to make the point of how crucial education was to the creation of a well rounded person. Then this came out of his mouth:

You know what the worst thing in life would be? Waking up when you're forty years old and realizing that you're stupid. I mean, being broke is bad,  but stupid? That's the worst. Being broke AND stupid would be doubly bad...only thing that would make it worse would be if you were sick. Sick, broke and stupid. Awful! About as far as you can fall unless you're ugly. Ugly, sick, broke and stupid! Life's most negative scenario!!!

The hall was laughing hysterically and I'm not even sure he was trying to be funny. It was more like he was just talking to himself, trying to work it out. Regardless, it was a magical moment.

I was reminded the other day that Mr. Rohn had died a few years back. He was only 79, I was told. But, what a 79 years it was. He left a piece of himself inside everyone who ever heard him speak. I'm told he spoke to over 40 million people during his life. I was one of them on a hot and humid night in Atlanta twenty years ago. I still remember it, all these years later.

Words matter. Good words, fine words, uplifting, inspiring words matter eternally.

A Facebook Critique

I have been an active participant in the social experiment known as Facebook for a very long time now. I find it a fascinating place to interact with large numbers of people. It has allowed me to keep up with hundreds of old acquaintances who otherwise I would have long ago lost contact with. It has delivered a treasure trove of hilarious dog videos to my doorstep, costing me nothing. It has flooded me with a million memes, some hysterical, some simply stupid. It has exasperated me with the often ignorant political musings of people who have never once in their entire lives had to pay an employee and yet profess to know exactly what the minimum wage should be. But hey...that's what Facebook is for, the uninhibited flowering of opinion. Asking those opinions to be informed is asking the impossible. So, I take the bitter with the sweet. For the most part, I thoroughly enjoy my daily excursions onto Mark Zuckerberg's playground.

Having said all of that, there are a few irritants which must be dealt with. Although what irritates me might not irritate you, diversity of irritation being the spice of life and all. But here goes...

The biggest problem with Facebook is that far too many people suffer from the flawed impression that large numbers of people actually give a flying *€#<?! about:

1. What you had for breakfast
2. How tired you are of this bad weather
3. What you had for lunch
4. The fact that you just "checked in" at the Waldorf, Maryland Jiffy Lube
5. What you had for dinner

But, even more annoying than these staples is the dreaded Type "Amen" if you agree declarations that usually come with some sappy picture of a white clapboard country church. Saints preserve us!

Then, the worst of all, and we all have them...that friend starving for affirmation who begins some long screed with the threat, "I'm about to find out who my real friends are," then lays out his or her crisis with the demand that if we are really their friend we will copy and paste said screed onto our  Facebook wall as tribute. Thanks, but there's enough self-absorption run amok in this world without me spreading yours around. Emotional blackmail is no less annoying just because it comes with cute emojis via the internet. Think I'll pass.

But, hey, keep those awesome puppy videos coming, people!!

My Bracket

Yes. I filled out a bracket. Me and fifty million of my fellow Americans sat down for ten minutes and made 61 snap decisions based on nothing more than the unscientific urgings of instinct. This one cost me twenty bucks and is run by our office bookie, Bland Weaver. Three or four years ago, I won the thing. Most years I'm middle of the pack.

There once was a time when I followed college basketball. I would watch a dozen or so games during the regular season, and read up on the fortunes of my local teams (UR, UVA, VT and VCU). But, not so much anymore.

Ok, so let me explain my methodology. When you have actually watched not one single game in its entirety all season, and know virtually nothing about all but a handful of teams, how does one go about making picks? I always start with the 16-1 matchup and pick the number one seed, since an upset there has never happened. Then I look for all of the local teams and pick all of them except UVA. Why? Mostly because it is my firm belief that there exists nowhere in the universe a university as overrated as Mr. Jefferson's school. Besides, their coach, Tony Bennett is frankly entirely too handsome to be a basketball coach. It's just not right. Then I go on to the matchups where I have literally no information. Perfect example of this...Purdue vs. Vermont. Frankly, it would require at least three boilermakers to force me to watch this game. I picked Purdue because I had no idea that anyone in Vermont even played basketball. Or how about Oregon vs. Iona? Seriously? Iona? They named a college after my fourth grade teacher?

Here are a list of the major upsets that I picked:

UNC Wilmington over UVA
Florida Gulf Coast over Florida
Nevada over Iowa State
Rhode Island over Creighton

That's it. Four upsets. I guess I'm a front runner.

I did notice that this year's bracket sheet comes courtesy of Jiffy Lube, a perfectly legal business enterprise which happily attaches its name to what amounts to a criminal enterprise whereby businesses throughout the nation are transformed into illegal wagering parlors in clear violation of every gambling statute on the books. The cops would do something about this wanton law breaking, but they are all watching the games!

Worst. Job. Ever.

I stumbled across a story yesterday that I have never heard of happening, and immediately wondered how it could be possible for it to never have happened before. Ever get that feeling? Yeah, me neither. Until yesterday. What am I talking about? Well, I just may have uncovered the very worst job in America that nobody has ever heard of.

I read it in the Washington Post. Early in Monday's Senate session towards the end of Senator Mitch McConnell's opening remarks, it was revealed that the Senate stenographer had collapsed. The unidentified woman had just keeled over right there on the floor of the Senate not twenty feet from the man. Senator McConnell is said to have remarked, "Oh, my goodness." A brief recess was declared as the poor woman was revived and taken to the hospital for observation. The video from C-SPAN shows the woman slowly teetering to her right, then collapsing head first onto the Senatorial carpet accompanied by a loud thud. How can this possibly be the first time this has happened? I mean, what are the odds?

Imagine for a moment that your job is to preserve for posterity every word that proceeds from the mouths of 100 of the most pompous windbags in America. Think about that...every utterance from the likes of Mitch McConnell and Church Schumer, everytime one of them opens their pie holes, you have to be there, manning your front row seat, typing every word into a machine. You alone have to bear witness to the oratorical stylings of the first blonde-haired, blue-eyed Native American Senator, the self righteous musings of the wild-eyed Vermont Socialist, the nasal dronings of the curly haired windbag from Kentucky. Five days a week, eight hours a day you have to type out classic exchanges like this:

"If it pleases the chair, I would like to yield the floor and grant the remainder of my time to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of North Dakota."

"The gentlemen from North Dakota is recognized."

"I would like to thank the distinguished gentlemen from the great State of New Hampshire for yielding his time and will gladly yield back the floor for him to revise and extend his remarks shortly..."

You're damn right the poor woman collapsed!

We are constantly told about the thousands of jobs that Americans just won't do. We are told that some disagreeable work is beneath us. This is why we need cheap foreign labor. Well, I am here to tell you, the collapsed woman laying out cold, spread eagle in the well of the United States Senate should stand as a dramatic refutation of such nonsense. Here is a woman, an American woman, who stands for eight hours a day listening and recording the most inane, inconsequential men and women spout the most inane and inconsequential rhetoric known to be uttered anywhere in the civilized world. This is her job.

You think you got problems??

My Weirdness Cell

Every so often, I become detached from reality. Some of you are probably thinking, "Well, that explains a lot!" Luckily, these detachments don't last long, and require no therapy or chemical intercession to remedy. Eventually it goes away and all is back to normal. It has been this way for as long as I can remember. How to describe the sensation?

It's as if I separate from myself and float up to the ceiling, and watch my life being lived down below, trying to figure out which view is correct. Sounds more serious than it actually is. It's more like a short period of acute awareness of normally unseen or unnoticed things. Suddenly, it's as if each day to day thing that I never ordinarily notice becomes the singular focus of my attention. The squeaking door, the ticking clock, that troublesome tag hanging from the bottom of the recliner, the strange way that dead leaves gather in the narrow, bricked gap by the front steps. After several days of this hyper attentive focus, life blends back into clarity, as if nothing ever happened.

During these days, I always feel like writing, but I can never begin. Where to start? How to explain? Nothing can compete with it, this temporal, third person existence. It always eventually sends me scurrying for the great old writers. I dust off something by CS Lewis or GK Chesterton. It helps to read something deep and wise, the Proverbs, Shakespeare. Luckily for me and those who depend on me, these episodes are infrequent and of short, spasmodic duration and serve as nothing more than a fresh way to look at the world for a day or so. No harm, no foul.

I have often wondered what the trigger mechanism might be. Hearing a particular song? Eating Pam's incredibly delicious meatloaf? Or maybe there's a random weirdness cell flowing through my bloodstream that occasionally stalls on his route through my brain, and until he shakes free and flows through, my perception gets heightened. Whether or not such a thing is biologically possible is another story, of course, but it's as good an explanation as any at the moment.

Here's a great example of how it works. The other day I was driving in South Carolina and happened upon a freshly disked field covered by probably 500 seagulls. This field was at least 40 miles from the ocean, but there they all were busy pecking the muddy soil with their hooked beaks unaware how far they were from home. For the next hour I thought of nothing but their flapping wings and muddy talons. I couldn't shake the image of a field of seagulls until I was nearly at Fayetteville. You try thinking of nothing but seagulls for over an hour. It's not as easy as I make it sound!

Not to worry, this latest episode has passed and now another won't come for six months or so. I'm back to the relentless clarity of reality, the big picture firmly in front of me, all the minutia back where it belongs...in the background.

A Dead Thing

South Carolina highway 9 leaving Myrtle Beach is like withdrawing from something. It's a divided highway in every sense of the word. The cars and trucks loaded down with the accoutrements of vacation life flow into town with such eagerness and purpose, then limp out of town worn, spent, exhausted. After ten miles or so the vacation-kitschy shops and huts begin to thin out. Fewer t-shirt shops, vegetable stands and tacky gift huts.

Suddenly, I saw a dead thing. A golf course, abandoned, gone to seed. The white painted brick gate elegantly sloping away from the entrance in both directions like wings proclaiming with black letters...lack Bear, the giant cursive B probably stolen by college kids and adorning the wall behind the bar at a frat house somewhere. A memory comes to mind of playing a round here twenty years ago when it was new and bustling with cigar smoking men in loud pants. Now it was dead.

I wondered what could possibly have happened. It was so beautiful when it was new. It was pitched as a sure thing by some sharp man in an Armani suit around a conference room table. He spoke of the unique qualities of the design, the flawless team that had been assembled to oversee the project. The investors could hardly wait for him to finish so they could write their checks.

But now it looks like a moonscape, all browns and grays, tall billowy weeds of cat tails, ragweed mixed in with the purple traces of wild alfalfa. I saw a block of blue wood with an iron stake through it pointing at the tops of trees where once a tee box stood. Here there was a rusted ball washer. There a faded hole sign diagramming the contours of what used to be a finely trimmed fairway but now looked like a minefield.

I thought of a story my Dad told me about an obnoxious churchman who, admiring his neighbor's garden, commented, "what a fine garden the Lord has given you to tend..." The neighbor, hands gnarled and stained by toil replied, "think so? You should have seen this garden when the Lord had it by himself."

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. "There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end leads to death." The golfing market became saturated. Too many options available, too many competitors. The flawless team never saw it coming. Now, 18 fiberglass poles with colorful flags were slowly decomposing in a landfill, 18 holes and 18 cups scattered throughout the property serving no purpose now except as a home for weeds.

Eventually, someone will come along with an idea. A new Armani suit will stand at the head of a polished table speaking of unique things. But this time, the hint of death will hover in the room, mental images of this barren landscape will enter the minds of investors. It will be a harder sell.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

A Two Dog Story

This afternoon, I spent some time on the beach. The place was largely deserted except for maybe a dozen college kids about fifty yards up the beach. Although it was clear and warm, it was also very windy and the wind swept down the beach from where the kids were, amplifying their voices. I heard a couple of loud female squeals(am I allowed to say this?),  and the word Wiggles. I glanced up the beach to see what was going on and saw an older woman with a little dog on a leash. The two of them had drawn a crowd. After a while they went on their way, headed towards me. When they got close, "Wiggles" made a beeline for me...

This is truly a horrible picture, since Miss Wiggles was far more adorable than this photograph. She was stunning, with one blue eye and one brown one and couldn't get enough of me. Her owner, a woman in her mid 60's told me that Wiggles can always tell when she meets a dog lover. She told me she didn't even have to ask me if I had a dog, because Wiggles doesn't care for people who don't have dogs! Without prompting, she told me the story. Her husband of 40 years had recently passed away unexpectedly. She was beside herself with grief. A friend suggested that she get a dog. Wiggles was a rescue, two days away from being put down. She's had her for nearly a year now and can't imagine what she would have done had they not found each other. As I watched the two of them disappear into the distance, they stopped at every child, every adult who wanted to meet her, and nearly everyone did. I thought to myself...who rescued whom?

Then, I found this on the internet...

Meet Air Force Sergeant Kyle Smith and his dog Bodza. They served four tours of duty together until 2014 when Bodza retired from the military to become Kyle's real life dog. Recently, Bodza, a German Shepherd, had been diagnosed with a degenerative disorder from which there would be no recovery. It was then that Kyle had to make the toughest decision of his life. When he had Bodza put down, he was sure to find an American flag to properly honor this noble animal. It is difficult to look at this picture without feeling the full measure of sorrow and grief, of how very difficult it must have been to say goodbye to such a friend, loyal and true.

The next time Lucy wakes us up in the middle of the night shaking on the bed because, I don't know, because a leaf fell from a tree too loudly, I'll remember Wiggles and Bodza...and squeeze her back extra tight.