To have a goal and miss it is not failure. To not have goals & dreams; or worse yet, to have them and not strive for their attainment, however, is IMHO a failure. To spectate your way through life, sitting back & doing little but pointing out whatever faults you can find in someone else, does not make you look any better in anyone’s eyes – not even your own I might suppose. With the possible exception of yourself, no one of any intelligence is deceived by your misdirection – your “look at their mistakes and not mine”, but a rising tide lifts all ships.

Unless you’re “a natural”, to be good at something you must first have to be willing to be bad at it, to realize that you’re going to make mistakes and learn from them. Nobody really wants to make them, but mistakes are just that, mis-takes. They’re part of the learning process and as long as we’re willing to learn from them they’ll serve their useful purpose. As long as we keep trying to bury them, we’ll continue to think they never existed, repeat them, and we’ll not get from them that which was intended. Continue Reading »

I’ve been around long enough to know that people generally aren’t in our lives for the whole term and I am fortunate enough in my professional career to currently be part of a team that’s led by a wealth of experience and practical knowledge unlike anything the average individual gets to experience – or chooses to notice – in their regular work-a-day life. One could say that I am in the right place at the right time.

Industry has always been improved upon by one generation standing on the shoulders of the previous, learning from their triumphs and mistakes and indebted to them for their efforts whatever the result. We can not get better by repeatedly re-inventing the proverbial wheel, nor will we contribute one iota to successive generations’ improvement by obliviously repeating the same thoughtless actions day after day, noticing only years or decades later that a lifetime has passed by and we’ve done nothing other than create an existence that did little more than “pay bills” for useless material possessions.

Times are few and far between, indeed, when one crosses paths with a single mentor who will pass down the benefit of their experiences to an open ear and possibly spare us a few of their struggles, but to be placed in the midst of a group of these individuals, all working towards a common goal, is an opportunity that far exceeds anything anyone could possibly hope for in a productive working career. It’s the stuff the best memories are made of.

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In a passage from Plato’s mentor, Socrates tells about a group of men shackled in a cave, a fire burning behind them as they face the wall, able to see only the shadows of objects projected in front of them. The men perceive the shadows as reality, for this is all they have seen their entire lives.

One man, however, is freed by a guard and is released from the cave. When he first steps into the real world, he is blinded by the brightness of daylight, but gradually as his eyes adjust, he begins to see the true nature of the world around him. It becomes clear that the cave is not reality at all. With his new-found knowledge, he rushes back to his friends to share this discovery, but the men only scoff at him; and some react with anger, believing that there is no other reality than the shadows in front of them. Continue Reading »

I don’t remember the first time I heard this old Taoist tale, but it’s worth sharing:

Two hunters, out in the early morning, stopped to admire a raging river. To their horror, they saw a limp body coming downstream towards them, repeatedly appearing and then being sucked back down into the churning waters. As the body started floating closer to the river’s edge, the two men scurried to find something with which to grab at it.

As the body was washing up on the banks, they got within feet of it to retreive it, but were instead awestruck to see the body straighten up, shake off the water and walk out towards them.

In astonishment, they asked, “Old Man, How did you survive?! How did you not drown?!”

The old man grinned, bowed to them and replied,
“It is easy. When the water goes up, you go up. And you go down when the water goes down.”