So this friend's dying has gotten to me. I'm still sorting out how I feel about it.
There's that and there's our being about to go on a six week grand tour of sorts, which may be a kind of milestone for me since 1) I've never done anything quite like it; and 2) it is something made possible by my no longer being full time employed, so it puts a sharp underline on my new status.
Then as part of the organizing for the trip my wife thought we should set up a blog we can post to while we travel. Okay. So that's done. As part of that I sent the link out to the folks who have expressed some interest about our journey and some old friends.
I heard back from one of them quite quickly. A colleague from my old stomping grounds: we had been each other's date of convenience during my single periods in the eighties. We were both divorced, both had kids about the same age--hers two girls, me two boys--and we moved in the same circles. I think I probably had wished at different points that it could have been more as she was quite attractive in a very whitebread kind of way. She was pretty clear it couldn't be and teased me a bit about how many attractive women I always seemed to be with. BTW, it never seemed that way to me. I remember that being a pretty arid time for me.
Anyway she pops back that she is on her was to Texas to marry her high school sweetheart. So there's a change. Originally from that part of the world, she had lived and worked in New England for most of her adult life.
Here's the other piece of this weaving. She was the one who introduced me to my friend who just died. When I came west, she thought he would be a good connection for me, which he was of course.
So weave three lives. We are all about the same age, born right at the beginning of the baby boom, maybe just a bit earlier. Similar careers in the same field, and who had families on about the same arc. Don's girls were adopted and a little younger and as far as I know he was married to the same woman, while Linda and I were both divorced around the same time.
The three lives could be marked as parallel arcs up until right now, when Don's ends, Linda's makes a sharp turn, and mine a slighter turn but quite different than hers or his. The image I think of is like a braided contrail that splits and forks at its apogee.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Significance
So I'm back at this again. I guess it is important to me. A whole lot of my motivation around career and personal life has been around whether I made a difference. I suppose one could argue that the mere fact of my existence requires a positive answer, but you know that's not what I am digging at.
The line of thinking goes something like, so what? There are some 6 billion of you. What possible difference can one in six billion make? Then I think about Sirhan. Without him there might have been some very interesting differences in how things worked out in the last four decades, unless, of course, the regression to the mean is so powerful as to damp out what might have been with RFK.
But still, really? I am but a mote in Brownian motion. When that's burned out who will give a crap? Given what I believe, I certainly won't. Which takes me back to the starting point again.
Inevitably where I net out is where I did in conversation with one of you some months ago. The only thing that I can hope to have done is to have made small differences along the way, just as some along the way have made them for me as I have written about them here. And there are some.
I keep going back to my Sheldon Kopp lines. The relevant one today: "We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that's all there is."
So if we do make a difference to one another along the way, that may be the very best we can do.
I can be sorry for having failed to make as much of a difference as I might have wished for my sons, but there's not much to be done about it now. I did what I knew how. For a few for whom I may not have been the best of friends all of the time, there's no going back to repair those. It is what it is.
Is it significant? Obviously to me in some way or I wouldn't gnaw at it. Is it significant in some larger context? Nope. Nada. Sorry mr. 1/6,000,000,000th.
The line of thinking goes something like, so what? There are some 6 billion of you. What possible difference can one in six billion make? Then I think about Sirhan. Without him there might have been some very interesting differences in how things worked out in the last four decades, unless, of course, the regression to the mean is so powerful as to damp out what might have been with RFK.
But still, really? I am but a mote in Brownian motion. When that's burned out who will give a crap? Given what I believe, I certainly won't. Which takes me back to the starting point again.
Inevitably where I net out is where I did in conversation with one of you some months ago. The only thing that I can hope to have done is to have made small differences along the way, just as some along the way have made them for me as I have written about them here. And there are some.
I keep going back to my Sheldon Kopp lines. The relevant one today: "We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that's all there is."
So if we do make a difference to one another along the way, that may be the very best we can do.
I can be sorry for having failed to make as much of a difference as I might have wished for my sons, but there's not much to be done about it now. I did what I knew how. For a few for whom I may not have been the best of friends all of the time, there's no going back to repair those. It is what it is.
Is it significant? Obviously to me in some way or I wouldn't gnaw at it. Is it significant in some larger context? Nope. Nada. Sorry mr. 1/6,000,000,000th.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Reading the Obits
I don't read the obituaries. My wife does. Odd given that I'm eleven years older, but that is the way it is. So it is unusual that I note the passage of someone I know. It happened a couple of years ago with someone I knew from a writing group I once was part of. I didn't know Sharma well, but she had passed through my life during a brief two year window and then I happened to see her obit. She had used a different name in the writing group so it was really an accident that I had seen her.
Not so this morning. And, yes it was my wife who brought it to my attention this time.
Don Summers, 68, died while on a teaching trip to Vietnam. This one is close. When I first came to Seattle another colleague from Boston suggested I talk with Don. Don was generous with his time and offered some useful suggestions to help me set feet down in the Northwest. He had preceded me by only a couple of years, worked in a senior role with a local bank, had been laid off following a merger (I think) and then set up his own consulting business which is when I met him.
I struggled to get started here. It was during the first Gulf War and everything was on hold. I had few connections in the community and got precious little business consulting. Then the person who connected me to Don, got me in touch with someone else and I got a gig for a year doing outplacement work for a somewhat sleazy low budget outfit. It kept food on the table. Shortly after that, Don suggested that I apply for a job with a local private university where he had designed a executive style program that needed someone to manage it. Because the organization was not particularly well run, things led to a rough patch in our relationship. I was put into the middle by my employer who had decided that Don, who was the lead faculty on the program, was "the problem." The real problem was the administration. There's more to it than that, but let that suffice.
Fast forward a couple of years and I ended up in another much better job, really getting my feet here finally, and I think I reached out. I was doing some research on the construction of identity in middle aged men and it occurred to me that Don would make a good interview. I think we were both about 59 and 60 respectively. He had survived a heart problem and I was just yet to get a cancer diagnosis. As ever, Don was fit and engaged, full of wit and great colleagueship.
We stayed in touch a bit more over the next few years. Had lunch a couple of times near his office at SPU. He invited me and a couple of other friends to be a panel for one of the evening MBA class he was teaching. I was pleased that he thought that well of my abilities and experience. It could easily have gone the other way after we had hit that rough patch, but he was a gracious man. The last time I saw him was at a breakfast he invited me to. It was one of those fill a hotel ballroom deals sponsored by SPU and featured the Governor, Susan Enfield (the interim School Superintendent), and Tavis Smiley as the main speaker. Don was a table captain.
I am beginning to understand why old people often read obituaries, and why I usually don't, though I am glad my wife pointed this one out. Reading about Don made me feel like a small piece of me died. It is as if my existence extends in this world through the physical bodies of the people I know and when one of them passes it is like observing a physical part of me disintegrating.
I have never felt exactly that way about the members of my family passing, with one notable exception, but almost always when it was someone I had made a personal connection with. That goes for the family member. He was the one who had put himself out to make a difference and with whom I had made a connection.
Kind of like a psychological version of Hansen's disease, watching parts drop off. I don't think I'm going to take up reading the obits. I will admit to being thankful that my wife does so that I didn't miss this one.
We are about to take off on a major adventure, traveling in Portugal, Spain, and France for six weeks. I had been resistant to the adventure my wife had suggested, but Don is proclaiming what a silly fool I would be not to go, and even if he's a year younger than me I'd better take his advice.
Not so this morning. And, yes it was my wife who brought it to my attention this time.
Don Summers, 68, died while on a teaching trip to Vietnam. This one is close. When I first came to Seattle another colleague from Boston suggested I talk with Don. Don was generous with his time and offered some useful suggestions to help me set feet down in the Northwest. He had preceded me by only a couple of years, worked in a senior role with a local bank, had been laid off following a merger (I think) and then set up his own consulting business which is when I met him.
I struggled to get started here. It was during the first Gulf War and everything was on hold. I had few connections in the community and got precious little business consulting. Then the person who connected me to Don, got me in touch with someone else and I got a gig for a year doing outplacement work for a somewhat sleazy low budget outfit. It kept food on the table. Shortly after that, Don suggested that I apply for a job with a local private university where he had designed a executive style program that needed someone to manage it. Because the organization was not particularly well run, things led to a rough patch in our relationship. I was put into the middle by my employer who had decided that Don, who was the lead faculty on the program, was "the problem." The real problem was the administration. There's more to it than that, but let that suffice.
Fast forward a couple of years and I ended up in another much better job, really getting my feet here finally, and I think I reached out. I was doing some research on the construction of identity in middle aged men and it occurred to me that Don would make a good interview. I think we were both about 59 and 60 respectively. He had survived a heart problem and I was just yet to get a cancer diagnosis. As ever, Don was fit and engaged, full of wit and great colleagueship.
We stayed in touch a bit more over the next few years. Had lunch a couple of times near his office at SPU. He invited me and a couple of other friends to be a panel for one of the evening MBA class he was teaching. I was pleased that he thought that well of my abilities and experience. It could easily have gone the other way after we had hit that rough patch, but he was a gracious man. The last time I saw him was at a breakfast he invited me to. It was one of those fill a hotel ballroom deals sponsored by SPU and featured the Governor, Susan Enfield (the interim School Superintendent), and Tavis Smiley as the main speaker. Don was a table captain.
I am beginning to understand why old people often read obituaries, and why I usually don't, though I am glad my wife pointed this one out. Reading about Don made me feel like a small piece of me died. It is as if my existence extends in this world through the physical bodies of the people I know and when one of them passes it is like observing a physical part of me disintegrating.
I have never felt exactly that way about the members of my family passing, with one notable exception, but almost always when it was someone I had made a personal connection with. That goes for the family member. He was the one who had put himself out to make a difference and with whom I had made a connection.
Kind of like a psychological version of Hansen's disease, watching parts drop off. I don't think I'm going to take up reading the obits. I will admit to being thankful that my wife does so that I didn't miss this one.
We are about to take off on a major adventure, traveling in Portugal, Spain, and France for six weeks. I had been resistant to the adventure my wife had suggested, but Don is proclaiming what a silly fool I would be not to go, and even if he's a year younger than me I'd better take his advice.
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