June 1, 2010—“The Beach”

Everyone has heard the expression, “you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone” right? Heck, many of us have lived it more times than we care to recount to ourselves and others. Well, in my opinion if you muttered this phrase to yourself then you have gone through life with more than a few regrets.

However, this entry is not about regrets; it’s about living IN THE MOMENT. Trying hard to appreciate life as it happens to you, because whether you like it, or not once that moment passes, it’s gone forever, alive only in your memory. Recently, I was lucky enough to experience one of those wonderful moments, well actually it was closer to a whole day. It wasn’t perfect mind you, as I capsized the sailboat multiple times and as usual my mouth “wrote a few checks my body just couldn’t cash.” Those missteps aside, it truly was a great day at the beach.

One of the great constant joys in my life has been “The Beach” (not that awful Leonardo DiCaprio movie) but that geological landform along the shoreline of an ocean, sea or sometimes even large lake. I grew up a stone’s throw from the beach in New Jersey, USA. Summers there were idyllic and make up the majority of the moments I treasure from my childhood. Right now, the beach I am referring to is along the Persian Gulf (sorry, ARABIAN Gulf apparently they can’t seem to agree on that either). Down by our compound’s yacht club (using the term loosely).

We were lucky enough to settle in with a real party planning crew who thought of and planned for just about every contingency imaginable. When I say EVERYTHING you could have ever wanted or needed was there for this picnic, I am not kidding… Picture a Williams-Sonoma, Toys R Us and Chili’s all rolled up into one. Being the slackers we are, we brought… hummus. (This actually might have been considered original in the WASPy circles we used to travel in back home, but in this neck of the wood is the very definition of passé.)

It was a day of food, folks and fun-celebrating each other’s company and just living life. Let me say that again because it’s important-JUST LIVING LIFE. Not a second of that day on the beach was spent worrying about tomorrow, fretting over yesterday; it spent just enjoying the moment for all it’s worth. One of the few things I learned at my last job (more on that in the future) was from their corporate cultural training. It was very extensive and actually worked. It was a multi-day course that could basically be boiled-down to one phrase-“Be Here Now.” It’s a great way to live your life. I see people around me do it each and every day with the greatest of ease, and boy are they blessed.

It’s these new friends that I want to stop and thank. (They know who they are, I guess I could “change the names to protect the innocent” or in this case the very guilty). Albert Schweitzer, the famous medical missionary in Africa once said, “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” Many of the people I have met here “on camp” have lit flames in me already-to be a better father, to be a better husband, to be a better friend, to be a better athlete, to be a better professional, to be a better person. Already, I owe them a lot.

Most of us can’t help but take things for granted, especially the people closest to us. We assume that good times will roll on and on and that people will never leave us. It’s an assumption that causes us to devalue the people we hold so dear. Eventually, sometimes for specific reasons or just because of relationship “drift” they slip away. It could be a quick, easy departure or a long, slow agonizing divorce that poisons everything between you. Regardless of which it is, when they do leave you'll realize that you wished that you valued them every second they were with you.

Live in the moment as much as possible and hold dear to you the people that matter most. I promise you will be happier. I know I am.

May 31, 2010 – “Some Kind of Wonderful”

Wow, two days in a row, now that is cause for celebration! I thought I would stick with the John Hughes/80s teen angst themed movies and talk about my own foibles, faults, and failures and boy is that a long list…

Some Kind of Wonderful is set against the strict social hierarchy of an American public high school. In a nutshell, a young tomboy, Watts, finds her feelings for her best friend, Keith, run deeper than just friendship when he gets a date with the most popular girl in school: unfortunately, the girl's old boyfriend, who is from the rich section of town, is unable to let go of her, and plans to get back at Keith. This is a movie about teenagers, which is also about life, about insecurity, about rejection, about learning to grow. But essentially it’s a "don't judge a book by its cover"(DJABBIC) story. Something I tend to do all too often, and to those closest to me.

Lots of people and I am no exception tend to determine the worth of something or someone based on its appearance. Come on people, if everyone were really being honest we would admit that most of us make these kind of snap judgments ALL THE TIME. In fact, the research says we do it in less than 7 seconds! Think about that, we can ‘size people up’ faster than it takes us to turn on our computers. The science here says that most of us have honed our instincts to the point that we ‘trust our gut’ over 90% of the time. Here’s the problem with my gut (besides being big and flabby), my gut tends to make three critical errors in this process time and time again:

1. I tend to make unfounded judgments during my sizing up process. It really should be a somewhat data-driven process.
2. Sometimes I find it hard to keep my results private (my mouth gets me into trouble). The rule should always be—keep it to yourself. Results from the sizing up process are often personal and based on one’s own ability to process information about how they perceive people.
3. At times I tend to confuse ‘the sizing up process’ with my own personal envious feelings and/or displays of inadequacy as an individual. A shrink would call this ‘projecting’ (attributing your own repressed thoughts to someone else).

So DJABBIC is probably one of the most common expressions used in the English language to convey vanity. It is often used in modern culture, to publically indentify people that just ‘don't seem to fit in.’ Let’s face it; it’s all about fitting in, right? There is a great line in Some Kind of Wonderful that goes, “You can't tell a book by its cover. No, but you can tell how much it's gonna cost you.” There it is… money.

This brings me to another one of my favorite quotes from actor/author Spike Milligan, “Money can't buy you friends, but it does get you a better class of enemy.” Money you see screws EVERYTHING up. Money makes the world go ‘round right? Money is how athletes have entourages and cult-like followings. Money is how our gut gets thrown off when making our ‘sizing up’ decisions. And money is how the geek gets the girl. (Anyone who has been to a High School reunion has seen firsthand the impact of money-it’s from all those Microsoft, Google, or Apple stock options right?) These class battles are everywhere: cities vs. suburbs, private schools vs. public, and the powerful vs. the under-privileged.

You see, Some Kind of Wonderful is fundamentally about socio-economic class distinctions. It’s about kids from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ versus the preps who live in the gated communities up in the hills. The best example of this in my opinion is “The Outsiders” a classic coming-of-age novel by S. E. Hinton (also a fairly good movie).

I mention this, because where I am now, half-way around the world living the bubble-life that is the expatriate camp existence these class distinctions create an unlikely duality. You see here, class is dichotomous-it means everything and nothing at the same time. More to come on this… Oh yes, MUCH MORE…

May 30, 2010 -“The Breakfast Club”

Almost forty days and forty nights after my last attempt to restart my blog, I am going to try again. If at first you don’t succeed try, try again. (Heck, new month-new effort.)

Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about one of my generation’s (that would be Gen ‘X’ not ‘Y’) seminal movies, “The Breakfast Club.” Sure there are others, but let’s face it, if you are in your late 30s or 40s right now, then you probably saw a few John Hughes movies before you were eighteen! The Breakfast Club continues to be a classic because the issues presented in the movie about social class and acceptance remains hot topics not just for high school students but adults of all ages.

The reason my mind keeps wandering back to John Bender and the gang from the fictional town of Shermer, Illinois is that life, you see, is high school. My theory has always been that EVERYONE can personally relate to one or more of the characters. (Yes you can conduct the same exercise for the characters in Star Wars too. And no, everyone can’t get to be Han Solo either.) Interestingly enough, when you live overseas in a somewhat artificial (one might say surreal) environment, you might as well have stepped into a time machine and been transported back to those four fun-filled years at High School.

Now don’t get me wrong, I liked HS (at least what I can remember of it). But there is still no better lasting visual reminder of how human beings rationally, routinely and robustly divide into self-selected groups or cliques. Admit it; it’s all right there on display at lunchtime in the cafeteria. Here on “camp” it is absolutely no different. People cluster together around like interests – sports, scrapbooking, Scrabble, etc. But interestingly enough, the ties that bind them together are so strong, they rarely wander outside their immediate social circle for very long. The world, it seems, has very few “floaters.”

I have always liked “floating.” You get to meet more people, expand your horizons, and life rarely gets boring. Let’s remember that life is always about clever dialogue and interpersonal questions. The downside is, you tend to “connect” with people a little less, and unfortunately it’s harder to improve your skills/talents in each area, because you are simply unable to focus your energies in specific areas. (Of course it could be that you are simply out-of-shape and lost ANY athletic ability you ever had - RE: Softball)

So life = high school. Cliques = clubs or groups. What, if anything should be done about it? I have often thought a great research experiment about social situations would be to use an elevator, which is one place where people from different social groups could be forced to bond. My hypothesis is this; an elevator on a normal day has hundreds of people go in and out of it without exchanging a single word. But if that same elevator suddenly stops due to technical problems, well suddenly the group is mentally forced to start talking to each other. Consider a foreign expatriate camp a very large elevator.

Now back to our story…as anyone who has seen The Breakfast Club knows, the movie ends with the fade up of a terrific song – “Don't You (Forget About Me)" – by Simple Minds; the “club” going their separate ways (Will they ever interact again outside this artificial environment? Acknowledge each other in the hallway? Sit together in the lunchroom?); and a voice-over by Anthony Michael Hall reading the group’s letter or essay to Principal Richard "Dick" Vernon. The end letter is as follows:

Brian Johnson: Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong...but we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...
Andrew Clark: ...and an athlete...
Allison Reynolds: ...and a basket case...
Claire Standish: ...a princess...
John Bender: ...and a criminal...
Brian Johnson: Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

My question to you is, “Which one are you?”