Category Archives: Family

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16 New Things I’m Thankful For (2013 Edition)

With Thanksgiving on the horizon, it’s time again to take a step back from our daily grind and consider the rejuvenating goodness that dots the landscape all around us.  Last year I kicked off my own blogging tradition with a post that featured 16 Things I’m Thankful For.  Here in reasonably simplicity that speaks without much preamble is my itemized, non-prioritized, yet still incomplete version for this year:

1) I can stop saying someday I am going to write a book.  I did that.  Many of you have been exceptionally gracious in your embrace of it.  The reviews are heartening, and the emails I am getting from people telling me they chuckled, teared up, or are living through similar challenges tell me the words are starting to meander to outer circles.  To share these words is pure fulfillment.

2) Health care is going to be accessible to a lot more people who desperately need it.  Yes, the ACA website was botched and Obamacare v1.0 is not exactly what the doctor ordered, but we have started on a long overdue journey of empathy and caring that is befitting of our prosperity.  In a decade the launch will be no more than a footnoted glitch, and wellness will be broadly understood as a civil right.

3) U.S. armed forces previously on combat duty are largely out of Iraq and have not fired a shot in Syria.  Hopefully we are turning the corner.  Give Peace a Chance.

4) Our new little rescue pooch (Kole) is teaching our senior bigger dog (Ellie) a lot of new tricks.  I have the pictures to prove it.  Dogs are good for each other, and good for the soul.  I learn a lot from these mutts, and they don’t much complain when I read dialogue to them.

5) I have not opened a bad bottle of Rioja this year, and not paid more than $20 retail for the privilege.  The values in Spanish wines remain astounding.

6) My amazing wife continues to change the world by bringing English language skills to college students studying in the U.S. from abroad who love her for it.  She is so good at what she does, it is humbling.

7) The Dodgers made it to the NLCS and got as close to the World Series as they have in 25 years.  Wait ’til next year.

8) Good Men Project is at record traffic levels and building a tremendous community.  Our CEO, Lisa Hickey, is heroic.  Our team of editors, staff writers, and independent contributors is tackling complex issues with equal parts gravitas and good humor.  Next year we focus on video, mobile, and subscriptions in addition to new categories, better sponsorships, and broader syndication.

9) Thrift Books is growing, growing, growing.  Our new President, Mike Ward, is 100% focused on People, Products, Profits, in that order.  All three are really good.  We are blessed, we are expanding, and we are green!

10) The feedback I receive from our CTI Executive Coaching students gives me reason to smile ongoing.  They are taking the message of People, Products, Profits into corporations all over the world, helping executives perform better with a grounded human approach that unlocks creativity and makes innovation happen.  Teaching this workshop has been a rare opportunity.  Hearing back from our coaches in the field reminds me that business can always be made better and more sane.

11) The FDA just banned trans fats.  We won’t miss them, not even a little bit.  Fewer heart attacks, longer lives, healthier families.

12) Trans-Siberian Orchestra returns this year to Southern California.  My wife and I missed the last two holiday tours (although we did see Night Castle live) and we are going the day after Thanksgiving.  #TSOtime

13) Our Celebrating Children event at Dodger Stadium raised over $150,000 to help support the kids and families we serve.  Click on the image at the bottom of this post for a little video that tells Hector’s Story and you’ll get an idea why this work matters as much as it does.  And hey, we got to meet Dodger Great Maury Wills, who was on hand to share stories of Chavez Ravine past.

14) I am working on my next writing project with one of the most talented editor/publishers a fellow could ever hope to welcome into his life.  And the project after that.  And the one after that.  So hey, go buy the one that’s out there so I can come tour your neighborhood on his nickel guilt free.

15) Two of my close friends beat nasty forms of cancer this year.  They were brave, resilient, noble in their struggle, and triumphant.  They taught me a lot, more than I could have imagined.  Raise a glass of Rioja, you earned it!

16) I’m not hungry.  I’m not thirsty.  I’m not sick.  I have a comfortable place to live, plenty of clothes to wear, time to read and share ideas.  I wish everyone on earth could type those words.  The basics are still too much a rarity.  We would all do well to remember that before we utter the words, “I want…”

Happy Thanksgiving 2013, whether you share the holiday in the United States or somewhere else in the world in spirit.  Celebrate the joys that are yours.  Earn Each Moment.

Hector

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The Best of 75 Years

We just celebrated my father’s 75th birthday.  At dinner I asked him to note the most profound change he had seen in his lifetime, technology or otherwise.  I found his answer surprising, but not really.

Before the punchline, a little background and perspective.  Surely you can do the math in your head, but to be 75 now you had to be born after the full resolution of World War I, but before the full onset of World War II.  The United States was at peace, but not yet a Super Power.  There were no televisions in homes; radio dominated news and entertainment, respectively starring Edward R. Murrow and The Lone Ranger.  The suburbs as we know them had not really come into being, largely because our highway system was nascent.  Automobiles were becoming common, but with gasoline prices crossing a dime a gallon, middle class families got by with a single vehicle that was mostly for work commuting.  Flushing toilets were common in cities, but once you got out of cities, you could easily find yourself at a country home with a detached outhouse.  The stock market crash was still pretty fresh in people’s minds, and the Great Depression was not over.

What followed in the ensuing three-quarters of a century was nothing short of astonishing.  Adolf Hitler, a single individual of unimaginably maniacal influence, brought forth the Holocaust and World War II, ultimately defeated by an alliance that championed freedom and democracy as global standards.  We saw the invention of nuclear power and its expression in the form of a deployed atomic bomb, the first true weapon of mass destruction.  We saw the birth of Israel, the end of the British Empire, the birth of Social Security, and the end of the Great Depression.

In the United States we then experienced immense growth in our economy, reputation, and standard of living.  The Interstate Highway system connected our nation in all directions for easy travel and access.  Affordable single family homes in the suburbs became realities with the growth of tracts, sometimes referred to as Levittowns after their New York model in Nassau County.  Radio gave way to black and white television, initially dominated by local programming (a good deal of it arena wrestling), soon after dominated by coast to coast live network broadcasts, eventually in color.  Commercial air flight became real, first short hop prop planes with very cold cabins, then pressurized jetliners flying coast to coast in a quarter of a day (with decent free food even in coach).  McDonald’s offered the same hamburger at about the same price in almost every state, going to college became accessible to the middle class, and entry-level business jobs for big emerging brand factories like P&G, Kraft, and Pillsbury were plentiful.  There was Elvis, The Beatles, stereo cabinets for record collections, and revolving credit accessed via imprinted plastic cards to help pay for it all.

We fought a war with fighter jets over Korea and with Napalm in Vietnam.  We stockpiled ICBMs in an arms race with the Soviet Union — they beat us into manned space flight, we beat them into orbit and to the moon.  We saw personal computers take over our desks — first at work, then at home — and typewriters carted off to recycling.  We got cell phones initially the size of briefcases, then the size of candy bars.  We got 100 channels of cable TV, then 1000 channels of satellite TV.  We got the Internet.  We saw the dotcom bubble burst, then we got iPods, iPhones, and iPads.  ATMs and debit cards have almost replaced cash, we don’t really need stock brokers or travel agents anymore, and talking about organ transplants is only tempered by available donors.  Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Amazon sell us pretty much everything we need at real-time comparable prices, and we can travel to Russia or China without any real restrictions.

It’s a brave new world.  It’s astonishing, truly astonishing, all that progress in one lifetime, a brilliant, beautiful lifetime still unfolding.

And yet none of that was Dad’s response to what had changed most.  We talked about all of it, late into the night, sometimes with a chuckle, sometimes with misty confusion about the timeline.  It was baffling how much he had seen, how vividly he could remember the primitive then, how normal the world around him with all its developments seemed now.

Yet with all that in mind, here’s what Dad thought had most changed — people’s acceptance of others.

Oh, that.

When Dad was a child, it just seemed so normal that most people stayed among people most like themselves.  Ethnic groups lived in ethnic neighborhoods.  People of the same color lived together, occasionally interacted in the workplace, but seldom mixed freely in bars or restaurants.  Social and cultural diversity were occasional topics of intelligent discussion, but in everyday life for most people were in terribly short supply.  Interracial and interreligious marriage was a very big deal, no matter where you lived — it happened, but it was not the norm.  When Dad traveled to and from Florida in the days before Rosa Parks, there really were separate drinking fountains, separate lunch counters, separate universities.  Jackie Robinson signed his minor league contract in 1945 and walked on the field with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.  Separate but Equal was not ruled out by law until 1954.  That was change that really started the times a’ changing.

In 1960 John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic President of the United States.  Cesar Chavez co-founded what would become the UFW with Dolores Huerta in 1962.  In 1964 the first Asian American woman, Patsy Mink, was elected to Congress.  In 1965 the reverent Sandy Koufax declined the honor of pitching in the first game of the World Series because it coincided with the most sacred of Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur.  Jump forward to 2008 and the American people elected Barack Obama as President, on whose watch we quickly sent “don’t ask don’t tell” to the scrap heap of divisiveness.  None of these milestones went unacknowledged, but with each the comfort level of individuals to be among those of different backgrounds became increasingly more common, increasingly more a cultural norm.

I don’t think anyone today can call our work done, but look around and you will see a heck of a work in progress.  Our friends, our families, our colleagues, we are not uniform.  We have seen a parade of civil rights, religious rights, gender rights, human rights.  We are a blended society not because we are forced to be, but because it is wonderful and enjoyable and natural to do so.  To study and embrace that which is different from our own backgrounds is to celebrate diversity as a shared value that can never be taken for granted, but increasingly warrants less special attention as it becomes more is than isn’t — less lacking, more present.  That’s what Dad sees as most different from the days when it was not so, and hopefully what children today will never think twice about as they move through their next 75 years.

That’s good change, with a lot to do still ahead, but a world that looks different and Thinks Different because it is the very reflection of progress.  We mix, we share our heritage, we worry less how we are different, we worry more about our common bonds in humanity.

That was a birthday dinner worth remembering, a real lesson in progress for us younger folks, a message forever.

Thanks, Dad.  Once again, Happy 75th.  You remembered well.  You shared even better.

Live Together In Peace.

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Are We Thankful Enough?

The following is an edited version of a note I sent to my staff a few years ago.  I started to draft a new version, but then remembered how similar this was in theme:

Each year about this time I like to take a few minutes to share some of my gratitude with colleagues. Given the industry in which we work, it is sometimes hard to separate our business interests in the holiday season from our own more personal sense of human enrichment, but let me try. True enough, the holidays can be seen through the eyes of materialism, and indeed given our dependence and expectations on retail behavior this time of year, it is too easy to allow oneself to “Get Scrooged” without seeing some of the more enlightened generosity that is all around us. Forgive me, Shelley and I attended the annual tour of Trans-Siberian Orchestra this week, so I am in a highly festive and particularly reflective frame of mind. The work we do for our customers and each other is much more than a feeding of the virtual cash register for tabulation by the National Retail Federation. The work we do has meaning because we have chosen to share this time together and infuse it with meaning. It is there if you want to see it, and it is always there for me in each of your own creative contributions and team celebrations.

Let me start with the basics, I am thankful for all of the wonderful people around me each day. As I always say, I have good days and bad days but I never have boring days. The work we do is interesting because the people we share it with are universally interesting. Each day I see your passion expand, your thinking blossom, your communication flourish, and your expectations of yourselves and each other rise to new heights. This isn’t just invigorating for me, it is sustenance. There is reason to come to work each day as long as there is purpose in the day’s activity, and sometimes that purpose is simply rooted in the ability to learn something new. I can honestly share with you that I learn something new from the imagination that surrounds us each day, and I have no sense that has likelihood of disappointing me anytime soon.

I am thankful for the good fortune of being alive at this precise moment in history. To truly appreciate and understand the power of the Internet is to have lived without it for so many years before. I used to say this about the personal computer, that to discover it as an artist’s palette was for me not a continuation of history, but a reinvention of history. Just as many of our parents were born into a world without television, the advancement in democracy of being able to see news from around the world each day was almost a miracle, as was radio before that, and widely available print before that. To be alive today at the inception of the digital age is to me a gift as well as an invitation to have a profound impact on establishing a set of norms that are as evolutionary as they are unknown. Our younger kids see texting and mobile communications and even social networking as quite ordinary, if you were here before them, my sense is you share my awe in the privilege of codifying the extraordinary.

This takes me to my third thank you for the year, appreciation for being able to have even the smallest impact on reaching out to change our world. Our technology has impact, our creativity is unbounded, and our business relationships are honest and crafted around the principle of win-win-win: a win for us is a win for our partners and a win for our customers. You may not always get to work in a culture that embraces notions of empowerment, I certainly have had my own ups and downs over the years in various places I have worked. Yet more than that, we get do fun things like embrace Make-A-Wish kids, give thousands of prize dollars away to families who need it, offer great discounts to families who might not get by without them, help people make the world slightly greener by encouraging them not to drive somewhere if they can shop at home. We also save moms time, lots of time, time that can be better spent with their families enjoying more moments than they might otherwise spend away from home on errands and chores. No, it’s not the work of Mother Theresa, but it is very positive and uplifting, especially when you read all those comments each day from people saying they “love” what we do for them. That’s a powerful word, and each morning I read it in our customer comments, I know we are doing something right.

So I wonder, are we thankful enough? Can we make Thanksgiving something more than a time to power-eat and start charging up our credit cards on the big sales days that follow?  As we enjoy two days away from the office, what is it that we can reflect on that keeps us coming to the office? Thanks for our incomes – I am sure there are varying levels of satisfaction there, but to have a regular income is still unfortunately rare in world of six billion people. Thanks for the people who sit next to us, or in front of us, or in the next room over – again, I am sure there are some around us whom you like more than others, but then again, I am confident that every one of us is within talking distance of at least one or two people we really appreciate, and as I said, don’t take that as a given, it will not always be the case. Encouragement to pursue excellence – OK, I know there are cynics out there who say this is just work-speak, but I promise you it is not, we have created an environment where we expect you to do your best and create work that makes you immensely proud, you’d be missing an important moment if you didn’t embrace and enjoy that, a lot of places it really is just work-speak. And finally, memories and future foundations – the accomplishments we enjoy, the education we give and receive from each other, the stories we are creating to enjoy at a later date, all of that is worth a moment of meditation; time escapes us in precious illusion, and though you are likely to forget this project or that deadline in the years out, if you look around you and thank your colleagues from time to time for even the smallest favor, you just might be making history, as that could become a moment you will share for years to come.

Freedom is such a difficult concept to appreciate because most of us have always known it, it is in the fabric of our society. Yet again, look around, is it the norm or a gift we can cherish? As we keep the women and men who serve us in uniform at the top of our thoughts this time of year, perhaps we can also reflect on just what it means to have the lives that we do, where we can pursue career aspirations and friendships and family and creative contributions to our world all at the same time. As I type these words, it all seems like a pretty big deal to me. I wouldn’t take it for granted. To be thankful is to truly enjoy all that we have, and as I look around our company, I see that we all have so much. I am never sure that I can personally be thankful enough.

I hope you are all enjoying this special time of year, it comes with a lot of work stress and family stress and Scrooge-Stress! Yet the journey is the reward, so let’s do our best to enjoy it and share it and where it makes sense, be thankful. You’d be surprised, it really can be a magical world when you look for the magic in each of the people around you. I see it, so very clearly!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Originally published: 11/22/07

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The Very Long and Winding Road

The Longevity Project
Book by Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin
WSJ Review March 9, 2011 by Laura Landro

How To Keep Going and Going

I have not read the whole book, but the summary in this review is intriguing.  It appears this is more observation than advice, but it is hard to argue with a capsule that includes:

“The best childhood predictor of longevity, it turns out, is a quality best defined as conscientiousness: ‘the often complex pattern of persistence, prudence, hard work, close involvement with friends and communities’ that produces a well-organized person who is ‘somewhat obsessive and not at all carefree.'”

And…

“The respondents to the study who fared best in the longevity sweepstakes tended to have a fairly high level of physical activity, a habit of giving back to the community, a thriving and long-running career, and a healthy marriage and family life.  They summoned resilience against reverses and challenges— including divorce, loss of a spouse, career upsets and war trauma.”

Posting this today for me seems especially appropriate and timely, a day that comes once each year to remind us of that certain ALMOST inescapable milestone!  In the words of Mr. Spock, “Live Long and Prosper.”