Life observations

Change

David Harkins
Photo by David Harkins

The work I do causes me to think a lot about how and why culture changes, how businesses change to respond to cultural change and how we, as individuals, adjust engagement and consumption behavior in reaction to an external disruption–that change in our normal state–when it is forced upon us. Throughout my career, I have helped many companies facilitate change, and the most important thing I’ve learned from it all is most of us hate change because it is usually something we are forced to react to, rather than participate in. This is especially true in our workplaces, with the businesses we deal with, and even with our favorite products. If you need an example, consider “New Coke,” or the attempt by GAP to change its logo.

I think everyone realizes change is constant and there is no rational choice but to embrace it, evolve with it, or at least find a way to adapt to the impact it has on our work. Embracing, evolving, or adapting is how most of us manage change in our personal lives, too. Although, we probably manage change in our business and professional lives much easier than we do in our personal lives.

My friend, Wendy Lou, believes most of us just want someone to change with us. I believe this, too, and I think this is why a change in business and professional environments, as painful as it is, can feel much easier for us than personal change. While each of us may approach change differently based on our background and life experiences, we typically experience workplace change with colleagues who are all moving, together, in the same direction. Change is much easier to navigate and appreciate if others are with us on the journey.

In our personal lives, we typically tackle change, at least self-change, alone and this is precisely why such change can be difficult. When we need, or desire, change of our own it’s often self-driven or created by an internal disruption and not directly caused by external forces. When we have people in our lives who are capable of and willing to change with us, we can grow together. If not, then, unfortunately, we will grow apart.

Facilitating life change is intensely personal. After all, not everyone experiences change the same way, or at the same rate. Unlike in the work or business world, we are not all moving in the same direction or toward the same goal, at least not at the same time, in our personal lives. While others might empathize and support us on our journey, no one will truly understand our new path because they will navigate the unique twists and turns of their own path at a different pace.

Change is inevitable. Accepting our own need to change and evolve is an especially difficult, but necessary part of what it means to be human. Acknowledging that we may need to experience personal change alone surfaces the undeniable, and sometimes painful, recognition that we are solely responsible for who we are, who we will become, and the happiness we choose to uncover in the process of living our own lives.

Poetry

Life’s Rebirth

David Harkins

I watched you grow for nearly a year,
three hundred fifty-seven days to be exact
from conception, stretching, then growing,
then stretching again, showing yourself more
and more with each iteration.

Your birth brought warm hugs and toothy grins
from your new family and I, from a distance, watched
for signs of your distress, quietly
moving amid the happy laughter, hoping
to go unnoticed as I cradled you,
and calmed your cries.

One hundred-forty people, more, or less, saw
your first steps forward, offering oohs
and aahs while I weaved quickly out in front,
and then behind, removing obstacles, ready
for your first tear-inducing tumble.

In three days time, the family left, raining joyful tears
in appreciation of you, their souls filled with love and pain,
a deep, achy sadness from leaving you to blossom,
in their absence, another year, maybe two,
before returning to see how you have grown,
and stretched, and grown again.

We waved good-bye, you and me, before
I tucked you into rest, for a while,
to dream of courage and creativity, brimming-over
in future lives, and all because your first breath,
your tiny, tiny, breath did everything, or maybe just enough,
to bring the family together.

As I left you to rest, I stopped to look at you again,
and in the dark silence I knew, my heart
had seen your heart, too, in stolen glances
through those unknown fractures your birth
created in my soul, as the beauty
of your existence caused my distraction.

I turned out the light and walked away, leaving
you to dream, to become what you need to become,
while I watch quietly, for a year, not two, for you
to stretch, and grow, and stretch again, just enough,
to turn on the light, open the door,
and tell me it’s  time to begin, again.

© 2013, David L. Harkins

A little self-reflection, Favorites

Mortgaging castles

David Harkins

Yesterday I was reminded my body has an expiration date. I know I will die someday, but the dreamer who drives my soul doesn’t like to think of such things. The statistician in charge of my brain, on the other hand, does expiration mitigation calculations thousands of times per day. I just don’t like the reminders from the outside world.

While I remain hopeful for at least fifty-one more years of life, I recognize living to be 100 with a sound mind and body is an unlikely possibility, especially since both are already questionable. Despite the fact I aggressively manage my health, there are hundreds of non-health related reasons that could end my life well before my planned expiration date. This is troubling to me because I still have things to do, people to see, places to go, and trouble to cause. I don’t want to run out of time before I’ve accomplished it all.

My arrival at middle age a few years ago came with a piece of baggage labeled, “oppressive sense of mortality.” The luggage is scuffed, tattered, and covered with stickers from travels around the world. Its hinges are worn from the constant opening and closing. Bungee cords hook together over latches that no longer have the strength to hold the baggage closed. It’s ugly, this baggage, and still I’m compelled to look inside for whatever answers it might hold.

I’ve learned from my far too frequent peeks inside that my first twenty-four years of life were for learning the basics for living, and my last twenty-five years were for creating a life. The baggage shows my future, too, swirling amongst all of my hopes, dreams, and plans—those I’ve accomplished and those I now wonder if I ever will accomplish— without a clear direction or any certainty of duration.

Perhaps the most important thing the baggage has shown me is while the past is clear, the future is always uncertain. I’m reminded that although I am not now, who I will become, I am also no longer who I once was—the big dreamer with a lifetime of opportunities. The luxury of time is no longer on my side.

I still dream the big dreams and I still have things to do, people to see, places to go, and of course, trouble to cause. I’ve just realized the dreams I had then—the dreams of a young man—are no longer the dreams I need, or frankly want. The seconds of life are far more precious now and I don’t want to waste them on aspirations I know are completely unrealistic or unattainable.

I have many unfinished castles in the sky today. The construction stopped some time ago and the workers have gone home for good. What remains of those castles was mortgaged to pay for the daily happiness I get from living more of my life in the moment and much less of it with my head in the clouds.

Favorites, Life observations

Technicolor® memories

David Harkins

It never occurred to me when I was younger that I might so easily remember the many details of my life experiences once I reached middle age.

I remember things I didn’t consciously commit to memory, but somehow I’ve retained them nonetheless. For example, my first day of elementary school; the time I insisted on tasting Crisco® because I was sure it was whipped cream, or; the first time I held a girl’s hand.

I certainly didn’t think I would remember my first telephone number and almost every number since; the theme of my 9th grade dance, or; the beautiful owner of the bright smile and infectious giggle who surprised me with a welcome, yet unexpected, midnight kiss as we rang in 1982.

For most people, it’s easy to remember a high school or college graduation, the first job, the first car, marriage, children, or retirement because these life events or “Memory Moments,” as I call them, are really known as episodic memory and are a key aspect of our personal identities. Memory Moments are similar to those “Kodak® Moments” we see inside theme parks, except we use our brain instead of a camera to capture snapshots of our lives.

For me, every day of my life is like a series of these Memory Moments. A single day is not just twenty-four hours of time; it’s a collection of little stories that I unconsciously make note of and file away for future reference. I love stories and I’m such a visual person that my brain seems to hold onto memories as short movies of my life that it allows me to play-back at will inside my head. All I need do is recall the correct reel to locate a memory.

While I know there’s no guarantee my memories won’t fade, or simply be lost to time, my hope is I’ll always be able to recall those many cherished memories and continue to create new ones as I get older. I’d like to believe that my brain is hedging its bets against future losses based on the sheer volume of memories it allows me to recall now. There’s memory safety in these numbers. At least, this is what I tell myself.

Most of us live our lives in the blur of time that occurs between the memories of our life events. For better or worse, nearly every day of my life becomes a life event that’s captured in living Technicolor® and stored for future showings.

My life has very little of the blur.

I prefer it this way.

______

Photo Credit::Technicolor kiss by pbump

Stories from the road

The power in knowing

David Harkins

Her favorite doll was Red Fraggle. Red received extra special care after surgery, too. Note the bandages.

I don’t share this story often. But, it has been on my mind lately and a message exchange with a friend this evening made me think it’s time to share it in writing. This is the streamlined version.

In the fall of 1991, my 18-month-old daughter began to tilt her head a little to one side after a long car trip. At first it looked like muscle stiffness from the ride, but a few weeks later she started having difficulty maintaining her balance and then she stopped walking.

Her regular pediatrician didn’t seem too concerned, but her mother and I knew something was wrong. Our next stop was an orthopedic surgeon and although he didn’t find any muscular or skeletal abnormalities, he agreed that something was going on. He recommended a second opinion from different pediatrician, one whom within moments of seeing her saw pressure within her eyes and admitted her to the hospital for an MRI.

A neurologist confirmed our fear a few hours later—a golf-ball-sized tumor in the right ventricle of her brain. A neurosurgeon arrived the next morning to prepare us for surgery and to talk about options for ongoing treatments. In his words, “I have not ever removed a tumor this size, from this part of the brain that was not malignant.”

The surgery took nearly eight hours.

When the surgeon came into the recovery room, we were relieved to learn the tumor was benign—a Choroid Plexus Papilloma—and he had reduced it to the size of pea, successfully cut-off its blood supply in hopes of killing it completely over time.

Five days later, she came home from the hospital. After three days at home, a high-fever took us back to the hospital late one night.

After hours in the emergency room and multiple tests, a young intern successfully diagnosed her with meningitis. She was immediately transported to the Children’s Hospital across town where intensivists and infectious disease specialists converged on her room. We waited for several hours in the waiting room before the doctors shared, her meningitis was caused by the Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterium, and they had never successfully treated an adult with this strain of bacteria, let alone a child.

Six weeks in an intensive care unit with many touch-and-go-moments, a shunt, hours of physical therapy, and another shunt two months later, finally put her on the road to recovery. There were difficult times as she grew up but today at 22, she’s a college student and learning to drive. She’s kind-hearted, determined, and a truly amazing young woman who strives to overcome the challenges life sets before her every day with a smile. She knows her limitations, but more importantly, she knows what she’s capable of achieving.

Life is not always easy.

Still, knowing and understanding our own personal limitations today should not limit who we become tomorrow. Instead, armed with this knowledge we should consider ourselves empowered to find new ways to achieve success and happiness in our lives. Best of all, we understand that we should not define ourselves, or be defined by others, on assumptions of what we cannot do; we do it anyway, just differently than everyone else.

Knowing such things about ourselves emboldens us and allows us to live, love, and pursue happiness on our own terms.

I can’t think of any better way to live. Can you?

____

Her favorite doll at the time was Red Fraggle from Fraggle Rock. The picture above shows Red in the hospital bed. Red received extra special care after surgery, too. Note the bandages on her head and hand.

It got me to thinkin', Life observations

You are not now, who you will become

David Harkins

Not long ago I sat in the bleachers looking down on a class of eighth-grade students taking their seats for a middle school graduation. They walked into the room in alphabetical order, but it was easy to spot the jocks, the geeks, the nerds, the goths, the cheerleaders, the mean girls, and the band kids not by what they wore, but by the way they carried themselves. As they took their seats, I wondered what they were thinking about as they marked this milestone in their life.

Were they thinking about going to high school? I was certain most were. Many of them probably had chosen a college, selected a career, and planned the size of their future family. I imagined when they thought of themselves as adults they simply saw an adult-version of who they were on this day. This self-awareness, if they possessed it at that time, had a far greater potential to be life limiting than they surely realized.

I’m sure they didn’t understand that each of us should constantly be growing.

I can’t imagine now that any of them really knew how every-day living would shape them far beyond the vision they had of themselves that day, or how each person they would encounter in their lives—from that day forward—would help them become, or in some cases make them, different people.

We do become much different people as we grow older and not just in the physical sense. Our hopes change, and so do our dreams. Our goals, achievements, memories, and feelings each have a different meaning than they did when were younger. I like to think we get a few gifts, too, as we add the years: We all gain experience, many of us gain wisdom, and some us are fortunate enough to earn a little more respect, if not by our accomplishments, most certainly by what we have endured.

I hope that we’ve found a wider sense of our own purpose, too.

Somewhere along the way, if we have listened closely to life’s teachings, we should have also learned that while our lives are ours to live as we see fit, we are most fulfilled when we share our lives with each other. I have always believed that some people come into our lives to teach us, while others come to learn from us. We will encounter very few people who can balance the teaching-learning scale and we we do find them, we should make sure we never let them leave. Of course, we have to balance their scales, too.

Here’s a secret I’ve learned: We are defined not by the events of our lives, but by the people whom we have known.

The people we meet, the people we choose to invite into our lives, the people we love, and the people we lose; all of them make us who we are and they never stop coming or going as long as we’re breathing. No matter how old we are at this very moment, we are not now, who we will become, because of this never-ending stream of people who touch us in ways that we often never realize in the present.

It’s the people in our lives who fuel our perpetual state of becoming.

My grandfather always told me, “Time flies; the older you get, the faster it goes.” We all know that time moves at a constant speed throughout life, so it is not that the seconds click by faster. Instead, I think what he meant was that as we get older we begin to understand how precious the moments of life are because age grants us a higher sense of appreciation and purpose for the gift of our own lives, and for the lives of others we have come to know.

No, you are not now, who you will become. Neither is anyone else.

What are you going to do about it?

Remember, time flies.

_____

Photo Credit: The Old Grandfather Clock by sburke2478