Unknown

11:00 Sunday night...I can't sleep.  I have the headphones on, the Pandora station "Fink" playing and my mind is racing with ideas.  I once heard that Sunday nights are the hardest nights for people to go to sleep, being one who doesn't just like to hear things, but always wants to know for sure...I did a little research and apparently it is true.  Sunday night is the worst night on average for human beings to get a regular night's sleep.  Sunday night sleeping not being the point of my blog I won't bore you with the statistics, but if you're interested go to Google and type in "Sunday Night Sleep Problems" and you'll find all the studies you want to read. 

Why can't I go to sleep?  That is what my blog is about and the title Unknown plays into this, Disclaimer:  because of the things I am dealing with most of this blog is going to be talked about in "metaphor" or "point of view", but hopefully you will be able to make some kind of sense out of it when I am done.  If not maybe I will put both of us to sleep.  Either way I see it as a win/win. 

In life I feel that we spend a large part of it trying to figure out what we are supposed to do, what is our "calling" exactly.  Dependent upon your religious views you can say God is leading me to do this, or I feel that by doing this it will bring good Karma.  I try not to cover religious topics in these blogs because that's between you and your creator, but I do think it is safe to say we all question, "what is my purpose?"  I've questioned mine since I was a child.  I have a book from elementary school that lists what I wanted to do when I "grew" up...on one line it says "gold digger" (not Kanye West kind, but actually pick and shovel).  The very next line says "mayor".  Funny I look back at those two ideas and can completely explain why they were my choices, one gave me the chance to be outdoors and possibly find instant riches, the other seemed to give me power, power to make decisions and control people.  All things that little boys dream of, or at least I did. 

28 years later, a college degree and 6 years spent in the business world and I still spend my time thinking "what do I want to do when I grow up".  I know many of you are smiling saying, "aren't you grown up at 28?"  I vote no, ha.  Here is where I am going.  I have an idea of what I want to do, I have a passion for what I think I should be doing, but getting from point A to point B is not as simple as walking across the street.  It's not like when I was young and you were told, work hard, go to school, make good grades, go to a good college, and you will be successful.  Instead I look at what I want to do, I look at who I want to work with and I see a wall of road blocks.  Not bad, not good, just obstacles...better put, reality slaps you in the face and says the world isn't that easy.  I teach people I work with, patience, take the time, put in the effort and the rewards will pay off, but putting that into practice is about as hard as running a marathon with half training.  You might do it and finish, or you might start and get carried off in an ambulance.

Knowing these challenges as we get older causes stress, both good and bad.  I've written in earlier posts about stresses I have faced in my life and the obstacles I am still trying to overcome.  I guess I write tonight because I face stress.  Stress that keeps me from sleeping, not because of what might come tomorrow, or whether or not the week will go well, but because I see the crossroads in a sector of people's lives and I don't have the power to control the track their train will take.  Back to religion real quick, a strong Christian would say "Let go and let God",  I should say that, I know this, but I look at our society today, a society I live in and have honestly helped create and it scares me.  I see some chances for our country to grow in a slow and steady progression, but I also see chances where we leave key people behind and those left behind will affect our future.  I see obstacles that can be faced, and I see obstacles that can be buried in so much red tape and bureaucracy that by the time the issue is addressed the problem has accelerated from a snowball to an avalanche.  Snowballs hurt and can be rather annoying, avalanches wipe out society.  Now this is not to sound doom and gloom, that is not my intention at all, but when we look at the stresses that cause us not to sleep on a Sunday night, the worst night of sleep for most people, what are the stresses keeping us awake?

Martin Luther King Jr. one of many men that I have studied and admired because of his willingness to be a voice for those who did not have one, fought a valiant public fight.  If you do research and study him though you know he struggled with the same demons we all do as humans...infidelity, doubt, stress, addiction, loneliness etc.  I can only imagine that he spent many a Sunday nights laying awake wondering what the future would hold.  In fact right now as the "Occupy" movement goes on (which I am not going to cover ) it reminds me of King's last days.  If you study, he was shot in Memphis while there to bring a voice to the movement of sanitation workers and their unfair treatment of employment, but that was not his big "goal" at the time.  At that exact point and time, and the months leading up to it he had been planning a poor people's "march/occupation" of Washington D.C, on the Mall to be exact.  Many in his own circle thought he was crazy for taking this cause up.  He had much more to lose by becoming the face of a new campaign then he had to gain by sticking with the reputation he had garnered as a great Civil Rights leader.  What King realized and was trying to address before he died is the same situation people struggle with today, it's the same stress that keeps me up on sleepless Sunday nights.  We have an ever growing gap between the have's and the have nots and unfortunately I don't see the problem going away anytime soon.  This is not a problem we got into over night and is not a problem that will be fixed over night.

Here is my question?  My bullet point:  What are you/I doing to deal with a stress that is staring us in the face and looking back for an answer?  I am not going to give you a solution.  I am not going to give you a political or religious speech.  I am going to ask you to examine your mind, your heart and say "what are you gonna do"?  You come up with something that is right for you as an individual.  For all of us it is probably something different or unique, but until you ask the question, until you identify the root of the stress you can't come to grips with how to get a grasp on it, and the one thing I have learned in my very short 28 years, stress can not be run from.  It will eat away at you until diagnosed and dealt with and this is a stress our country faces as a whole.

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Look Into My Eyes

"Look into my eyes and tell me what it is you see in me.
Would you look into my eyes?
Look into my eyes and tell me what it is you see in me.
Could you tell me what you see?"

As I sit to write this entry tonight I have these words repeating over and over in my head...if for some reason you don't know the phrase (I'll withhold judgment) they come from the song by the same name as my post title, "Look Into My Eyes" by the group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.  Now you can pass judgment on me for using a 14 year old rap song to start out a post on a blog about learning.  Oh' NBC, "The More You Know"...

Why exactly do I have these lyrics running through my head at 12:30 am during the busiest week of my year?  Good question!  One I should be pondering and probably the ultimate reason I am even writing this blog.   

Here's the back story, busiest week of the year...extended filing time for Year End Pension Plans (Give or take about 85% of the company I work for, their business), October 15th.  That means in my world, you have to have all your "stuff" done and the right people sign off on it by Monday or the D.O.L. (Department of Labor) and I.R.S. start fining your clients $25 a day...we get till the 17th this year because the 15th is Saturday, thanks.  For those of you not in the T.P.A. world, which would be 99.9% of you probably reading this blog (I do keep making up these percentages out of thin air), don't worry about it, I don't really get what I just wrote either, but it is the equivalent of making sure your taxes are postmarked by April the 15th.  Very important to the people who cut my check.


So that being said I probably should be getting some much needed rest right now, instead of rethinking the chorus of a rap song that is 14 years old and writing words in a post that isn't really important...and yet I am still typing.  So I'll give you something.  As I opened my laptop with the intention of typing out a blog, but no general direction of where I was going, I had to look at the picture on my homepage and wait for Firefox to load.  The picture is one of me, my two brothers and my father at a Vanderbilt/Florida football game from a few years ago.  As I stared at that picture, the same one I have looked at probably a thousand times (why stop making up numbers now) I looked into my own eyes.  ****!   You can use any four letter word you want there. 

Have you ever looked into your own eyes from a picture?  Thought about what it was they were telling you?  People always say you can read a lot about a person from looking into their eyes, well I looked into my own in that picture and saw the face of a man who looked familiar, but was someone else at the time.  I told two stories with those eyes.  Narrow.  That's how my eyes normally are when I smile, but I noticed in this smile I'm cutting my eyes to the left.  Narrow and cut to the left.  Grin.  I don't really have a smile across my face, more like a sideways grin, the same one that I have given millions (we're just making numbers up here, right) of times to people.  Open.  My body position in the picture, non-committal, to anything.  Funny how I have looked at that picture every time I opened my computer for the past several years now and thought, "I like the picture of my family", never once have I looked into my eyes and told myself what it was that I saw. 

I can remember the night well.  A chance to spend time with my family, and see my beloved Gators play.  My ex-wife and I had driven from Dallas to Nashville just for the game.  Tim Tebow was at quarterback and we were watching history being made (they would win the National Championship later that year).  We even all stood up and sang "We are the Boys" at the end of the third quarter like a home game at The Swamp.  What more could a person ask for (if you are a gator fan, I get it)? 

Funny the other part of the story I remember.  I had just recently started battling panic attacks a few months earlier.  I had already had to check myself into the emergency room once.  I struggled with fear everywhere I went.  Not afraid of getting shot or dying in a Tornado type fear.  We are talking the kind that makes a normal guy (I thought of myself as normal, ha) not be able to ride in the car up 5 flights of a parking garage because I might get claustrophobic and can't breath.  The same kind that made my ex and I have to drive instead of fly because I couldn't get on a plane, and finally the kind that when we got to the hotel and I realized our room was on the top of the 13th or 14th floor, (one of those teen numbers) I almost passed out in the elevator because my legs got so weak.  I literally had to face the doors of the elevator and focus on breathing so as to not look out the glass windows on the way up and down.  These were the eyes that were there that night, these were the eyes in that picture. 

It's funny tonight I looked into my eyes for the first time and I remembered that night, that time in my life.  Maybe it is because I am so busy this week or maybe it was because I took a bike ride after work, who knows the trigger, but for the first time I saw what was truly evident.  I reflected on that period and that time that seemed so uncertain and scary.  In many ways it seems like yesterday and in others it seems like an eternity.  I still haven't been able to fly, but I can get on an elevator (for the most part) and ride up.  I've changed jobs, moved, been through a divorce and seen a lot of things come and go in my personal life.  I think it is interesting how we as humans may never truly know what we are really seeing when we look into someone's eyes.  We may not know what that person is going through or battling, even if they are smiling, but here's my bullet point and I'll wrap this novel up.  Before you look into another's eyes and tell them what you see, make sure you can look into your own and give a truthful examination of what is staring back.  Then look into their's and listen with your heart.  You can read a lot about a person by looking into their eyes, but never think you get the full story.  The moment you do, you have been deceived.

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On Your Left!

No I am not writing a post about politics, I'll say that in the first sentence so I don't lose the one or two of you who might read this.  Although a post about left minded...never mind


On your left!  A phrase that I use every time I ride my bike.  A courtesy phrase.  A warning.  A short, get out of the **** way if you will for bike riders.  The signs technically say, "Passing on your left", but for some reason, I and everyone else I ever hear at least mutter a semblance of the phrase,the word passing is left out (that's a side note by the way).  Tonight as I was riding and yelling it out more often than normal (because it was dark and I didn't want to get charged for running someone over) I thought a lot about what that phrase really meant, and how it played a role in my life.  I know I've already lost some of you, and others are still trying to connect the political dots, and Pharm. D is just saying "give me the bullet points", but I had 50 or so minutes of quiet time so I thought about it.

Here is what I came up with...get ready, this will change your life.  On your left, really is a way I give someone the polite "finger" as I pass through their slow life.  Wait...did that not change your life?  My bad, thought I had something great there, guess not, but allow me to explain this.  When I am riding my bike the only time I use the phrase is when I am passing someone who might...just might get in my way.  I am not saying I purposely use it on slower people or people who might not be paying as much attention, but really that is the case.  Example 1:  If there is one person walking down the trail and they are hugging the right side like trail etiquette says, then more than likely I just move slightly over to the left and pass right on by that person with nothing ever said.  Example 2:  If there is a person walking or jogging on the trail and they have their IPod (R.I.P. Steve Jobs) blaring Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" and they are veering closer to the center line than normal, I am going to yell "On your left" so they don't "Jagger" their way in front of my wheel.  Example 3:  If there is a pack of over accessorized "Uptown Posse" strolling down the trail and you KNOW they wouldn't get out of the way if a semi were rumbling down upon them, because 1. They can't hear 2. They wouldn't care if the could, frankly it's not that important and 3. "Hello, I'm in heels here!" Then I yell "On your left" as I ride off the paved surface and try not to derail my chain.  All those examples to prove my point.  I don't yell "On your left" because I'm really trying to be polite, but more because it keeps me out of trouble or gives the ol' F you to people who are being annoying.  I was not very happy with myself when I came to this conclusion...life changed yet?  Well you get what you pay for right?

"On your left" should be a motto we live by, meaning: "excuse me, but I am entering your life and don't want to do anything but add something positive or politely pass through."  Instead for me "On your left" means: "hey I'm living my life here and you need to get out of my way or at least not make me hurt you."  Pharm D.  here comes your sappy bullet point "-" I am not the only one using this trail called life.  I am a mere person who was put here to do something (won't go philosophical) but it wasn't to just get my way.   As much as it pains me to say it I am not the center of the universe, and the sun does not revolve around me.  As I came to that conclusion it really deflated my ego, but I realized...give me a day and I'll find something else to pump it back up (just kidding...kind of).  When you grasp you're not the only one using the trail called life it makes you look at things in a completely different manner.  For me it meant as I passed people and yelled "On your left" and then I went past them I said "Thank You."  Maybe it didn't make sense to them, maybe they got it, but I realized they were sharing and I appreciated it. 

To sum it all up, don't let "On your left" be a polite way to give someone the "finger" as you pass through their life, but instead let it announce your presence and then at the least leave things the way you found them if not better as you exit.  The world and politics (got ya) would be a lot better if we all understood this concept and tried to put it into practice every now and then.

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Innocence Of Youth

I took this picture Saturday as I walked back to my apartment from the opening of "Art In October" here in the Arts District.  For those of you who don't recognize the site, it is the reflecting pool in front of the Winspear Opera House.  I love walking past this pool, no matter what time of day or night.  It always seems to have an inviting "come play in my serenity" feel to it.  Saturday someone had answered the call.  The person who answered was a child.

Last night was Cafe Momentum.  If you read my blog or know me you will hear much more about this wonderful program, if you don't I strongly encourage you to check out the website and see what it is all about.

http://www.cafemomentum.org/

As I worked with the wonderful young men who serve and run Cafe Momentum, my heart felt an overwhelming since of pride.  It took me back to the picture I had taken on Saturday and the innocence of the child running through the reflection pool.  Most of these young men have been told by a lot of people throughout their lives that they will not amount to much, the cards are stacked against them, and "face it you will become a statistic".  I like to look at it in a different way.  They jumped into the figurative "water" last night and worked in an environment that many culinary students could only dream of.  The kitchen we operated in was state of the art, the Chef, Abraham Salum, one of the best in the city of Dallas.  The mentors working with them in the kitchen, front of the house and back of the house, amazing years of culinary talent.  The experience priceless. 

Did these young men recognize all the benefits that they were being provided last night, probably some, probably not, but you know what they did recognize...Hard Work.  The men jumped in and served over 80 people to a five course meal that brought out big names from all over the Metroplex.  The guys did not ask, who is going to be here?  They didn't ask what are the credentials of this chef?  They didn't ask will this improve my resume (yes they do know what a resume is)?  All they did was work their rear ends off knowing that with the circumstances in their lives right now something good would have to come out of it, even if it just meant a few hours away from the dorm and a paycheck.  Innocence of Youth. 

Too many times we as adults (I am one as much as I hate to admit it) look at the end gain.  We focus on the bottom line and forget the journey, or the opportunity to be free and run through the water.  I guarantee when that child above took off running through the reflection pool she thought of one thing and one thing only, "this will be fun".  Last night as I worked with my awesome young men, I know they had a similar feeling, maybe not this will be fun, but this is a new and exciting experience. 



I'll close with this, as we rush about through the business and craziness of life lets not forget about why we are here.  Results are great, but they are only a fraction of the process.  Let us remember the majority of the process is unknown and if we keep an open mind and the "innocence of youth" there is no telling what we will learn and experience along the way.  Growth comes from the journey...not the result.


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