Everything else Rick writes
The reality of being a single dad is even more complicated than this because all the lines are about half-an-inch wide (to scale), so it’s really an enormous mass of grey. OTOH, maybe that means I really should just stop trying to figure stuff out — but that’s hard to do when your primary skill is figuring stuff out!
Advice?
via: (http://leiaworld.tumblr.com/post/70408990884/so-small-is-the-different-between-all-of-that)
Tom said:
What you need is someone who is interesting, dynamic, can handle your craziness, and is not psycho. That’s a tall order.
This will be on the test. 🙂
Sometimes, life is too fatalistic for my tastes. It’s a fundamentally anti-American thing to say that we are too molded by the past, that our destinies are rough-hewn before we have control of our own lives. Sad, too, to learn too late that this is also true of those around us.
Certainly, this isn’t determinism; but without even knowing what causes us to shape and shade our thinking, how much are we hamstrung by invisible ropes? I thought briefly that perhaps I should never read research again, but my feeling here are they same as they are with consumer DNA testing: learning where the risks are gives us power to choose.
Ignorance is submission. Knowledge is power. Action is dignity.
The NYT can’t understand corporate finance [link to come; post underway], but they can do headlines: “Hijacker Overpowered on Norway-Turkey Flight.”
I guess we did all learn from the heroes on United 93. “Never again” is as good a motto as “let’s roll.” It stands to all of us to do something, perhaps not everyday, all the time, but absolutely when it counts. For a time, it seemed like I opened nearly every essay I wrote with Hemingway’s definition of character as “grace under pressure.” It sure is true, and if you disagree with that definition, you better find me another word to carry that meaning.
Just as courage is action in the face of fear, character is action in the face of everything, of the hard right vs. the easy wrong. That’s why we call it character, to show that it’s the deep inside, our own soft underbelly of fear, selfishness, blame, and vanity, that we’re supposed to conquer at the moment it matters, not when it doesn’t. I’ve quoted him before, and I’ll do it again: Milton in the Areopagitica: “I will not praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue.”
I was thinking about this the other day in the context of someone who let me down when it mattered most, and also thinking about a case I’m involved in. In the lawsuit, one business partner ended up embezzling about $7 or $8 million from the company’s clients. His partner was a high school friend, who is now almost certainly liable for the losses, and they will certainly fall on the company and theoretically put it out of business.
I think about that guy, and his longtime friend, and think about how awful it would be to have that happen. I think of it because I’ve been in business with a longtime friend, Mike Princi, and I have no fears of this ever happening. Not only do I not fear Mike doing this to me, but I don’t fear ever doing this to Mike. I know that whatever awful thing might happen in my life, such as the embezzler’s fear of not giving his wife a luxurious lifestyle, I could go to Mike for help rather than break our trust.
Small failures are different; or maybe I think they are because those are the kind I’ve made, day after day, even year after year sometimes. But small failures shouldn’t cause us to lose faith in someone, to doubt their actions in face of the most important decisions we could imagine. Small failures are readily correctable, if not so easily corrected.
In my personal life, the other person didn’t choose the path of stopping before breaking the trust. And that leads me to wonder what happens next? If there’s only one test, maybe only one time in your life, does it matter if you failed since you’ll never get asked again? Or does that failure really take the measure of a person?
I know the choice I made on that front. Let me know your thoughts about character and the really big choices.
Are you truly committed – or just curious?
Are you truly committed – or just involved?
Are you truly committed – or just concerned?
Are you truly committed – or just interested?
Are you truly committed – or just legally obligated?
Are you truly committed – or just not unhappy enough to change?
Are you truly committed – or just biding your time until something better comes along?
Excerpt from a post on showing the world you’re serious.
As many of you know, I divorced my wife a month ago (November 15, 2010). I know me: someday I’ll get married again. And the experience has caused me to be a little more deliberate about some things, and this set of questions really hit home.
I want the person I’m with to be committed to me because that’s who I am: a committed person — no doubts, no halfway gestures, no hedging. I don’t play poker that often but I know that I’m reasonably good because I’m never afraid to go all-in.
In love, that’s always been me (and my bigger issue has been the equivalent of folding early (to continue the metaphor), of deciding that the future isn’t likely to develop the way I want and thus decide not to waste anyone’s time); in life, I’ve been happiest at work when I’ve been engaged, really engaged, in my work because it was important, interesting, challenging, and stretched me. I’ve been unhappiest when it’s been unimportant and when there’s no growth.
(As I post this, I think that I’m going to have to actually meet Scott Ginsberg sometime and see whether there’s any “there” there. Maybe he really is bright and insightful, or maybe he writes so much that something will make sense, or maybe it’s all bland enough that it will sound good to someone somewhere sometime.)