March Madness has begun, and I always think about the high hopes that teams bring into the tournament. All the players have visions of holding that championship trophy high above their heads, basking in the glory of victory.
They never consider that all but one team in the tournament will end the season with a loss. Even three Number One teams will finish with an L in their final game.
Pinning all your dreams on an unpromised finish sets you up for disappointment. Enjoy the journey as much as the allure of a trophy at the end.
Six years ago today, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID to be a pandemic. I think about how naive we were in the beginning — asking people to stay inside for “two weeks,” never thinking that the direct effects would last for months and the lingering effects for years.
I have been watching some shows from that time, and it’s hard to remember wearing masks, the six-feet-apart rule, only socializing with people in your “pod,” or the run on toilet paper, wipes, and hand sanitizers. There are still remnants of that time — including foot pedals for hands-free door opening, remote work, online shopping and delivery of almost everything, and touchless payments — but mostly, COVID has been forgotten.
Instead of letting the memory of the pandemic fade away, I think it helps to note the anniversary and the whole experience. It will be written about in history books someday, and we lived through it. We survived something that was unprecedented, unexpected, and even unimaginable. We adapted more extensively and more quickly than anyone could have predicted.
Don’t let the lessons learned from that sacrifice go to waste. Major change is possible if the will is there. We can do hard things. We are stronger than we think we are. Internalize those truths to make your future better.
It’s interesting to me what is kept private and what is freely shared.
I see social media posts with license plates blacked out — even though they are publicly visible on streets and parking lots. The White Pages used to publish everyone’s phone number, but now you have to pay to access a phone number or address.
Warnings have been issued about decals on cars that unintentionally reveal information about the family. And yet, people upload pictures and many personal details with AI, then publicly share caricatures that disclose much more about themselves than a license plate.
Don’t worry about covering up things that are public and instead spend your energy choosing what to keep private.
For the final project in the capstone class I’m teaching, I required the students to put together a dossier—a collection of their resume and examples of work products or assignments from their time of study. In addition, the students had to write a philosophy statement to synthesize their learning and reflect on how they approach their work as a result of this degree.
At one of my workplaces, I was required to compile an annual report that served a similar purpose to the dossier. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise, but it caused me to pause and consider the successes and challenges of the previous year. It also provided a historical perspective I could reference to remind myself that progress was being made, even when it didn’t feel like it.
The same is true for final reports on major projects, annual reviews, and resolutions of a personal nature. If you stop to reflect and compile the happenings from an extended period, it often provides a sense of accomplishment that would otherwise go unnoticed. It’s back to that “stringing the pearls” philosophy, where intentionally connecting seemingly disparate items creates synergy greater than the individual parts.
Make it part of your routine to tangibly collect evidence of your major work or the passage of another year. Seeing it together is worth the effort of compiling it.
I have a friend who is in the process of downsizing his home and moving into an independent living facility. I think about when it’s my time to do that, and how hard it must be to part with the majority of your lifetime possessions. I’m reluctant to even get rid of my enrollment materials that I haven’t needed in a decade. How do you say goodbye to sentimental treasures?
I read a passage in A Gentleman in Moscow that resonated:
“From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family…But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu…For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity — all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance.”
I look around my house and see treasures that have meaning only to me; things that could easily be tossed by someone cleaning out my home, but that I value. How do we get so attached to physical objects?
I was reminded of a passage from Gift from the Sea where the author spends a week at the ocean and collects shells on each of her walks. As she prepares to leave, she notes:
“One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can only collect a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few…For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms.”
Whether they be sentimental, valuable, or practical, in the end, things are just things. Create some space in your life to enjoy relationships, nature, and the intangible pleasures, rather than accumulating more “stuff.”
Source: A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, 2016, p. 14 and Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindburgh, 1955, p. 114.
It seems one of the new fads is puzzle competitions. A local bar just held one where teams were given the same puzzle to solve within two hours — after only having one minute to look at the picture on the box. There are now year-round leagues with teams and wait lists. Multiple libraries have also done puzzle competitions as fundraisers, allowing people of all ages to participate.
I think of puzzling as a slow, casual activity to be done without stress as a way to pass long winter days. For me, it’s certainly not a race, and I frequently look at the box to help in completing my task.
I wonder if puzzle competitions are an outgrowth of youth sports, where it was a competition instead of “play for play’s sake.” Or, maybe gamification has taken over leisure as well, where people are not interested if there is no trophy at the conclusion.
One thing is clear: almost everything can be made into a competition. Perhaps your organization should compete to see how you can turn your service into a contest to engage your audience. The dot-liking challenge, maybe?
Today marks ten years since I began working for myself instead of on a campus. I can’t believe it has been that long.
When I reflect on the past decade, I’m struck by how much I have forgotten. I used to be an expert on college enrollment and knew all the nuances of so many regulations and processes. Not anymore. Of course, I still remember all the fundamentals, but no longer retain the details.
I hear about others in the same scenario. My friend is a physical therapist, but in her administrative role, no longer sees adult patients. When another friend asked her for advice about their surgery rehab, she was unable to help them, saying, “I haven’t worked on a knee in 15 years.”
There are countless people (myself included) who have or had careers in fields other than their college majors. People change jobs and take years of institutional history and knowledge with them. We all need to keep learning to counterbalance what we forget.
I think about people who have lived through the evolution of technology. I learned to type on a manual typewriter in school. Then the typewriter I received for graduation was electric—how easy it was to tap the keys! Next, it had a correction feature! In the 1970s, personal computers became available, and Microsoft was founded in 1976, helping to make desktop computing available to the masses. The ability to produce printed documents went from being expensive and time-consuming to being able to create them by talking.
When I graduated from college, my resume was typeset by a professional printer and cost me a fortune. Today, I can have an improved version printed in my home, and AI could even write it for me.
Much of what we take for granted was a stunning delight at some point. Whether in technology, medicine, science, travel, or any number of fields, pause for a moment today to appreciate the wonders that surround you every day. You’re living among miracles.
I think life is like an interstate that has many off-ramps. When we describe our journey, we usually only consider the exits we took, but there is a similar impact from the times you did not leave the main road. It’s easy to reflect on the things that we did, but we are also shaped by the choice not to take many actions in life.
I’m teaching a class this term, and I love it, so I began wondering why I was so late to the teaching game. I didn’t really begin teaching academic classes until a few years ago – and then I remembered that in the Nineties I was asked to teach a class, but my boss wouldn’t give me permission to do so. I never really considered it again until, many years and several institutions later, a faculty member became pregnant with twins and they needed me to teach. I have been a regular instructor ever since. Not teaching 20 years ago is one of those decision points that influenced many subsequent outcomes down the road.
I had this epiphany about (not) teaching while I was driving, and as my mind wandered, I recalled numerous examples that would have had a ripple effect of consequences had I done something instead of passing on the opportunity. I turned down the chance to chair a convention, which made me available to serve on the board. I haven’t touched my dissertation since the day I turned it in, closing off chances to present and publish in a new field. I didn’t take pre-calculus in high school, so I became a journalism major in college instead of marketing because of the calculus requirement for business majors. The list goes on.
The next time you’re on a drive or have the chance to do some reflection, consider just the exit ramps you drove by in your life. You may or may not regret staying on the path you took, but a big part of who you are comes from the roads you didn’t travel.
Originally published in modified form on October 9, 2018
I’ve had conversations lately about the difficulty in making new friends as an older, childless person. So many people my age are still raising children or doting on grandchildren that it is hard to find single people in my life stage for social connections. It’s often lonely.
I thought of this when I was at our town’s No Kings rally yesterday. I’m not sure that the protest will make any difference in policy or practice, but what it did do was bring many like-minded people together. It was nice to have that connection, however fleeting. I talked with more people at the rally than I have in months.
One of the signs said, “Things are so bad that even the introverts are here.” Why does it take a protest for that connection to happen? Be intentional about crafting ways to bring people together for social reasons beyond rallies. You and your community will be better because of it.
