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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday, August 7, 2000 Volume II Number 32
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FOCUS - Gravitas
Every once in awhile a new word catches on.
You hear it once, then over and over again, and pretty soon, it creeps into your own conversation. It helps if the word has the ring of scholarship, the kind of word or phrase that might send a collegian to his Webster, or the kind of word that might qualify for use in the title of a Master’s thesis or better still, a doctoral dissertation.
Have you ever asked a PhD candidate the subject of his or her research? Every one of them is designed to perplex the uninitiated… probably even the initiated.
In my college years the hot phrase was “in terms of.” I never understood why it was so popular, except that it made an ordinary sentence sound, well, sophisticated. During a particularly boring class, I would count the number of times the young TA used the phrase “in terms of.” (TA - Teaching Assistant, those underpaid understudies of the real professors who rarely showed up). I put those little check marks in groups of five in the margin of my notes. An hour-long class would sometimes get me into three digits. “In terms of” this then “in terms of” that. It was used so often, like an easy filler for an already dull lecture – it became one of those hollow phrases that keeps the tempo going but adds absolutely nothing of substance.
If you were speaking in a college classroom, you would not say “plate tectonics theory is a revolutionary concept in contemporary geology.” Instead, you would say, “in terms of contemporary geology, there is no more revolutionary concept than the plate tectonics theory.” Or, if the topic was the weekend game you would lament, “in terms of football strategy, there is no more desperate play than the ‘Hail Mary.’” In terms of heady conversation, “in terms of” makes you sound really smart.
Most of us agree – teenagers are masters
of the empty phrase. A favorite
these days is “like I’m all…” There
are so many wonderful ways to say it. So
many contexts in which it fits just fine.
It can be a cry of desperation. Or
celebration. Or disbelief.
Or drama. Or surprise.
Or romance. So many shades
of meaning. Listen and you will
hear it repeated back and forth between friends, with a roll of the eyes, a
cluck of the tongue, a guttural blast of air from the throat, a waving of the
hand; like the hook in a pop song, said musically in a thousand ways “like
I’m all…” It’s code that
says, “we are teenagers, we understand each other.”
Like I’m all revved up just writing about it.
Here’s another one. The source would be those computer geeks who live their lives in cyber-land. But it has me, too. I say, “cool” a hundred times a day now - maybe more than a hundred – with a variety of inflections. Cool software. Cool site. Cool graphics. Cool, I’ll be there. Cool. I’m hopelessly hooked. Cool.
But teenagers and college teaching assistants and cyber-nerds aren’t the only ones who conjure up little words and phrases that mean little but become a staple in American conversation. Jargon happens everywhere. Slang is a way of life. Colloquialisms separate “us” from “them.” Buzzwords. Acronyms. “The CIO’s ETA is 0900 at the AT60 after the BLT.” It’s an in crowd thing. “Don’t know what that means? Of course not, you aren’t one of us!”
A brand new one hit the airwaves just this week. A week ago, I had never heard the word. It’s not in the dictionary. But it’s rolling off the tongues of media reporters and anchorpersons and commentators and pundits in a profusion of excitement - the discovery of a single new word. It slips into the conversation like an old friend. And if you can do it, you are really hip.
The word is GRAVITAS.
* * * * * * * *
Last night, I killed a rattlesnake.
Well, it wasn’t really a solo effort. But we got him. Killed him dead.
Rick and I met at the impressionable age of nineteen and twenty respectively. We were camp counselors at a Horse Ranch Camp in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. That was a long time ago, but through the years, I managed to keep a Carousel tray of thirty-five millimeter slides from that memorable summer.
Rick and Brenda live in the country - in a log cabin style house they built together ten years ago. You approach the house around a long driveway and up the hill to their charming gabled entry with a steep pitched roof. There’s a wide wooden front porch with rocking chairs and braided rugs and lawns and gardens and big shade trees, and a sprawling expanse of concrete for parking. The sign on the door says “Welcome, Friends.” At night, candles glow in the windows all around the house. Upstairs, too.
After dinner over great food, lots of reminiscing and laughter, I excused myself to go outside and get the old projector and slides from the back seat of my truck. Rick followed me out the door. We were eager to set up the slideshow and see what we looked like back then.
And as I walked out the front door, across the porch and down the stair, then around the flower garden towards my truck, I reached into my pocket for my keys. (Why do I lock the truck on a two-acre country lot?) Rick, barefoot in walking shorts, was close behind me. We were tellin’ stories as we wandered outside.
On the far side of the truck, I put my key in the door lock, and started to turn it…
Rick’s story stopped mid-sentence. Then - “Ken! Move away! Toward the garage! Move now! Now!”
I turned toward Rick thinking it was another one of those pranks we pulled too many times back at camp. Either he had honed his thespian skills or there was something really amiss, I thought. His eyes fixed and widened, his hand stretched outward in the direction of the garage where I had been instructed to move with haste, Rick stared a laser-beam stare at a spot on the concrete just behind me.
It was a dead silence in the still of the night. Dimly lit. Rick frozen. He said in a barely audible whisper, “A snake! It’s a snake!…”
With my key still in the lock, I turned slowly to check that same spot on the concrete. And there it was, about eight inches from my ankle, a chubby four-foot Diamondback, stretched along the concrete, not coiled, but pointing directly at me. His head up three or four inches from the surface, lookin’ me over.
An adrenaline shot fired somewhere in my chest. And my pupils widened to about the same size as Rick’s.
“I think it’s a rattler,” Rick said, cooler than me.
So I stepped back towards the garage. Slowly. Deliberately. Eye’s locked on the pit viper. One step, then two. Easy now. The snake, probably as frightened as me, didn’t move an inch.
“What do we do now?”
* * * * * * * *
When I type the word “gravitas” I get a red squiggly line underneath. My word processing software has a built in spell check with thousands of words. If I enter a word that is not found in the dictionary, my version of the program warns me with a red line. Gravitas is not in the database of recognizable words. My computer has never heard of it. I guess because it’s Latin.
Why then does an Internet search of this unknown word with the major news outlets produce so many hits? All dated in the last thirty days? It’s the buzzword of the month.
I was tipped off by a radio talk show that the same word “gravitas” was used again and again by media people of all sorts this week. Then I started hearing it. Everywhere. Its emergence as a favorite buzzword coincided with the announcement that Richard Cheney would be George W. Bush’s running mate.
So I checked the Internet for myself, and sure enough, everyone’s using it. Gravitas. I got matches from every news source. ABC News.com. MSNBC.com. CNN.com. TIME.com. USAToday.com. Newsweek.com. Scores of hits from every last one. Give it a try.
Does
Cheney have the gravitas to win voters? Will
Cheney’s gravitas make up for George W.’s lack thereof?
Is Cheney’s gravitas for real, or is it an illusion?
Does Gore possess gravitas to match Cheney’s?
Will his running mate? Does
gravitas even matter to voters?
Such are the quotes from Brokaw, Jennings, Rather, George F. Will, Tim Russert, Lance Morrow, Adrianna Huffington, Walter Shapiro, Sam Donaldson, Ted Coppell, and Bill Press for starters.
So if gravitas is some sort of political asset… then what exactly is it?
* * * * * * * *
Rick (did I mention he’s barefoot and barelegged, in walking shorts?) went into the garage in search of a pellet gun. No luck. He emerged unarmed, holding instead a flat blade shovel. Still, the rattler lay motionless by the truck.
Neither Rick nor I connect our masculinity with the fine art of snake control. Both of us are rather inclined to leave well enough alone, go back into the house and look at 35mm slides than take on a venomous rattler. Live and let live. Let him be. Then again, neither of us would have suffered any loss of manhood had Brenda or Carolyn volunteered to care for the disposal of this threatening intruder. Go girl. Hey, equality of the sexes.
Of course, neither did.
So, thinking I really ought to participate in some manner, I wandered into the garage, looking for something that might be used as a snake-eliminating implement… and the best I could find was a garden rake.
Both of our wives found the scene hysterically funny, their long time husbands standing there frozen with fear, one with a white knuckle grip on a shovel, the other a rake, staring in terror at a slimy reptile, not even poised to strike. They were laughing, but we weren’t.
Barefoot Rick made a move toward the viper. He waved the shovel… and the snake made his first move, which caused all four of us to jump backwards. In unison. The snake slithered directly under the truck, and snuggled up to the right rear tire.
“Quick, start the truck and roll over him!” It was Brenda.
I jumped in the truck… checking out the floor to be sure a relative had not somehow worked his way inside and under the seat… I put the key in the ignition and fired up the engine. This prompted the snake to jump away from the tire, and head back the other way under the truck. I put it in gear, rolled forward and “POP!” I felt a little bump. I hit the brakes. Rick winced.
“Eew…” he said.
I caught the last quarter of the four-foot long beast, rolling my gnarly wide rear tire over his back end, just inside the rattle. Entrails exploded outward under the weight of the truck, leaving a red splat on the concrete. Our wives covered their eyes.
“He’s a goner,” Rick shook his head.
But he wasn’t. I stepped out of the cab to look at the damage. The snake, disabled, flailed back and forth. Still a menace. Carolyn said, “you’ll have to do it again.” So I jumped back in the truck, maneuvered it into perfect position, and rolled it forward. “Pop.” Then back. “Pop.” Carolyn and Brenda now grew pale and for some reason known only to womanhood, felt sorry for the snake.
Rick, now emboldened, used the dull blade of the shovel to separate the rattler’s head from his mangled body. Mouth agape. Fangs extracted. It was not a clean cut. We disposed of that head (sparing the community and all the local critters from the deadly poison) in a place that shall remain undisclosed. Let’s just say there was a flush involved.
For the remainder of the evening, Rick and I strutted around the house like a couple of conquering heroes. High fivin’. Reliving the tense moments of our unexpected encounter with mortality. Laughing with abandon.
Liberated from the ominous threat of the venomous fangs of the diamondback and recovering from the gruesome after dinner episode in the driveway, both Brenda and Carolyn, over fresh strawberry pie, ultimately shared in our celebration of glorious victory. Sort of.
*
* * * * *
The Latin word gravitas means heaviness or weightiness. In common usage, it means “high seriousness.” One with gravitas can handle “grave” matters. He’s a heavy. She’s comfortable with the tough stuff. He’s a man of experience, and courage, and ability.
What she says matters. When he decides, he’s worthy. She brings wisdom and sound judgment to the table, and when she speaks, people listen.
Isaac Newton published his Principia in 1687. In it, he revealed his revolutionary theories of mathematics and physics and the laws of the universe. He talked about a universal force that attracts masses of matter – one to the other. And to label this profound concept, he drew on an ancient Latin word – gravitas – to be the root of his innovative idea – GRAVITY.
Newton wrote - the phenomena of the tides and the orbits of the comets and the planets illustrate that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses. It’s gravity.
At least two published journals call themselves GRAVITAS. One’s focus is religion and philosophy. The other, literature. The heavy stuff.
So if a public figure possesses gravitas, he or she is capable of dealing with the big issues. The big ideas. He draws on experience, on the wisdom of the ages, and in the process, attracts others to his point of view. She speaks with clarity and precision and insight and persuasion. He confronts crisis with poise and skill and courage.
Gravitas. It’s a virtue I hadn’t really thought about. Until this week.
* * * * * * *
Leaders know gravitas when they see it. In time, the best leaders possess it.
A leader with gravitas owns a magnetic personal presence. Others can predict what this kind leader will say. And do. It’s trustworthiness. Competence. Readiness. Street smarts. Loyalty. Integrity. Courage under fire.
It may be just another summer Monday morning for you. But you’ve been around long enough to know that surprises hit… unanticipated, calendar altering, crisis triggering, career threatening surprises that can sneak up on you like a rattler out of the shadows.
You may think you don’t have the tools or the resources to respond. It may seem like all you have is a flat blade shovel, a garden rake and a pick up truck. But if you have gravitas, you’ll be ready.
In this political season as we look for gravitas in the candidates, and as each of the pundits pretend they have found an original idea, let’s instead look to develop this admirable trait in ourselves.
Someday, as observers search for just the right descriptive word to characterize your style, your influence, your accomplishments, your personal presence, may they find that old Latin word embraced by Isaac Newton.
Gravitas.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2000
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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