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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday January 22, 2001 Volume III Number 4 |
FOCUS - Wilson
How would your life be different if you were blindsided by an unexpected, unavoidable diversion – into a four-year, involuntary isolation?
For some of us, it would be a welcome change. For most of us, the radical adjustment would leave us bewildered, perhaps even paralyzed absent the high-pressured, high-expectation routines that make up our ordinary days.
Such was the case for Chuck Noland, a Fed Ex executive who lived by the clock. He survived a terrible plane crash while traveling trans-Pacific. His Fed Ex jumbo jet, bound for Singapore, veered several hundred miles off-course, suffered an on-board explosion, and then plummeted to the surface of the water where the captain and crew attempted heroically to ditch the crippled craft and land on the stormy waters of the Pacific Ocean somewhere among thousands of remote Indonesian Islands. The airplane broke apart, and Chuck Noland, the only survivor, rode an inflated emergency raft, blinded by a night storm, hurricane winds and heavy surf, to the sandy beach of one of those uninhabited, heavily vegetated, coral reefed land masses that speck the blue Pacific, one of thousands of tiny suboceanic mountain peaks, piercing through the surface of the crystal clear waters.
When he came to his senses, and looked around, he called out, pathetically, “Hello out there! Answer me! Anybody!” As though there may be several who might. There was, of course, no one. Chuck Noland was as alone as a man can be.
He left behind a world in perpetual motion. A world of efficiency. Of peak production. A competitive world of global marketeering. He conceived of himself as a globe-trotting coach, teaching an eager crew of international employees and managers and runners how to capture a generous helping of capitalism’s promise. He had been unusually harsh with his Moscow staff, which just couldn’t seem to grasp the urgency of delivering packages in an instantaneous flash. It was as though he appointed himself to revolutionize an entire culture, and convert them from the co-dependant, aimless, listless socialists that they had been all their lives into the eager, ambitious, achievers he knew they could be. He brought to bear everything he knew about coaching from Vince Lombardi and Woody Hayes and Bobby Knight. He ranted, he raved, he screamed, he belittled, he prodded, he shook his fist. And mostly, he wanted action. Now. He wanted to win. For the good of everyone.
His girlfriend, Kelly Frears, came from the same high-energy stock. Family gatherings were characterized by the same kind of intensity – one-upsmanship, comparing overburdened schedules and overpriced toys, surrounded by outrageous abundance and conspicuous consumption. It was life lived at a frenzied pace and no one seemed to notice that the fever pitch of empty conversation and the frantic tempo of those gatherings produced high blood pressure but little room for connectedness.
Out of time, Christmas Eve, on a rainy, windy dark night, Chuck and Kelly park a Cherokee on the tarmac next to a whining fleet of cargo jetliners to bid another routine farewell as Chuck prepares for one more last-minute trip to the other side of planet Earth. Asia beckons. Co-workers see Chuck, look at their watches, slap themselves in the forehead and then motion to their colleague, “c’mon, where have you been? It’s time to roll. Let’s go!”
And Chuck turns to his soon-to-be fiancé Kelly. She hands him his gift, and says, “open it.” Inside he finds a pocket watch from another era. It belonged to her grandfather, a railroader, who in his own way and in his own time, was like Chuck. Time, the clock, arrivals and departures… they defined his life. He opened the antique timepiece, and inside, a photograph. It was a miniature image of Kelly, with a warm smile looking back, beckoning Chuck to return… soon.
“Chuck, let’s go!” came a harsh voice from outside the Cherokee. “Everyone’s waiting… you’re holding up the entire operation!” He closed the watch, and slipped it into his pocket.
“I’ve gotta go.”
“I know.”
They kiss. He jumps out into the wind and rain, and hurries away. Then he stops. Turns, as though he almost forgot. He returns to the car and hands Kelly a package. By all appearances, it is her engagement ring wrapped festively in a tiny box with a bow. “Open this before you go to bed tonight,” he says.
And then he races to the waiting airplane and Fed Ex crew.
Hours later, on a routine trans-oceanic flight, the airplane, its cargo, four crew and Chuck Nolan go down somewhere in the vast watery expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
One wonders what must ultimately be the attraction of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The accoutrements of power certainly have their appeal. It’s the supreme mailing address – The White House, Washington DC. Its occupant is routinely referred to as the most powerful person on Earth. You are surrounded by eager aids. You are served diet coke on a silver tray. You travel by chauffeured limousine and roaring helicopters and a 747 Jumbo Jet they call Air Force One. A brass band plays “Hail to the Chief” every time you walk into a room. You are surrounded by the best and the brightest at the conference table. Even your pets get elevated to celebrity status.
This weekend, we observed the orderly transfer of power. It’s been eight years since the occupants of the White House changed. During the Inauguration ceremonies, the drapes on every window in the private quarters of the grand mansion were replaced. The old came down. The new went up. For the first time this century, moving vans pulled up and beefy workers carried boxes up and down the stairs of the historic residence loading up empty the trucks for destination unknown. New York? Arkansas? DC? Probably storage.
And then another fleet of trucks arrived under guard, this time to deliver the new occupant’s belongings. Boxes carried in. All while the nation celebrated (well, half the nation) the installation of a new Commander in Chief.
What happens to the person who occupies that House with his family for a term of office? Or two? The before and after photographs tell the story.
A page in the history books got turned this weekend. Our new President, though enormously gifted, looks a bit uncomfortable. He worked so hard. And now, it’s his. He’s got the keys. The outgoing President nearly swaggers; he’s a veteran. Eight years ago, he was the uncomfortable one.
There’s a new man in town, one who will learn from experience new ways to become “Presidential.”
* * * * * *
In one brief night, Chuck Nolan’s familiar world disappeared. One failure of man and machine, hurricane force winds and rain, and Chuck Nolan was thrust into the Stone Age.
Every comfort, every convenience, every diversion, every relationship, gone.
* * * * * *
How would you change if for four years you were deprived of life, as you know it? No computer. No cell phone. No paging device. No television. No books. No air-conditioner. No freeway. No stereo. No parking structure. No automobile. No refrigerator. No mall. No airports. No church. No office. No overstuffed chair. No alarm clock. No wristwatch. No treadmill. No spouse. No kids. No friends.
Just you.
With one assignment: survival.
* * * * * *
As Chuck begins to process the trauma of the crash, and the storm, and his new domicile, he finds his first coconut. He’s hungry. And thirsty. (There was plenty of salt water, but precious little fresh.) But how do you crack open the hard shell? There were no tools.
Fed Ex packages wash up to shore. Most containing vitally important documents, checks, certificates, legal and financial documents… all worthless now. But some contain items that become useful for survival. The Fed Ex jet carried Christmas gifts. The netting on a gaudy dress brings in a regular catch of fish. Ice skates provide hard steel blades for cutting, even a handy tool for some mandatory, do-it-yourself amateur dental work. The magnetic tape from a package of videocassettes becomes a useful binding material. A soccer ball becomes his companion. He gives him a name – Wilson. Chuck Nolan has entered a world of make-do.
In the four years he inhabits this isolated island he becomes a survival expert. He finds shelter in a stone cave. He learns to make fire. He cooks his fish. He gathers fresh water. He makes tools from granite and lava rocks. He creates a sundial clock and calendar. He studies the stars. He draws and paints pictures on the walls of his shelter. The pocket watch, which stopped at the time of the watery crash, sits open in the firelight each night. Kelly smiles, beckoning him home.
They, and Wilson, are Nolan’s companions for four years of isolation and loneliness.
* * * * * *
Back home, the crashed jet never located, the search of fifty thousand square miles of ocean water is called off. The crew and passenger of the cargo plane are pronounced dead. There are memorial services. And burials.
Kelly, in the wake of her recovery from grief, marries. And gives birth to a daughter.
* * * * * *
Nolan and his silent partner Wilson design and build an escape raft. And on the easterly winds, make their escape setting sail for anywhere but this terrible isolation.
And weeks later, Nolan is found - adrift and exhausted five hundred miles from the island that saved his life.
He returns home.
* * * * * *
Those four years leave Nolan forever changed. The values that energized an endless succession of high pressure days, the tyranny of the clock, of the deadlines, of the obsession with efficiencies and productivity and achievement… all departed from him somewhere on that awful island.
Perhaps it was that moment when, hands raw
from the effort, he observed the first spark under the dry straw as he rubbed
and rubbed two sticks together, like some boy scout learning about the basic
elements, and he fanned the heat and smoke from a spark to a flame to his first
bonfire, and as he celebrated the warmth and the crackling blaze and the light,
alone on the beach, sparks streaming skyward, perhaps then he was released from
the need to spend himself on the delivery of someone else’s priority
documents.
And his friends and colleagues expected somehow that he would simply pick up where he left off, and dance around the globe once more, cracking the corporate whip and firing up unwilling employees to abandon old ways and join in the endless race to prosperity. But we aren’t surprised, are we?
He just couldn’t do it.
* * * * * *
Could you?
What if… what if, it was all taken away? Everything you are working so hard to keep. Those deadlines that seem so demanding. That calendar that just won’t lighten up. That phone that won’t stop ringing. That mailbox that just keeps on delivering more bills. What if you were forced to devote all of your time to simple survival?
Tom Hanks plays the part of the fictional Chuck Nolan in the new hit movie, Cast Away. It’s a performance worthy of an academy award nomination. No doubt. And in the portrayal, his predicament challenges us all to re-evaluate. Are we caught in a web of intertwined routines and pre-determined scheduling that somehow prevents us from… well… living?
There is perhaps no one more meticulously scheduled and scripted than the person occupying the Oval Office. Here’s hoping that now President George W. Bush will find his stride. Find his voice. Bring his cherished values to the people. And be a convincing leader. One who will restore our national confidence. One who will build social bridges. One whose integrity will set the pace for national leadership. May he never take his cues from the spin masters, the pollsters or the image-makers. May he rather engage our nation in a challenge toward greatness.
It is once more Monday morning. You are a leader.
You are back in the routine. There’s a part of you that would much prefer the warm sunshine of a sandy South Pacific beach. You’d like the isolation. The freedom to explore. To take in the color, and the warm tropical breeze and the great expanse of water meeting sky out there on the horizon.
But just for a moment, let’s think about the basics. You need rest. You need pace. You need shelter from the storm. You need nourishment. You need companionship. You need friendship. You need exercise. You need a place to belong. Your people need you. To be healthy. And upbeat. Focused and energized.
If it were all taken away, what would you miss the most? Who would you miss the most?
Be sure to whisper a prayer of thanks. You’ve still got them. Take time to embrace the people you value who are still with you.
You have today.
And it is a gift. A very good gift.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
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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