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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday June 23, 2003 Volume V Number 30 |
FOCUS - Despair, Inc
For more than a year now, as my clients look at me across my desk, on the wall just over my shoulder is a large framed lithograph, a four color seascape at the water’s edge, waves spraying high drama against a rocky coastline, deep blue waters, choppy seas with white foam caps in high winds, thunderheads ominous against a cobalt sky, an invigorating scene for those of us who view life as something of a captivating tempest. Underneath, across the bottom in clear, bold print the word CHARACTER. And as a subtitle, The True Test of which Emerges in the Crucible of Adversity.
I keep it there as something of a reminder. Most days, something happens to test character. I want to remember that it is a test. Pass-Fail. And I want to pass. I also want my clients to know that I care about this seminal virtue. They can trust me, and accept my advice because I aspire to be a man of character, and I’m not surprised by or intimidated by or diverted by adversity. It’s all part of the deal, and we’re in it together. All this I hope is communicated by the poster on my office wall, and I don’t have to say a word. It makes the statement all on its own.
So at the mall, that shop peddling the paraphernalia of SUCCESS, always draws me in. I can’t just walk past. I feel good just roaming up and down the aisle, surrounded by mugs and paintings and desktop knick-knacks all engraved with little inspiring words and phrases celebrating ACHIEVMENT and ATTITUDE and RISK and PERSEVERANCE and POSSIBILTIES and TEAMWORK and VISION and IMAGINATION and HOPE and SOARING, like an EAGLE (that one’s biblical). All these trinkets and wall hangings are a bit pricey over there at the Mall, and I wonder which comes first – does the investment in this stuff lead to SUCCESS, or does success come first so that you can afford to decorate your office accordingly? I haven’t yet come to any conclusions on that one.
This week, a married couple, also good clients, came by to pick up some paperwork. Christie looked at my CHARACTER poster and asked, “Do you like those poster things?”
“Yeah,” I said, not sure where this was going. “I do.”
“Hmm…” Christie nodded and smiled and looked over at Shawn like she needed support for the revelation about to come. “… Well … we found a cool web site where you can buy those things, but it’s kinda the other end of the spectrum.”
“Oh…?”
“It’s www.Despair.com,” she said. “It’s pretty funny.” So I turned to my keyboard and punched up the URL.
When Dr. E. L. Kersten considered the huge success of the motivational business, multi-billions in trinkets and books and seminars and tapes and videos and conventions and whiz-bang public speakers who model the life we’ve always dreamed of, he saw, instinctively, the disconnect between the promise and the hard realities of life in the trenches. Perhaps it is the PhD, which develops in the holder a hearty skepticism about all things generally accepted by the masses. Doctoral work equips one with verbal agility, argument and insight, case studies, a superior intellect, all combined to give one the skill and ability to shatter even the most cherished icons readily embraced by John Q. Public. But the good doctor is himself a marketing mastermind, in a perverse sort of manner. While I know little about Despair, Inc. as a viable enterprise, I’m guessing his antidote of realism against the backdrop of the Success Industry is selling rather well.
The Motto at Despair, Inc is simple – “Increasing Success by Lowering Expectations.”
And there is a full collection of posters and despair paraphernalia ready to toss into your electronic shopping cart.
The first one caught my eye – a clear glass coffee mug with a line marking the half-full (or half empty) level in the cup. Beneath the line the no-nonsense statement: The glass is now half empty – DEAL WITH IT. They call it The Pessimist’s Mug™. Dr. Kersten explains, “In these irrationally exuberant times, it's getting harder and harder for the self-respecting pessimist to stay unhappy. So pervasive is the hope, so overwhelming the positivity, that without the firmest grip on your sullen perspective, you might actually lose it. Then one day, you wake up looking at the bright side, whistling some inane showtune, and generally annoying everyone around you. Fortunately, we've created a solution. Despair, Inc. is proud to introduce The Pessimist's Mug™ Specifically engineered by the chronically cynical pessimists of Despair Laboratories™, this crystal-clear mug will help all who drink from it to Stay Grounded™ by forever reminding them to see when the glass is half-empty.”
Ah, the posters. One pictures two pre-adolescent boys caught in action on the athletic field, engaged in a soccer match, just in front of the goal. The photograph is captured from the sidelines by a monster camera lens, big enough to freeze the action with a razor sharp focus on the subject, everything else a green blur. One boy in a blue jersey looks the quintessential bully, a shock of reddish hair, cropped close, his chubby face mean with a look that says, “Outta my way, Pinhead!” as his open hand strikes his opponent in the face, pushing him aside in what must have been called by any fair-minded referee a blatant foul. His opponent, the recipient of the wallop, a goalie in a red striped pullover vest, half the size of the bully in blue, cringing from the blow, shrinks back from the collision cringed in pain, a sad picture of a little darling smacked by a wanton playground thug – certainly horrifying this mother in the stands. The bold word beneath is GOALS, and the subtitle – “It’s Best to Avoid Standing Directly Between a Competitive Jerk and his Goals.”
Indeed.
Another
captures a solo penguin, waddling away from the camera towards the horizon of
clear blue, wings open wide (what there are of those “wings” – two little
stumps unlike the wings on other “birds”), the penguin embracing the sky ahead,
moving clumsily forward on the white snow, and below the photograph:
LIMITATIONS; “Until
You Spread Your Wings, You’ll Have No Idea How Far You Can Walk.”
Penguins can’t fly. Never have. Never will. Same with some dreamers, I guess.
A couple more. Picture hands outstretched, piled high at the center in a show of unity, commitment, resolve and the caption: MEETINGS: “None of Us Is as Dumb as All of Us.”
Or another – a rowing team, a muscled crew on the tranquil waters in the morning mist beside Oxford or Cambridge, pulling long oars together in synchronized harmony under the watchful command of a chief barking out the timing: GET TO WORK: “You Aren’t Being Paid to Believe in the Power of Your Dreams.”
And so goes the wit and wisdom of Dr. Kersten over at Despair, Inc.
I may need to consider a replacement for CHARACTER.
* * * * * * *
The ranks of grandparenthood is growing among the circle of my peers. Another call came in on Saturday morning, reporting yet another expected arrival. All we do is laugh anymore, celebrating the joy about to come. Most new grandparents experience some anxiety over the prospect of yet another tangible evidence of the onset of seniorhood. It’s another passage, another milestone, but the arrival of a tiny little child somehow puts the whole thing in perspective. In the case of this week’s announcement, make that two. Carolyn’s niece is expecting twins.
I can still see the face of the college kid in my brother-in-law, who opened a card on Father’s Day from his wife, his four girls, two sons-in-law and two grandchildren. Randy hasn’t changed much, at least not that I can see. He’s still the same comfortable, easy-going likeable guy I’ve known for over three decades. But now he’s surrounded by these good lookin’ adults all of whom I remember as children. Out of the envelope, he pulled a gift certificate. The whole gang pooled some cash, enough to buy him a twenty-one speed mountain bike, the very one he admired last time he was in the shop, black and silver, equipped with top of the line derailleur and center pull brakes and knobby tires; on or off road.
The minute the Pastor uttered the benediction on Father’s Day Sunday morning, Randy was in the car heading for the bike shop to cash in his certificate, and while the dinner table was set, he took his new machine for a spin. He made a pledge that day – he’s makin’ his daily commute to and from work, about five miles down the road, on his new bike.
That afternoon, the two of us went for a ride out in the countryside of southern Wisconsin. The deep green is stunning to us California types, and the rich, moist clean air. We got to talkin’ as we peddled, and I learned from Randy that one of the reasons his family got him a bicycle for Father’s Day is that they wanted to invest in something that would keep the old guy fit. I agreed, we’ve both reached the place in our lives where the people who love us want us to stay healthy. Take care of ourselves. Regularly rev up the cardiovascular.
And I guess that’s a good thing.
Apparently, they want to keep us around.
* * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Sometimes the cynicism of Dr. Kersten gets you, too. You know all the clichés and principles of successful living, but occasionally your world favors the antithesis, making the whole idea of success seem ludicrous. It’s healthy, I suppose, for humor to offset the disappointment, the exaggerated expectations and the gloss coat we like to slap over our humiliations. These awkward protrusions, these penguin stumps. They want us to call them wings; and flap them until we take off and soar. We flap and flap, and nothing happens. We’re waddling on ice. It’s cold. Once in awhile, it feels like we are card carrying, full-time employees of Despair, Inc.
But picture Randy cruisin’ down a country road on the black and silver TREK he got for Father’s Day, shiny new spokes sparkling in the sunlight. Think about the love that put him in the saddle; see him pushin’ on the peddles, takin’ in the scenery in the afternoon breeze. And a family watchin’ him ride, and wavin’ and laughin’ and a Mom leanin’ over to her little girl sayin’, “Look at Grandpa go!”
And tell me how you define success.
Go Randy!
Slow down, we’re comin’ along right behind.
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2003
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
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