The time around Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite (great food, few surprises, and basketball season gets in gear) but it gets sobering fast when people die. These last seven days were sober in the extreme.
A former Atara Bio colleague (mid 30’s), a friend from San Francisco (age early 50-ish) and a college fraternity brother from Willamette U. (mid 60’s) all died in their sleep last week.
That sort of pattern reinforces certain superstitions. It also reminds you of a basic fact; life is fragile.
Just because life is delicate though is no cause to be iffy. Sometimes, in fact, frail is the last thing you want because it means you may live a “smaller” life, something less robust, less accomplished, and less full than your potential would point you.
It’s easy in work and your personal life to ruminate about the might-have-beens in your past or be overly anxious about your future. You can’t do anything about the former and as an article in the Harvard Business Review notes, “What is happening to predictability in an intensely competitive, rapidly changing global economy? It is being destroyed.”
While I’m a planner by nature (who else maps a Utah road trip for October 2020 twelve months in advance), it means that it’s wiser to live with a reasonable degree of uncertainty and avoid obsessing about what might change.
What you do have is the present, and living as fully and richly in the now as you can. The current movie Becoming Nobody about Ram Dass, who I had a chance to meet 30 years ago, brings that point home. One of the movie’s themes is that we’re all so busy becoming somebody that we fail to appreciate the present and those that share it with us.
My thought for this Thanksgiving at work and at home? A line from a Tom Hanks interview in the New York Times, right on the verge of the release the Fred Roger’s bio movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood:
“Somewhere along the line, I figured out, the only thing really, I think, eventually a parent can do is say I love you, there’s nothing you can do wrong, you cannot hurt my feelings, I hope you will forgive me on occasion, and what do you need me to do? You offer up that to them. I will do anything I can possibly do in order to keep you safe. That’s it. Offer that up and then just love them.”
So Happy Thanksgiving. Love yourself. Love those special colleagues and family members around you. And be here now.
Life Back West is an occasional set of writings focused on ways people, teams and organizations can be both more effective (doing the right thing) and more efficient (doing the right thing well). More about my 30+ years of work coaching execs, start up and leadership teams can be found at the “About J. Mike Smith and Back West, Inc.” sidebar at the Back West blog. Now welcoming new and known clients.