Tag: hope

Guitars, Drums, and Trusting Yourself

“Forever trust in who we are, and nothing else matters…”

In the world of inspirational and positive affirmation quotations, we are used to the words of Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins, Norman Vincent Peale, and others. One of my favorite inspirational quotes, however, comes from the duo of James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich.  Hetfield and Ulrich are better known by their day jobs as lead vocalist and drummer, respectively, of the band Metallica. The above quote is from their 1991 song “Nothing Else Matters”.

Trust is a funny thing.  As kids we learn to trust our parents.  We learn to trust our siblings. We learn to trust our friends.  But at what point do we learn to trust ourselves?

The road to trusting ourselves is sometimes treacherous. Especially if a troll named Insecurity jumps out from behind a tree.  Insecurity is the arch enemy of self trust.

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Welcome to the Year 1439

It was going along just great until Johannes Gutenberg changed everything.

It was 1439, the year that Gutenberg is widely believed to have invented something called moveable type. Moveable type was the foundation of the modern printing press. Gutenberg crafted individual letters and then could assemble words, then sentences, then paragraphs, then pages of information that for the first time could be mass produced. Prior to Gutenberg, calligraphers ruled the world of printed information. The only problem with calligraphers was their work could not be mass produced, thus greatly limited the distribution of information. The printing press changed the world.

Being a calligrapher in the age of the printing press was not a good thing. Suddenly your skill set is no longer as useful to the world as it used to be. I’m sure calligraphers of the day fought this technological change; after all it was a direct threat to their trade and their ability to provide for their families. Fight as they may, technology won, and changed the world.  

Technology always wins.

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A New Found Appreciation for Trees

You can learn a lot from a tree.

As children, we excitedly spoke of what we’d like to be when we grew up.  Doctors, firefighters, baseball players, teachers.  I don’t recall anyone ever saying that they’d like to be a tree.

I can honestly state that I never wanted to become a tree.  Even today I have no desire to radically transform myself into trunk and branch.  Even if I did want to, I’m not quite sure how I would even go about it.  Trees have many great characteristics that we’d all love to possess.  They are tall, strong, self reliant, patient, and can weather the extreme changes of seasons.  The thing that inspires me about trees, though, is their attitude.

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Nothing Will Ever Make Me Happy

One of the happiest days of my life was when I realized that nothing will ever make me happy.

Nothing.  As in no thing.

Things used to excite me.  I would feel so much better by having things rather than when I was just wanting things.  I have surrounded myself with all sorts of things, all designed to make me happy.  Or at least that’s what I told myself when I bought them.  Somehow I expected the things that I possessed would give me the happiness and joy that I was missing in my life.  How could I be happy with a 32″ TV?  A 54″ TV is 69% larger, and therefore must contain 69% more happiness!  How could anyone be happy using last year’s iPhone?  Driving a two year old car?  You must be miserable!

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“Have an Adequate Day!”

Maybe it’s me.  Perhaps I send out some sort of signal, some sort of message to those I come in contact with that lets them know that I settle for mediocrity and have low expectations.  Maybe people just don’t think I’m capable of having a great day.  Because they always only tell me to have a good day.

These people who talk to me each day are talking to you, too.  You see them at the drive-thru when you get your morning coffee.  Or when you pick up your dry cleaning.  The waiter at lunch.  Even when you’re buying new shoes.

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Who Are You?

“I was with a friend of mine in an airport and a stranger came up to me and said, You’re tall. Are you a basketball player? and I replied, No. Then another person came up to me and asked, Are you a basketball player? And I said, Nope. So my friend asked me, Bill, why do you keep telling them no? And I told him, Because basketball is what I do, but it’s not who I am.”

The quote above is from Bill Russell, perhaps the greatest basketball player in history.  An 11-time NBA champion, Olympic Gold medalist.  Two-time NCAA champion.  The evidence strongly suggests that Bill Russell was, in fact, a basketball player.  But I just love the wisdom of his view of his real self: “basketball is what I do, but it’s not who I am.”

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The Space Between

If I could only live my life in slow motion.

Life is a series of responses and reactions, and the quality of the responses and reactions determines what happens next.  There is a space – a moment – between what just happened and how I deal with what just happened.  Sometimes I am proud of my response, sometimes I’m rather embarrassed.  The responses, good or bad, just seem to come out of me automatically, the classic stimulus – response scenario.  When I suddenly become a mature adult again half way through an overreactive ballistic tirade and realize what I am actually doing, I wish life would grant me a mulligan and I could relive the whole event all over again, this time producing a more favorable response.

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Of All Things Great & Ordinary

You get to a point in life when some long held opinions, once indisputable truths, start to show some cracks.  

Wisdom imparted by life experience somehow leads you to challenge and re-examine.  I am at that point with greatness.  What exactly is greatness?  

Greatness used to be defined as something of spectacular magnitude.  Something beyond conceivable attainment by someone as “ordinary” as me.  The wealth of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the passionate intensity of a Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar solo, the graceful fluidity of hockey legend Wayne “The Great” Gretzky, the architectual scope and scale of the Great Wall of China.  All are awe inspiring in their own right.  But I’m at a point where I find true greatness lies more in the vast philanthropic fortune that Messrs. Gates and Buffett are now giving away, as opposed to the creation of their massive wealth in the first place.

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