GETTING FIRED --GETTING HIRED

The next two paragraphs have been copied from Dr. Jim Tunney’s most recent weblog posting from his The Tunney Side of Sports (“What Do I Do Now?”, September 9, 2019).  Jim Tunney, who has been called the Dean of National Football League (NFL) Referees, lives in California and works out at the Resort where I work.   I would recommend his inspiring (in a non-religious way) and motivational thoughts as worthy of your consideration.  This posting was generated by the reality faced every year around September 1^st when 500-600 aspiring college football stars get cut from the tryout rosters of the 32 NFL teams.

“Have you ever been cut or fired from a job? If not, you are missing out on one of life’s most personal challenges. One of the first things that comes to mind when that “grim reaper” appears is: “What do I do now?” Friends and loved ones will tell you: “When one door closes, another one will open?” Yeah, but when your world collapses, you struggle to keep positive. However, begin to look for that next door to open – and it will! It may not open when you want it to, but, as has often been said: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

“Hopefully, the person making the decision to fire you is someone who will look you straight in the eye, explain the decision and point out other opportunities – in and out of whatever your current job happens to be. You hope that person making that decision will wish you well and leave the door open for you to call if they can help further. It’s never easy. If, however, you are the one in-charge, be sure you express those feelings to those you are releasing. After all, you did hire/employ that individual and felt at the time it was a good decision. Unless the firing is for egregious behavior, you still are releasing an individual with whom you had confidence.”

I would add to Jim’s remarks that any person who has shown enough self-discipline and worked hard enough to even get invited to try out for a professional sports team will have a great deal of what it takes to be hired to some other profession. Desire, determination, and discipline (not only on the field but in the classroom and in interpersonal relationships) are what it takes—and with it you can do almost anything. 

(OLD) BOYS AND THEIR TOYS

 In the late summer and early fall of the year a peculiar change comes over the Monterey Peninsula in California. With the arrival of ‘car week’ and the automobile races at the Laguna Seca International racetrack the sights, sounds, and even smell of the air changes as hundreds of exotic, classic, and collectors’ cars fill the roads, parking lots and even golf course fairways.  The sights of outrageously expensive and untouchable cars, the pervasive sounds of rumbling ‘on-the-cam’ or accelerating high-revving engines, and the smell of Castrol engine oil in the old sports cars brings back old memories to thousands of car enthusiasts (usually affluent people or wannabes’ who grew up in the 1940’s, ‘50’s, and 60’s) from around the world.

Even if you are not an enthusiast, you can’t be neutral about these things as you find yourself stuck in traffic, or hear the cars winding out from five miles away at the racetrack, or hope to find a parking place within a half-mile of your destination because of the many venues that are displaying these works of superb engineering and art.  The untouchables are suddenly ubiquitous.

And the prices the auctioneers get for these increasingly older and rarer pieces of machinery are staggering—most well over $100 k up to a million or more dollars.  As a minimal case in point let me share with you something I found in a file I had at home. I had written, in April of 1964 (you read that right), a for-sale ad to place in our local newspaper for the second car I had ever owned—a 1958 Austin-Healey 100-6 deluxe roadster with all the ‘extras’ such as a radio, luggage rack, overdrive and tonneau cover.  The car was in very good condition, engine just rebuilt, new paint job, 48,000 miles and I was asking $1,375 for it.  The same car in the same condition, but sixty years older, is now selling, at auction, for $55,000-$75,000 with some examples going up to $100 k. 

  

But let me go back to what precipitated what I really wanted to write about today about boys and toys.

  

Where I work at a local resort golf course I yesterday heard and saw probably a couple hundred Porsches, Ferrraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens and similar marques of 500-700 horse-power cars accelerating for hours in 2-3 second bursts of what a police officer once told me, as he stopped me as a 17-year-old in the aforementioned Austin Healey, for “exhibition of speed and power.” The officer thankfully gave me only a warning.  He had to explain the language of the law to me after he observed me ‘accidently’ lay down about a 7’ strip of rubber as I pulled out from a stop sign.  Of course my ‘speed’ only reached about 20 mph (hence the warning instead of the ticket) before I backed off and my ‘power’ only amounted to a little over 120 hp compared to the cars I witnessed today in their constant “exhibition of speed and power” of 0-50 or 60 in about 2.5-3.0 seconds flat.  My A-H could do about 10 sec. flat. 

Interestingly it soon became apparent to me as the hours rolled on was that the drivers of these cars really wanted was to have was people look at them and their car and the person sitting beside them.  That person was always an attractive woman from 20-40 years younger than the driver (who was a man typically in his late 40’s to his late 70’s). These exhibitionists typically drove in little packs of three to four cars. Onlookers were always first attracted by the sound of gearing down and then the air being rent by 2-3 second bursts of fierce acceleration. (The captive –but not captivated—women were rarely smiling.) 

Now here is the thing about these old boys and their toys:  Psychologists are virtually unanimous in saying that these rich old boys are simply trying, in their old age, to project a rather pathetic image of power and ‘manliness’ in their display of “look at me and what I’ve got!”  Probably all they’ve really got is a huge ego, a big bank account, insecurity and a need for attention and a heavy right foot.

Is it much different—except for the bank account and the age of the girl—than a 17-year-old boy and his (or his father’s) car? Not in my experience as a boy who grew up, and fortunately out-of-it, in the 1960’s. 

FAMILY MAN

Being the father of a large family and child-sitting a grandson every week and having taught school as a profession it is surprising that I have never written about children. Perhaps it is because they are so much a part of my everyday life experience and thoughts I have taken them for granted.  I will try to begin to make up for that with a few observations (some my own, some from others) that may be funny, or not, but which I believe and have some or much truth in them that could help others.  

·       At the end there are three things that matter to a man, regardless of who he is; and they are the affection, understanding, and welfare of his family—every person in it. 

·       There are no real difficulties in a home where the children hope to be like their parents one day.

·       You can do anything with children if you only play with them. 

·       Before we had children, I had five theories about bringing up children; now I have five children (plus six step-children) and have no theories.

·     "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.  Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households.  They no longer rise when elders enter the room.  They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs and tyrannize their teachers."  (Socrates)                                                               

·     "The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children."  (Duke of Windsor)

"I’ve seen kids ride bicycles, run, play ball, set up a camp, swing, fight a war, swim, and race for eight hours . . . yet have to be driven to the garbage can."        Erma Bombeck

·       Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying.

·       One cannot see the evil deeds of one’s own children. 

·       Small children give you headache; big children heartache. 

·       Children are often spoiled because you cannot spank two grandmothers. 

·       He who takes the child by the hand takes their mother by the heart.

·       Child psychology is what children manage parents with.

·       The young always have the same problem: how to rebel and how to conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. 

·       With a child in the house all corners are full.

·       The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home.

·       The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

·       If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.

·       A home is ruled by the sickest or loudest person in it.

·       The most important work you will ever do is within the walls of your own home.  

AN INTUITION TO THE ESSENTIAL THINGS

I heard a sports journalist, Jamie Diaz, use that phrase this morning as I watched the television run-up to The Open, formerly called the British Open golf tournament.  He was talking about one of the premier golfers of the world and his approach to preparing for major golf tournaments. 

Any reader of mine knows that I am a golfer.  But what a casual acquaintance with me as a person or as a reader may not know until they have spent a little time with me is that my interest and enjoyment in golf is but part of my internal focus on what I deem to be the much more essential things that make up my life—or any life.  Golf, for me, is an enjoyable end in itself, but it is also a means to looking at more important things.

If you are going to be a major player in anything in life I believe there is an essential approach to the essential ‘things.’ (This reminds me of the song ‘The Gambler’ sung by Kenny Rogers, “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run . . . .”)

Golf has given me an enjoyable way of learning through the discipline that it takes for me to be a good golfer that it also takes the same type of approach and discipline to be good at anything that one may not have been naturally gifted.

A person has to be teachable.  That is to say, the person needs to discipline himself to not saying ‘I know,’ when he does not know; to not looking away or doing other things when a model or opportunity is made available to him that he could observe and try to replicate.  And if that is not possible, then looking up the answer when the model is not available to consult.  In short, it is to use the moment when it would otherwise be wasted, and then come back to it as soon as you can.  We can always learn from others—what to do, or what not to do. We need to observe and to ask them, and ourselves, ‘What is essential?’

A fundamental essential thing that we need to know in golf or in life is what our weaknesses are and then face them square on.  Next, we need to figure out how they could be remedied.  Then we need to work on those things using every resource that is available to us when they are available.  This includes time as well as people as well as books or other materials.  It needs discernment as to (from another song) ‘what to leave in and what to leave out.’ Then, when we find a success we need to immediately reinforce it.  Do it over and over until it starts to take root in our muscles and our memory. 

I have been repeatedly reminded of the insight once learned to ‘not get caught up in the thick of thin things.’  We need to cull out the ‘thin’ or unessential or unproductive things. There are essential things (lessons, best practices, approaches) embedded in nearly every activity—but there are, more importantly, best activities—the  essential thick things of life—our physical and spiritual health, our family, our contribution or ‘calling’ in life, our commitments and our covenants, our duty to God and country. Concentrate on and put your best efforts on these things.  

Take stock, identify the essential things, and then go from there.  

PERVASIVE RELATIVISM

If you are under about 35 you probably didn’t hear much about the term ‘relativism’ during your schooling in your teenage and young(er) adult years.  That is because it was so de rigueur (cool) by then and so pervasive (common) now. Since about the mid-‘60’s-‘70’s, life, as you are now experiencing it, is taken as simply ‘the way it is.’ But there was a time, before the cataclysmic epoch-changing 1960’s, when things were very different. 

Social scientists, philosophers, and traditional religionists looking back recognize a tremendous shift in the attitudes and perceptions young people developed in those years—a huge cultural shift.  Consider the words to an immensely popular song in the late ‘60’s:

“There’s something happening here

What it is ain’t exactly clear. . . /

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound

Everybody look what’s going down. . . /

There’s battle lines being drawn

Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong

Young people speaking their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind. . .”

(lyrics from Stephen Sills’song For What It’s Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1966.)  

Explanatory to those views, here is how an esteemed university scholar and representative of the older generations (people born before about 1955) views the majority of today’s young people—especially high-school and college-age students (ages 14-39). Contrast it with earlier times: 

“Students are deficient in moral formation, in reading of serious books, in musical tastes, and above all in love [he rightly considers ‘relationships’ as a sad excuse for love].  They are shallow.  They have no longing in their souls for anything high or great.  Their minds are empty, their characters weak, and their bodies sated with rock and roll and easy sex—or at least with the belief that sex is ‘no big deal.’  These students come equipped with a simple-minded relativism that is quick to close off all discussion with the tag, ‘Who’s to say what’s right and wrong?’   Their relativism justifies [to themselves] an easygoing openness to everything, an openness which expresses their incapacity for being serious about anything.  Their proclaimed openness [today they call it ‘tolerance’] in fact, turns out to be a dogmatic closedness toward moral virtue.”

      (Thomas G. West, notes from “Allen Bloom and America,” in 
       The Claremont Institute, the Claremont Review of Books, 1988.)

The high schools, and particularly the universities, along with fractured families with the debilitating effect of divorce on children and the child’s capacity or motivation to learn and to love, are largely to blame for these distorted views.  Many  educational institutions (again, particularly the ‘elite’ liberal universities whose faculty are largely  children—those spoken of in the song lyrics quoted—of the 60’s and 70’s) have openly taught that life has no intrinsic meaning and therefore that there is no principled difference between good and evil (or that there is no evil). Therefore, law is a joke. Many of their students who believed these things have children (the current young adult generation) who also believe these things, who claim to be open to everything, who “are filled with boundless seas of rage, doubt, and fear and that liberty means nothing more than self-realization or self-expression with no intrinsic moral limit.  Their music, which is reflective of their culture, has anger and desperation in it. . . ” 
                          (Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind).

So what is the solution to this sorry state of affairs?  Well, for starters, how about revisiting America’s founding principles?

Even inspired foreign observers could see what we need or would need to salvage the mess our society has become. The French observer of society and culture, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of it with prescience in the mid 1830’s in his Democracy in America, and the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the 1970’s understood our founding principles better than many of our politicians and young people when he said, in A World Split Apart, “In American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature.  That is, freedom was given to the individual [by God, not by government] conditionally, on the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. . . . [They] have lost the concept of [divine principles and] inalienable rights which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.”  The language of the Declaration of Independence, of course, supports Solzhenitsyn’s claim: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights . . . .”

Men are subject to the laws of nature’s God.

The Founders were well-aware of the need for public-spirited citizens.  I think that they well-understood and welcomed immigrants who would desire citizenship with the duties and loyalty it required (and restricted entrance to those who wouldn’t).  They anticipated with clarity the consequence of a loss of public virtue by any who came here, or resided here by birth—even their own offspring, if they did not subscribe to these expectations.  They believed that a people accustomed to living however it pleased, who saw no higher purpose than, say, entertainment and having fun—or indolently living off a government and disrespecting its laws, a people demonstrably incapable of self-government in the sense of controlling selfish passions and interests—would also be incapable of self-government in the sense off democracy, making public laws for themselves to live by.  

Founder James Madison says in Federalist 55:

“Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities [men’s capacity for virtue] in a higher degree than any other form [of government].” But if a people ever becomes slavishly lacking in self-restraint, lacking in understanding or respect for law, if their "spirit shall ever be so far debased," they, alas, "will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty."

And so they have.  And that is the crux of the problem.

Some things--many things-- are not relative. 

WORK--You won't return home without it

As one, who, from the outset of this corpus of little essays, reflections, and observations, acknowledged the positive influence of great men, I also gratefully acknowledge the profound influence of the great women in my life (particularly my wives) and add with this essay yet another to my pantheon.  As a female counterpart to the astute Christian mentor of many of us—C. S. Lewis—I add his British contemporary, Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957)—essayist, novelist, poet, theologian, dramatist and scholar. In 1942 she published an essay titled ‘Vocation in Work’, in  A Christian Basis for the Post War World (WW II). When I read her essay, I immediately resonated to it.  It helped gel my views on the value of work, which I give here.

For us in our time work is often viewed as but a means to some (we think) higher—usually some economic, commercial, or leisure-focused—end. I, Ms. Sayers, and other old- schoolers would suggest a contrary view.  The economic end taken alone or intentionally chosen over other options is ultimately a dead end.

In the opening years of the 1940’s, a time of economic uncertainty, a coalition of religious leaders in Britain concluded that “the sense of a Divine vocation must be restored to a man’s daily work.” An esteemed leader in the Church to which I belong some ten years earlier voiced a similar plea: “Let us as a people re-enthrone work as a guiding principle in our lives” (Heber J. Grant). He said this in response to the troubles of the early years of the Great Depression in this country which soon spread to Europe.

‘Restored?’ ‘Re-enthroned?’

 As much as this prescient man knew that people needed food, they needed hope; they needed purpose; they needed vision; they needed meaningful work and work needed them.

Mr. Grant posed a more correct view of work than the usual, by traditional religious interpretations, rather negative interpretation of the so-thought-of work from the beginning of life on earth as being the ‘curse of Adam’: “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life . . . in the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread, (i.e., you must work) till thou return unto the ground; for out of it thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3: 17, 19).

But look closer.  Notice that the ground was cursed, not Adam (man). The antecedent for the ‘curse’—the partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—by our first parents was, rather, to become the catalyst for God’s gracious response. Readers of scripture also seemed to overlook the caveat in that verse, “for thy sake.” Because of this choice God sent to earth a Divine Redeemer—to redeem fallen man and to redeem the fallen earth.  It was all part of the plan. 

Remember, too, before Adam partook of the fruit of the tree, he was told to “dress this garden (Eden); keep it (or take good care of it).” He was moreover given dominion (stewardship) of all living things and the Earth itself. To me that means purposeful, productive, meaningful and rewarding work was his (Adam’s—man’s) charge, but would now be carried out in a different venue—in a world where things wouldn’t be so easy for him. He would be required to constantly make choices. He learned that the Creator Himself not only valued work, but it was the very thing that comprised the focus of His—God’s—life. Moses, recorded God as revealing to him God’s purpose in the creation of man: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Pearl of Great Price, Moses 1:39).  God set the pattern; meaningful work was to be man’s work also.  Man needed to work out his salvation but to keep God in the equation because he couldn’t do it alone. 

To repeat: God was and is a creator—that is His work.   Man should be a creator also—that is his work.

And how is it done?  It is for us to turn to our own work—whatever we are motivated to do, whatever we are called to do, whenever we can do it.  Serve work that is intrinsically compelling for you—something that you can be really good at if you will discipline yourself to put in the time. If it is good for you (and it will be if you are creative, that is, you too are a creator) it will surely be good for others.  But note this caution: your chosen vocation will not necessarily be found by simply looking within and finding your passion, as graduation speakers are prone to say, but rather by looking without and asking what life is asking of you.  When you ask, ask to know what life is calling you to do.  And then do it.

 One who follows this pattern will be satisfied because he will have lived a life of purpose—and you will always find it will include other people and that your vocation in some way served them. 

A divine vocation will always serve others.

MAINTENANCE and ENTROPY

As a young person I took a lot for granted.  I guess I just assumed that if things were good when I wanted to use them, they would be good when I was finished with them.  If I wanted to use dad’s truck, for example, all I had to do was ask and then put some gas in it after I used it. I didn’t think there was much more to it. I didn’t realize, or think about it, that Dad took care of everything I didn’t see.

As I got older and got my first car I quickly realized there was much more to it than just saving up money to buy the car.  There was insurance.  There was an annual automobile registration and license. There were innumerable repairs that needed to be made to a second or third hand automobile. And, I found, the thing just wore out and continued to get older by the day.  Moreover, I had to maintain a good driving record to have the privilege of driving on roads that I didn’t build or maintain myself.

There were owner responsibilities to maintaining my investment. 

I have always (in my mid-years and beyond) been impressed with the commercial advertisement run many years ago by the Midas muffler and brake shop: “Pay me now – or pay me later,” meaning, take care of your vehicle maintenance now or pay me ‘big time’ for a repair job later when the thing breaks because you neglected it.

The concepts of maintenance and neglect carry over to where you live and other possessions as well as to your health, to your job, and to human relationships.  You can’t just take for granted that everything will stay the same as when you first took interest in whatever it was. 

I have learned that you must give proactive attention to all these things.  You must pay a small price early on, or every day, to keep what you’ve got in good repair.  Moreover, you must make further investments in the object of your interest or need.  It will, like you, get older and need ever-increasing attention and care. Even your education (temporal and spiritual) need regular attention, maintenance, and upgrading.  If you just let things slide you will regret it.  If you let it slide too long, the thing you once valued will be destroyed.

There is a physical law called the Law of Entropy that says that everything in the universe is running down and tends toward disorganization and eventually wins all battles.  That may be true in the physical universe but it doesn’t have to be true in one’s spiritual life. 

Think about it.  Then fight entropy in all areas of your life with maintenance, and better yet, with proactive attention. The tools are out there.