Yeah, Nice Thinking!

Sustaining Better Health, Lifestyles and Legacies in Southcoast, MA - Sometimes stuff just pops into your head and out of your mouth. I really don't know if it flashes in your head before it comes out of your mouth.  Usually, it happens when you least expect it. I've had some of these moments usually when speaking my grand kids or in class.

Sometimes when I've been percolating something in my head because of a solution I've been looking for, or relating what I'm working on with someone and - Bam!  Yup, there it is.  

I was a bit frustrated with some unmotivated students in class one day and out this popped: Nothing worth something requires (your) minimal participation.  It's amazing how many students are happy with just getting by.  These days (sounding as old as I feel here) instead of students asking me how much they have to do to get an "A"; I get asked what's the minimum?  Okay, yes, many students are working 40-hour weeks and commuting at least one hour round-trip and taking six classes.  What the heck is going on here? 

Sure, they're learning some valuable life lessons but this really isn't a time in their life where priorities have been reduced to a to-do list.  Class - check!  Work-check!  Commute-check! Homework umm?  Group project - umm?  They do squeeze in some time for their social life but it comes at a cost especially in  my 8AM class . 

My grandchild was going through one of those phases.  Reality and fantasy were indistinguishable.  And lying wasn't lying if you weren't questioned or didn't get caught.  So, in the spur of the moment there was an issue with mendacity and I got a snoot full of.  Don't here that word much - loved how Katharine Hepburn said that word in Tennessee Williams' - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  - but, for some reason I thought it was in Glass Menagerie.  Anyway, Burle Ives as Big Daddy did say, for sure, " I smell mendacity."  Anyway, lying is lying but for some reason mendacity sounds so much worse.   So, where was I?  Oh, in the spur of the moment I blurted out to my grandchild - When you lie you lie twice; once to yourself and then to the person you share that lie with.  Wonder if she'll pass on that bit of impromptu wisdom? 

In a client meeting, there was concern as to how their customers would buy into the concept my client wanted to present them.  There had to be a simpler way.  There was!  I was inspired to say that they were going about it too rationally.  What they needed was an emotional hook because as I proclaimed - before you can change their minds; you first need to change their hearts.  From that point, I was able to get my client to understand that in order to best communicate with their customers; they had to tell them what the customer wanted to hear.  That it was more important than what they wanted to tell their customers.  

Look, I don't know if I've picked up some of these concepts before.  I'm not saying I'm a towering genius.  I'm not saying any of these thoughts were even totally original but, they did fill the bill at the time!

The little boy next door was constantly asking me questions.  What are you doing?  Where are you going?  What's that for?  His grandmother would chastise him for asking too many questions.  One day in the midst of his non-stop questioning, he decided to check himself and said, "I ask too many questions, huh, Ron?"  That's when I blurted out - The problem isn’t asking too many questions; it’s not having enough answers!  That little boy was taken away too soon. I won't get into it here.  But he did leave me with one more question - why?

 

In discussing with colleagues of around the same age how great we thought things once were, I realized that - the pleasure of the memory minimizes the pain of the experience.  I think we fondly reminisce about past shared experiences with those we know and love and forget how those memories wouldn't be as sweet if they occurred today.  Rabbit-run tenements,  shared bathrooms and filling kerosene heater bottles may make us feel nostalgic but, would we really like to go through that again? The Saturday night bath with no running hot water is a whole other story.
 
Be careful of what you think of though.  Remember that scene in the movie Ghostbusters? Dan Aykroyd's character Dr. Ray Stantz says, after the evil Gozar, played by Savitza Jovan told him that his first thought would destroy him, "I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us. Mr. Stay Puft!"  Bill Murray, as Dr. Peter Venkman replies, "Nice thinkin', Ray."

Indeed - I'm making myself a note to do more of that myself!

P.S. New thinkin' requires a new light bulb icon - incandescent bulb I guess represent old thinkin' - and so it goes.