Reflecting on the glory days can be a harmless, self-absorbed activity for most people but for me it would be a lie. I was blessed with a decent athletic ability and a competent mind, but I found apathy safer than effort. Doing my best would remove the one excuse I had for a lack of success.
That all ended when something bad happened in late July, 1987. I was a young 23-year-old when my father went for his daily walk. Attending graduate school, I was training for the career that now consumes me. Now I realize that I was in a teenage sleep. The sun hadn’t set yet when he went for his walk, but before it rose again, some vague thoughts crept up on me throughout that sleepless night. My father hid his potential too well. For a lot of reasons, he didn’t go after it (or maybe he didn’t have an ”it”). I realized he would never be proud of me. To this day, I wonder if I keep chasing those words from his lips despite their impossibility. And finally, it struck me that being caught up in the outcome of success was equally as important to me as it was counter-productive. This all occurred to me in between that weeping night and the delirious morning that followed the day my father died.
My life has never been the same. As those thoughts gained clarity in the summer months that followed his death, going for it replaced the worn fear of trying that I hid from others (and me) for so long. My backstop disappeared. I had run out of options. It felt good to know that failure as I had always perceived it was ok. Failing at something doesn’t make a failure. Not showing up does. The only thing that mattered to me was the idea of dying without doing my best at everything I wanted to do.
Many of my dearest friends are facing their first major business struggle right now. There is a lack of prejudice with the deep recession all of us are fighting against. The authenticity of fear I see in many people is a contrast to the individuals I have always known them as. It takes my breath away. All I can do is listen and share my own stories. The story of constant fear for me is a former one.
What does fear do? Does it make us too shy to ask for the order? Does it invent excuses before the first attempt? Does it make perseverance seem no longer worth it? Does it mean we’re too focused on outcomes that we can’t control instead of what we can? Do we get consumed by how others perceive us if things don’t go our way? I only know what it did for me in my Glory Days. Fear wasn’t good and its disappearance was my father’s final, unintentional gift to me.
Thank you both for your comments on this piece. I never know what the reaction will be with some of my thoughts, so reading your comments was very helpful to me. Cliff, by the way, has to be one of the all-time classic characters in sitcom history. But Coach was my favorite Cheers character.
I agree with BMurphy wholeheartedly. Thank you for this wonderful auto-bio/ reflective/ motivational post. Most people are plagued by past failures and cannot move on to truly live in the moment. I don’t mean ‘in the moment’ like some drunken, rebellious, self absorbing & self indulgent fool. Some of us look too much forward or backward and miss the present completely. Guilty I’ve been many times.
Your questions about fear ring true. I’ve had points where the fear of failing was crippling. Pushing myself into a corner with further hesitation. Being blessed with abilities to pick up things quick and easily as a youngster had the effect of me wandering from thing to thing and choosing not to really ever give my all for a sustained period of 2yrs or more in any one endeavor.
And in this info loaded/ accessible world, most are becoming jacks of all trades, knowledge about everything with no continual strengthening of core foundations/ positive traits/ skill sets. Cliff from sitcom Cheers!
What a compelling and thought provoking piece.
I believe that all of us to some degree are fearful of the unknown. I also believe that these uncertain times compounds this uncertainty and therefore, drives us to an highten state of fear and forces us to proceed with greater caution.
Operating cautiously can do more harm than good. Like a football team that gets ahead and tries to play it safe, only to lose the game when the other team aggressively attacks, Fearful times can cause us to try and play it safe, waiting for better times ahead.
in these difficult and uncertain times, we need to remove the fear from ourselves and our people, just like the passing of your father removed the fear from you.