Robert O. Martichenko's Blog

Upon self-reflection, it always amazes me what the brain decides to store away and, subsequently, retrieve at any given time. Even among all the chatter of new technologies and the not-too-distant prospect of artificial intelligence, I cannot imagine we will ever virtualize, or imitate, the true working of the human mind. It’s simply too complicated of an algorithm when we insert the all-random variables that relate to emotion.

The human brain, an incredible hard drive that may very well store every second of every event in our rear-view mirror. The human mind, a computer that warehouses memories and constantly catalogs, re-sorts, retrieves, removes, inserts, and restores images to the front of the line in what often feels like a random chaotic never-ending story being recited and visualized internally as we progress through our day. And what a story it is. Ruminations, images in still shots, images in moving video, smiles, frowns, learnings, regrets, and everything in between.

And as I mentioned, it always amazes me what the brain decides to store away and then retrieve at any given time.

One memory that surfaces frequently for me is a moving picture image of a twenty-second conversation I had over twenty-five years ago. I was talking to an older gentleman who had moved to Alberta, Canada for a brief career assignment after living in the same small town his entire life to that date. I asked him, “How did you enjoy living in Alberta when all you knew was your home town in Ontario?” His response was, “Home is where you hang your hat.” Home is where you hang your hat. In seven words, he framed his belief system; he created an entire narrative that told me how he approaches change, how he decides to make the best of any situation, how he lives his life. I remember feeling a sense of calm from this man, yet also a small fraction of envy. I recall wishing I had this same sense of peace of mind. Home is where you hang your hat. What a great tagline to the movie we call life. What a great way to frame the screenplay.

If you do an internet search on self-help books, you will be able to pick from millions of titles. Millions. And within these millions of books, many of them will tell you the exact same thing, although possibly using different words. This single theme that is common in all theories of self-help is that life is what you make it. Life is what you decide it will be. Life is attitude. Life is how you frame the story. Happy. Sad. It’s completely up to you. That event that sucked yesterday – will you learn from it or allow it to beat you down? Completely up to you. When you fall off the horse, do you stay down or get back on the horse? Completely up to you. Would you rather play and lose as opposed to not playing at all? Completely up to you. Is life nothing but pain and suffering or is life an amazing gift to be cherished?

The answer is completely up to you. It’s your choice how you frame the story. This is the single number one lesson to any form of self-help. You get to decide.

Ahh, the simplicity of it all. It’s so easy, is it not? Just decide to be happy. No problem. QED. Problem solved! Hmm, simple in theory, but not so elementary in execution. Yet, we can, in fact, follow the age-old saying that it is not what happens to you in life, but rather how you decide to react to the happenings. And this theory is based on one sound premise. That we are in control of the frame of the story. That we can decide the narrative of any life event in order to turn the negative into positive. However, to do so takes practice. Some focused practice. And this practice begins with a first step. And this first step is to work towards understanding our own biases. That is, we need to understand our own biases to better relate to why we frame stories the way we do, to better understand why we see the world the way we do, to fully grasp why we are creating and watching the movie we are watching. To fully grasp why we decide what to decide relative to how we react to the events of our day.

A bias is defined as a strong inclination of the mind or a preconceived opinion about someone or something. Our biases will set up how we see the world, how we frame the story in front of us, how we play out the movie of our lives. And this all makes sense as we only know what we know, and our attitudes and beliefs are a function of what we know and how we chose to use this internal knowledge.

Yet, where do biases come from? Initially they come from our upbringing, our cultural experiences relative to race, religion, nationality, and societal norms. And then we build upon this foundation with education, life experience in the form of mistakes and successes, risks taken, rewards received, all while deciding just how much to give life a shot while gathering and assembling lessons learned. And then, after years of living, we develop and dogmatize our biases based on these collective experiences. We decide whether to smile or frown, we decide whether life is good or bad, we decide whether to love or hate, we decide what and who we see when we look at another human being, we decide what and who we see when we look in the mirror. We decide exactly how we will frame the story. We decide what we believe to be truth.

Yet, at times, we fail to recognize there is a very dangerous aspect of allowing our biases to frame our story. You see, once our biases are firmly implanted, the story may never change, and we may simply live our lives in routine, never changing the scene, never exploring a new plot, never inserting new characters, or possibly changing the outcome of the movie.  And even worse than this, we may spend our lives looking for, and embracing only those things that confirm our biased view of the world while ignoring anything that may teach us to see life through a new lens. We may never actually have the courage to admit that perhaps there is a better story out there that could possibly improve our condition, improve the condition of our community, improve the condition of our world.

This is the gift of looking at life through a non-biased view in order to change what we believe to be truth. And this is critical in our society today as we are living in a world that has actually now been coined the “post truth era.” Where truth is not based on fact or visible outcomes, but rather truth is a function of how we frame the story in order to convince others what to believe, all of it being an art and science in manipulating people through an orchestration of playing to their negative biases.

Ahh, what a world. On one hand, one could say, “What a messed up, broken world we live in;” and then on the other hand, one could say, “What a crazy, wild, fantastic world this is.” It’s all about what we choose to believe. It’s all about the frame.  It’s all about the story.

Stories shape our beliefs, and beliefs create our existence. Once we believe this, we can, in fact, use this knowledge to create a better life, to create a better world.  This can be accomplished by changing the tone of the story to reshape our beliefs in order to create a better existence. That is, we can question our own biases to reframe the story in a such a way as to create beliefs that are more positive, benevolent, empathic, and constructive.

Let’s shift the tone to stories that matter. Stories that matter are stories that describe the positive going on in our world. Stories about people who live with enthusiasm, interest, and passion for actions and events that support kindness and respect for people and the earth. And as story-shifters, we can become a community. A community that is not interested in hate, anger, fear, negative biases, or divisiveness. A community where we recognize the only way to make the world a better place is to sound off more positive vibes than negative vibes. Where we recognize that life is short, and it’s critical to take time for what is important. To take time to see the positive in the world, to believe in the good of people, in the diversity of people, and to live a life surrounded by nature, sport, art, poetry, music, and interesting people with great stories. In other words, to take time to Drift and Hum.

Now, with a little Drift and Hum, will all people suddenly become kind and peaceful? I suspect not overnight, as the human being is not known for learning any important lesson too quickly. Will we suddenly eradicate the earth of war, famine, corruption, misogyny, and bigotry? I suspect not overnight, as the human being likes to take its sweet time while walking the path of justice, humanity, and common sense. However, I make these statements recognizing that my own negative bias exists. A negative bias where my life experience to date could possibly leave me with a negative framed view of the world.  A framed movie where the human being is a flawed cast member, where violence and suffering prevail, where evil wins over love, where common sense is wrestled to the ground where it ultimately submits to greed, madness, and a gross lack of human grace. A world where nice guys do, in fact, finish last.

Or, perhaps I can reframe this view of the world. Perhaps I can edit and rescript the screenplay of the movie I’m watching.

Perhaps I can believe that I should attempt to be the change I want in the world. Perhaps I can fully recognize that I am not suffering and should be action oriented to help those that truly are. Perhaps I can wake up and understand that my daily struggles and challenges are not even remotely true struggles or challenges as compared to others. That if I witnessed real struggle firsthand, I would be infinitely embarrassed by the fact that I have ever felt sorry for myself. Yes, perhaps I can be smart enough to question my personal biases in order to reshape my own belief system where my new view of the world has been framed by no one but myself through reflection and learning relative to my own experiences, through my own thoughts, resulting in my own conclusions on what is right and wrong. Where the true truth will prevail.

Yes, perhaps I can find a way to shift the tone of the story.  To shift the tone to stories that matter. Yes, to stories that, in fact, do describe the positive going on in our world. Amazing stories about people who live with enthusiasm, interest and passion for actions and events that support kindness and respect for people and the earth. Yes, and then maybe we can develop a community of likeminded people. A global community where we recognize the only way to make the world a better place is to have more positive vibes than negative vibes. Where all of us recognize that life is short and it’s critical to take time for what is important. To take time to see the positive in the world, to believe in the good of people, in the diversity of people, and to live a life surrounded by nature, art, sport, poetry, music, and interesting people with great stories.

Yes, that sounds like a great plan. I think it’s time to start this shift.

And perhaps a place filled with optimistic people sounding positive vibes would be a great place to hang our hats. To hang our hats indeed.

Take time, Friends.

Let’s take time to shift the story.

Let’s take time to Drift and Hum.

It’s not every day you get to check off a bucket list item. In particular, when the item is to go dog sledding in the Yukon Territory with your oldest daughter!  A father-daughter duo with crossover interests; mine being the Yukon Territory, and my daughters being all things wolves, huskies, and dog sledding related. And so, time and opportunity presented itself, and we took advantage of the presentation.

A check list on the bucket list. Check.

It’s hard for me to remember a time when I was not passionate about the Yukon Territory, the mountains, the Yukon River, the Klondike Goldrush, the Chilkoot Trail, Lake Lebarge, Whitehorse, Dawson City, the Alaskan Highway, and all things north, goldrush, and snow related. My original copy of The Collected Poems of Robert Service has a handwritten date stating 1965, the year I was born. It was a gift from my mother to my father.

My memorization, and often ill-timed, random, and impromptu recitations of The Cremation of Sam McGee are legendary in my own mind, and perhaps in the minds of a few close friends, although probably for different reasons then my own.

For my oldest daughter Emilee, there has never been a time when she has not been driven and consumed by her passion for puppies, wolves, sled dogs, and dogs in general. Her first word was not Mommy or Daddy, but rather was Annie – our Yellow Labrador – at the time of her birth. Her first formal letter written, when she was around 9 years old, was to admonish the governors of the few north central states that have dabbled with reinstituting the wolf hunt for purposes of managing competing needs and priorities of ranchers, national park officials, and overall ecosystems.

Her favorite books growing up, and still to this day, include Jack London’s The Call of the Wild and White Fang. And how will I ever forget the time I took Emilee to American Girl in Chicago. A proud father, with a generous spirit, I told Emilee to get whatever she wanted from the very well-stocked and strategically laid-out retail doll store. After an hour and a half of looking through the store’s entirety, we left with only a small package, a package that contained a tiny stuffed husky dog with an attachment that resembled an original First Nations’ dog sled. On the way back to the hotel, Emilee continued to check in with me to ensure she had not hurt my feelings by passing on the bitty baby or the look alike doll and matching outfits.  I was fine, as was my American Express card.

And so, we were both very excited as we met in Toronto this past month, having travelled from work and school respectively, to travel again, this time together, to Vancouver and then on to Whitehorse, Yukon for our bucket list week. And what a week it was!

Flying into Whitehorse set the stage for the week. The airport is the perfect-sized airport for a convenient hometown feel, and even though Spring is around the corner, the snow banks were of ideal size for an appropriate winter feel, and the blue sky seemed endless other than being interrupted by the bright yellow sun and the mountains in the never-ending background.

Upon checking into the Whitehorse Gold Rush Inn for our first night before heading to the ranch, we were not surprised to be greeted in the log cabin-style lobby by a large stuffed figurine RCMP Mounty in full dress, with the police officer being accompanied by a huge taxidermized moose head.  As I was checking in, I looked over at Emilee and we simply smiled a smile that spoke a thousand words. We had arrived!  On the way to our room, we poked our head into the hotel restaurant/saloon – Poutine on the menu, hockey, and curling on the televisions.

“I love Canada,” Emilee whispered to me.

The following morning, we were picked up at the hotel and chauffeured to our new home for the next four days – The Sky High Wilderness Ranch. Twenty kilometers outside of Whitehorse, The Sky High Wilderness Ranch sits on a beautiful piece of land that borders the shores of Fish Lake. The ranch is off the grid – no power, no running water, no Wi Fi, no cellular.  Perfect!   Emilee and I shared a small log cabin with a set of bunkbeds, a sink that drained into a pail, and a woodstove that could keep the cabin at 45 degrees Celsius even though in was negative twenty outside. A pot of water sat fixed on the stove to offer hot water for washing, and act as a permanent humidifier. The pot was replenished daily with water from a five-gallon plastic can.  The ranch had a couple of these cabins and a small main lodge that was used for meals and housing other guests. In total, we were a varied crew of maybe fifteen guests from all over the world, five guides who would take us under their wing, and a total of one-hundred and sixty-seven husky and husky-mix sled dogs.

Our four days of dog sledding were spectacular. We each had our own sled, and bonded with the four dogs we were assigned to for our stay. We learned all things dog sledding – lead dogs, wheel dogs, harnessing, sled brakes, hang-on at all costs, and don’t let the dogs get tangled.  Each day seemed more spectacular than the last as the spring initiated blue sky and the sun warmed our faces, and the very bulky parkas and snow pants provided insulation to trap our natural heat and keep our bodies warm in the still winter temperatures.  Breakfast and dinner were a team sport with each guest helping in the kitchen. For a breakfast treat on the last morning, I recited The Cremation of Sam McGee for the European guests. I’m thinking they enjoyed it. I know I did. Sometimes I just can’t help myself. One of our guides, a great guy named Paul, told me it was memorable. Paul would know too. He is from north of Yellowknife and told me that he comes south to Whitehorse, Yukon during the winter to get out of the cold. So much for needing Florida.

Lunch each day was on the trail, surrounding a small campfire with the dogs using the time to have a well-earned rest. And while the days were amazing, the nights were equally fantastic. Even though we did not get to see a full show of the Northern Lights, we certainly did enjoy looking up to the clear, bright, and star-filled northern sky. The stars danced and twinkled as if they were truly diamonds in the sky.

Let’s face it, cold northern nights are in a league of their own. It’s pretty hard to look down when the nighttime northern canopy is up above.

Emilee and I were both sincerely and infinitely sad when our departure day rolled around and we had to say goodbye to the ranch, our new friends, and most importantly, the dogs. In the end, I had to pull Emilee away from the dogs – in particular, her lead dog, Hurricane. Hurricane, at one point in his career, mushed the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest in the same year. Two one-thousand-mile races back to back. Hurricane is the real deal.  Yes, I had to literally tell Emilee the ride back to Whitehorse was waiting for us. “I just love Canada,” Emilee whispered as we watched the ranch fade into the rearview mirror.

Landing back at the Whitehorse Gold Rush Inn, we woke up the next morning with things to do. Explore Whitehorse, a little souvenir shopping, lunch at Tim Hortons, and an interview with Dave White at CBC Radio Whitehorse. Emilee was not surprised when Dave White came out to greet us wearing a Winnipeg Jets hockey jersey. “I just love Canada,” she whispered to me.

I loved the CBC radio interview. The purpose was to talk about Drift and Hum and the upcoming reading that was scheduled for that evening at 7PM at the Whitehorse Library. In addition to talking about Drift and Hum, which is too easy for me to do, I enjoyed the studio and sound booth. Radio is cool, radio is universal, radio will never go away.

Evening rolled around and we walked the main street of Whitehorse and then followed the banks of the Yukon River for a nice, brisk, cold refreshing stroll to the Whitehorse Library. Seven o’clock rolled around and I got to do my first Drift and Hum reading – just me, Emilee, the book, and five very nice people who came to hear about the adventures of the Beaver Brothers. Three of the five audience members were family of a close of friend mine from Timmins, my boyhood northern Ontario town. The meet and visit with my new friends resulted in an invite to their home for dinner the next night. A dinner that could not be beat. Thanks so much to Ken, May Lynn, and their amazing son, Jonathan. As well, a big thanks to Nora at the Whitehorse Library. It was great to read from Drift and Hum and recite the tale of the boys on their Yukon quest and their writing of the poem, A Day Well Spent, a poem written by the Beaver Brothers on the shores of Lake Lebarge.

Speaking of Lake Lebarge, on our last day in Whitehorse, we spent the day in fresh powder surrounded by the mysteries of Sam McGee’s final warm place. A guided day on the sled, Emilee’s first time at the throttle of a Canadian made ski doo, guided by a very personable and interesting German named, Thomas. Unsolicited, while around our lunch campfire overlooking Lake Lebarge, he volunteered his advice to us. “Career and money aren’t everything,” he offered, “and the trick is to figure that out as early as you can.”

Hmm, I thought to myself as I stared out across my lake and imagined a derelict called The Alice May moored down below on the frozen shore.

Well, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and so did our time in Whitehorse. An early morning flight on Friday morning, on Air North – Yukon’s airline – took us back to Vancouver where we spent the weekend. We walked Vancouver and enjoyed all the beauty of the city.  Friday night, we took in the Vancouver Canucks’ hockey game. “I just love Canada,” Emilee whispered to me as the Canucks got scored on again and a devoted Canucks’ fan behind us complained by exclaiming, “What a shit show!”

Saturday was more spectacular sites, lunch, and a long-time coming visit with a childhood friend from Timmins who has been in Vancouver for over thirty years. A big thanks to Steve for the hospitability.

And, with time stopping for no person, with figurative and literal tears in our eyes, Emilee and I said our goodbyes at the Vancouver airport early Sunday morning. Me taking a flight path through Chicago to Charleston and her heading back to Boston via Toronto. “Thanks, Dad. I love Canada,” are the words I remember her whispering to me as we separated towards different departure terminals of the airport.

It was a bucket list checkmark. A remarkable trip. Every minute of it. Time with Emilee, time in the Yukon, time with the dogs, time looking up at the blue sky and the brilliant sun… sky and sun facilitating a transition from winter to spring.

And time looking up at the pitch-black sky, a sky deep-dark black while also lit by a natural array of twinkling stars, each star playing a role in some cosmic, endless journey of hope, optimism, and wonder.

The sun and blue sky by day, and the dark and brilliant nighttime sky by night, rendering it impossible for any caring person to look down.

Time take time, friends. Take time to enjoy the spring and the life that it brings to us, and take time to look up into the night. Into the stars. Into the wonder of hope and dreams.

Take time, friends. Take time to Drift and Hum.

I was recently interviewed by David Drickhamer on his Crossover Wisdom blog. David is an independent leadership and management writer, editor, researcher and journalist. For the past ten-plus years, he has helped business leaders and companies tell powerful stories.

We talked about how my creative side and professional life have come together, and how problem solving builds respect:

Now I’m all in. I’ve decided that I can bring more joy to myself, and maybe help others, if I give people my whole being. Robert the lean guy, Robert the supply chain guy, Robert the thinker. The risk of offending a customer is very low. For my own happiness and to give back to people I just need to be who I am.

Read the article

During my bucket-list trip to the Yukon with my oldest daughter Emilee last week, I was interviewed by Dave White of CBC Radio in Whitehorse.

Having spent most of my working life in the corporate world, we discussed the transition to becoming a fiction author.

Enjoy!

For those that have known me for a long time, they know that school was not easy for me. In fact, I remember when I finally graduated from high school, back in the mid 1980’s, my sister Mary Lynne said, “I won’t believe it until I see him walk across the platform.”

So, it’s nice now, being in my fifties, with two daughters who work hard and are successful at school, that I can reminisce about myself as a young person and student. That is, I look back in time – my now perspective – and I examine the story of myself relative to my school experience. I’m not sure I would advocate this for everyone, especially if you knew it was a bit of a train wreck. But, in the spirit of narrative, let me take you on a journey. No doubt, some of you will identify with my reflections.

Here’s a quick history of my school career. Kindergarten to grade five was at Ecole St-Jean in Timmins, Ontario. Ecole St-Jean was a French Catholic elementary school, even though I was an English-speaking Protestant at home. My parents wanted me to be bilingual. After my father’s death when I was eight years old, the family moves started happening. By the time the dust would settle on my formal school experiences, I attended two middle schools, five high schools and four universities. All of this resulted in, by the time I was thirty-seven, a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and an MBA in finance. Don’t be too impressed, though, as the journey was chaotic.  Then again, considering the absolute chaos of the journey, perhaps we should be impressed. I guess it depends on how we frame the narrative.

Narrative depends on your point of view, that is, how you chose to look at or frame a story. The five high schools I referenced were quite the scene. While my memory may be a bit fuzzy, I’m pretty sure I was asked to leave a couple of them, and I’m pretty sure I left a couple of them on my own. It’s not that I was a bad kid, truth be told, I mostly struggled with actually finding the school. Every day I would head out in the morning towards school but for some reason, would be diverted between home and the morning bell. This was my real problem – I simply did not want to be in school, and unlike a lot of other kids who felt the same way, I seemed to have the misguided nerve to actually veer off and do something different with my day.

To be brutally honest, I was a truant. Just to prove the point, I remember in grade twelve, two teachers at Rideau High School in Elgin Ontario tried to help me by having a board professional come down from the local board office to meet with me and offer guidance. The two teachers were Mark Tympani, the gym teacher, and Ron Dobbs, the school guidance counselor.

The meeting was set.  The board professional would drive over an hour to our rural high school to meet with me and analyze me in an attempt to ascertain why I never showed up at school. The day of the meeting, I didn’t show up. I didn’t show up for the meeting about why I didn’t show up for school. Ron Dobbs, the guidance counselor, was furious with me. However, in hindsight, I am not sure why we were surprised. Let’s face it, I had problems showing up to school.

Remind me later to close the loop on the story with Mark Tympani and Ron Dobbs.

This particular story is one of my rearview mirror reflections. One of my hitchhiker go-tos. You know, where the hitchhiker in your head takes you back in time and says, “What the heck were you thinking man?” This is because the hitchhiker only lives in one-time zone, which is the past. He’s sitting in the car, and every time you try to go ahead on a new road or go around a corner, he pushes the rearview mirror into your face. It’s his favorite and only move – he pushes the rearview mirror right into your face so all you can see is what’s behind you. The road up ahead is no longer visible; where you are at that exact moment is no longer visible. The rearview mirror is small, and the windshield is huge, but only what’s in the past is within your sight. Meanwhile, while he’s holding the rearview mirror in your face, he’s jamming you with insults. That’s right. You’re trying to make the corner, get down the road a bit, and the hitchhiker is jamming you with criticism and abuses. His voice is piercing and dissonant; it hurts to hear it. It’s a rude ringing in your ears that won’t go away, “What the heck were you thinking, man?”

Now, like many adults in their fifties, I do spend some time thinking about the hitchhiker’s question, “What were you thinking, man?” And here’s the irony, after years of trying to answer the question, the best I can come up with is…I was thinking I just didn’t want to go to school that day. I know, I get it.  This is not very helpful or insightful. Now, I do want you to know one thing relative to what you may be thinking. Was I a lazy kid? The answer to that is “no”. In fact, I recall a statement my childhood friend Ian Goodfellow once said that many of us seem to have an “overabundance of unproductive energy.”

In my case, the overabundance of unproductive energy was driven by an overabundance of unproductive enthusiasm. And school did not support my enthusiasm.  What was driving this enthusiasm? To answer that, we need to go back and examine an interesting point of my high school career. This is the point that even though I was not showing up for school, I did manage to read a select few books assigned to my English class.  That is, even though I was not showing up, was not taking the tests, there were a few books, and one poem, that I did read on my own time.

I studied the poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert Service and I read the books “Catcher in the Rye”, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, and “Where the Red Fern Grows”. If you know these stories, you will see a common theme. Each protagonist is on some soul-searching journey, a life adventure, a trip through the mountains, or across the city, searching for gold or the equivalence. They are looking for meaning, trying to fill a void that exists in their soul.

They weren’t sitting in school staring at a blackboard.

And so, as I look back three decades, I realize I had some Huck Finn juice in my veins.  I wanted to be on my homemade raft floating down the Mississippi. I wanted a perpetual adventure – people, places, and events. Unfortunately, this sounds more romantic than it was in reality. While rafts and rivers did play into it a few times, most days as a truant were spent driving down backroads, sitting around campfires in the bush or fishing on a lake – and generally with a few bottles of beer. You know what?  Maybe we were Huck Finn in our own way considering what resources we had available at the time. The key point is the feeling of wanting to be on an adventure, the feeling that there is something out there calling you, the feeling that your soul is searching…searching for something that feels so close it must be just around the next corner.

In many respects, this feeling never left me. I recall a memory from when I was twenty-six and finally getting my bachelor’s degree. At this point, I was mature enough to know that I needed an education and a career, so I forced myself to show up and finish. It was not academically stellar, but completion was achieved. How I ended up with a degree in pure mathematics is still an unsolved family mystery.

Anyway, I have a vivid memory, and this is my reflection on that memory. I was in math class at the University of Windsor, in Windsor, Ontario. This particular classroom had a row of windows on the left side that faced out with a view of the Ambassador Bridge. The Ambassador Bridge is a large suspension bridge that connects Detroit, Michigan with Windsor, Ontario. It is one of, if not, the busiest international border crossings in North America. My classroom was literally right beside the Canadian end of the bridge. And so, class after class, I would take a chair hugging the window and I would watch the cars and trucks moving continuously across the bridge. I remember the feeling that each vehicle represented a story, a narrative, and I had the feeling that each vehicle was on an adventure. This produced in me a powerful feeling of restlessness, sensing and knowing that the world is out there calling me. The bridge was a conduit to all things possible. The starting point of some amazing road trip.

I still have these feelings, and I believe it’s a good thing. You see, I am a reflector. That is, I have become a life learner, and to be a learner means to reflect.  Although, I allow the hitchhiker in my mind to have too much power over me. The hitchhiker likes me to mull over, and sometimes regret, past decisions to ruin the future by using the present to think about the past…and always the perceived negative past at that!

And one of these past events for me is the story of not showing up to the meeting that was set up for me to try to understand why I did not show up for school. I carried this with me for decades, always wishing I could apologize to my two teachers, Mark Tympani and Ron Dobbs.

Now, I’m smart enough to know that brewing over past events is senseless, so after thirty years of senseless brewing, I decided to take action. About seven years ago, I contacted the school and inquired about Mark and Ron. I found out that Mark had passed away very young from cancer. He leaves behind a legacy of sport, fitness, love of nature, love of family, love of teaching, and pure love of life. Seriously, his is a story full of grace that needs to be told. I may need to take up this challenge one day.

With help from the school, I was able to connect with Ron Dobbs, now retired and still living in the area. As you may recall, Ron was the guidance counselor who took an interest in me and tried his best to help me through whatever it was I was going through. A few emails led to a lunch while I was in Canada one summer and we continue to stay in touch.

The lunch was big and very interesting for me from a perspective of story, of narrative, of how we frame the events of our lives. After I apologized to Ron for the meeting no-show, he laughed and said, “Robert, I sure hope you have not been worrying about this for thirty-some years!” I squirmed in my chair for a bit and lied, “of course not.”  He saw that I was lying and then said, “Robert, you were a good kid, a smart kid. You simply were not wired to be sitting in a class room.”  I was left speechless. His story, his narrative, his framing was not what I had imagined. It was nothing like I had assumed he felt about me, my truancy, or the no-show for the session on sorting out the art of the no-show. That lunch with Ron was a pivot point, a lesson learned, a redirection on how to see, feel, and think about my life, my story, my own narrative.  I learned that I have choices; I can choose how to frame my personal stories.

Why do we worry so much? Life’s events are what they are and everything is a learning opportunity. Are we not the aggregate of all our life’s experiences?  Recognizing that I am so grateful for my life as it is today, should I not be thankful for each and every experience along the way – the perceived good and perceived bad?

I suspect the answer to this question has different narratives based on whether or not we think we may have hurt somebody and need to make amends. Either way, I think it is safe to say that just because you have framed a particular event in a particular way, this does not mean that others have the same perception.

As a wise man once said to me, “Robert, two people can go into the same movie and walk out having watched a completely different story.”

Quick closing point, with the help of Ron and Rideau High School, we were able to set up an annual bursary for graduates in the name of Mark Tympani and Ron Dobbs. So, in the end, reflection on my personal no-show story allowed me, and others, to celebrate two teachers who truly made a difference.

Last closing point, when my oldest daughter Emilee was in the third grade, I bullied my way into her classroom, and to her complete embarrassment, I read from “Where the Red Fern Grows”. Now, ten years later, she recalls the story with a smile as she reminds me that not only did I read from the novel, but I did ‘character voices’ and got ‘choked up’ when I read a certain part of the story.

This is the good stuff.

Take time, friends.

The nineteen-century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, is known as the author of the quote, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”  A century later, we can find many variations of this concept in many forms with the easiest, and most ubiquitous, being “no pain, no gain.”

The principle is that through surviving adversity and tragedy, we grow as a person. That we experience hardship, pain and suffering, and fully experience the essence of life. That wisdom and strength comes not as a guaranteed result of aging, but rather from the personal book of knowledge written through diaries of experiencing adversity and personal tragedy.

Building upon this, the linear relationship between strength and tragedy would suggest that the strongest people alive would be those who have suffered the most. Yet, I’m not sure this is the case. Like everything in our world, it is very dangerous to generalize and draw blanket conclusions from these generalizations.

Does suffering through and surviving personal tragedy result in enhanced worldly insight and a heightened moral character? We know this to be true in many, many cases, however, there may be an equal number of cases where tragedy left the victim physically alive, but unable to continue living a full life. In other words, that which did not kill them only left them weaker.

The Nietzsche quote, when taken literally, could possibly bring with it a logical outcome. That is, if in fact, that which does not kill us only makes us stronger, then should we not be grateful for adversity and tragedy in our lives? Taken to an illogical extreme, would we consciously wish adversity and tragedy upon ourselves so we can, in turn, overcome the events and become stronger? That’s a tough pill to swallow, and I can’t sign up for this argument, nor do any people I have in my life who know personal tragedy firsthand. And so, retreating from this polar extreme, we are left with the more moderate stance of that which does not kill you only makes you stronger.  However, we truly hope tragedy does not show up on our doorstep today.

A common definition of the word tragedy includes themes such as: an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress (such as losing a child), a serious accident, being a victim of violent crime or natural catastrophe. When I think of personal tragedy in my own life and the lives of my extended friends and family, I see themes including accidental and untimely deaths, debilitating disease, addiction, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and other events that we now know can result in post-traumatic stress disorders.

Yet, in most cases when I view my personal landscape, we have carried on. Some stronger perhaps, some maybe not, but we carry on nonetheless. When reflecting, though, I can safely draw one conclusion. I do not know an instance where, even in hindsight, we would consider the experience of the tragic event some sort of blessing. With true tragedy, at no point do we look back and say, “Wow, am I ever glad that happened!” And so, with this conclusion in mind, we arrive at another conclusion – there is a vast difference between dealing with adversity as opposed to dealing with tragedy.

Adversity, as we know it, is the aggregate of those daily challenges we face within our relationships, our work, our finances, our general health – those adversities where working to overcome them will result in us being stronger.  However, is this not simply life experience? As the saying goes, “Shit happens, right?” And should we not become smarter, wiser, stronger as we grow just as an outcome of living a life of self-reflection from these life experiences? It seems logical that one requirement for living should be to live, to experience, to deal with adversity and learn and grow in the process. Perhaps one of our societal issues today is people see basic adversity as tragic.  We are stressed, we suffer from anxiety, we are scared, we are mad, and we are sad.  Yet, at the same time, many of us have had only simply daily challenges that define any given day.

With that, can we reasonably draw a conclusion that adversity is different than tragedy?

Interestingly enough, the term tragedy inhabits another world from the common definition we just explored. Think of the Shakespearian tragedy – a form of dramatic theater based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis, and maybe even pleasure, for the viewing audience. The play is often a dramatic setting dealing with somber themes, and will typically involve some great and powerful person who is destined to experience a tragic downfall and often death. And the viewing audience sees it all unfolding as they are aware of the character flaws in the hero; they see the tragic blind spots that are not visible to the character themselves.  In this setting, the tragedy is nothing more than a group of uncommitted strangers watching the progressive obvious, and not surprising, destruction of an often-destructive character. There is a part of me that wonders why this is even considered a tragedy. At the risk of criticizing Shakespeare, this plot structure could be argued to be nothing more than some powerful dumbass realizing the logical and karma-filled conclusion of being a dumbass.

Yes, a Shakespearian tragedy may not describe a typical life at all. Very few of us rise to royalty and power only to allow our blind spots and biases to be so detrimental that we implode in front of innocent onlookers. I’m not saying it does not happen, I’m just saying this is not typical of the tragedy that normally impacts the common person. The Shakespearian tragedy seems to focus more on causality, that you reap what you sow, that doing good will deliver good in kind, and bad will deliver bad. That tragedy happens because of us.

The truth is, typical tragedy happens to us and not because of us.  It feels random and unplanned by thoughtful plot or progressive scenes that are building a mountain of personal character flaws that will eventually topple on top of us. Simply put, a lot of tragedy appears to be nothing short of simple random bad luck. Universal entropy. Being in the direct line of chaos in a chaotic world. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In spite of the appearance of randomness, it happens nonetheless, and what we do with it, how we react to it, who we are after the aftermath, would all appear to define who we become as an individual in the life we live after the tragedy.

Alas, are we any closer to understanding whether that which does not kill us makes us stronger?

Not yet.

I am very blessed with having many people that I sincerely call friend. These friendships have varying degrees of tenure, history, and frequency of contact. What makes them sincere friendships, though, is the deepness of dialogue when we do spend time together – the richness, the importance, the relevancy of the conversations. And within my group of friends, we have stories of surviving personal tragedy which has led to multiple conversations over time; which has resulted in getting closer to answering our question.

Now that we have dealt with the essence of tragedy, we need to turn our attention to the idea of strength. The question is, once tragedy has presented itself in its cold form, what does it even mean to be made stronger?  What is strength? This is one of two important questions I explored with my friends who know tragedy first hand.

One conclusion drawn is that there are three areas a person can be made stronger from experience. These are physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Body, Mind and Soul. And of these three, becoming stronger from tragedy appears to center itself on the spiritual. The soul. In other words, perhaps some people may dive into becoming physically stronger or perhaps may learn about a new topic more deeply, but the real strength earned through surviving tragedy comes in the form of spiritual growth. Strengthening of the soul.  The soul, that illusive, non-physical, non-biological, invisible to x-ray part of our being that is the essence of life, that which drives our appetite for living, that which defines our desires, our passions, our emotions, and our moral character to differentiate between right and wrong. The soul that allows us to examine the distance between joy and pain. To understand and determine how we will react to adversity and tragedy when it knocks on our door. And most importantly, relative to our conversation today, the soul and our degree of spiritual strength is what determines our strength of purpose.

Purpose.  The reason something has happened or the reason why something exists. Purpose.  The reason for which we are here.  Purpose. Why did this happen and why did it happen to me?  Purpose. What is my purpose now that I have suffered and lived through this tragedy?  Purpose. What am I supposed to do now?

In my conversations with friends, the idea of heightened purpose was a common denominator in surviving tragedy. So, to further paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, that which does not kill us, if we chose to fight, will make us stronger in soul and purpose. (Note: Reminder to loop back to this at the end of my narrative as I probably just offended a whole group of philosophers.)

Anyway, to me, this makes perfect sense. The tragedy has taken place. We are still here. We must choose what direction to take. Of all the paths available to choose, a path based on a fundamental change of perspective, a positive, purposeful change seems appropriate.

Which led me to the second question I asked my friends, “You have survived personal tragedy, you chose to fight, and you have become stronger spiritually and you have a new sense of purpose for your life.  But, are you happy?”

Happiness, perhaps one of the most overused and misunderstood words in the English language. What’s interesting, though, is that there does not seem to be a definition of what it even means to be happy. Don’t get me wrong.  There are volumes of material about what you can do to become happy, but there is very little on what it actually means to be happy. We see themes such as to feel pleasure, to be content, to be satisfied. But these in themselves would need further description. In the end, perhaps the word happy cannot be described for what it is but rather what it is not. Meaning, to be happy is simply to be void of pain and suffering. Under this definition, many, many people, in particular in the developed world, should be considered being in a position to be happy. Yet, many people don’t seem to be happy. And so, the search for answers continues and leads us to another word.

There is one word I have not introduced yet that plays a part in connecting our entire conversation.  That word is control.

Control, or better yet, being in control, plays a key role in the conversation of dealing with tragedy. Overwhelming, people who successfully survive tragedy, who become spiritually stronger, who develop a renewed sense of purpose, also share a common belief. That is the belief that we are not in control of events and the workings of the world. That there is a higher power that is in control. A higher power, a divine entity in the form of God or a Great Spirit.

And so, we relinquish our need for control to God and we accept that pain and suffering is a part of life, that God wants us to grow through this pain, that all things work together in this world, that everything is one, the good and the bad, that when we suffer, this is God challenging us, forcing us to think about our lives, to reflect and understand what is holding us back from being everything we can be, to reflect and understand what is holding us back from living with purpose, and being who we were designed to be. In other words, to understand and have faith that there is a larger plan for our lives than we recognize and that there is a higher purpose to be gained from the pain.

And through reaching this understanding, we may experience joy, and this joy may seem very similar to the undefined idea of happiness.

Yet the joy does not come from money or events or time healing wounds, but rather the joy comes from the steadfast, all consuming, all purposeful belief that life on earth is just a single step in a greater journey, a journey which preceded our time here and will continue into the next phase when we depart.  And the joy is a result of knowing that in the next step we will enter a place that is without pain, without tears, and in addition to this, we will once again be reunited with those we have loved throughout our journey. Let’s call this heaven.

And knowing that this place is next, knowing that we will one day connect all the dots, will one day learn the answers to questions we have no answers for today, combined with the peace one gets by relinquishing control and instead living with a purpose to serve, to help, to be kind, to be a good person – this is how people get through tragedy. This is how we become stronger. This is how we can rationalize the saying that which does not kill us only makes us stronger.

Closing Point: Full transparency. I am not a philosopher and I am not formally educated on Frederick Nietzsche. However, I am superficially aware that Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of our quote, actually did not believe in purpose.  So, I apologize up front for offending anybody who understands this much better than I do.

Last closing point. Many of us have had our fair share of tragedy and many others have had better luck and have avoided the big, bad stuff so far. The irony is often the kindest people in our communities are the people who have suffered most. So, if you are one of the lucky ones, take some time to help those who have been less fortunate. Take some time to make the world a better place at the ground level.

Take time, friends.

Changing the World

I spent some quality time with my oldest daughter over the holiday break. She’s home from school and we decided to head out for some hiking with our two yellow labs.  So, we loaded up the truck and the dogs and drove four hours to Brevard, North Carolina. Brevard, land of the Pisgah Forest, the Dupont State Park and, most importantly, waterfall after waterfall. In two days of hiking, we saw six beautiful winter waterfalls and some spectacular views from Looking Glass Rock. If you have never been to the Brevard area, take some time Friends, take some time and go. Black Balsam Bald and Shinning Rock are spectacular, not to mention you can take a walk into the history books and climb Cold Mountain.

And so, Emilee and I and our two dogs, Georgia and Indy, got some good miles in, put challenging steps behind us as we spent some time with the sounds and sights of wintry and icy waterfalls. We took time to Drift and Hum.  This was, and is, the good stuff.

At one point in our hike, Emilee and Indy yelled from the rear, “So, Dad, what ya doing up there?” This made Georgia and I stop and pause for a couple of reasons. The first was I realized I was walking ten feet in front of Emilee. I was in my own little world, with my daughter, but not truly with her. I was once again ruminating in my thoughts, hiking at my own pace, forging ahead to the destination while missing the journey. A classic case of mind full as opposed to mindful. I was reminded of the comments I get from my family when we travel together. As we flow through Atlanta airport to make a connection, my family just tells me they will meet me at the next gate as I walk twenty feet ahead of them, clearly on some mission to get to the next gate before anybody else. And every time, I stop and let them catch up and then I explain that normally I am on my own, travelling for work and, therefore, I am hardwired to go fast. They will then tell me that this trip is not work and that I can slow down. I smile and say, “You’re right,” and then I attempt to walk with them, which lasts about three minutes and eventually I am thirty feet ahead. Becoming mindful is not easy. How do you change habits that have had 25 years to be firmly planted in the subsystems of your mind and your physical being?

Slowing down is not easy. But I am committed, in my view, that it is necessary. I guess it just takes practice.

Anyway, back on the trail, I thought about Emilee’s question, “So, Dad, what ya doing up there?” What she was really asking was, “What ya thinking about, Dad?” So, I slowed down and we started what would turn into a very rewarding conversation.

I told Emilee that I was thinking about a conversation I had watched on the news channel that morning prior to hitting the Blue Ridge. The young person being interviewed was in the tech industry and was inventing an app. Apparently, the app is going to ‘change the world’.  The interviewer asked, “What does that mean – to change the world?”

The young person said, “You know, change the world, change how we communicate, change how we get around, change how we make decisions, change how we interact with each other and, ultimately, change how we think.” “Wow,” the interviewer said, “that’s ambitious.”  “Oh ya,” the young person replied, “we have millions raised to fund it. We are going to be the next big thing. We are going to change the world.” Then the interviewer asked a

very interesting question. She asked the young person, “I understand you are going to change the world but, in doing so, are you also going to make the world a better place?”

There was a pause, and the young person replied, “What’s the difference?”

That was all I heard, as at that point, the mountains were calling and I needed to go, and so I turned off the television, and Emilee and the dogs and I headed for the trails and waterfalls.

Now, fast forward back to the trail when Emilee shook me out of my reverie and we hiked and talked about what it means to change the world and, most importantly, what it means to make the world a better place.

Now, stop here for a minute, and in the spirit of complete transparency, and at the risk of you not listening any further, I will readily admit we struggled to come up with any definitive or absolute answers. But I do think we made progress. And I suspect any progress is good progress when we are talking about making the world a better place.

If you do high-level research on ‘what it means to change the world’, it’s surprising how little help there is with the question. There are lots of lists – Top 10, Top 25 – of things you can do to change the world, but I cannot find one definition that describes ‘what it means to change the world’. This does not surprise me, as Emilee and I struggled with defining it as well. And so, as we trekked up our trail, our hearts working hard in multiple ways, we made a list of easy stuff that probably has, in fact, changed the world. We focused mostly on inventions because we figured we would end up in a dark hole if we listed people who may, or may not have, changed the world with their actions. Our small list of big inventions that changed the world (in no particular chronology) is as follows:  the compass, gun powder, steel, the printing press, the wheel and the resulting boats, planes, trains and automobiles, penicillin and antibiotics, electricity and the light bulb, the internet, computers and, of course, telephones and the resulting cell phone, the camera and good old social media platforms. I know we missed a bunch of important things, but the fully completed list is probably infinite and we were searching for waterfalls at the time of the conversation. Feel free to add to the list for us.

And so, with this mental list intact, we then asked the most important question of the day – Sure these inventions may have changed the world, but did they make the world a better place? Once again, and as you can imagine, we really struggled with a definitive answer. Let’s face it, absolutes are never absolute because virtually every event in life suffers from the power of dualities. The Yin and the Yang. That concept that without dark, there is no light; that without off, there is no on; that without hate, there is no love. While I personally struggle with the principle of dualities in the world, as I do believe you can have love without hate, I do comprehend the principle that virtually every pivot point in our history came with unintended consequences. Is this not what dualities actually are? That when we do something positive there always seems to be some unintended negative consequence to balance out the good?  For example, have the cell phone and social media made the world a better place? I suspect the answer will depend on whether you are talking to a YouTube star as opposed to a young person who has been cyber bullied. So, the question that I’m not sure will ever have an answer is – considering the dualities of this world, and a long list of unintended consequences with so many decisions we make, how do we ever know if our actions are making the world a better place?

If you do a little research on how to make the world a better place, as opposed to changing the world, two themes do jump out right away. These two themes clearly focus on the planet and humanity. That is, you are making the world a better place if you are making a positive contribution to the health of the planet or the health of humanity. Which could be argued that really, we are left with making contributions to humanity because one day the planet will be just fine without humans.  So therefore, any contribution we make to helping the planet is really about making the planet a better place for human existence, and therefore, takes us back to making the world a better place for humanity. In this case, humanity simply means the human race, all of us collectively – yip, the whole bunch of us regardless of race, religion or nationality; a motley crew to be sure.

So, we are back to our question, what does it mean to make the world a better place for humanity? Not to mention there does not seem to be clear and obvious connections between humanity and the list of inventions we came up with as world game changers. In other words, I’m not sure the inventors of many of the big inventions had humanity on their minds while making their original designs.

Back to the hike with Emilee. Emilee educated me a little bit about some of her reading and conversations she is having at school. In particular, we talked about the philanthropic foundations that are doing amazing work to, in fact, attempt to make the world a better place. These sincere and benevolent foundations are guided by the belief that every life has equal value, that those that have should help those that have not, that we need to help all people lead healthy and more productive lives. For example, in developing countries, as well as in the United States, many foundations focus on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty in addition to ensuring access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. What’s puzzling about this is the fact that our foundations are doing this work when it would be very easy to wonder why our governments are not driving these priorities. What’s even more puzzling, and very sad really, is that there is not a lot of evidence that we are trying to stop war, hate, and bigotry. It seems as if our work to make the world a better place simply resigns itself in working around the fact that humanity will never fix the one true problem – the problem of hate, corruption, and resulting violence against people that have no way of defending themselves.

Anyway, as we dig deeper, relative to many foundations, we learn that no matter what they are trying to do, or where they are trying to do it, there is a foundational theme with many foundations – the theme of education.

And so, this led to one small conclusion. That changing the world and making the world a better place is rooted in activities that surround education.  With this, Emilee and I thought we were making progress, and in our optimism driven by being in nature, we thought we may come up with a single definition of what it means to make the world a better place.

Then we ran into our next challenge, a challenge defined in a set of questions – Who do we educate, where do we educate, when do we educate, and what do we educate on? And how would we ever get universal alignment on answers to these questions?  In other words, considering most of us don’t have an organized foundation to help with our quest to make the world a better place, we need to define some scope we can get our arms around. This lead to a conversation around perspectives and timing. That is, macro versus micro perspectives. And long-term versus short-term thinking. Most philanthropic foundations clearly have a macro perspective. And they are working for short-term results while also trying to embed long-term solutions. That is, they are trying to make the world a better place, and when they say world, they mean the whole world.

But can we all take such a world view? Which brings me back to my research on how a single individual can make the world a better place. Interestingly, the themes you see are not just about solving world hunger or eradicating disease or cleaning up the environment, but rather the themes are about being kind, showing respect, having grace and empathy, volunteering, embracing diversity, and most importantly, teaching and influencing others to do these things. And when it comes to a macro versus micro perspective, the perspective is decidedly micro. That is, we make the world a better place by being kind and emphatic, and showing respect and teaching these characteristics in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in our immediate communities.

So, maybe Emilee and I were getting close to an answer?

Unfortunately for Emilee and me, we came to the end of our hiking trip before we could complete our work. I was disappointed too, because the end of the hike came just as I was going to ask Emilee a few follow-up questions.

The first is, what does it mean to be kind and empathic?

The second is, what does it mean to be respectful and show grace?

And the last question, and for me, the most important one of all is, Emilee, have I taught you the importance of these character traits and will you live them and teach them going forward?

In other words, in some small way, have I made the world a better place, and in doing so, have I taught her to do the same.

As you can imagine, I look forward to my next hike with her. I look forward to taking some time with her to Drift and Hum.

Changing the World

I spent some quality time with my oldest daughter over the holiday break. She’s home from school and we decided to head out for some hiking with our two yellow labs.  So, we loaded up the truck and the dogs and drove four hours to Brevard, North Carolina. Brevard, land of the Pisgah Forest, the Dupont State Park and, most importantly, waterfall after waterfall. In two days of hiking, we saw six beautiful winter waterfalls and some spectacular views from Looking Glass Rock. If you have never been to the Brevard area, take some time Friends, take some time and go. Black Balsam Bald and Shinning Rock are spectacular, not to mention you can take a walk into the history books and climb Cold Mountain.

And so, Emilee and I and our two dogs, Georgia and Indy, got some good miles in, put challenging steps behind us as we spent some time with the sounds and sights of wintry and icy waterfalls. We took time to Drift and Hum.  This was, and is, the good stuff.

At one point in our hike, Emilee and Indy yelled from the rear, “So, Dad, what ya doing up there?” This made Georgia and I stop and pause for a couple of reasons. The first was I realized I was walking ten feet in front of Emilee. I was in my own little world, with my daughter, but not truly with her. I was once again ruminating in my thoughts, hiking at my own pace, forging ahead to the destination while missing the journey. A classic case of mind full as opposed to mindful. I was reminded of the comments I get from my family when we travel together. As we flow through Atlanta airport to make a connection, my family just tells me they will meet me at the next gate as I walk twenty feet ahead of them, clearly on some mission to get to the next gate before anybody else. And every time, I stop and let them catch up and then I explain that normally I am on my own, travelling for work and, therefore, I am hardwired to go fast. They will then tell me that this trip is not work and that I can slow down. I smile and say, “You’re right,” and then I attempt to walk with them, which lasts about three minutes and eventually I am thirty feet ahead. Becoming mindful is not easy. How do you change habits that have had 25 years to be firmly planted in the subsystems of your mind and your physical being?

Slowing down is not easy. But I am committed, in my view, that it is necessary. I guess it just takes practice.

Anyway, back on the trail, I thought about Emilee’s question, “So, Dad, what ya doing up there?” What she was really asking was, “What ya thinking about, Dad?” So, I slowed down and we started what would turn into a very rewarding conversation.

I told Emilee that I was thinking about a conversation I had watched on the news channel that morning prior to hitting the Blue Ridge. The young person being interviewed was in the tech industry and was inventing an app. Apparently, the app is going to ‘change the world’.  The interviewer asked, “What does that mean – to change the world?”

The young person said, “You know, change the world, change how we communicate, change how we get around, change how we make decisions, change how we interact with each other and, ultimately, change how we think.” “Wow,” the interviewer said, “that’s ambitious.”  “Oh ya,” the young person replied, “we have millions raised to fund it. We are going to be the next big thing. We are going to change the world.” Then the interviewer asked a

very interesting question. She asked the young person, “I understand you are going to change the world but, in doing so, are you also going to make the world a better place?”

There was a pause, and the young person replied, “What’s the difference?”

That was all I heard, as at that point, the mountains were calling and I needed to go, and so I turned off the television, and Emilee and the dogs and I headed for the trails and waterfalls.

Now, fast forward back to the trail when Emilee shook me out of my reverie and we hiked and talked about what it means to change the world and, most importantly, what it means to make the world a better place.

Now, stop here for a minute, and in the spirit of complete transparency, and at the risk of you not listening any further, I will readily admit we struggled to come up with any definitive or absolute answers. But I do think we made progress. And I suspect any progress is good progress when we are talking about making the world a better place.

If you do high-level research on ‘what it means to change the world’, it’s surprising how little help there is with the question. There are lots of lists – Top 10, Top 25 – of things you can do to change the world, but I cannot find one definition that describes ‘what it means to change the world’. This does not surprise me, as Emilee and I struggled with defining it as well. And so, as we trekked up our trail, our hearts working hard in multiple ways, we made a list of easy stuff that probably has, in fact, changed the world. We focused mostly on inventions because we figured we would end up in a dark hole if we listed people who may, or may not have, changed the world with their actions. Our small list of big inventions that changed the world (in no particular chronology) is as follows:  the compass, gun powder, steel, the printing press, the wheel and the resulting boats, planes, trains and automobiles, penicillin and antibiotics, electricity and the light bulb, the internet, computers and, of course, telephones and the resulting cell phone, the camera and good old social media platforms. I know we missed a bunch of important things, but the fully completed list is probably infinite and we were searching for waterfalls at the time of the conversation. Feel free to add to the list for us.

And so, with this mental list intact, we then asked the most important question of the day – Sure these inventions may have changed the world, but did they make the world a better place? Once again, and as you can imagine, we really struggled with a definitive answer. Let’s face it, absolutes are never absolute because virtually every event in life suffers from the power of dualities. The Yin and the Yang. That concept that without dark, there is no light; that without off, there is no on; that without hate, there is no love. While I personally struggle with the principle of dualities in the world, as I do believe you can have love without hate, I do comprehend the principle that virtually every pivot point in our history came with unintended consequences. Is this not what dualities actually are? That when we do something positive there always seems to be some unintended negative consequence to balance out the good?  For example, have the cell phone and social media made the world a better place? I suspect the answer will depend on whether you are talking to a YouTube star as opposed to a young person who has been cyber bullied. So, the question that I’m not sure will ever have an answer is – considering the dualities of this world, and a long list of unintended consequences with so many decisions we make, how do we ever know if our actions are making the world a better place?

If you do a little research on how to make the world a better place, as opposed to changing the world, two themes do jump out right away. These two themes clearly focus on the planet and humanity. That is, you are making the world a better place if you are making a positive contribution to the health of the planet or the health of humanity. Which could be argued that really, we are left with making contributions to humanity because one day the planet will be just fine without humans.  So therefore, any contribution we make to helping the planet is really about making the planet a better place for human existence, and therefore, takes us back to making the world a better place for humanity. In this case, humanity simply means the human race, all of us collectively – yip, the whole bunch of us regardless of race, religion or nationality; a motley crew to be sure.

So, we are back to our question, what does it mean to make the world a better place for humanity? Not to mention there does not seem to be clear and obvious connections between humanity and the list of inventions we came up with as world game changers. In other words, I’m not sure the inventors of many of the big inventions had humanity on their minds while making their original designs.

Back to the hike with Emilee. Emilee educated me a little bit about some of her reading and conversations she is having at school. In particular, we talked about the philanthropic foundations that are doing amazing work to, in fact, attempt to make the world a better place. These sincere and benevolent foundations are guided by the belief that every life has equal value, that those that have should help those that have not, that we need to help all people lead healthy and more productive lives. For example, in developing countries, as well as in the United States, many foundations focus on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty in addition to ensuring access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. What’s puzzling about this is the fact that our foundations are doing this work when it would be very easy to wonder why our governments are not driving these priorities. What’s even more puzzling, and very sad really, is that there is not a lot of evidence that we are trying to stop war, hate, and bigotry. It seems as if our work to make the world a better place simply resigns itself in working around the fact that humanity will never fix the one true problem – the problem of hate, corruption, and resulting violence against people that have no way of defending themselves.

Anyway, as we dig deeper, relative to many foundations, we learn that no matter what they are trying to do, or where they are trying to do it, there is a foundational theme with many foundations – the theme of education.

And so, this led to one small conclusion. That changing the world and making the world a better place is rooted in activities that surround education.  With this, Emilee and I thought we were making progress, and in our optimism driven by being in nature, we thought we may come up with a single definition of what it means to make the world a better place.

Then we ran into our next challenge, a challenge defined in a set of questions – Who do we educate, where do we educate, when do we educate, and what do we educate on? And how would we ever get universal alignment on answers to these questions?  In other words, considering most of us don’t have an organized foundation to help with our quest to make the world a better place, we need to define some scope we can get our arms around. This lead to a conversation around perspectives and timing. That is, macro versus micro perspectives. And long-term versus short-term thinking. Most philanthropic foundations clearly have a macro perspective. And they are working for short-term results while also trying to embed long-term solutions. That is, they are trying to make the world a better place, and when they say world, they mean the whole world.

But can we all take such a world view? Which brings me back to my research on how a single individual can make the world a better place. Interestingly, the themes you see are not just about solving world hunger or eradicating disease or cleaning up the environment, but rather the themes are about being kind, showing respect, having grace and empathy, volunteering, embracing diversity, and most importantly, teaching and influencing others to do these things. And when it comes to a macro versus micro perspective, the perspective is decidedly micro. That is, we make the world a better place by being kind and emphatic, and showing respect and teaching these characteristics in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in our immediate communities.

So, maybe Emilee and I were getting close to an answer?

Unfortunately for Emilee and me, we came to the end of our hiking trip before we could complete our work. I was disappointed too, because the end of the hike came just as I was going to ask Emilee a few follow-up questions.

The first is, what does it mean to be kind and empathic?

The second is, what does it mean to be respectful and show grace?

And the last question, and for me, the most important one of all is, Emilee, have I taught you the importance of these character traits and will you live them and teach them going forward?

In other words, in some small way, have I made the world a better place, and in doing so, have I taught her to do the same.

As you can imagine, I look forward to my next hike with her. I look forward to taking some time with her to Drift and Hum.