In my junior year of college, I traveled to Ecuador as part of a winter semester program. I lived with a local family and took a class on literature. It was a life altering experience on a variety of levels. Although I went there to improve my Spanish abilities, I can link many of my fundamental beliefs back to that trip. I changed as a person during my time there. One of the simple ways that I changed was that I became the “King of Introductions”. There was no official coronation! It’s an unofficial title that I developed for myself but it was a key component to many later successes.
Two days after Christmas in 1996, I arrived in Ecuador. After a few days of touring, I was paired with my ‘Ecuadorian family’ on New Year’s Eve. For the next two days, I attended no less than three family parties. If I had to guess, I was introduced to over fifty people in less than 48 hours. Obviously all of those introductions were done in Spanish. It was nothing that I had planned but the more times that it happened, the better that I got at introducing myself. With the first few people, I was only saying ‘hello, nice to meet you’. Eventually the conversations got more robust with full explanations of why I was in Ecuador and my thoughts about the country so far. The repetitions were the key. Even though all of conversations were slightly different, each one gave me another opportunity to organize, edit or add. By the end of those first two days, I was definitely the “King of Introductions”.
It seems so simple but often people ignore this methodology. People give up on things quickly because they’re not “good enough”. The need to not look foolish is ingrained so strongly within us that we tend to avoid even chancing it. So we never get past the peasant status much less reach to the level of king. With something so simple, it would seem like everyone would follow this recipe but often we don’t. Any success requires that you:
- Take action
- Notice what’s working/what’s not
- Adjust the approach
- Pay attention to those already getting the result you want
It’s almost too easy, isn’t it? The problem usually isn’t a lack of role models to follow. It’s a failure to take any action at all. When there is no guarantee of success, a lot of work and a possibility of looking foolish; peasant status is what is chosen. In the minds of so many, it is better to be the peasant that never tried rather than the one who went for the crown and failed. The most important thing for you to recognize though is that the walls between you and the crown are usually built by you. The world offers all kinds of riches and above is the plan for how to get any of them. We just need to be willing to follow it long enough to get them!
It’s good to be the king!
Pete
In about a month and a half, I’ll be moving to Virginia. It’s an exciting time! Filled with all kinds of possibilities. While we’re looking forward to that future, we must first deal with the daunting task of moving all (or most or some) of our stuff. The process of packing is a necessary evil where you must decide what is going with you and what things just need to go! Some people have trouble letting go of the things that they’ve accumulated over the years. For better or worse, we get attached to things from the past and have trouble letting go.
I just wept in front of a room of teenagers. It wasn’t part of the lesson plan but every once in a while, you just have to go with it. Whenever I talk about a particular former student, it is bound to happen. It has almost gotten to the point where the waterworks start before I even tell the story. That’s because I’ve let it happen. The memory does not have to be painful. It is a combination of factors that make it so and they’re all within my control.
The spring season brings rejuvenation and tryouts. Soccer tryouts, hockey tryouts and I’m sure many others. The constant evaluation of players is now a cultural norm. While it may seem like a necessary evil, it is our job as the adults or forward thinkers to ensure that it doesn’t become pure evil in the mind of a young player. The constant question can go swirling through their head “Am I good?” While it may be a common question, it is probably the wrong question.
At certain point in history, in particular parts of the world, the wealthiest people such as kings lived in castles. I’m sure many people have fantasized about living in a castle. The fantasy probably does not mirror the reality of what it was like hundreds of years ago. By comparison, the comforts of most of our modern day houses outshines castle living. Castles were made of cold stone without heat or air conditioning. Although they served as protection from the elements in some ways, there was no escaping the fact that survival was the order of the day and not comfort.
Geometry was probably one of the easiest classes for me in high school. Despite its relative ease, I had trouble staying engaged with it. I found it tedious to give all of the reasons why something was true. It was usually pretty obvious whether a problem was going to withstand the scrutiny of the different theorems that we were learning at the time. So it seemed like a relative waste to my teenage self to write out all of the steps in proving or disproving a problem. Especially when the answers (to the odd problems usually) were in the back of the book.
Cautionary tales like “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” seem to be less prevalent than in the past. Perhaps that is just my perception or my own implementation of life lessons to my kids. I remember exactly who told me this story and for what reason. It had the desired effect. In third grade, I would frequently “not feel well” in order to be sent down to the nurse’s office. Once my visits became frequent enough, the nurse recounted the story of the boy who cried wolf. My visits to her office became more legitimate.
We live in a modern world but humans are prehistoric creatures. Obviously we have acquired skills and knowledge that our ancestors did not have. So I am not suggesting that we are on their level in that respect but I do want to point out that we are using the same hardware. The same brain structure that caused us to run from saber-toothed tigers is now tasked with managing a world that moves faster than we were intended to go. We’re overwhelmed and stressed because we created an environment that stresses and overwhelms our prehistoric brains. This is not a blog to suggest that we go back to living in caves. Rather it is intended to point out the fact that there are limits on our bandwidth, therefore we must manage ourselves so the prehistoric brain does not go into overload.
This line is from the quite ridiculous but still entertaining Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. And it was co-opted by the band The Get Up Kids as a song title in the 90’s. The song outlines one perspective of a short term love affair where the singer refuses to give the relationship a chance. In his own words, “because I’m afraid to try.” It’s an old story that probably precedes Danny Zuko in Grease. Boy meets girl. Boy likes girls. Boy wants to leave while things are still fun and casual because a relationship is just too much work.
In high school, I ran track and field. High jump and long jump were my specialties but I also won points for the team in some of the sprints. Track is a completely different animal than most other sports. Although it’s a team competition, most of the events are competed as individuals. Much of a track meet is spent waiting around for your event to take place. So they end up being long affairs because all of the races are run on the same surface.
Huryk Unlimited 