Archive for the ‘Thanksgiving’ Category
How to Regain Wonder
Target cannot sell you a loaf of wonder
It would seem that life beats wonder out of us. This project went sour. That team sucks. My career seems more about false starts and abrupt ends than ascendancy to the corner office. The boss or CEO or pastor or professor are in it for the money or the power or both. People and institutions disappoint.
It’s easy to paint most anything black with the brush strokes of cynicism. Our culture largely applauds and rewards this attitude, often providing pulpits for the world-weary naysayers. It’s a stance we learn early in life. We chide optimists as Pollyanna and naïve.
But if you look around, it isn’t the cynics who make things different. It’s the people with faith. I’m not talking about religion, though faith in God applies big time. It’s the people with a sense that things don’t have to be this way, that there might be a better way. And beyond that: people with a basic wonder at how the world works. People with a sense of wonder and curiosity are the refreshing people who are fun to be around. They entertain just by pointing out the invisible stuff that we never thought to think about. These are the gratitudists, whose stance of thanks sweetens the well for all around. Their faith and wonder refuse to let today’s seeming realities push forward as tomorrow’s certainties.
Where do you find wonder in your life? Hostess has closed and Wonder bread may or may not be available. But I plan on seeking out those places and people where wonder presents.
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Image credit: Adam Pękalski via 2headedsnake
Of Crotchety Old Men and their Winning Ways
Get off my lawn.
A few days back George Tannenbaum, the crusty old copywriter behind Ad Aged, wrote about the box of good ads he ripped out of magazines and carried with him from job to job. These good ads became a starting point or a kind of measuring stick to gauge his own practice of the craft. To have a box of ads you consider good is itself a positive statement. Most folks in advertising are quick to point out what is bad, what doesn’t work. What is worthless. Copyranter does this constantly, so every once in a while when he says something positive, his readers sit up and take notice. To say something is good is also to say something about your taste level. Doing most anything positive opens you to criticism. Maybe that’s why most of us prefer to not step out of the crowd. I locate myself in that passive crowd.
I’m a fan of George Tannenbaum’s blog. So are a bunch of other people, which is why his blog appeared on somebody’s top 100 list of influential bloggers. He may be the very definition of a crotchety old man, but his near constant kvetching holds lots of secrets about how a person makes it through life as a creative person. What I like about his raw, scenic and often obscene musings is that they give insight into a person and an industry. In a sense, to follow his posts is to follow a story. Not everyone has the courage to tell a few successes, complain about useless meetings (in real time) and the people who organize them, and tell of his own screw-ups.
There are a couple other of these seasoned, old-guy blogs I like and keep returning to, including Dave Trott’s blog and Hey Whipple. It would be a crazy fun party if all these guys showed up. I would not invite my grandmother.
My only point is to express thanks for these vets who share their experiences so willingly and so poignantly. Nearly every day there is an actionable thought to come from their writing. And that is saying something.
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Please Write This Book: A Year in Chesed
of course there is dancing
In A Year in Provence, British copywriter Peter Mayle, moved to France and wrote about this place of exceptional food, wine and beauty. Mayle provided his reader with nearly first-hand experiences of cooking, shopping and conversation. Along the way we saw hints of a different way of living.
I want to read a book that takes a similar journey, but rather than air travel to a glorious foreign country, I want the author to settle into a land devoid of anxiety and full of bonhomie toward men and women. I want the author to get there by following the thread of meaning from a very particular foreign word: “Chesed”
Google chesed and you’ll find a central Jewish value that means (for starters) “lovingkindness,” but points to much, much more. This old Hebrew word appears 247 times in the Torah and 127 times alone in the Psalms. “Chesed” has shades of meaning in the Torah, variously translated to English as: loving-kindness, mercy, favor, pity.
I imagine living in chesed is something like life in a foreign country. My glimpses of this country come mostly through the Psalmists who use the word again and again as they respond to or acknowledge God’s care. It is a word that describes a way of life that is the polar opposite of my country’s “Black Friday,” and all that consumerist orgy represents.
As you write this book, please take long, generous expeditions into this land of living in gratefulness and thanksgiving. Explore how the inhabitants of this land depend on materials and attitudes already in their possession. Please show me what contentedness looks like. Show me how they brush off the slights and insults and lack of fame because they are grounded with a deeply-rooted faith-joy in the creator. I imagine this land as anti-Kim Kardashian: Sopping with contentment. Joy. Stability. Not glamorous. Not narcissistic. Not attention-seeking. So that means your book won’t get on the news every evening. But I’ll buy a copy.
Spend a full year there. Show me what happens when the crops are not bountiful and enemies encroach. Show me chesed when taxes are due and when plans go terribly wrong.
Please write this book soon because my land is teaming with insects whose bite results in a longing for more shiny stuff and much daily fame. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking through the postcards the psalmists sent.
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Image Credit: Via 2headedsnake
Comcast the Free Router and the Monthly Fee: a Story of Thanks
Have I been helped or did I run up against a new marketing ploy? You tell me.
In conversation with Comcast after my router stopped working, they said,
“Hey, we’ll give you a free router. It’s part of our service to you!”
Cheery words! But wait—what’s the catch?
“No catch,” said the Comcast representative. “Look, I’ve already put in an order for you.”
Cool! Of course I want a free router! It would take five days via UPS—is it possible I could pick up an old router from the local Comcast store while I’m waiting? Just to keep the signal moving through my home?
“Certainly.”
So I did and the old router worked mostly well, though it drops the signal for about 30 seconds every hour or so. But I could live with that while waiting for this new Netgear router. The new Netgear router came: easy instructions, which I followed. No signal. Called Comcast:
“Sorry for your troubles. You’ll need to order our Xfinity service plan. It’s only XX per month. But what I can do is walk you through turning your router on and off.”
OK. Hmm. No service plan for me, thanks. Yeah—sometimes turning everything off and on helps. I’ve done it half a dozen times, but maybe I got the order wrong. I’ll try that. Didn’t work. Called Netgear. After an hour with a kindly gentleman from India, he concluded my router had been loaded with special Comcast software that would not bend to the will of his computer screen directions and superior knowledge.
Called Comcast. My router doesn’t work. Can you send me a working router?
“Sure. I’ll order one right away. And thanks for being a Comcast customer!”
I reinstalled the older Comcast router and it worked, though with the peculiar dropping of signals once an hour. And I anticipated the new Netgear router making it’s way across the land on a brown UPS truck. New Netgear router #2 came: same easy instructions. Same result. No signal. Called Comcast:
“Sorry for your troubles. You’ll need to order our Xfinity service plan. It’s only XX per month. But what I can do is walk you through turning your router on and off.”
No Xfinity plan, thanks. And actually, I’m now pretty good at turning it on and off, but thanks. Called my Netgear friends from India:
“I don’t understand why Comcast tells you to call us when they install special software on the routers. You’ll have to call Comcast. Here’s the special Comcast Router help numbers.”
What’s that? Special numbers for router support? That smells suspiciously like real help! I call both numbers—excited to encounter experienced talkers. How’s that? One number is out of service? What? The other number connects me to an Xfinity service plan automatic ordering line and I can be connected right now. No thanks. Back to installing the old router that drops signals. Still, it works. And for that I am grateful. I could just go buy a router and probably will. They get cheaper every week.
So—was I helped or was this just an elaborate ploy to get me to start another monthly fee to support the free Comcast hardware? I’m still not sure. But I’m thankful for the free old router that drops the signal with military precision once per hour.
Happy Thanksgiving to all and especially to Comcast and my Netgear friends in India!
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Image credit: Via We Love Typography, Good Deeds by jon contino
