The greatest gift has no cost, but its value is priceless

 

The Greatest Gift

I don't have many childhood memories at all, and most of the episodes I do remember involve broken teeth or stitches.

But I do have one.

I think of it every year at this time. Outside my window, the dandelions are blooming, bursting with spring, and the newly-green lawns will soon be polka-dotted with them.

I remember a boy in Detroit -- I am not sure how old he was; just a little tot. He lived at 13479 Archdale Street - don't ask me why I remember that address, when I can't remember where I put my car keys.

That boy was  me. He still is.

One spring day in the 1960s I was in the front yard -- a small patch of grass on a tight city block -- but everything seemed larger to me then. The dandelions had just poked up through the Irish-green grass. I was amazed -- they had not been there the day before;  they had just popped up while I slept, it seemed. A tiny yard that a few weeks ago had been sooty and barren was now my own personal Swiss meadow.

Inspired, I began picking them, one by one, walking back and forth across the lawn to find the very best and brightest ones. Two neighbor ladies walked by. They said, "Good morning, Little Professor, how are you today?" They called me that because from the age of 2, I'd worn thick horn-rimmed glasses with lenses as thick as the bottom of a cola bottle. I hated the name.

"What are you up to today, Little Professor," they asked kindly. I looked up at them, not smiling because I hated them for that name, and said, "Picking flowers for my Mom." They laughed gently and walked on, and now I really hated them. I didn't understand why they laughed at me.

When I had a rich bouquet of dandelions from the yard, I went inside to present my gift to my Mom. She was on the phone when I walked in, but when she saw my flowers she said, "I gotta go, I'll call you back."

"I picked you some flowers," I said.

She stared at me for a minute -- just staring, and then she broke open a smile brighter than the flowers. She hugged me hard and took the flowers and made a big production of putting them in the best vase she could find, with water, and placed them as a centerpiece on the kitchen table, and she said they were the most beautiful flowers she'd ever seen. At dinner that night she talked of nothing else, it seemed. No one else seemed to care much, but she did. And I did.

For a week, the table was adorned with those brilliant blooms.

About 30 years later, she confessed to me that dandelions only last a day or so in a vase, and then whither. She'd been picking new ones every morning to keep that bouquet fresh.

This is the only episode of childhood that I remember so vividly. I remember it because those dandelions from the yard were the most valuable gift I've ever given. And because nature reminds me of this episode once a year by decorating the new lush green grass with brilliant sunny flowers that some people consider to be weeds.

My Mom is gone now, gone to seek her rest. But I hope and pray that where she lay, Spring is eternal, and that there are dandelions on her grave.

When Summer Was Forever

When Summer Was Forever

By Steve Cebalt

Originally written for The Journal Gazette


It took me 45 years to come to terms with summer.

In this part of the country, summer is meant to be the season of sun, sand and simple pleasures. Summer is the mythical season of magic and romance, filled with images of watermelon and hammocks and sandals, and the smells of chlorine and sunscreen and freshly-mowed grass. Somewhere along the line, though, I lost the magic.

I started thinking about this after looking at a childhood photo of my daughter Grace. It’s just an ordinary backyard snapshot, blurred by her boundless energy, running barefoot through the grass for the shear thrill of feeling the wind brush her face. When’s the last time you had that feeling?

I recall the thrill as a child of waking up on summer mornings and realizing that I had a full day to spend however I pleased. I might spend four hours collecting tadpoles for no reason, or discovering the tart taste of backyard rhubarb, or playing driveway hockey with our dog as the goalie.

Easily influenced by TV, I’d mimic whatever I’d watched – playing cowboys and Indians, or clipping a towel around my neck with a clothespin as a Superman cape.

The notion of summer seemed not seasonal, but permanent; the coming school year was beyond the horizon. Summer was forever.

But that was then.

You see, the magic of summer depends on the illusion that it will last. It’s been said that as you get older, time passes more quickly. A few years ago this phenomenon was explained to me mathematically. For a child of 5, a year represents 20 percent of his or her lifetime and memories. For a man of 50, that same year represents just 2 percent. A child of 5 is experiencing the seasonal changes as if the concept were just invented; a man of 50 has seen this all before, and it becomes routine: Remove the storm windows, spray the dandelions, and go on about your business.

Until very recently, I harbored an uneasy tension each summer. Looking out the window from my office under fluorescent lights, I felt trapped, like I should be doing something more fun outside. And I couldn’t help counting away the days of summer. “June is flying by; it’s almost the 4th of July, and then the back-to-school sales start and then the cicadas sound the alarm that means that the best of summer has come and gone -- it might as well be over.” The festivals and fireworks that mark the passing of summer in our region didn’t thrill me much. And yet I couldn’t shake the restless feeling that I was missing something, and the “best time of the year” was slipping by.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I finally realized: Summer is just not my thing. I love the autumn, and I enjoy the winter and spring. But I’d been conditioned to think, as so many people do, that summer is the superior season. It simply had never occurred to me that summer isn’t for everybody, and that I prefer the other seasons. And, oddly enough, I now enjoy the summers more, without the pressure I’d been placing on myself to capture the passing season like catching a firefly in a jar.

The landscape of summer is painted in green. I think that’s one reason it is a favorite time for so many people. It reminds us of the days when we, too, were green -- green and innocent, running barefoot just for joy, oblivious to the coming frost.

This blog is for you if ...

Ideas have consequences, and erroneous ideas can have destructive consequences. So I expose erroneous ideas and challenge conventional wisdom. This blog is for you if... you are a free thinker and like to follow the news, current events, history and other social topics from a slightly weird but usually logical and well-reasoned perspective, spiced sometimes with a little dry humor.  The important thing in my opinion writing is that I am always willing to be wrong. And sometimes I write just for fun. In my day job as a PR consultant, I write for pay; here, I am off the leash, free to write what I please. But the idea is to provide fresh perspectives on life and living, through the quirky lens of a PR man gone rogue.  -- Steve Cebalt

Dirty Tricks Department: Watch for "Wag the Dog" War

What does a President do when he's in hot water?

He changes the conversation!

What do Presidents do when their inner Nixon is exposed through simultaneous accusations of embassy coverups, IRS targeting of political opponents, and massive covert spying on reporters?

They change the conversation. Obama's administration is in a "Perfect Storm" -- a shitstorm -- of things that look very unlike the "Hope and Change" he promised. I have nothing against President Obama. This article is more broadly about the power of the Presidency, and its potential for abuse.

Our current president, like others before him, finds himself in web of his own Nixonian "dirty tricks" on an epic scale that requires dramatic action. Like war. You heard it here first. Within coming weeks, when the shitstorm reaches its apex, Obama will shift our attention to a skirmish with North Korea, or perhaps by engaging in Syria's civil war....or some other military action; it really doesn't matter where or why. Because the media are susceptible to chasing the latest shiny object, the scandals rocking the White House will be forgotten while we watch the new reality show staged by Obama and the military.

This is not cynicism. It is PR 101 for presidents, and has been for ages.

Since 1997, it's been called the Wag the Dog strategy, after a prescient movie that about a Washington spin doctor who, merely days before a presidential election, distracts the electorate from a sex scandal  by hiring a Hollywood film producer to construct a fake war with Albania

A year after that movie, some critics of the Clinton administration expressed concern over the timing of Operation Desert Fox. The four-day bombing campaign occurred at the same time the U.S. House of Representatives was conducting the impeachment hearing of President Clinton. Clinton was impeached on December 19, the last day of the bombing campaign. A few months earlier, similar criticism was levelled during Operation Infinite Reach, wherein missile strikes were ordered against suspected terrorist bases in Sudan and Afghanistan, on August 20. The missile strikes began three days after Clinton was called to testify before a grand jury during the Lewinsky scandal and his subsequent nationally televised address later that evening in which Clinton admitted having an inappropriate relationship.

The Operation Infinite Reach attacks became known as "Monica's War" among TV news people, due to the timing. ABC-TV announced to all stations that there would be a special report following Monica Lewinsky's testimony before Congress, then the special report was pre-empted by the report of the missile attacks. The combination of the timing of that attack and Operation Desert Fox led to accusations of a Wag the Dog situation.

Fast forward to today. I don't think the embassy cover-up is a big deal. Maybe the administration had good security reasons for not disclosing everything they knew. Maybe they were just incompetent. Who knows, and not many people care. But a President using his IRS to obstruct political opponents, and using the Justice Department to engage in a massive witch-hunt against the media -- well, even Nixon would blush. Stalin would give it two thumbs up.

Watch for Obama  to wag the dog this week. You heard it here first.

Are your goals holding you back?

This article is about goal-setting. How goals can set you back and limit you. And how to evaluate your goals so you are not shooting for meaningless outcomes in the first place.
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My son played football for four years in the Police Athletic League. Each week the linemen do drills where they face off one-on-one against a team-mate in "THE RING". Goal: Push the other guy out of the ring, and you win the round. Last man standing after practice is the overall victor.

Sometimes Charlie would win the battle, sometimes the other guy. But there was just one player he’d never been able to beat – no one on the team had ever been able to beat him. It seems like every season there is one undefeatable Goliath who is always the Champion of THE RING. (Stay with me here … I’m leading up to the goal-setting part).

Charlie and I enjoyed talking football on the drives to and from practice.  I said, “Why don’t you set yourself a goal to beat that big guy in that drill, just once.”

Charlie: “Dad, he is a foot taller and 50 pounds heavier than me, and he’s got skills. And he’s strong. None of us can beat him.”

So I started preaching that he should TRY – experiment with different tactics; use Goliath's strength against him, judo-style; be fiercely aggressive, shock-and-awe style; ask his coaches for advice on blocking a larger opponent, etc. etc. “You don’t have to beat him every time – just make it a goal to be the one guy who beats him one time this season – don’t tell me that’s not possible.”

I am not entirely sure it is possible, to be honest. Partly because of what Charlie said -- a  positive attitude is great until you run into a skilled athlete who is twice your size; then the laws of physics kick in.  But David did slay Goliath, and sometimes small players with a big heart and smart tactics do prevail. The larger problem is that Charlie was not buying what I was trying to sell. He’d given himself enough excuses to lose (too small, not strong enough, etc.), so there was no pain in losing, just as all the other kids lost to the same bigger player in the drills. Losing became the expectation.

I gave Charlie all my cliches and bromides, including this one from Henry Ford:

“Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right.”

He started to tune me out and got mad when I'd even bring it up, so I backed off.

It illustrates how often we fall short of our potential because we simply lack faith in our own abilities.

Then, I turned the tables. I had told Charlie at the beginning of the season that MY goal was to do 100 nonstop consecutive pushups by the end of the season. (I exercised at the stadium while he practiced). I started at 25 pushups. With each workout, I increased that number by 1 or 2 or 3, until I hit 64. Then, for 4 workouts in a row, I could not hit 65. My body caved in after exactly 64 pushups. Charlie was ribbing me about my own "Epic Fail," as he put it. And then the negativity started. “Maybe 100 isn’t realistic for me. Maybe 60+ pushups is good enough for a guy my age. Maybe I just can’t do this. Maybe I need to ‘recalibrate my goals.’” (That’s how business people refer to quitting or giving up.)

Thankfully, my colleague at work gave ME a bit of a pep talk, and a specific idea that I think will work. She said, “You’ve got to quit counting. Just do pushups and have someone else count. Listen to music, think of something else, but forget about how many you’ve done. Just push and push until you drop” .....

..... Great idea, Angie. Obviously I'd programmed myself to “beat 64.” Who knows? Maybe I’m capable of 80 or 90, or 120, but if my brains is shooting for 64, that’s what I get.

So I will keep on pushing. The thing that motivates me MOST is that I want to demonstrate to Charlie that it’s important to set goals, and work until you achieve them, even when it seems impossible. Don't worry about failure; failure tends to take care of itself...focus on succeeding.

Meantime, I told him that if he can’t beat the big guy in the one-on-one drills, at least to battle him fiercely in every practice drill, and to use his team-mate's superior strength and size to make HIMSELF a stronger, better player. If he can “lose tough” every time in a hard-fought grapple with his Goliath teammate, Charlie will get stronger and better with each drill, and he’ll be able to beat most of the other kids he’ll ever face on gameday. More importantly, by learning to set impoossible goals and being willing to "fail big," he'll be better prepared to tackle the Goliath-sized challenges that life will throw at him. 

So by setting impossible goals, you can win even when you lose.

UPDATE: I did achieve the goal of 100 consecutive pushups. Which taught me another lesson: Choose meaningful goals. I  had worded so hard to achieve 100 pushups. But it was a non-producitve arbitrary meaningless achievement. So strategically, it pays to consider whether your current goals, if achieved, would bring you the satisfaction you hope for. In other words, am I working on the best goals possible?

Why I never trust a guy in a visor

 

Phil Mickelson is not to be trusted.

 

Why should you never trust him? He wears a visor. I hate visors. I guy who cannot make a decision as simple as whether to wear a hat, or not wear a hat, cannot be trusted with major decisions or commitments.

 

Worse, he's wearing a vest. "Should I wear a sweater, or not?"

 

He can't decide. So he wears part of a hat and part of a sweater rather than commit to a decision.

 

He probably orders medium-sized coffee, too. Half-caffeine brew.

 

 

His favorite ice cream? It's gotta be neopolitan.

 

No, I shall not trust such a man.

Triple Crown Phase 2 picks: Today's Race

Today, Kentucky Derby winner Orb will the second step toward the coveted Triple Crown, which no horse has achieve since 1978.

He seems likely to win -- a prohibitive favorite, but I can't pick him. It's no fun to "bet the chalk**," and you don't win much, because the "favorite" wins about 34 percent of races. Where's the fun?

Plus, in terms of economics, independent events are unaffected by previous events. Each race is different.

So my picks today:

• Itsmyluckyday

• Departing

• Governor Charlie

** Chalk - When a horse is the favorite -- or has the most money bet on it -- that horse is termed the "chalk." Interestingly, this term comes from the pre-computer era of the bookie. When a bookie recorded bets on a blackboard, the odds would change over and over as more and more people bet on the favorite. The horse became known as the "chalk" because the horse's name would disappear in chalk dust as the bookie constantly erased and lowered the horse's odds.

In Praise of Spite

I have been examining spite as an aberration of economic theory. (Stay with me ...)

Spite is often described as something you do ONLY to hurt others, with no benefit to yourself. The common origin of the term is ascribed to medieval nuns who feared rape at the hands of invading barbarians. They'd mutilate their faces so they were so grotesque they'd be spared rape and the loss of chastity that would keep them from heaven.

That's a good story, but it doesn't really define  spite. The nuns paid a horrible price. But by escaping the stain of rape at the hands of the pagan marauders, they retained their place in the kingdom of heaven. In economic terms, the cost-benefit analysis IN THEIR CONTEXT in that era made perfect sense.

True Spite:
It's not about me winning, it's about you losing

True spite is something else; where you have NO gain, but inflict pain on others. You'll do anything to see the other guy lose -- even a total stranger.

• A robbery isn't spite; you gain the money.
• Perversely, murder is not spite; you get bizarre satisfaction over controlling another's fate, playing God.

Having thought about it, most acts of spite are economically based, but the  math is wrong; you wrongly calculate the costs vs. the benefits.

Example: I work 20 years for an employer, then get a better job. As I leave, I unload 20 years of rage and frustration at my boss, the HR department, etc. I burn my bridge. My benefit: 10 minutes of satisfaction. The cost: A lifetime of never being able to use my excellent employment record with that company as a reference. Standard economics; bad math.

 

Sometimes our math is SO far off that it makes no sense at all. Teens know this. They get in a spat with their BFF (best friend forever) over...something. Both have long forgotten the genesis of the feud. A lifetime friendship could be resurrected with a simple friendly text or phone call to re-establish the relationship. But they don't and they are never friends again. The cost of that phone call -- virtually zero -- is too much to pay for a lifelong friendship, which is priceless. (See also: Hatfields and McCoys).

This is where the economic theory starts to wobble.

Could it be that we enjoy spite? That spite is its own perverse reward? A man at his 70th wedding anniversary celebration was asked the key to such a loooooooooong marriage. "Spite," he said. "I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of me leaving her, even though she drives me nuts; I knew she'd be happier without me and I wasn't going to let that happen. In fact at our age, spite is all we've got."

It's hard to avoid tears when an enduring love is expressed like that.....

Steve Cebalt

Will a person with a "black" name face discrimination?

Studies of job applicants have found that those with names that suggest the person's ethnicity are treated differently. Those with distinctively "black" names may face discrimination, according to the conventional wisdom.

The good news: There is some truth to that, but it doesn't hurt job-seekers. In fact it prevents them from wasting time interviewing with racist employers who would not hire them anyway. When you correct the data for socioeconomic factors, a person's name makes absolutely no difference in their economic success or failure in society. Here's a study showing how a rose by any other name, would indeed smell as sweet:

THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF DISTINCTIVELY BLACK NAMES

It's a fascinating topic, because we all have a name! And parents get to brand their own children. Mine are Emily, Grace, Mary and Charlie. Except for Charlie, those names are about as "white" as it gets.

Final note: I've studied everything I can find on names, but on aspect I have not seen is the use of shortened, altered or diminutive versions of names. (Alfred = Fred, Bradley = Brad, etc.)

Would Brad Pitt be perceived the same if he were called Bradley Pitt? Maybe.

This interests me because I have always been called Steve, never Steven. Same for my siblings Tom, Mike and Kathy (never Katherine).  Clearly my parents leaned toward informality. My father Herbert C. Cebalt was just plain old "Herb," never Herbert. Can you hear the difference?

My theory is that if I had used the name Steven in everyday conversation, I'd be perceived differently. "Steve" is approachable, friendly. "Steven" is formal, a signal that I am a person who expects to be taken seriously. Thus I never use Steven, even on legal signatures. And I think I am a different person as a result.

Similarly for my son. He is Charlie, never Charles. Sometimes "Chuck" or "Chuckles" around the house, but "Charles" only when we are joking around. But can you imaging England's Prince Charlie, or someday King Chuck? For princes and kings, the formal sounds right.The name  does shape the person in this regard, I think, but this is one aspect of names that I have not seen any research on, so it is just my hypothesis, nothing more. And it is inconsistent with the research in the link above, so I am probably wrong.

So, I've been called many names, including many bad things, and I don't mind. Just don't call me Steven.

Has your name shaped you one way or another? Do you like your name, or hate it? Please tell us by leaving a comment below!

The upside of being wrong

• In 1610, when Galileo pointed out to the Catholic Church that the Earth revolved around the sun, and not vice-versa, rather than admit their error they put him on trial for heresy. It took them two hundred years to officially recognise that he was right and that therefore…they were wrong.
• During the Great Depression, the economist John Maynard Keynes was criticized for changing his views on monetary policy. His reply, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’

Learning only comes from a willingness to be wrong -- in fact, a DESIRE to be proven wrong. I learned this at mid-life from a  random comment from actor Bruce Willis. I am sure he doesn't even remember saying it, but it changed my life. In an interview he tossed off this remark:

"I'll always tell you exactly what I think...but I am willing to be wrong."

Today that is my mantra. Does it make me wishy-washy and weak? No. "I was wrong" are words that only a very strong, confident person says. That's why you hear it so rarely. Think about it: What do I gain from being "right"? Nothing. By being proved wrong, I gain something precious -- an expanded worldview and the virtue of learning something new and fascinating.

In my younger days I prided myself on being decisive. I hated uncertainty, so I'd make a decision -- any decision -- just to relieve the uncertainty. That's all fine, except once I had made a decision (rather arbitrarily), I felt I had to stick with it. I'd defend it. I'd pursue it to the end, even if it was unproductive. I'd debate it, and I enjoyed a good argument. I wanted to be RIGHT. What a fool.

Now, instead, I assume I may be wrong about ANYTHING. I look for opportunities to be wrong. I listen to people who oppose my views, not to argue, but to learn. I don't care to convince or persuade them. I assume they are right...unless I can prove otherwise. And even then, I gain from their perspective.

The sun revolved around the earth -- until we discovered we'd been wrong for thousands of years. The earth was flat, until we discovered otherwise.

I try to make good decisions, knowing that I can change them if I want to. Emerson said it well: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

And it's not always right vs. wrong. Both may be right, or both may be wrong. Or bits and pieces of opposing views may be right or wrong. The possibilities are endless.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

So now I smile every time I say, "I see your point. I've been wrong." Because that's how I learn.

I love to be wrong.