Leader In Training

            “Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.
Have no friends not equal to yourself.
When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.” – Confucius
“To thine own self be true…thy canst not be false to any…” – Shakespeare
“Character is power.” – Booker T. Washington
“One of the greatest gifts leaders can give others is hope.” – Unknown

In life, we see a little bit of us in everyone we meet.  The surprise comes when we see and accept a new part of us we hadn’t seen before.

When I saw you, I saw the part of me I knew – a redhead in a sea of blondes and brunettes – but I met the part of me I had forgotten about.  I met sincerity.  I also saw the makings of good, if not great, leader, someone who had seen life through clouds of doubt but for whom now the sky is clear.  Belief in one’s self supplanted following someone else’s life goals.

When you stand in front of the mirror, what do you see?  Do you focus on a facial blemish, a socially-defined defect or perhaps the march of time across your hands?  Do you look into your eyes and automatically smile at the confident person staring back at you?  Are you listening to the whole message you’re sending out?

When you sit alone, whom is your inner voice talking to?  In what timeframe are you thinking?  Are you rehashing the past with yourself?  Are you asking God for guidance in the future?  Are you telling yourself to be quiet while you try to think?  Are you arguing with your lover about what you are or are not doing right now?

We can never predict the future but we can plan what we want to do.  We can never relive the past but we can choose to remember what we wanted to do, or did.

If I were here a day from now and remembering what I wanted to do, I would recall asking you if you are doing what you want to do.  I would sit here writing down your answer, marveling at the revelation in learning that another person, a redhead like me but a woman not a man, had dreams not much different than mine but with an approach so much more wonderful that I wish I had been you a year ago or had at least asked the question some months before.

Right now, the vantage points from Room 212 of the Portsmouth Holiday Inn gives little insight into how I am like you and how I’m not.  I do not pull hair behind my ear; instead, I adjust my glasses.  I do not wear skirts; I wear dress slacks.

There was a time when I would use this space to fill your eyes with eloquent words and fill your ears with metered rhymes but that person who was me is no more.

I am now a grown-up, a man, an engineer, a leader in training.  Where once I saw a woman as a person to court, to woo, to date, to marry, I now see someone to teach me the nurturing, non-warlike ways to persuade others to believe in themselves.  In teaching me, she learns the patience of the teacher who must wait for the student to give up old traits and learn new habits.  She learns that the way she taught the last person does not work on this one.  She learns that she cannot teach everything she knows.  She learns that silence is as good a lesson as noise.

Should you never get another chance to teach me about yourself, I’ve already had the chance to learn something about you through another person.

A colleague of mine, who observed you off and on throughout the day, said that you are the kind of woman who has no trouble choosing between men who want to spend time with you.  We both agreed that you had a sweet demeanor.  I observed your professional dedication during ADSL physical connection tests – recording pertinent data on a laptop you carried to CPE booths.  From these observations, I concluded that you would lead a group of people to accomplish a goal that is now but a dim dream in your head.  For now, you are finetuning yourself, a never-ending task but one that we can spend as much or as little time as we wish yet still keep pushing ourselves forward, growing ourselves while growing others.

“Lord, when I am wrong, make me willing to change; when I am right, make me easy to live with.  So strengthen me that the power of my example will far exceed the authority of my rank.” – Pauline H. Peters

I have changed so that the women I meet are the sister and mother I grew up with, whose dreams are not restricted by gender or limited to gender roles, no who only live to make men happy, but to live with those regardless of gender for whom the fulfillment of happiness is not a goal in the future or a sugar-coated New York/Madison Avenue ad but a here-and-now, one-on-one way of life.

If ever we meet again and get to speak a word or two, I hope I remember to thank you for the quiet inspiration you gave me to hold up this mirror of words to your face to let you see the glow that lights the faces of others.

21 September 2000

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My Vanity Mirror

Everyone has a story to tell, the story of their life.  Of course, we filter out a lot that happens around us so that what we remember about the story of our lives is a mixture of emotions and selected memories of sights, smells, sounds, touch, etc.

A diary is the story of one’s life, written not for general distribution but written to nourish one’s soul.

Today was a long day.  I awoke at 3:18 a.m. and got ready for a 5:35 a.m. flight from Huntsville-Madison County Airport through Atlanta to Seattle-Tacoma Airport via Delta Airlines.  My wife was kind enough to drive me to the airport.

And why is it that I am bothered by the touch of another human being?  Well, that should be the title of this story but I’m getting ahead of myself.

“All Things Grow With Love”, states a pillow on the mantel above a fireplace in my room at A Cascade View, a local B&B.  Is there a correlation between human touch and love?  There is certainly a correlation between human touch and sex.  Sex is, after all, really just a shortened version of sexual (not necessarily sensual) contact.  But I’m still getting ahead of myself, or am I?  After all, these are the thoughts going through my head now (or in the last few minutes) and what I’ve come here for is to record the events of the day, bad grammar and all.

After the airplane landed in Seattle, I struggled with my luggage (having a problem with a large box full of equipment that I have brought with me to test at Microsoft), having to upgrade my rental car from a Ford Contour with a satellite navigation system to a Ford Explorer with a map in the passenger’s seat.  Earlier in the week, I had surfed to the website http://www.mapquest.com and downloaded the following maps:

·        • A map from SEATAC airport to Verlot, a town in the Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest

·        • A map from Verlot to A Cascade View B&B

·        • A map from A Cascade View B&B to the Seattle Repertory Theater

·        • A map from A Cascade View to Microsoft

In addition, I had purchased a ticket to “Metamorphoses,” a dramatic performance at the Seattle Repertory Theater.  Also, I surfed to a Washington state hiking trails map and had zeroed in on a trail that led through mining country and some ice caves.

I drove from SEATAC airport and headed north to the national forest.  Before I got to the forest, I stopped at a convenience store for a bottle of water, a candy bar and a disposable camera.  Once in the forest, I noticed old ice in the ditches and as I drove further into the forest, there started to be patches of snow on the ground beside the road and larger piles of snow along the road.  Eventually, there was a sign that the road would be closed at Deer Creek.  At Deer Creek, I parked behind some other cars and started walking up the road to the Ice Caves trail, keeping one eye on my watch because it was already a little after 2:00 p.m. and I had told Marianne, the B&B proprietor, that I would be arriving at the B&B somewhere between 3 and 4 o’clock.

As I walked briskly up the road, I wondered about my reaction to people throughout the day.  On the nearly five hour flight from Atlanta to Seattle, I had been squeezed between two other guys.  As usual, there was the usual jostling around to keep from touching the other guy too much.  Also, in the row in front of us were some teenage girls who kept turning around and looking at someone in our row (vanity said it was me but why?).  I was either sleeping or watching a movie, “Galaxy Quest”, and never made eye contact with any of the girls.  I was uncomfortable with the guy behind the counter at Hertz because he is black/African-American and he knew I was from Alabama so I worried that I might say something that would tell him that white people from Alabama do not like black people.  When I got to the B&B, I did not hit it off perfectly with the hosts so I over-emphasized my tiredness and rushed off to get a bite to eat before seeing the play.

The play.  Or should I say, “The Play”?  Ah yes, every good story should have a narrative with a conflict and a climactic resolution.  The play I saw tonight definitely did.  Unfortunately, I am fighting off sleep and may not be able to get down everything today.

How much do I love my wife?  Well, she is the person with whom I feel the most comfortable.  Therefore, I am often uncomfortable when I am with other people without my wife.  At the same time, I often feel my life would be different if she wasn’t around.  More than likely, I would spend more time writing, my only passionate hobby.  For the most part, if I have to decide between feeling good or writing, I pick feeling good.

After hiking for about a mile, the road was no longer plowed so I had to trudge through snow one to two feet deep, approximately deeper than all the snows I’ve experienced while living in Huntsville, Alabama.  Occasionally, one of my feet would punch through the crusty snow and sink up to my knee.  One interesting little tidbit – Just as I reached the part of the road that wasn’t plowed, two slightly overweight women were standing there with their dog.  They looked like they were contemplating going on.  I walked past them and heard them comment to some other people that they were quite out of shape.  Okay, so I go all the way up the road to where the Ice Caves trailhead begins (taking some pictures along the way).  There stands a guy with long stringy hair and a boy looking nervous/disinterested beside him.  I ask the guy if he is coming or going on the Ice Caves trail.  He said that he is going and wants to know if I know where the trailhead is.  I comment that I do not.  He said that he came all the way from San Diego and he is determined to go on.   I look at my watch and see it is 3:00 p.m. so I decide to start heading back down the road.  When I get about a quarter-mile from the plow line, one of the two women with the dog is helping the other one get out of a snowdrift.  I joke that at least they decided to start up the trail.  The long, permed and stringy blond-headed woman asked me if I had seen a guy with long hair and a kid tagging along with him.  I responded that yes I had and he said he was from San Diego and he was determined to go all the way up the Ice Caves trail.  She said, “That’s great.  He goes on up the trail, not caring how we’re doing.”  I responded, “Well, it shows that he’s good for something, he’s good for nothing.”  Her final comment was, “That’s why he’s in San Diego and I’m here.”  The hike was well worth it, even if my shoes and jacket are drying by the fire.

I’m just glad that I put on deodorant this morning but that leads to another one of my small observations today, that after I exercise and cool down, my body is quick to warm up again, especially when in contact with another person (chiefly when my wife is in bed beside me and I act as her personal heating pad).

Okay, the hike is over, I’ve checked in at A Cascade View and shared a Jack Daniels whiskey Tipsy Cake with my hosts.  I’ve viewed their rose garden, the Cascade Mountains and one of the buildings on the Microsoft campus (and learned that both their sons have done temporary contract work for Microsoft).  Time to drive in to the city after having driven by a closed restaurant recommended to me by my host and getting some Baskin Robbins ice cream, instead.

To cut this story short, I parked the car, found my way to the theater and realized I arrived too early at the box office.  I walked around downtown Seattle, observing the international water fountain and an exotic drum session kicking and grooving on the park grounds.  I went back to the theater, purchased my tickets still 30 minutes before seating.  I decided to go to the Space Needle and see the sights.  I also bought a bunch of souvenirs for my wife, nieces, nephews, sister, and parents.  I rushed back to the theater when I realized it was 7:00 p.m. and the play started at 7:30.

I got a program and walked to my aisle seat.  I took off my jacket, set the souvenirs underneath the chair and sat down.  A few minutes later, what appears to be a couple with a same-age tagalong walk up to sit down beside me.  The woman, large and a little overweight, sat beside me.  Actually, it was more like she had to kind of slide in and squeeze into her chair.  Her left leg was firmly pressed against mine.  I had seen a sign in the lobby that said the temperature in the theater was warm to keep the actors healthy because they would be spending a lot of their time in a large reflecting pool.  Combine that with the fact I had exercised earlier in the day and I knew that the temperature of my right leg was going to go up.  So, to subtly warn the woman I told her about the sign in the lobby.

From this point on, I spent time watching the play and noticing the drama taking place beside me.  Just before the play started, the guy next to the woman said, “Don’t worry.  I won’t try to hold your hand or anything.”  The woman gave a knowing blow of air through her nose.

Keep in mind that because I had exercised earlier in the day, not only did the temperature of my leg rise but also my legs were tired and I could not constantly keep them tensed up and pulled away from touching the woman’s leg.  Instead, after a while I just let my legs relax so I could enjoy the play and not fall asleep expending excess energy.  I have to assume the woman felt I was pressing against her leg.  She did what I had not experienced since high school.  She would press against my leg (or let her leg relax) and then pull away, I assume, seeing if I was pressing back.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that our shoulders where pressed against each other, too.  Admittedly, I wanted the physical contact.  I wanted to feel wanted by another woman but I did not want to return the want because (as part of my lifelong pattern) I didn’t want to give the woman the wrong impression.  At one point, she even sort of put her arm underneath mine.  Had she been Janeil, I would have lifted my arm and allowed her to lock her arm in mine.  Instead, I left my arm where it was and forced the woman to pull her arm away.  One of the big questions in all this is “Who am I?”  I enjoy the relationship with Janeil and don’t want to ruin it.  At the same time, I would enjoy a relationship with another woman.  I have never been the guy who makes the first move and if ever there was a time when I was tested on who I am and what is my relationship with Janeil, tonight was it.  I guess I confirmed that I think enough of Janeil that I would not flippantly allow a physical relationship to occur with another woman.  I also confirmed that I don’t know how to react to the touch of another human so I just freeze up.  In some ways, it would have been nice to see where tonight could have taken me.  I’ve always wanted to move to this area and this woman could have been my formal invitation.  Carrying out the fantasy, I could fall in love with the woman; we could get married and have kids.  Or we could have a flash-in-the-pan relationship and I would be stuck as a single guy in Seattle.  I love the options life gives me.  Too bad I can’t have them all.