Thursday, June 23, 2011

What do other people see when they initially look at you?

A few weeks ago I swallowed whatever pride I had left and walked into the local workforce development office in search of answers to obtaining unemployment compensation.

After a 20 minute wait to be seen, I noticed a five-foot tall cardboard cutout mentioned just how important a jobseeker’s first impression is to future employers.

Never one to care too much about having stubble on my face, or the freshest shoes, or clothing or accessories that immediately promoted a brand when I was working, and prior to that in school, I decided to ask some friends their original impression of me and how it changed or differed once they got to know me.

Realizing that most men my age wouldn’t ask —and definitely not share—such things with other guys, I kept my query to 15 women, and received nine responses. Their answers were as much of an eye-opener as my trip to Workforce Plus.

Words alone are incapable of describing me, or any person. However, the experiment was a healthy one for me because the constructive and loving observations were things I had either not previously noted or chose to dismiss.

If nothing else asking an honest assessment of your friends—not your family or significant other, but your friends—is a good way to see just how far you have come over the years. Try it, and if everyone is being candid, the responses should provide some self-realization.

No one wanted to go out on a limb and call me weird, but it was nearly universal that I was not the average guy. One friend said it best when she saw me in a science class in college and immediately thought “‘Lord, this boy needs help.’ He’s smart, doesn’t dress normal and country.”

Other words used were dork, nerd, goofy and usually those were followed looking uncomfortable in my own skin. Something else that was instantly recognizable was that I was always telling jokes, or was quite the smartdonkey, but had a decent heart once all the visual and evident demerits were removed.

Yes my concept of humor, in the eyes of my friends, was quite unique. However, as the years wore on most realized the highbrow humor with a tinge of snobbishness was as much a part of me as my glasses.

“You are an awesome person. I am thankful that I know you and have a friendship with you,” said one amiga who has known me since I was a hefty 16-year old in Rockledge, Florida.

Underneath it all was intensity for doing the right thing and not taking the path of least resistance. Though it was something I knew Whitney was aware of, I had no clue that others recognized that I do have a serious side to me.

“Now, I see that you are a little less immature and still goofy with a quirky sense of humor,” said one friend who noted I am still so young my breath smells like similac. “You have matured into a young man with determination and strong morals. I truly admire that.”

In truth, there is something I admire in each of the friends who received my initial question. As haughty as it sounds, if a man or woman was incapable of teaching me something, of contributing to the world around them or a warm person then I would not waste my time talking to them either personally or professionally.

Perhaps my belief in what constitutes a friend is as highfalutin as some of my jokes, but when I see one, it does not take long to recognize it.

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb

Thursday, June 16, 2011

What were your youthful accomplishments?

When he died in a flurry of bullets 15 years ago, I did not know who Tupac Shakur was. I did not know his music, or why his death was just as seminal a moment to some as Kurt Cobain’s suicide two years earlier.

As unbelievable as Shakur’s death may have been to my classmates and millions of others, it may be equally unfathomable that he would have turned 40 today.

Though I knew neither man, nor his work during their lifetimes, I always wanted to accomplish something revolutionary in my lifetime. As I grew older, and became a fan of both, the thought further fermented in my mind.

Everyone wants to be rich and famous in their lifetime, but the thought of winning a Pulitzer Prize before my 30th birthday motivates me more than the money that I could clearly make from winning such an award.

Though neither artist lived to be 30, I always had a sense from watching documentaries on both and listening to their work that their art was more important than money. If Shakur and Cobain happened to make money and earn commercial success while sharing their talents we were richer for it.

In his 25 years Shakur did more than most of us will do in our lifetimes. How many other rappers would be such a cultural phenomenon more than a decade after their assassination to the point the President of the United States found a way to evoke is name during a black tie dinner this spring?

Shakur’s 40th birthday will not be the catalyst for me to go out and spend my remaining days in Tallahassee volunteering or trying to save the city. It’s better to be honest, than lie to simply flatter the memory of a dead man.

The biggest changes within any organization or society do not come from on high, but from the people. Even non-secular countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Syria are beginning to realize the exuberance of youth are more powerful than water when channeled properly.

(South Africa realized this with devastating consequences 35 years ago and takes pause each June 16 to celebrate the impact its youngest citizens have on society.)

So while we cannot live without water, it is also a very destructive force. The question, Tupac’s death has led me to ask myself and others is whether your actions, your art, your words are enrich or destroy lives?

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb

Monday, June 13, 2011

Was last night a failure or dream deferred?

The sun still rose this morning. The apocalypse is not among us simply because a team won a basketball game last night.

In the immediate moments after the conclusion of the NBA season, I was among the chorus of people who were happier the cocky bunch wearing the white jerseys lost as opposed to the maligned bunch in blue won.

As the night wore on, I realized holding up a bunch of young men for such praise or ridicule was silly. At the end of the day most athletes are simply men—and occasionally women—in their 20s who are playing the game they love and getting paid for it.

Athletes, politicians, actors and other so-called celebrities are, and always will be people. Because a person has more money or is recognized faster than most of us does not make them immune from hurting.

Then I heard the combination of anguish, frustration and surprise from a 26-year hold multimillionaire who had the gall to lose last night. It made me rethink a few things.

"At the end of the day, all the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. …” That is what LeBron James said about an hour after his dream of winning an NBA championship was suspended for yet another year.

It has baffled me why we as people love to bring public figures to such depths when they do not meet either their expectations or ours. Our collective envy seemingly prohibits us from having empathy at just the moment someone else needs it.

Social media has ruined the line between constructive criticism and vindictiveness. Combined with my generation being dubbed the most narcissistic in American history one can see how that is a Molotov cocktail when intertwined with the wrong person’s vocabulary.

The point is most of what we know about athletes is when they are at work. I am sure we all have a few colleagues who we think we know. However, if we saw them at a BDSM convention, or if they were a deacon in their church, or if we saw them at a gay bar we would be stunned.

Why should it be any different with athletes, who are like most of us—except their salaries are bigger and more people want to sleep with them? Winning an NBA championship does not instantly make a basketball player, or person, better or more complete. It just makes someone the best in their profession.

And if you can’t support someone’s aspirations to be the best in their chosen line of work, especially when it does not pertain to you, then perhaps James had a point.

“...I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. So they can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they got to get back to the real world at some point."

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb