"we've arrived and to prove it we're here"

My grandfather (click on the link and scroll down to the picture, fifth row, far left) was a math teacher, headmaster, and serious polymath geek, if you'd call anyone who was born in 1899 a geek. He was just someone who was interested in math, in science, in history... in why. And someone who had a very academic sense of humour.

Whenever we drove somewhere and parked the car, invariably the first line out of his mouth was the above line. It's a mathematician's joke, a goofy assertion and a goofy proof. It's dumb, but I love it. It's a silly way of focusing me on the here and now.

Because really, where else are you?

In the marketing world, another metaphor that's to the point is "the grass is always greener." After two or three years, people begin to think about moving on. They hate their client, or their boss, or their co-workers, or whatever, and they start to look around and they go...

And the inevitable lunch-bag let down happens. They discover the exact same issues, the same hatreds, the same problems, in the new place, only much more quickly this time. 

And maybe they move again. And slowly, at least some of folks begin to discover that everywhere they go, they face the same issues and people and problems. And they realize that the only thing that matters is how they deal with those things.

As a manager, it sounds self-serving and condescending and faux philosophical for me to say, but damn it, it's true.

Your presence, your attention and your attitude is what makes the difference. No matter where you are, it's up to you to make something happen.

"We've arrived and to prove it we're here." As my grandfather said, it's all about presence in the here and now.

Or, to put it even better, in the immortal words of everyone's favourite philosopher-physicist-rockstar, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Comments

[Danie Gomez Ortigoza]

Very inspiring. Thanks.

[Scott]

Thanks Danie, much appreciated.