Israel 2020: Day 1

So great today to be back in the Holy Land of Israel. 

Every time we come, we can literally see how the country has matured and built up even more since just the short time before. 

Of course, we arrived with a little jet lag but still managed to take a nice walk around the bustling streets of Tel Aviv. 

The restaurants, cafes, shops, theaters, and culture here is awesome. 

I guess the toughest thing is deciding what we want to do each day, but that is all part of the adventure. 

See you tomorrow! 😉

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Beautiful Architecture, Washington DC

Check out this beautiful exterior architecture.  

This fine exquisite pattern is all around this building by Metro Center. 

I think this must’ve been restored over the last few years, because I don’t remember it being this colorful and awesome in the past. 

Civilization can still create some amazing works…whether technology, medical cures, and even beautiful pieces of artwork. 

Now we just need to proceed with the positives of creativity and productivity without destroying ourselves with indifference, dysfunction, and mismanagement in the process. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Life Is Like A Sailboat

Planning is a critical aspect of making progress toward your goals.

As they say;

If you fail to plan, plan to fail. 

However, planning is subject to life–and life happens!

One colleague of mine compared it to a sailboat, and our dialogue went something like this:

You set out on a course. But the wind and ocean current takes you here and there. Even as you try to steer the boat with the sails and rudder, sometimes you land on Gilligan’s Island!

Hence, life is like a sailboat.  😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Measurement And Standards Are Our Friends

So I learned that Metrology is the science of measurement. 

And measurement is the foundation of scientific research and creating standards. 

Scientific research and measurement are about exploration, discovery, and innovation.

Further, it is about finding the facts; it is objective; it is truth; it is essential to maintaining integrity. 

Standards also help to ensure dependability, because there is a common reference and you know what you are getting. 

A great true story that demonstrates the importance of measurements and standards is the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904.

This was the third worst urban inferno in American history. 

It destroyed over 1,500 building across 140 acres. 

Fire engines responded from as far as New York and Virginia. 

But the problem was that they invariably could not help. 

Why?  

Because their fire hose couplings could not fit on the Baltimore fire hydrants–they were not standardized.

Without standards, we don’t have interoperability. 

We don’t have a reference that everyone can go by. 

It’s as if we’re all working on our own desert islands. 

This defeats the power in numbers that make us together greater than the sum of our individual parts. 

Science and technology help us advance beyond just ourselves and today. 

Measurement and standardization help us to build a better and stronger society. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Failing Forward

There were 2 inspirational student speakers today at my daughter’s graduation from American University.

One spoke about how he got sick soon after starting college with a serious vascular disease, but despite numerous hopsitalizations, treatments, and falling behind his peers, he persevered and was graduating today and in very good spirits. 

Another women spoke about her many failures leading up to the success today of her graduation. She described how her father used to ask her: 

“What did you fail at this week?”

Why?

Because even though we don’t like to admit it, most people have many, many more failures in life than successes.  

Even Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb is said to have failed 1,000 times before getting it right.

This women explained how failure is actually something to celebrate–does that sound crazy?.

But it’s really not, and here’s why?

“To fail is to learn.
To learn is to grow.
To fail is to grow forward.”

Now, I had heard about failing up, but never failing forward. 

Many who fail still manage to advance themselves in the process. 

But failing forward is different. 

It’s not taking advantage of the failure, but legitimately learning from the experience so that you can grow yourself, and advance yourself, by becoming a smarter, stronger, and more capable person from it. 

Sure, it hurts to fail. 

Who would normally want to celebrate failure?

But if we understand life as a journey and not a specific destination, then we enjoy every blessed moment that we have to become better today and tomorrow than we were yesterday. 

In this case, failure is not the opposite of success, but rather is part and parcel of achieving it. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

The Revolving Door

So work is a revolving door of people onboarding and offboarding.

New people are getting hired.

Old people are leaving.

Nothing is stable.

The relationships you made yesterday just left the revolving door today, and it’s time to make new ones.

One “ran from Dodge.”  Another retired.  A third left for the private sector.  Someone else is going just down the block.

On the inbound train are Summer interns. Contractors being hired on as regular staff.  Brand new people.  And even some people coming back after leaving for a short time.

People get antsy or have enough doing what they were doing, dealing with who they are dealing, or simply want a change and a challenge.

Others are shown the door under less fortunate circumstances.

Whether looking to pave new trails, find yourself a seat at the table, a leadership position, or a fatter paycheck–the eyes see, and the heart wants.

Some people are tethered to their job or even “retired in place (RIP)”–perhaps it’s truly a great job and fit or it’s like their life blood (their whole identity, their reason for being) or maybe, they just like collecting what they consider “easy money” for a job they know and love or can skate by on, or maybe they work with other great people they really like and every day is a fresh challenge and even fun. 

Recents studies indicate that retiring later in life actually increases longevity, but when is enough enough or are we leaving ourselves enough time to sit at the pool side and just enjoy life a little?

Millennials, famous for changing jobs often, now are at an average of 4 jobs by the time they hit 32.

And in Information Technology, job hopping is considered “the world’s biggest game of musical chairs.“

Why the increase in the job hopping bug in people’s you know what?

Sure there is more opportunity for those that have the right skills, and people getting bored or stale is a bad thing, everyone wants to find a good fit for themselves and where they can have a real impact, and economic and social pressures push people to make the leap, perhaps there is also some foolishness involved–where the grass is always greener or not.

Sometimes though it really may be right for the person–and that’s for each to explore and decide for themselves. 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to John Garghan)

Prove Them Wrong

So I was recently teaching a certification class. 

And this was a very high-caliber class of professionals attending. 

One gentlemen was a wonderful African American who I will call John. 

As part of one of the class assignments, John,  a very successful man, told of how as a young man growing up in the DC projects, a neighbor told him something very hurtful and potentially devastating to him.

The neighbor angrily said, “You’ll never be anything in your life!”

And John described how he pursued his education, his career goals, his family, as well as philanthropic pursuits to give back to the community–and he went quite far. 

He told with great emotion and tears in his eyes how ten years ago, he went back to his old neighborhood to thank this neighbor for motivating him (even though in a negative way) to go as far in life as he did. 

You could hear a pin drop in the class–I think a lot of people could relate to this story in their own lives. 

I know that I for one certainly could. 

For me, while I am a simple person and have not gone so far, I have certainly had an interesting life and lots of wonderful opportunities.

Yet, I too remember more than 20 years ago, when I had taken a job in a wild pursuit in my youthful ambitions that one crazy boss that I was briefly working for who was considerably older than me and with his own business abusively said to me one day, “You’re not half of what you think you are!”

BAM! Like a huge sledge hammer hitting me right across my head–I was still relatively young and impressionable.

Also, I came from a pretty blue collar-type working family and although upwardly mobile, and I was certainly trying to become “more,” I never really felt at all entitled. 

Anyway, the story this student told really brought my own experience hurling back to me from my past. 

In the class, John said–you have to go out and “Prove them wrong.” 

And while I don’t exactly feel that proving others who wish us bad to be wrong is the point, I do agree that we shouldn’t let any of these negative nellies in our own lives drag us down. 

We all have our mission in life–and it’s up to us to become the best people that we can–and to hell with everyone who looks down on us, discourages us, maybe are competitive with us or jealous in some way, or simply don’t wish us the best. 

So John is right–go out there and do great things! 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

I Am Doing

Today, a disabled man asked the lifeguard at the pool, “How are you doing?”

The lifeguard couldn’t understand or fully hear the disabled man who had to repeat the question multiple times.

Then, the lifeguard responded, “I am doing well. How are you doing?”

The disabled man with a blank to sad look on his face says, “I am doing.”

His response of just “doing” (not well, good, or fine) was like just going on day-to-day amidst very challenging life circumstances of illness and disability–just in a state of being, but certainly not feeling like he was thriving in his current life. 

It reminded me of my own parents, survivors of the Holocaust. 

After the horror and loss of the Holocaust everything, including coming to this country without a dime or a job was just a cakewalk in comparison. 

For 25-years, my dad would never even go to the doctor. 

He would say, “G-d is my doctor!”

Only later in life, when all his friends were sick or failing, and my mom was so sick with Parkinson’s would my dad respond to people’s questions of how he was, by saying simply, “Surviving!”

And then often adding, “We are part of the survivors’ club.”

When we’re young, healthy, and vibrant, the world seems too small compared to what we think we can do and accomplish.

That’s good–it gives us the thrusters in life to go as far as we can with accomplishments and progress. 

As we age though, the realities of life and health come into vision and we realize that we can’t lift cars with one hand (anymore) or fly lightening speed with just our cape around the globe–we’re mortal. 

This doesn’t mean that we can’t do great things for ourselves and the world at any age and with any (dis)ability, just that it many not be as simple or as easy any longer–we have to fight harder and be part of the survivor’s club. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

New Body Parts

As I gear up for Hip Replacement #2, my sister sent this funny comic to me. 

I heard that something like a million joint replacements are now done in the U.S. every year. 

And these procedures are expected to increase precipitously with projections by 2030 of:

– 3.48 million knee replacements (a factor of almost 7 times)

– 572,000 hip replacements (an almost 2-fold increase)

This also means that revision surgeries will start to rise rapidly as replacements wear out or are in need of replacement themselves. 

Thank G-d that they have these procedures to help people–I don’t know how people lived with the incessant pain and degenerative mobility even a generation ago. 

What’s it like to have a body part inserted to augment your own?

Just ask this horse! 😉

The Power Of One, Many, And G-d

I took this photo at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale. 

I like how they took the pictures of the professors, administrators, and students and wallpapered it outside on the facade of the building. 

It says, “I am the voice of innovative education and civic engagement for the 21st century.”

It’s a cool idea showing the individuals and the power they have to make a difference as well as the aggregate of the photos, as a group, displaying that we are somehow all in it together. 

We can’t just rely on others, and we can’t take it all on ourselves…progress is a shared responsibility. 

We do our part and contribute to the greater group–it takes a variety of talents to get things done, so we leverage everyones strengths for the good of the team. 

– Education is one part.  

– Experience is another.  

– Engagement is a third

And all these ingredients only come together with divine providence and the good fortune from the Almighty.

This last one is the secret sauce as they say. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)