wanderings

I rec'd the Last Lecture for Christmas. I'm just now reading it. For the Christmas gift I actually rec'd the podcast of it from John. I became friends with John while in Lesotho. John is in charge of IT stuff and much more for the Baylor clinic in Maseru. John is very creative - for this gift he wrapped the jacket of The Last Lecture around The Medical Guide for Third World Travelers. I was confused when I flipped through the pages to find charts of "Causes of a Runny Nose" or "The Nutshell Guide to Healthy Travelling" Then I found the I tunes redemption coupon for Megan #3. :) Thank you John Baylor!

I couple of the chapters that I appreciated are below:

A Bad Apology is Worse than No Apology
Apologies are not pass/fail... any performance lower than an A really doesn't cut it... A good apology is like an antibiotic; a bad apology is like rubbing salt in the wound.
2 classic bad apologies:
1) "I'm sorry you feel hurt by what I've done." ( this is an attempt at an emotional salve, but it's obvious you don't want to put any medicine in the wound.)
2) "I apologize for what I did, but you also need to apologize to me for what you've done." That's not giving an apology. that's asking for one.)
Proper Apologies have 3 parts:
1) What I did wrong
2) I feel badly that I hurt you
3) How do I make this better?


Look for the Best in Everybody
But in the end, people will show you their good side. Almost everybody has a good side. Just keep waiting. It will come out.

Tell the Truth
All the time. You're only as good as you word. People lie for lots of reasons, often because it seems like a way to get what they want with less effort. You run into people again later, and they remember you lied to them. And they usually tell lots of other people about it. What Amazes me about lying. Most people who have told a lie think they got away with it... when in fact they didn't.

So with this free time, I've had some time to read, watch movies, work out, spend time with great people. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Story behind this book and the last lecture is: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? The author of this book had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and gave this lecture. In the book he is a father leaving bits of himself for his children. The conversations that won't be had, the stories he still wants his children to know.
We are finishing the Life of Moses this year in BSF, I think there where lots of nuggets that Moses was able to impart before he died, even if he didn't make it into the Promised Land. He got to see the Promised land and he got the honor to pass the baton over to Joshua! Sometimes it's OK that we don't set foot in the Promised Land. It's still a wonderful sight. At the end of Numbers we have the record of the 40 years of wandering in the desert for the Israelites. The record although it doesn't bring out all the awful failures (and there where some big ones!) along the way, it tells part of the story of the journey. We need to know where we've come from. Hopefully if we've learned from those mistakes and we're stronger and not just going to repeat them. If we remember our mistakes, we are less likely to repeat them.
I love hearing most people's stories. Sometimes I miss the the chance to hear them, but I get to be the listening ear on many occasions. Like yesterday at the gym, I happened to be working out next to the woman who started telling me about her inspiration to get into shape a couple months ago she started working out for the first time in her life. She lost over 20 pounds! She was loving it. She then had to have surgery, so then things went down hill, she gained 6 lbs over this 3 weeks she was recovering. She wasn't have with the surgery results, we got some checks stolen, and someone is out there writing bad checks, she got laid off a couple months ago... it was quite the story. I congratulated her for coming to the gym, it was a step forward. Reminded me that I was glad that I came as well. We both had frustrations to work out, it was a good way to release some of them.