5 Minute Reflection #14.02: If You See Something, Say Something

"If you see something, say something." We hear that continuously in airports, train stations and other public places. It's about fighting terrorism. It's about trusting no person, no parcel, no behavior that appears out of place. It's also about resisting the temptation to look the other way, the temptation to avoid involvement. 

Today is the 30th anniversary of the death of Martin Niemöller, a German Lutheran pastor known for his outspoken pacifism. Ironically, Niemöller was a successful and decorated U-Boat commander in World War I. After the war, following in his father's footsteps, he took a sharp turn and was ordained a Lutheran Minister in 1924. Niemöller wrote about this journey in a book called, Vom U-Boot zur Kanzel (From U-boat to Pulpit). 

First a supporter of Hitler and the Third Reich, he took another sharp turn and became an outspoken opponent. Niemöller was arrested several times and spent eight years in concentration camps until the liberation of Dachau in 1945. He was a contemporary and colleague of theologians Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Confessional Church and the Pastors' Emergency League, respectively. For his anti-Nazi activities, Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging in the Flossenbürg concentration camp at dawn on April 9, 1945, just two weeks before the camp's liberation. 

Niemöller has been criticized for early alignment with Hitler and for various apparently anti-Semitic statements. However, former cellmate Leo Stein having escaped to America, wrote a 1941 article about Niemöller for The National Jewish Monthly. Stein's article suggests that Niemöller's repudiation of the Nazi Regime and all of its policies was ultimately complete and unequivocal. Nevertheless, Niemöller himself never denied his own guilt during the early years of the Nazi regime. In 1959, asked about his former attitudes by Alfred Wiener, a Jewish researcher into racism and war crimes, Niemöller stated that his eight-year imprisonment by the Nazis became the sharp turning point in his life, after which he viewed things differently.

Today, Niemöller is remembered for the following saying:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out — 
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — 
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — 
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — 
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me — 
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

May I suggest two points of reflection?

1. Never be afraid to take a sharp turn in your point of view. It would be a shame to require seven years in a concentration camp to rise above the fog.
2. If you see something, say something.

5 Minute Reflection #14.01: A Perfect Day For A Funeral

Every once in a while the distinctions blur between symbols and the things they represent. Metaphors materialize and ordinary events take on transcendent meaning. I attended a funeral this morning. It was a perfect day for it - heavy snow showers, a blustery wind and bitter cold. Colorless buildings, roads, cars, and pedestrians were dimly seen through the falling snow under a canvas painted in shades of white and gray stretched from horizon to horizon. It was the kind of day that makes mourning easy. It was also Ash Wednesday, for Christians an observance and reminder of human mortality - ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken;for dust you are and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3:19 NIV)

Yet, we believe that this is not the end of the story. Although we live in the shadow of the winter and death, we look ahead with hope to the of end of winter, to the Resurrection and ultimately to a "new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade." (1 Peter 1:3-4)

Resolve To Start At The Beginning

Most people don't do particularly well keeping their New Year resolutions. Why? Is it because the resolutions are too ambitious? Is it because we don't really intend to keep them? To both questions, I say no. I suggest that starting with resolutions is like starting a trip in the middle. It simply doesn't work.
Here's an alternative. Start with a change in direction. Make a broad statement about how you want to change yourself or your life. Understand why it is important. Sell yourself on the idea. Maybe you want to improve your fitness and sense of well-being. Great! Start there. The key is being clear about your central purpose.
Once you are committed to a direction, make a small number of specific resolutions (five or less) that move you toward the goal. Be specific. What measurable outcome do you expect for each resolution? How will you define success? Now you have the beginning of a roadmap.
Finally, plan. You have a broad goal, and the specific outcomes that represent its attainment. Now you must answer the question, how? Take some time and plan. What concrete actions are needed to carry out each resolution? What must you stop, start, or continue? What resources beyond your own resolve do you need? How will you measure progress? How will you make adjustments along the way? As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
There it is. No more empty resolutions for you. Set goals that have motivating power. That is where must start. Once you understand your motives and can envision your goal, make logical, achievable resolutions that define your journey. Plan the specific steps. Follow your plan.
In short, here's the formula that I suggest for your consideration:
1. (Why?) Define your central purpose or goal.
2. (What?) Elaborate on it on the form of resolutions.
3. (How? When?) Make a realistic plan and follow it.
Now go. You can do it. Create a turning point and be blessed in 2014. Happy New Year!

Obamacare's Pre-existing Conditions, #1 in a series of undetermined length

Have we missed an important point regarding the delays and software difficulties with HEALTHCARE.GOV? It is possible that many members of the team are suffering from a medical condition known as SADD. SADD or "Software Almost Done Disorder" affects millions of IT technical professionals and project managers. Its incubation period is about six weeks for the commercial strain and up to a year for the government strain. SADD is a chronic condition that worsens over time, normally until the sufferer retires, changes careers, or gets a glue about best practices and productivity. Sufferers are unable to clearly articulate a definition of "done".  Even with a reasonable grasp of "done", they often exhibit an inability to plan their work, execute the plan, or adequately test the results.

If it is determined HEALTHCARE.GOV has not met its project goals because key members of the project team have pre-existing cases of SADD, then we may have to re-think the path forward. Those members of the team may be eligible for disability pay, and full availability of the site may have to wait until after they complete their treatment regimens, return to work and remediate the defects in the system.

Note: SADD was first documented as an occupational disorder among IT professionals in 2005 by Chris Drummonds on this forum.

Life Through The Peculiar Lens Of Social Media

If you have a lot of family, friends, and contacts of various kinds on social media you might have had the kind of morning that used to be known only to doctors, nurses, counselors, pastors, and so on. That is the simultaneous observation of the full spectrum of life events. Sometimes, within minutes we read of births, graduations, new jobs, marriages, divorces, retirements, sickness and death. 

For me, it has been one of those mornings. A friend's dad is in precarious health. Another friend lost a close friend of decades to the inevitability of physical death. Literally within seconds of reading about this friend's loss on my Facebook news feed, I saw a great picture of friends with their beautiful daughter who was born overnight. This nearly instant view of the major life events of our family and friends is sometimes a cause for great joy, on those days when everybody seems to have good news. Other days are frankly, depressing, when nobody has anything to report except illnesses, trouble at work, or failing relationships. Most common however are days like today, when the full cycle of life is on display. 

Social media, Facebook in particular, are filled with jokes, pretty pictures, political rants, advertisements and more. Do with those things what you will.  But keep a watchful eye for what really matters. Don't just read what you see like a newspaper. Engage with each other. Participate with each other in the miracle of life itself and our shared experience as we pass from cradle to grave with hope of the life to come.

Time Travel And The Day After Christmas

We already know that retail marketers are shape-shifters, perhaps not quite like Odo, the Star Trek character played by René Auberjonois, but they are ever-shifting, ever-adapting, and ever in our faces with some reason to buy, buy, buy, on their schedule, not ours.

Tonight's evening news featured a story about a major State Street (Chicago) department store's unveiling of its Christmas window displays, the Governor of Illinois lighting its 45-foot Christmas tree, with thousands of lights and ornaments, and yes, somebody singing an over-the-top hopped up version of Jingle Bells - the kind of music that makes we wish that we Christians could just have another day altogether and leave this "holiday" for the marketers. Following that story was an ad for a home furnishings store's "Pre-Veterans' Day" sale. Let me get this straight. It's not yet Veterans' Day, but we're having a Veterans' Day furniture sale. This is of course, weeks before Thanksgiving, which is in turn weeks before Christmas, which we are already celebrating.

If we have to be bombarded by all of this commercial clap-trap for the next several weeks, can we please at least do it in sequence? One passerby, interviewed by the news crew covering the Christmas window unveiling said, "It's never too soon to start the holiday season."  Really? Would December 26th be too soon? Yes. November 2nd is also too soon, unless you are an adept manipulator of rifts in the space-time continuum. In that case, the calendar is irrelevant, holidays can come in any order, or all at once. Maybe that's the solution. Let's just line up all of the holidays, one after another, shop 'til we drop and be done with it by mid-January and start again around the 1st of March.

Gratitude for The American Revolution and Other Unintended Consequences

A humorous and memorable series of television commercials for the Dish Network asserts that unless you terminate your subscription to cable TV and switch to a satellite dish you may lose all of your life savings in Las Vegas, your house may explode, or you may simply end up in a ditch. Each commercial is a memorable short story linking, by cause and effect, a series of improbable events that begin with the decision to have cable TV instead of the dish and end in calamity for the cable subscriber. At the end of each tongue-in-cheek story, the very serious narrator exhorts the viewer to avoid losing your life savings, having your house explode, or ending up in a ditch simply by switching from cable to a satellite dish. Although the conclusion proposed by these commercials is based on an absurd generalization, the improbable sequences of events are not unlike real life. These stories are funny in part because they contain an element of truth. Most of what we have and who we are is the result of our own uniquely improbable sequence of events.
I worked for many years for Hart Schaffner and Marx, later Hartmarx Corporation, now-defunct, later HMX LLC, now-defunct. Although Hart Schaffner Marx, an iconic American brand of fine men's suits lives on through a new company, the enterprise is a faint shadow of what it was a generation ago. This is a direct result of the arrival of "business casual" – a change in cultural norms in the American workplace. In the 1940s men wore suits, ties and formal hats to see a baseball game at Wrigley Field. Today, some men don't even wear shirts. Today, we still refer to many occupations as white-collar jobs because a generation or two ago, the men holding those jobs were expected to wear a suit, tie and white shirt to work every day. Because of this evolution, many good people lost their jobs at companies like Hart Schaffner Marx and other makers and sellers of business apparel. What happened? What caused all this? In January of 1961, John F. Kennedy was the first person to be sworn in as President of the United States while not wearing a hat. Soon, consultants at Arthur Andersen were no longer required to wear hats to work. Eventually, employees at IBM were no longer required to wear white shirts every day. People started reporting to work on Friday without a tie. The term 'business casual" was coined. People stopped wearing suits to work. Many employees at Hart Schaffner Marx lost their jobs. Don't lose your job making suits. Insist that the President-elect wears a hat.
In 1674, Englishman George Ravenscroft invented lead glass, also known as lead crystal. Great Britain's King George III enjoyed port wine. His wine was stored in lead crystal decanters. The longer the wind stayed in the decanter the more lead leeched into the wine. King George developed lead poisoning. He lost his mind. He began treating his American colonial subjects badly. They rebelled. King George lost a large chunk of his empire. Don't make your King lose a large chunk of his empire. Don't let him store his wine in lead glass.
We celebrate the birthday of the United States of America today, on July 4th. We are grateful to our nation's founders and to all who have given so much to create our nation and to preserve it. Should we also in some small way be grateful to George Ravenscroft who inadvertently poisoned his King? Or should we simply be grateful, for all that we have, for all that we love and for the whole tapestry of our lives, woven together from innumerable threads of unforeseen causes and effects?
Be grateful that you have nor ended up in a ditch.