Proficiency

I am not all that competitive in most things. But I am very competitive in one thing.  I'm competitive in academics. No I'm not back in college and have no desire to be, but if I did go back to school I'm quite sure that I would be as competitive as ever.  When I was in school  I wasn't competitive with other students; I was competitive with myself, and with the grade book. If it was an exam, I wanted to  make an A.  If it was a term paper or a report, I wanted to make an A.  If it was a final grade, I wanted to make an A. I didn't always make straight As but it was through no lack of trying. 

A downside of that ability to make those As is that when I was finished with that course, I was finished.  I then moved on to the next course and its particular academic challenges.  Consequently, there are many things I learned how to do that I wish I had kept current. One of those things is a keyboard proficiency I learned in graduate school. The requirements in this class included being able to play all  major and minor scales with both hands with the correct fingering up and down two octaves. Although I acquired this ability forty years  ago and lost it fairly soon thereafter, I think about it every time I play my keyboard. It would help me so much with my keyboard ability if I could practice these scales, if my finger memory included this ability. 

This ability may not seem too impressive until you understand what was involved.  It may not seem too impressive even if you do understand.  But here goes...

To demonstrate the difficulty of the exercise I am going to explain the fingering of the C major scale. This one is the easiest of all the major and minor scales to play.  What makes the minor scales particularly hard to manage is that some of them do not include the same notes going down the scale as going up.  In other words you have to know the rules of those scales before you can play them correctly.   What I am going to explain you can do on the piano or on the kitchen table if you don't own a piano.  It's much easier to do on a piano, but not impossible on the kitchen table.  With the right hand place the thumb on middle C. Play C,D,E and then turn the thumb under and play F,G,A,B,C.  Only here's the thing, the exercise is to play these scales up and down two octaves. So in order to proceed to the next octave at C you turn the thumb under and play C,D,E, turn the thumb under at F  again and play F,G,A,B,C.  Now you're coming down. Play B,A ,G, F and turn  the middle finger over at E, D, C. On the last octave turn the 4th finger over on B and play B,AG,F turn the middle finger at E,D,C and you're done. This is the right hand and I'm not going to bother you with the left. Just know that the fingering is completely different than with the right hand. And since you are playing them simultaneously, you're turning your thumbs and fingers at different times. This is similar to the skill of rubbing your stomach and  patting your head at the same time.

If you learned how to play these scales, even though you couldn't make an A, you could impress your friends.  But they would be much more impressed, and  it would take you far less time to learn, to juggle three or four  plates. And keeping multiple plates in the air is a skill you can use every day.

The Best Way to Get Somewhere

"Don't just make good time, but make time good."  Unknown

In order to get to where you want to go, you have to know where you want to go.  You have to have a destination.  This though is a matter of choice and preference.  Instead of a definite place on the globe you want to reach, your destination might be the journey itself.  In the case of a definite place, you may have a definite time you want to get there.  The destination is the  thing and the  journey is just a means of getting there. In this case you will usually find the shortest route to take and travel as fast as possible. If the speed limit is 70 mph, you may drive 75 or 80. You may pass go and you may collect $200, but you might not remember much about Park Place and Boardwalk. When you travel, instead of stopping to eat something good and nutritious, you grab fast food and eat it in the car as you continue to travel toward your destination.

To  illustrate the difference in the destination-is-the-thing or the journey-is-the-thing, I'm going to reference hikers on the Appalachian Trail.  You might think given the serenity and stunning beauty of the trail, all hikers take their time and their cameras to savor every minute. After all, this is the world- renowned Appalachian Trail.  Why wouldn't you enjoy every minute and take in every vista? But this is not necessarily the case.  Some AT hikers are known as speed hikers.  Their purpose in hiking the trail is to break the last speed record. And some of them, not all of them, cut corners to accomplish their goal. The journey which takes most people months, they accomplish in weeks. The only thru hiker I have known personally, hiked the AT with his fiance.  They had a reputation for being the slowest hikers on the trail.  They followed every pig trail and enjoyed every overlook.  It seems to me that this method of hiking is far superior  to speed hiking, but again it all depends on your destination and your goal. When Joseph Campbell said "Follow your bliss", he didn't attempt to define "bliss". He left that to each of us.

Another thing about your destination, you have to know when you're on the wrong road.  If you're  on the wrong road and don't find the right road, you will never get to where you intend to go.  I can illustrate this with something that happened a few years ago.  I took the up ramp off of I-75 north at exit 345 to Ringgold, Georgia. About 30 yards up the ramp, I met a car coming down the ramp the wrong way. I instinctively pulled my truck across the ramp  to block her entry to the wrong side of the interstate. When I got out of my truck and walked to her car, her radio was blaring so loudly that I could hardly talk over it.  But she talked loud enough for me to know that she was not happy with the obstacle I had put in her path.  She exclaimed, "I'm tryin' to git to Dalton!" I tried to explain to her what she was doing and that she would be putting her life and other lives in danger if she proceeded. When I convinced her that she needed to turn around and take the next ramp, she asked if she could take highway 41 to Dalton.  I told her to turn around and at the stop sign to turn left on 41. I told her that this highway would take her to Dalton just as quickly as the interstate.  She turned around and at the stop sign turned right toward Ringgold, the opposite direction from her destination.  When she was on the wrong ramp, she was at least going the right direction, but she probably would not have gotten very far toward Dalton.  Even the right direction can be deadly if you're on the wrong road.

Old habits die slowly. Most of our working lives my wife and I have both worked two jobs through the week. My church work obligated us for Sundays as well.  When we got in the car for a road trip, time was of the essence. We drove as fast as reasonably possible and cut every corner of time to get to our destination (nearly always family). Things are much different now.  In semi-retirement both of us work a short work week and I am  no longer in ministry. Wherever there is, we have plenty of time to get there. But when we get in the car to go somewhere (nearly always family), we're still in a hurry. However, we recently stopped for lunch. We parked the car and actually sat down in a restaurant to eat.  About an hour later we resumed our trip. And when we arrived at our destination no one seemed to think that we were late. Our goal is to gravitate from the destination-is-the-thing to the journey-is-the-thing or at least a combination of the two.

My friend and his fiance on the AT were brutally murdered  near Duncannon, Pennsylvania at the halfway point of the trail.  It's a good thing that the journey meant much more to them than the destination. The journey was all they had.  They reached their unscheduled and unexpected final destination  hundreds of miles before the place where they had planned.

After hurrying through everything our whole lives and we're finally standing at the Pearly Gates, St. Peter will say, "There was no need for you to hurry to meet me; I've got forever."

Nah Duh !!

The first time I recall hearing the sarcastic phrase "nah duh"  was when my first cousin said it to me.  He wasn't making fun  of me but of something some one else said. After that I started hearing it from other people from time to time. And sometimes it was aimed at me.

There's a "nah duh" statement I  have heard many,  many times over the years while watching football. I heard it just the other day. During both college and NFL games the announcer makes a comment which deserves nothing but "nah duh" as a response.  The team is driving and is now inside the opponent's thirty yard line.  And then  he says, "They would rather get a touchdown here than settle for a field goal."  Nah duh!!  Can you think of a situation in any football game regardless of the score or who's got the ball when a coach and a team had rather have a field goal than a touchdown?  Would there be a situation where it would be to a team's advantage to get three points instead of six, seven or eight? Would it be much different if during a major league baseball game the announcer said, "He would much rather hit a home run here than  settle for a single".  Maybe it's just me, but all of  that seems obnoxiously obvious to me.

But my new favorite "nah duh" moment happened last weekend on a trip to Greensburg, Indiana to visit our granddaughter and watch her play basketball.  So you think it's going to be something somebody said about the game. Nope. It's something that happened on the way to  Indiana.  We got to a place on the trip that we needed gas and I needed to use the restroom.  We took  an exit that looked promising. We wanted to find a gas station conveniently located to accomplish both needs. At the top of the ramp we couldn't see a station either direction.  But we were sitting directly across the street from a Costco.  Since we're members we decided just to go  there.  It took a minute to figure out how to get in the parking lot.  When we did, it was a very large lot and a very large store. We made a quick pass around the store and didn't see the pumps. Meanwhile my need was growing in intensity.  So my wife said, "I'll just park here. You go to the restroom and ask somebody where the pumps are so that I don't have to  drive around looking for them."  "Sounds like a plan."  The nice man  at the door didn't know me, but he knew that card in my hand so he invited me in. The restroom was exactly where it is in our Costco so I found it easily.  As I was leaving I found an employee standing near a register.  I asked, "Excuse me, can you tell me where the gas pumps are located?"   And I swear on my grandmother's chicken and dumplins she said, "They're outside." Nah duh !!!. I thought they might be in the meat department or in frozen foods.  Or I guess they're with the tires to keep automotive all together. When I recovered I asked, "Anywhere in particular?"  She said, "Just go out and go to the right and you'll see them at the end of the parking lot."  And I told her thank you and walked out.

I guess I owe an apology to all those football announcers.  I can see how helpful it is to remind the coaches, players and fans that a field goal is as good as a touchdown in some situations. I mean it's not like you can roll over all those extra points to the next game.

We were both about thirteen years old when my cousin said "Nah duh" to  me that first time.  A few weeks ago he was part of a beach house cousin gathering that we participated in.  It was so good to spend that quality time with my Helms cousins and their spouses. And after being around him for several days, this cousin didn't say "nah duh" to me a single time. But I didn't ask for it either.

Tender-Loving Kindness

If TLC is a wonderful thing, then TLK is even more wonderful. I was recently a recipient of tender-loving kindness. .

It started as a routine blood test last April. Of all things my doctor called me at home the next night  to express his concern.  He told me that he was ordering a scan to confirm his suspicions about my thyroid and parathyroid function. That scan was the first of a dozen  scans and tests to determine what was wrong with my thyroid and parathyroid, and what needed to be done to correct the problem. Through the process a large tumor was discovered on my thyroid and suspected abnormalities on my parathyroid.  And surgery was scheduled.  It would be a total thyroidectomy and partial parathyroidectomy. The ENT surgeon gave me some unlikely but possible bad outcomes.  Those outcomes included, but were not limited to, the inability to speak and the inability to breathe without a tracheotomy ever again  There was also the outside chance that the tumor would be malignant. The surgery was more than an appendectomy and less than  open-heart surgery, but it was serious surgery.  I entered the hospital two weeks ago.  The surgery took a little more than four hours.

I don’t remember all of the particulars of the medical procedures over the past several weeks. I don’t remember all  of the reasons  certain things were done.  What I do remember is how kind people were to me. Besides the loving-kindness of family and close friends, there was the kindness of strangers.  There was the kindness of doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, lab technicians and others. These people went above and beyond to be helpful and to make me as comfortable as possible through the process.  A number of work-related people expressed their concern. But I especially appreciate my family and friends who through calls and texts stayed in constant contact with my wife and me to check on me and inquire of my welfare. We lost count of the number of people, including people willing to drive great distances, who offered to sit with her through the surgery. I lost count of the number of people  who checked on us before, during and after the surgery to be sure that  I was doing okay.

I’m very thankful that I can speak.  And that I can breathe.  I’m deeply grateful that the tumor was benign.  So much could have gone wrong that didn’t go wrong.  My surgeon, who had been both professional and kind through the entire weeks-long process, had assured me that he was not going to let anything bad happen to me.  And he didn’t. I have a permanent scar below my Adam's apple, but that is certainly something I can live with. 

Many of you know  me and many of you do not.  If you know me, maybe you too would have liked to have expressed your love and concern.  But you had no way of knowing till now what was going on.  But what we both  know is that there are people around us who desperately need to know that somebody cares about them, that we care about them.  I plan to be that person more than I ever have been.  Who knew that a text, call or visit could mean so much.  I got a text just a few minutes ago from one of those "work-related" people who hoped to see me at a business function coming up soon. And I assured her that she will. That was a kind thing to do.  

I will eventually forget about the particulars of the medical process, but I will never forget the kindness of strangers and friends. Tender-loving care. Tender-loving kindness.  "And now  faith, hope and kindness abide. But the greatest of these is kindness." .