The Isolation

The Isolation

May 18, 2021 | Social Media

For those of us who sometimes feel isolated and alone, social media can tend to make us feel worse about ourselves. We are not part of the scene that is social media. We don’t have as many “likes,” “shares,” or “follows.”

Whatever social media is measuring, we don’t have enough of it. We are always missing out on something. Did we see the latest tweet or Instagram post of whoever is trending at the moment?

Honestly, do any of us really remember the most impactful Facebook post of our lives? When was THE moment we saw THE post that unlocked THE answer? There was no such moment.

The world is not a static image that one may ‘click’ at one’s leisure. It is a world of loss, tragedy, murder, rape, love, hope, deception, hunger, homelessness, awful humans and much, much more.

Social media enables us to look outward so we can avoid looking within. It is not all bad. There is beauty in it, too, but there is also something very isolating about the experience of it.

Social media packages reality into sound-bytes and pictures that show others what we want them to see. It is a carefully, although often thoughtlessly, curated experience that does not reveal the fact that our lives are lived in our own heads.

How do we capture the reality of reality in a format that primarily reveals the lives of others through images and/or videos that capture very limited points in time? There is no context for what we are seeing, no before and after, which is real life.

Do you have “friends” on Facebook that in fact have no idea who you really are? Were they high school friends that you have not seen in 20 years? How are we using the term “friend” now? Are you our friend?

There is something subtly quite isolating about social media. We can connect with the world without ever leaving the screen of our handheld device. No, that is simply and utterly false.

Regardless of one’s age, we make time to physically meet the people that matter — and that number may be in the single digits. Social media allows us to participate in something without really being part of it at all.

Perspective

Perspective

May 15, 2021 | Strategy

If we are to understand an organization, we must ask certain questions first, right?

What are your job descriptions? What is your employee retention rate? Do you offer benefits? Are you profitable? What is your mission?

These and so many other questions are most definitely important, but does it make sense to jump right into an analysis of an organization before, in fact, we take a step back?

We are talking about perspective, which we define here for our purposes as the ability to see something in its largest context.

What are you as an organization now? Where were you before? Where are you going? Is it working well? Are there problems and/or challenges you would like to overcome? What connects all staff with one another? What might be driving them apart?

This line of questioning entails that we observe as well as reflect on what we see and hear before we jump into the kinds of questions that have binary sets of answers. If A, then B. If not B, then A. It is more complicated than that, of course, but answers to questions like, “Do you have benefits?” are easily answerable.

To gain perspective, we need to go into the gray areas of an organization in order to uncover clues to the ‘how’ and/or ‘why.’

Perspective of an organization does not begin or end within its proverbial walls. Rather, we must also consider the actual lives of the people who work there.

Are they motivated? Is this their first job? Their last? Are they parents? Grandparents? 

The roles we play outside the office has a direct bearing on how we conduct our behavior within it. Whether our staff work within an actual office or virtually, organizations operate by unwritten rules of behavior.

“This is the way the handbook says things work, but this is how it really works,” an incoming new hire might hear from a well-intentioned supervisor. Is this something we really want to hear?  

Perspective is the ability to see things from many angles. It seems like an art, but it is a science, one grounded in philosophic inquiry.

If we spend actual time each day thinking about the ‘how’ and the ‘why,’ there is a better chance we will gain insight not just into a business operation, but our very selves.

Ever work for a boss who was unable to offer you perspective? There may be nothing more uncomfortable in work, or personal, life for that matter than individuals unable to contextualize to any degree the behaviors around them…

Looking Back

Looking Back

Dec 3, 2020 | Time

We have all done it from time to time, right? We have been guilty of looking back. In this age, however, is there time to look back?

We are what we were.

That statement seems obvious, but society encourages all to have no regret, look forward, soldier on and display a fierceness that is not only questionable, but disturbing. Why can’t we look back? Why can’t we take the time to examine who we are in the context of what brought us here?

The future is not a fact. It is a theory

There is no such thing as destiny or anything that had to have been. Rather, everything results from everything else, a progression of circumstances, events, ideas and feelings that eventually somehow led to now. Today did not have to be this way.

The value in looking back is directly proportional to the amount of time we question ourselves.

This is not a questioning that takes place on Facebook or in the tinny light of an overcrowded coffee bar. This is a questioning that takes place when no camera is rolling, no buttons are pressed and no evidence will ever exist that it took place except in the content of our character.

If we do not know who we were, how can we appreciate what we are?

Looking back is sad, often laconic, generally bittersweet. It is indeed a mixed bag of “stuff.” Easier to let that stuff stay in the corners of our selves, right? Why dredge up memories that may still hurt us today? Why look back?

If we look back far enough, we can see our future selves.

There is a tremendous sense of place that can arise when we dig into our past–for better or worse. Ultimately, we are slaves to our pasts unless we take the time to place it in its proper perspective. It is not an easy process nor is it necessarily going to yield anything tangible.

Are our lives random, isolated moments? Do they connect? Where are we going?

Look back and find yourself, all your selves. They are all within us, waiting, watching in space-time. Look back far and hard enough and you just may be the one looking back at yourself.

The song of ourselves may be faint, but the melody lingers on…

The Answers

The Answers

Mar 26, 2020 | Millennials

We have all seen it, right? The look on a millennial’s face when he or she discovers THE answer on their phone.

They are surrounded by individuals who experience the same thing, and these moments of bliss are captured and disseminated through social media channels at nearly warp speed.

Isn’t it natural, though, for all younger people to feel as if they have the answers? The difference now is that younger generations are able to capture these moments with technology and promote them. Might Baby Boomers have experienced such things, too?

What will happen when today’s younger generations grow older and time seems less infinite? There is something deeply disturbing about the march of time. It goes on without us, and that reality is obvious the older we get and the more we see change, yet stay the same.

Do millennials have the answers to life’s mysteries? Media coverage seems to suggest they know something profound. However, might it be that millennials know technology better than older generations? They know how to use technology, but that knowledge seems to bleed into the arena of life itself, which is profoundly problematic.

Some answers are known by each generation, but the question becomes what kind of answers are they? Can a 29 year old advise a 60 year old on the complexities and nuances of life? Maybe. Do millennials fundamentally understand aspects of life? No way. Technology, however, provides photos and videos of them in that sort of nirvana that only exists for younger folks.

As we age, the excitement of what we think we know is tempered by the experiences that make up entire decades of what we do not know. What would it look like on social media to see pictures of 85 year olds staring at each other in rapture and clicking buttons? We would surmise they have dementia? After all, what can older folks know, right?

What those who are older know, however, cannot be measured by Google analytics or captured in an online review of a local vegetarian bistro. Rather, it is the actual content of a life that has been lived and all the detours and nuances that result from the pain, loss, tragedy and triumph of existence.

Do millennials have the answers? Sure, they are exuberant and bring fresh perspectives to age-old human foibles. Have they experienced decades worth of life and loss? No, they have not.

Ask a 25 year old what is life, and he or she will look toward the future. Ask a 50 year old the same question, and he or she will turn around and look back…

True Love

True Love

Feb 2, 2020 | Love

In this day and age where we seemingly must “crush” everything in sight in order to prove ourselves to a world that seemingly watches our every move, is there a place for love anymore?

True love. What is it? Why does it matter?

True love may not even exist, but the idea of it is massive, and it exists in some form else how can we account for people that lose their lives saving the life of others? How can we account for this tremendous disparity in our world between what we say to people out loud, but privately value in our own heads and hearts?

True love matters. It is a feeling, a glimpse, a window into something better inside ourselves.

Is it better? Well, that is arbitrary, but when many people love well, it not only makes those around us feel better. It actually makes us feel better, too, right? The difficult thing today, however, is that acts of love and kindness are often not able to be caught within the frames of life we stare at on our phones, tablets and computer screens.

True love is often quiet and sometimes is counter-intuitively experienced as pain. True love is not easy.

Is anything really easy, however? Can we click a button and really get that thing we desire, or need, or want? True love starts inside the mind with an idea. We can either fan its flame with breathe or extinguish it with the hardness of 21st century thinking.

In a world of Big Data, true love is still not something that can be measured. 

Just because something is not measured, though, does not mean it does not exist. Like a graviton, true love has never been captured, but evidence for its existence lies all around us?

Where do we find this evidence of true love? Close the door and look inside yourself.