I saw this quote
on a plaque in a garden on a walk today with Juno, my 10-month-old Cane Corso. I looked it up, and it was written by an Italian writer named Cesare Pavese.
How true, right? For me, anyway. All I can remember are moments, and the ones I remember are laced with emotion since emotions, positive or negative, are a critical part of the machinery that embeds those moments in the recesses of our brains.
The negative moments are particularly strong fuel for that memory machinery. I can still remember when I was 10, putting my hand on the refrigerator door handle, starting to open it, and hearing my 'step-father' say "you're fucking eating us out of house and home." My mental video is as clear as the day it was made.
I am writing about the quote because it triggered a memory of a very positive and seminal moment in my life. I was fresh out of the Navy and, since I was a high-school dropout, needed to take the GED if I wanted to go to junior college. To earn extra money, I decided to take this vocational course to learn how to weld metal at a school in north Minneapolis. The school was for seriously disadvantaged young people, and it was not a very tidy place.
I asked Judy, who worked there, to help me figure out how to apply for the GED test. This was in 1974 or so, well before the internet. One applied by writing a letter, mailing it, and checking one's mailbox for days on end. She asked me to write the letter and show it to her.
Pertinent information: I never attended classes in junior high or high school, having lived on the streets most of my teen years. As a result, I was unable to do simple math (like dividing numbers), nor did I know how to write a decent sentence.
But I gave it a shot, wrote it, and walked into her office. I remember every detail - how nervous I was, her clunky old gray metal desk, the stack of papers on top, and her jet-black straightened hair.
I sat down in the grey metal chair next to her desk, handed her my letter, and sat silently while she read it. She finished, looked up at me, and said "you can really write well."
No big deal, right? Well, it was to me since I had been in and out of jail and reform schools and had been relentlessly told that I was stupid by my peers, my "step-father," and others. These ideas became embedded in my psyche, and with enough repetition, I had bought the narrative hook, line, and sinker.
In that moment, everything shifted for me, literally. It was like a cool breeze by the ocean that blankets you and makes you feel so damn good. It was the first time I recall anyone saying anything about me that was so positive.
I took that moment to the bank. Judy nudged me in the right direction by seeing something in me that no one else had, or if others had seen something, I had never heard anything about it.
The power of that moment was nuclear fuel for me.
It also reminded me of this splendid TED talk by Drew Dudley entitled Everyday Leadership.
We all have the power to change people's lives by creating moments for them that they remember. All it takes is to see something good about a person (you may have to actually look!), and then make the effort to tell them. That is Everyday Leadership.
Plus, it feels good!
