I will admit that patience is not one of my best virtues. And when I combine this deficiency with other personal characteristics I find myself in some interesting scenarios. For instance, I am also something of a fast walker so I am often led to ask, why is it that people who tend to walk slower also walk right down the middle of the aisle at the grocery store? If they want to leisurely consider the goods stacked around them so be it, but do they have to take up the entire aisle?!
I have been reading a book by Robert Fulghum called, What On Earth Have I Done? If you are familiar with Fulghum you will know that most of his books are made up of short chapters that contain semi-random observations about life. In this book is a story about two young college students who were eating a chair as an extra-credit assignment for a philosophy class they were taking. The assignment was to “do something unique and memorable – not dangerous or foolish, but something creative, inventive, and instructive. Write it up, and explain what was learned and how it might apply to their philosophy of life” (pg. 29). From that they decided to eat an unfinished, wooden chair.
Each day they would use a file to grind some part of the chair down to dust and then sprinkle the dust on their food. They did consult a doctor to make sure there were no health risks and apparently, with some seasoning, the dust tasted okay. The project was taking longer than they expected though so they were planning on recruiting some friends to help.
The students learned a number of things from this assignment, but most of all how long term goals can be achieved in incremental stages, and that patience and perseverance can be very important qualities to have. “Some things cannot be had except on a little-at-a-time, keep-the-long-goal-in-mind, stay-focused basis” (pg. 31).
It was a good reminder for me. Sometimes I just have to accept the reality that something worthwhile may take longer than I would like to achieve. I am not convinced that grocery shopping is one of those things, but I am convinced that great teams, a great place to work, trust, good communication, and strong leadership are all in that category. It can be difficult to fight the ‘I need to have it now’ mentality that can be so prevalent in our culture, but there are some things that cannot be rushed.
In these areas there are not a lot of quick fixes. They just take time, and patience, whether it is your strong suit or not. The organizations that seem to do best at this are the ones that realize that all of this culture ‘stuff’ needs to be woven into everything that they do on a day to day basis. It is real work that is done along side of all the other real work that they do. When an organization takes this view, pays attention to it, continually works on their teams, their values, their work environment; good things happen. It may not always be easy, but it sounds better than eating a chair.
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Eating A Chair
I have been reading a book by Robert Fulghum called, What On Earth Have I Done? If you are familiar with Fulghum you will know that most of his books are made up of short chapters that contain semi-random observations about life. In this book is a story about two young college students who were eating a chair as an extra-credit assignment for a philosophy class they were taking. The assignment was to “do something unique and memorable – not dangerous or foolish, but something creative, inventive, and instructive. Write it up, and explain what was learned and how it might apply to their philosophy of life” (pg. 29). From that they decided to eat an unfinished, wooden chair.
Each day they would use a file to grind some part of the chair down to dust and then sprinkle the dust on their food. They did consult a doctor to make sure there were no health risks and apparently, with some seasoning, the dust tasted okay. The project was taking longer than they expected though so they were planning on recruiting some friends to help.
The students learned a number of things from this assignment, but most of all how long term goals can be achieved in incremental stages, and that patience and perseverance can be very important qualities to have. “Some things cannot be had except on a little-at-a-time, keep-the-long-goal-in-mind, stay-focused basis” (pg. 31).
It was a good reminder for me. Sometimes I just have to accept the reality that something worthwhile may take longer than I would like to achieve. I am not convinced that grocery shopping is one of those things, but I am convinced that great teams, a great place to work, trust, good communication, and strong leadership are all in that category. It can be difficult to fight the ‘I need to have it now’ mentality that can be so prevalent in our culture, but there are some things that cannot be rushed.
In these areas there are not a lot of quick fixes. They just take time, and patience, whether it is your strong suit or not. The organizations that seem to do best at this are the ones that realize that all of this culture ‘stuff’ needs to be woven into everything that they do on a day to day basis. It is real work that is done along side of all the other real work that they do. When an organization takes this view, pays attention to it, continually works on their teams, their values, their work environment; good things happen. It may not always be easy, but it sounds better than eating a chair.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 20th, 2013 at 9:33 am and is filed under Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.