Friday Reflections

Lessons about Change from the Movies "Born Free" and "The Shawshank Redemption"

POINT TO PONDER

“The key to change... is to let go of fear.” ~Roseanne Cash

STORYLINE by Raiv Shah

Change is hard. It forces us to confront the unknown, the future. It jogs the mind into coming up with scenarios of all the things that might happen – the good and the bad. Often the bad thoughts win and we protect ourselves, our loved ones from what is coming. It's a survival mechanism. It's primal. We are wired to do it. Unfortunately, change is also inevitable. We can't escape it, can't predict it, and often can't cope no matter how hard we try. Or can we? Here are two films that deal with confronting change differently.

The first film is BORN FREE. The story is of a young British couple living in Africa who comes into the care of three young orphaned lion cubs. Caring for the youngest, Elsa, the couple is forced to re-habituate the lion cub into the wild or send her off to a zoo. Choosing to reintroduce Elsa back into the wild, the couple watches the cub grow under their care, eventually loving the cub like their own child, knowing that one day they will have to part. The heartbreak over losing Elsa is unbearable but they press on – caring for and loving the lion. Eventually, the time comes and they release her back into the wild, unsure of how Elsa will fare as she has become attached and domesticated as well. Unfamiliar with the wild kingdom and her real strengths, Elsa is scared of even small animals, gets badly battered by a small wild pig and returns home.

Finally Elsa does go, her future and survival uncertain, and the couple returns to England. Years later, the couple returns to Africa and searches for Elsa. They find Elsa and she remembers them, having survived and become a mother herself to three young lion cubs.

The other film is THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. Brooks is a prisoner. He's been in prison for most of his life. Towards the end of the movie and having spent most of his entire life locked up, Brooks is finally given parole and released. What is initially seen as good is hard for Brooks, and he tries desperately to reintegrate back into a society he left so many years ago. Lonely, and unable to cope, Brooks takes his own life by hanging himself in the middle of his desolate room.


REFLECTION

So how do we deal with change? If we've been habituated into a way of life and are forced to change – can there be a light at the end of the tunnel?

There is always good that comes from the bad, the challenging, the painful. Always. Like a flower that grows from a pile of shit and how fires burn a field fallow in order to allow it to grow again, better and stronger.

Change is hard. Change is inevitable. Change leads to strength. You either give in and stop fighting and allow fear to consume you. Or you find the courage to accept it, and continue on, knowing that change will bring growth, if you have the faith to allow it.

All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten

 

POINT TO PONDER

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.  ~Albert Einstein


STORYLINE by Rajiv Shah

Sometimes when I'm feeling nostalgic and I'm back in my hometown I'll take a walk around my old elementary school. It's like a walk back to a simpler time where lines were formed and obeyed, lunch was always served at 12:15pm, and I had a nameplate claiming a desk as my own. Walking the campus I reflect on how far I've come, how time flies and how drastically we can change. Or not change. Maybe we still grapple with trying to habituate those all important lessons they were trying to teach us in kindergarten. Below are lessons from Robert Fulghum's book, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” which are appropriate for this week’s reflection:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

 
REFLECTION:

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

 

[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum.  See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com]

 

Can you teach an old dog new tricks?

 

Points to Ponder:
 
Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years.  We grow old by deserting our ideals.  Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.  ~Samuel Ullman
 
 
Story Line:
 
Bashir in the video represents an old dog, not because of his age or years of service but because he is resting on his laurels. Where as Zena Doolittle, of similar age, represents the dog with new tricks; full of energy and enthusiasm, willing to learn new methods, willing to take risks and innovate.

Recently, when I was going over my album and came across the pictures of them in action, it reminded me of one scene from the movie Major League. Rick Vaughn, a young and enthusiastic pitcher who wants his team to win, confronts the veteran third baseman Roger Dorn who refuses to field ground balls. Dorn, who lives in an expensive home with a luxurious lifestyle, tells Vaughn that he does not want to go an extra mile (take risks) to field the ball - afraid that any injury can damage his upcoming contract negotiations.

But Vaughn refuses to give up and eventually charges up the entire team, mostly made up of worn out players, with his enthusiasm and they went on to win the championship.
 
 
Reflection:

The last five decades in high technology industry has given me an opportunity to witness the enormous transformation that the entire world has gone through in the way we work, the way we communicate and the way we live. Incredible amount of new tools and methods emerge every day.

This enormous transformation in technology has also required an associated transformation in the management technology (a,k.a Psychology of management), how we manage the organization and it’s most important asset, people. For a person like me (Pencil/Paper and Typewriter generation) who has spent five decades in this industry (An Old Dog?), it has required rapid and significant transformation in how we mange multiple generations of people (PC generation, Internet Generation and now FB/Twitter generation). I have numerous and humorous stories collected over time, but let us save them for another day and another time.

The key learning I have from managing people since early 80s is a few sentences from a famous Poem by Kahlil Gibran (apologies for changing a few words for this article)

Your employees work for you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may share with them your experiences and wisdom but not impose your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may strive to help them, but seek not to make them like you. For business goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
 
Original Poem by Gibran: http://fridayreflections.typepad.com/weblog/2011/01/your-children-are-not-your-children-by-kahlil-gibran.html