Ed Batista

Personal History: Amy and Merlin

It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

~Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca

Amy and I grew up in the 1970s on the far western outskirts of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. At the time the area was comprised of small farms that were rapidly being sold off and transformed into tract-house sub-divisions, which gave it an unusual suburban/rural character. Our relatively large, modern high school was surrounded by corn fields and pastures. Most of our classmates planned to go to college and pursue professional careers, but the school also had a thriving chapter of Future Farmers of America, and on the first day of deer-hunting season a lot of kids skipped class.

This was the context in which Amy's parents moved against the prevailing current and sold their suburban home to buy a working farm a few miles away that had been too small and poorly located to sub-divide. The move kept her family in our school district, but meant that we would attend different middle schools, delaying our meeting for a few years until we crossed paths in high school. It also uprooted her from the "normal" neighborhood she'd known and dropped her into a very different environment.

Life on a small farm wasn't glamorous or lucrative, and it involved a lot of dirty, unpleasant work. But one of the benefits was the opportunity to have a horse, which had a special appeal to an 11-year-old girl. Amy rode and maintained Nancy all through her childhood and into her first year of college, after which her parents moved away and sold the farm. We had started dating the year before, and I have many fond memories of spending time there with Amy--although not many fond memories of Nancy, a mare who never liked any of Amy's boyfriends.

I didn't fully understand this at the time, but riding and having a relationship with a horse was a profoundly important formative experience for Amy. It gave her a degree of independence enjoyed by relatively few children of white-collar families. It allowed her to challenge herself physically in a way that few girls of that era were allowed to. And it taught her that caring for a horse was a major responsibility, not to be undertaken lightly.

Amy rode a handful of times in college, but horses generally stopped being a part of her life after her parents left the farm. And then, just over 2 years ago in 2017, Amy learned that a trail-riding outfit would be operating for a few months in Golden Gate Park, just a few miles from where we live in San Francisco, and she decided to give it a try.

Spending time with horses again awakened something in Amy that had lain dormant for 30 years. It wasn't just the physical experience of riding--it was also the emotional experience of having to connect with this large, strong, potentially dangerous and psychologically complex animal in order to ride it. She didn't know it at the time, but she was hooked.

The trail-ride program came to an end, but then Amy discovered a semi-dilapidated stable on the Daly City coast, just south of San Francisco, that was (somewhat surprisingly) still in operation--and there she met Merlin, a semi-dilapidated horse, also (somewhat surprisingly) still in operation. Amy took regular lessons from Jackie, a gifted and empathetic instructor, and got back in riding form over the course of the year, during which time she also fell in love with Merlin.

Merlin wasn't in great shape--he was fairly old, underweight and was occasionally bullied by younger, stronger horses in the corral. In order to have consistent access to Merlin and to prevent him from being used on group rides, Amy decided to lease Merlin from the stable. She also got more involved in his maintenance and upkeep, which only led her to feel closer to him and more responsible for his welfare.

When Amy learned that the stable might shut down because the property owner was considering another use for the land, she became concerned about Merlin's long-term fate. Given his age and health, it was quite possible that at auction he'd wind up headed for a slaughterhouse--so in mid-2018 she decided to "buy" him from the stable (for the nominal sum of $1) and take over full responsibility for his care.

Shortly afterwards, Amy decided to move Merlin to Miwok, a stable located in Tennessee Valley in southern Marin County, on land that's a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the Bay Area's most beautiful parks. The move was driven in part by concerns about the future of the stable in Daly City and in part to find a home where Merlin could thrive.

And for the better part of a year Amy has devoted herself to insuring that he does thrive. She's traveled up to Marin before work and after work and on weekends as often as possible. She's seen him through major dental work and multiple injuries and a frightening episode of colic, when it seemed quite possible that an intestinal blockage might kill him. And with the help of the amazing staff at Miwok, she's tended carefully to his diet, helping him put on nearly 200 pounds, returning him to a healthy weight for a horse his size.

And as Amy has nursed Merlin back to full health, he's become very energetic--to the point where he's rearing and posing a danger to the staff. After two such incidents, yesterday Linda, the stable director, told Amy that Merlin has to leave Miwok. Amy understands and supports this decision, but it's been very painful, and there have been a lot of tears, including mine. The sad thing is that Merlin doesn't usually act up like this with Amy, but she can't be there every day to take care of him--she's been going 3 or 4 days a week, and even that has been difficult to accomplish.

Given all the factors involved, Amy's had to conclude that it's not feasible to move Merlin to another stable, where the same issues might arise, and that it's time to find him a home where he can live the rest of his life in peace. So yesterday Linda and Amy and I went up to a farm in Sonoma County where they keep "retired" horses, and it's a beautiful setting where Merlin will get to roam in a 15-acre pasture with a few other horses. We can visit him, but given the distance and our other responsibilities it won't be possible for us to make the trip more than once or twice a month.

I've interacted enough with Merlin to know that he's an unusual horse--he's more interested in people than most other horses and has a very "interpersonal" dimension, so to speak. Yesterday I was scratching him, and he nibbled on my beard, a gesture he's made several times that I can't help but interpret as a way of saying "thanks." And although I'll miss him, the hardest thing for me is observing the impact on Amy--I've seen how meaningful it's been for her to care for him, to oversee his return to health, to manage this very willful and complicated creature, and she truly loves him. (I have to say I do, too.)

Amy knows this move is the right thing for Merlin--he's had a hard life, probably spent roping calves, given the nature of his injuries, and being in an environment where he can just "be a horse" and run with a small herd will be a happy ending for him. But it will also leave a big hole in Amy's life, and it's hard for me to watch her prepare for that. She'll keep taking riding lessons on other horses at the stable, but that's really never been the point of horse-ownership for her.

She rescued Merlin because she fell in love with him and wanted to save his life, and she did, but now he has to move on. So it is an ending--not a permanent goodbye, but a fundamental shift in the nature of their relationship, in Amy's ability to care for him on a regular basis, and in her opportunity to find fulfillment in making the world a slightly better place for another creature.

I know that in the grand scheme of things there are far more important problems--Amy and I are facing several right now, which are undoubtedly making this a more emotional experience. I'm well aware that the problem of two little people and one old horse doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. But today I wanted to write about this particular problem, both to acknowledge the sadness it has evoked and to let Amy know: I see you, and I see the noble work you've done. You saved a beautiful animal's life, and you taught me a lot in the process. You've sacrificed much to make this happen, and it's been inspiring to witness. It makes me want to be a better, less selfish person, and it makes me appreciate my time with you even more.

 

 

 

 

Personal History (1986-1998)

Amy discovered the photo above a few weeks ago, and it's stirred up a host of memories from a pivotal period in my life that I feel compelled to document here--I don't expect anyone to read all this, but I suspect I'll enjoy re-reading it myself some day. The photo shows the two of us in 1991 in our first apartment in San Francisco. It was $750 a month for a nice one-bedroom on the Panhandle. She was--and is--completely adorable, and I look at that face and fall in love all over again. I have no excuse for my haircut and no explanation for what we're doing with our hands.

The Fender Bandmaster amp in the background was given to me by Charles Thompson, aka Black Francis of the Pixies, when he and I were dishwashers together in a Boston restaurant for a few months in 1986-87, while I was a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and he was launching the band. Charles was friendly and funny and a good colleague in a shitty job, and I really wanted to see his band, but I was under 21 and didn't have a fake ID and the Boston clubs were strict about carding.

By early 1988 I knew that art school and life in Boston had helped me grow up in some critically important ways, but I also wanted to continue my education in a more conventional setting. I'd spent my freshman year at Duke, and although I'd enjoyed aspects of it immensely and had close relationships with many people there, I felt that I had changed too much to go back and feel at home there again. I decided to apply to Brown, which affords students a great deal of freedom in charting their path, and although I considered some other schools, ultimately I applied only to Brown. It's not that I was confident of my acceptance--I wasn't--but I knew that if I were to return to school successfully I would have to retain the independence I'd enjoyed in Boston. I spent the summer of 1988 living with my (very patient and supportive) Mom and Dad and working construction, waiting and wondering what I would do if I didn't get in. Somehow, I did.

After moving to Providence that fall I came up to Boston regularly, and I finally got to see the Pixies at the Rat in Kenmore Square in December 1988. I was practically sitting on the stage, and it was one of the greatest shows I've even seen. Kim Deal wore a dress and high heels and deftly dodged the crush of people. The previous year Amy and I and a pair of friends decided to skip the Hüsker Dü show at the Orpheum, and I will go to my grave regretting that decision, but at least I saw the Pixies at the Rat, and I'll hold on to that one forever.

Amy and I were friends in high school and started seeing each other shortly after she graduated. I had decided to leave Duke before she and I got together, but I chose the SMFA because it was near Dartmouth, where Amy was headed. We were deeply committed to each other, but we were also teenagers, and I was obviously filled with uncertainty. With the benefit of hindsight, the turmoil we went through over the next few years was predictable, but at the time it was also quite painful.

In early 1989, shortly after seeing the Pixies, I was thinking about calling Charles and asking him if I could travel with the band and help out in some way over the summer. I was a terrible guitar player, but I could tune, and I was willing to work for free. I have no idea if he would have said yes--I had his phone number, but didn't know him well. But then I realized that if he did say yes, I probably would have gone, and who knew how a summer apart would have affected me and Amy?

So I never made that call, and instead Amy and I decided to spend the summer together in Washington D.C. She had her shit together and landed an internship at a law firm--it wasn't the greatest job in the world, but it paid enough to allow her to save for senior year, and it provided a grownup-looking line on a resume. I most definitely did not have my shit together and arrived in D.C. unemployed, eventually finding a job as a sandwich maker at a deli in Georgetown. To save the money I needed for senior year, I bought a bucket, a pole, and a squeegee, and after work I roamed the neighborhood offering to clean the storefront windows of local businesses, and eventually I developed a regular clientele.

Washington was in the midst of a profound homelessness crisis in the late '80s, and as I walked to and from Georgetown and along my window-washing route I would pass dozens and dozens of people living without shelter. At the deli where I worked we threw out large boxes of unsold muffins at the end of each day, and eventually I convinced the managers to let me take them home with me so that I could distribute them to the people I passed--this also turned into a regular route.

Amy and I made it through another challenging year as a couple--my fault--and shortly before graduation we decided to take a wild leap and move to San Francisco, which I had visited with my family years previously and remained a sort of magical place in my imagination. Most of our peers were headed to entry-level professional jobs in New York and Boston, and we weren't quite ready for that--we wanted to have an adventure in this city that seemed so welcoming to people who didn't quite fit into the ordinary categories elsewhere. It's not lost on us that two history majors would not be able to do this today--and that a great deal of privilege enabled us to do it then. So that summer we hitched a U-Haul trailer to my Camaro--yes!--and drove across the U.S., surviving on Denny's in the morning and Domino's at night.

Once again, Amy had her shit together and followed her interest in public health education and her actual experience as an HIV peer educator at Dartmouth into a grownup job with the California Medical Association, which would ultimately lead her to law school, corporate practice, legal librarianship, and the leadership role she holds today as the director of the Zief Law Library at the USF School of Law.

And once again, I did not have my shit together and was really at a loss as to what to do professionally. But my history degree qualified me to serve as a cub reporter for the (now-defunct, of course) San Carlos-Belmont Enquirer-Bulletin, an old-school local weekly that was part of a small chain of area papers owned by Jerry Fuchs, an equally old-school publisher. I landed the job by passing this test with Jerry: after asking me some perfunctory questions, he turned the tables and told me to interview him, then put me in a room with a typewriter and had me write up my notes as a feature on the spot. It was the most true-to-life job interview experience I've ever had.

After a few months covering anything and everything in the charming, sleepy town of Belmont, Jerry promoted me to County Editor and allowed me to write about a broader range of issues affecting the region. My experience in Washington D.C. had stuck with me, and I was keenly aware of the extent of homelessness in San Francisco, and a little investigating made clear that the issue was also a problem on the Peninsula. Homelessness wasn't as visible as it was in SF because there were relatively few panhandlers, but if you knew where to look you could find the quiet streets where people were living out of cars and RVs, and even the occasional encampment.

There was much I loved about being a journalist--I had a great deal of freedom in choosing what to write about and how to spend my time, and much older people in positions of authority treated me with respect (and answered my naive questions graciously), and seeing my name in print each week was always a thrill. The money was terrible, even then, and I had to write the occasional piece of hackwork on an important advertiser--it was very much a business, and I knew that.

But I couldn't stop thinking about homelessness, and I wanted to work on the issue directly, not from the sidelines as a writer. I told Jerry I was quitting, and although as an old RFK supporter he understood my motives, he also made one last offer to try to keep me--he'd give me a weekly column. This was incredibly tempting, and I've often wondered what my life would look like today if I'd said yes. The most likely conclusion is that I would have had an amazing experience as a Bay Area writer in the '90s and '00s, only to be laid off in the '10s.

So I sold my Camaro for $3,000 to finance a job search, eventually landing a role as the intake worker at a drop-in crisis center operated by Compass Community Services (then known as Travelers Aid.) The woman who interviewed me, Kathy Taylor Gaubatz, became one of my most important mentors and a personal role model, but (she told me years later), she almost didn't hire me because I wore a coat and tie to the interview, which (along with my total lack of experience) made her wonder if I'd be able to fit into a world where coats and ties looked out of place, to say the least.

I spent a little over a year in that job--every day, at 9:00am and at 1:00pm, I would interview a long line of people seeking help ranging from a cot in a shelter to a long-term bed in a rehab center, from treatment for mental health issues to a bus ticket home. We could help some of them, but we couldn't help all of them. And even when we could help, we couldn't accommodate everyone, and I had to turn away most of the people I talked to, and I tried to do it with compassion and respect. I failed with one guy, though, and he spit in my face. I took the rest of that day off, and went to the childcare center that our agency operated in the Tenderloin, and I just hung out with the little kids and their teachers to decompress.

Then I was hired by a coalition of the city's family and domestic violence shelters to help launch the Homeless Children's Network, which would provide therapy and counseling to children in these shelters (and which is still in operation). I was responsible for management and fundraising, and my counterpart who initially provided our services and ultimately led the clinical team was Erica Kisch, a gifted counselor and another special colleague.

By the time we got HCN up and running, Kathy had become Compass's executive director, and she asked me to return as her first associate director, and later Erica joined us to manage the organization's main family shelter program. (Erica would eventually succeed Kathy and is still running Compass today.) Over the next three years we opened Clara House, a transitional housing program for families; expanded the childcare program that I mentioned earlier, enabling it to double in size; and were asked by the city to establish a centralized intake system for all family shelters. I raised over $1 million to help support this work, a sum that seems trifling today, but which had a big impact in that setting at the time, and I wore a bunch of different hats as I helped Kathy and the rest of our management team turn these projects from ideas into realities.

I didn't have any formal training as a technologist, but thanks to my family and education I'd had more exposure to personal computers than the typical person working in social services in the 1990s, and I was reasonably adept at learning the often-clunky office productivity software of that era. I also began using email intensively in 1994 in order to plan a long-distance motorcycle trip with a friend who lived across the country. These experiences helped me see what a huge opportunity there was for nonprofit organizations to employ technology more effectively, in uses ranging from service delivery to fundraising.

Then in 1996 I met Melinda Tuan, an MBA student at Stanford who was considering an internship at Compass, and the following year I visited the school's Graduate School of Business to attend a conference on entrepreneurship that Melinda had organized. At that conference I saw a passionate, blunt, and wickedly funny talk by Jed Emerson, who was the CEO of the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, one of the first efforts to fund social ventures. (Melinda went on to work for Jed and later succeeded him at REDF, and Jed went on to become one of the leading thinkers in the world of impact investing.)

I'd been thinking about graduate school but was leaning toward a public policy degree, when a conversation with Kurt Taylor, Kathy's husband, changed my perspective dramatically. He said something like, "You seem to enjoy starting new ventures and getting things done, and I don't think you want to write white papers--you should consider business school." With this in mind, and with the realization that mission-driven people like Melinda and Jed were welcome at Stanford, which was obviously a hotbed of entrepreneurship and technology, I decided to apply to business school. Many people who knew me found this inexplicable.

Around this time Amy graduated fifth in her class at U.C. Hastings, which led to an offer to join the healthcare practice of a San Francisco firm. While I wasn't the best boyfriend in college, I take pride in being an outstanding law school husband. I had so much practice helping Amy prepare for the bar that I honestly believe that I would have had a 50/50 shot at passing it myself.

While waiting to hear my fate, I quit my job at Compass and trained my successor as associate director--no matter what the B-schools thought of me, the application process had made me realize that after 7 years in social services it was time for something different. I was proud of the organizations I'd been a part of and the work we'd done, and I felt grateful for what I'd learned and the sense that I'd made a meaningful contribution. But I also knew that this wasn't the work of a lifetime for me, and if I stayed any longer the feelings of cynicism and futility that had begun to erode my commitment to that work would get the better of me.

And then I got the call from Marie Mookini, Stanford's dean of admissions at the time, welcoming me to the GSB. I was surprised, but not nearly as surprised as I remain today, looking back more than two decades removed. As an MBA student I would discover organizational behavior with Roberto Fernandez and interpersonal dynamics with Mary Ann Huckabay, two of the most gifted teachers I've ever known (and I've been blessed with many); these were the foundational learning experiences that would eventually lead me into executive coaching. I would explore a rich variety of post-MBA paths, which was inevitable in the near-frenzied atmosphere of 1999-2000. I would graduate with offers from four startups, only to conclude that I didn't think I could give them my best effort, leading me to re-launch my job search in the summer of 2000. And I would return to my original reason for attending business school--helping nonprofits use technology more effectively--and eventually be asked to serve as the first executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network. (My work in the nonprofit technology sector from 2000 to 2006, before I launched my coaching practice, deserves its own post, if I'm ever similarly inspired by a photo from the '00s.)

This walk down memory lane has left me feeling a little wistful, mildly embarrassed, and profoundly grateful. Everyone mentioned above--especially Amy and my parents--played an essential role in the lengthy, uncertain process of helping a well-meaning but deeply confused young man finally get his shit together, and I will always be in their debt.

Learning From Sisyphus

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

~Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Twelve years ago, in December 2006, I accepted a position as a member of the first team of in-house executive coaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Our first year was both exhilarating and insanely hectic, and one consequence was that I stopped exercising completely. As I later described this period,

It was the usual thing: throw myself into a demanding job, defer my personal needs, tell myself "I'll exercise tomorrow," all while assuming that I could get active again any time I wanted to. And then in the Spring of 2008 I finally did get active again--and in less than a month I hurt myself, wrenching my knee so badly that it took seven weeks of rest to recover. I dimly recalled turning 40 the previous year and wondered if that might have something to do with it. Ultimately I realized that I needed to get active and stay active--I was too old to do "the usual thing" and needed to make a sustainable change in my approach to exercise.

So 2008 was a year of reckoning for me, and I had to accept and come to terms with a set of unfamiliar limitations. I could no longer take my physical capabilities for granted. But I was able to change my approach to exercise, and making a sustained commitment to stay active served me well throughout my 40s.

Yet in retrospect I see that I merely exchanged one set of illusions for another. While I learned not to take my body for granted, I labored (literally) under the mistaken impression that my efforts would forestall the aging process, if not indefinitely than at least long enough to allow me to maintain a sense of control over its advance.

And as the futility of this project slowly became apparent over the past decade, my determined commitment and my tolerance for discomfort (and my fear of mortality--see below) intertwined to create a perfect storm. Twice in the last three years I've enjoyed what felt like a period of peak physical health, only to experience a traumatic and painful injury that required months of arduous recovery.

So 2018 has been yet another year of reckoning, and I've had to recognize and accept yet another set of unfamiliar (and much less palatable) limitations. Most significantly, I've realized that my commitment to staying physically active has a shadow side, having become--at least in part--a "heroic project," a concept derived from the work of the late anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker.

As described by Sam Keen in his introduction to Becker's The Denial of Death, Becker believed that "the basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death," and over the course of our lives we engage in any number of activities with the (typically unconscious) goal of achieving a symbolic victory over mortality, which offers us at least a provisional respite from this terror. These energies can be directed toward many different ends--raising a family, building a business, pursuing fame or status or wealth--but for many of us today this process also involves an almost fanatical dedication to physical health and well-being.

This was certainly the case for me during much of the past few years. At age 47 I decided to intensify my weight-lifting regimen, and a few months later I was setting all-time personal records for the bench-press and the squat--and then I blew out my elbow and could barely lift a coffee cup. I healed, eventually, and adopted a new approach, committing to a demanding routine of running and strength-training classes, and a few months later I weighed less then I did in high school as a competitive runner--and then I hurt my foot so badly I could barely walk. But while I may be a slow learner, life's lessons eventually sink in, and I've come to see this frantic effort for what it truly is: my very own heroic project, born of middle-age and the encroaching shadow of senescence, an understandable and yet misguided attempt to transcend mortality.

I'm embarrassed to admit that at first I found this demoralizing. I've been blessed with such good health until now that I felt inadequately prepared to cope with the inevitability of my physical decline. But while I may have lived a privileged existence in this regard, I haven't been entirely sheltered from reality. I've spent a great deal of time over the last decade reflecting on mortality, and those hours were spent profitably.

Rather than triggering morbid or unpleasant thoughts, fully acknowledging the finite nature of this existence only makes me more appreciative of everything that it has to offer. And over the last few months I've come to adopt this perspective not merely in an abstract, metaphorical sense, but in a deeply embodied and literal way, and Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus has been an important text in that process:

Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.

It is during the return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me... That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness...

If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would be his torture, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?... Sisyphus...knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

If the descent is sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock...

One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I haven't given up on a return to a more active life, and I do hope my healing process continues. But I'm pursuing this effort with a more realistic view of what's possible and a feeling of gratitude for what I can do, rather than a feeling of resentment for what I can't. I've grieved what I've lost, just as I'll grieve the losses to come. But the inevitability of loss, of the boulder slipping from my grasp, won't stop me from turning and descending again. And again. And again.

 

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For Further Reading

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (Albert Camus)

The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)

Marcus Aurelius, 3,000 Years, and the Present Moment

On the Shortness of Life

The Definition of Pain

Gualala (On Mortality and Gratitude)

Photo by Ann Wuyts.

Thank You, Veterans

I owe an immense debt to so many authors whose military service influenced their writing, which in turn expanded my perspective not only on war but on the nature of life itself. Among this group Kurt Vonnegut--born on this day in 1922--continues to stand out as an inspiration. As a POW in 1945, Vonnegut survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden because he and his comrades were being housed in a former slaughterhouse, and they were able to find refuge in a meat locker located several stories below ground--an experience later memorialized in his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five. From a letter to his family dated May 29, 1945:

I've been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler's last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. Seven Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges' First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight - so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I'm told, but I'll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren't wounded. For that much thank God...

On about February 14th the [American bombers] came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden--possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me.

After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.

After the war Vonnegut moved to Chicago, where he pursued a master's degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago while also working as a police reporter. His thesis was rejected, which led him to leave school and take a job as a publicist for General Electric in Schenectady, New York, where he began submitting stories to magazines. [1] In 1952 he published his first novel, Player Piano, a dystopian tale set in the near future, where intensive mechanization has rendered the working class redundant and led to an extreme gap between rich and poor.

I encountered Vonnegut as a middle-school student, and I absolutely adored the way he wove contemporary social commentary into what were essentially works of science fiction. I haven't read one of his novels in years, but I find that many of his themes--his skepticism toward authority, his fatalistic optimism in the face of cruelty and mendacity, the importance of free expression--remain meaningful to me today. From "The First Amendment," an essay in his wonderful 1981 collection Palm Sunday:

I am a member of what I believe to be the last recognizable generation of full-time, life-time American novelists. We appear to be standing more or less in a row. It was the Great Depression which made us similarly edgy and watchful. It was World War II which lined us up so nicely, whether we were ever in uniform or not...

And let it here be noted that the best-known members of my literary generation, if they wrote about war, almost unanimously despised officers and made heroes of sketchily educated, aggressively unaristocratic enlisted men...

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment. Our American heirs may find it incredible, as most foreigners do right now, that a nation would want to enforce as a law something which sounds more like a dream, which reads as follows:

"Congress shall make no new law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

How could a nation with such a law raise its children in an atmosphere of decency? It couldn't--it can't. So the law will surely be repealed soon for the sake of children...

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut. Thank you, veterans.

 

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[1] Vonnegut's early life is discussed in "Slaughterhouse-Five: Kurt Vonnegut Jr." by Ray Boomhower, published in the Spring 1999 edition of Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History.

Thank You, Veterans (2017)

Thank You, Veterans (2012)

Portrait of Kurt Vonnegut by Xandriss.

In Case of Emergency

This is an idiosyncratic collection of material intended to help me get through some upcoming challenges. If anyone else finds it useful, that's gravy.

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Watch This

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Read This

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. "Don’t weep for me,"
he said to his friends. "I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it."

~Raymond Carver, "Gravy"

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And This

We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who's awake, that's death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn't have any fresh air. There's no room for something to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience. Doing this is setting ourselves up for failure, because sooner or later, we're going to have an experience that we can't control: our house is going to burn down, someone we love is going to die, we're going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head...

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.

~Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

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And This

Amy and I spent the past week on the Mendocino coast, just north of the little town of Gualala. One evening a planet appeared low in the sky as the last light of sunset was fading--you can just make it out in the top left corner of the image above. Pictures like this fail to do justice to the real thing, of course, and yet they still serve a important purpose, prompting memories of moments that shouldn't be forgotten.

After I took this shot I stood looking out at the Pacific, watching the stars slowly emerge as the sky darkened, listening to waves crash into the cove below, feeling the air swirl around me. It was a moment I've experienced many times during our trips up here, and yet there was something different about this one. Amy had gone back into the house, and I sensed her presence and her absence. I felt alone beneath the sky, before the sea, and also together, with her and in some sense with humanity.

~Gualala (On Mortality and Gratitude)

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And Listen to This

03 This Year

I am going to make it through this year

If it kills me

~John Darnielle

 

Photo by James Cridland.

Gratitude Checklist

I'm alive.	☐
I'm not in pain.	☐
I can think clearly.	☐
I can see, hear, and walk.	☐
I'm warm and well-nourished.	☐
I'm protected from the elements.	☐
I was born to parents who loved me.	☐
I've built a loving relationship with a partner.	☐
I feel known and cared for by a number of people.	☐
I derive a sense of meaning and purpose from my work.	☐

To be clear, I'm not some blissed-out idealist, and I don't walk around thinking about these things 24/7. I'm disappointed and irritated on a daily basis. But I've experienced enough real heartbreak to know that disappointments and irritations are fleeting sensations, and I shouldn't let them dampen my gratitude for this existence. A list like this helps. So does a sunrise.

Lost and Found

Amy and I met when we were in high school together, probably sometime in 1983. We started dating and fell in love in 1986 and then spent most of the next four years apart as we pursued our separate (but deeply intertwined) paths through college. The distance forced us to stay in touch through the U.S. Postal Service. We didn't have email accounts, the web didn't exist, and phone calls were expensive--the old Ma Bell had just been broken up, and we had to call each other after 11:00pm, when long-distance rates were more affordable on our tight budgets.

So we wrote letters--hundreds of letters. Somehow, 30 years later, we still have them, and Amy proposed that we re-read them over the holidays, a major undertaking that we just completed. It was an overwhelming experience, in the best sense of the word, and we found much to laugh about, much to be grateful for, many surprises, and plenty of heartbreak and sadness. My first reaction is simply thankfulness that we're still here. There were many times during those tumultuous years when that outcome seemed highly unlikely.

And my second reaction is thankfulness for the work that I do today and my life as a coach and teacher. I had many strong passions as a young man and launched myself on a number of potential paths with vigor, only to find my enthusiasm fade after a few years. From my vantage point today, not only do I feel a sense of pride in what I accomplished on those ventures, I also realize that the lessons I learned along the way contributed immensely to my ability to be of service to my clients and students now.

But in college, during the period covered by the letters we just read, I went from a checkered (albeit very entertaining) freshman year at Duke to two years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (chosen for its proximity to Dartmouth, which Amy was attending), followed by two more years at Brown (where I finally got my shit together.) I'm deeply grateful for those experiences--and to my parents, who certainly had their doubts, but who remained supportive and encouraging along the way. And yet at the time I often felt like I was wandering.

So it's deeply rewarding to look back at those uncertain years and know that the path I ultimately chose has been a calling, a true vocation. That's not to say that the last 12 years have always been easy or fun--I've struggled many times, and I know I'll face difficult moments in the future. But I feel so privileged to do this work, to live this life, to be able to say: I'm not lost, I'm here.

 

Photo by dvs.

Thank You, Jed and Melinda

Thankfulness has been on my mind recently, so it was a welcome surprise this morning to see the photo above accompanying an article on the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF). It shows Jed Emerson, George Roberts, and Melinda Tuan sometime in the 1990s, which is when I met Jed and Melinda. George is in the center as a sign of respect for his seniority and status--he's the billionaire who funded REDF--but it's Jed and Melinda who had a profound impact on my life and to whom I remain deeply grateful.

In 1996 Melinda was an MBA student at Stanford who was considering a summer internship at Compass Family Services, where I was serving as Associate Director. She wound up spending her summer elsewhere, but she made a powerful impression on me, and we stayed in touch. Her example taught me that business school could be a place where someone could pursue entrepreneurship and social impact.

The following year Stanford hosted a conference on entrepreneurship, and I attended the nonprofit track, which Melinda had organized. I saw Jed speak there--he was the founding CEO of REDF, and Melinda would join him after graduation as Managing Director--and I was thrilled to see that the room was overflowing, with people sitting on the stairs.

I was struck by Jed's blunt candor and sharp sense of humor, as well as his email address, which he wrote on the board: Live4Punk@... He also made a powerful impression on me, and his example taught me that people could be themselves at a business school--they didn't have lose their identities in a conformist crowd.

I was so inspired by both of them. I thought, "If this school supports people like Jed and Melinda, then this is where I need to be!" I applied to the MBA program and was thankful to be accepted, but I had no idea at the time what an amazing course my life was now set upon.

Two decades later, I am so incredibly fulfilled by my work as a coach and teacher, and it would not have happened without the two of them. Thank you, Jed and Melinda.

Giving Thanks

I'm feeling thankful for many things today.

It's a challenging time in San Francisco, and I'm dismayed by my beloved city's crumbling public infrastructure and glaring income inequality. I'm not pining for some bygone era--it's a tempting illusion to think that SF was at its best when you first encountered it--and yet our current level of dysfunction can't be denied. So I'm all the more appreciative of wonders like the Presidio. Yesterday I watched the sun set from Washington Boulevard and felt so thankful to be there, at that particular spot, at that particular moment. I don't have the answers to San Francisco's problems, but I know it's a place worth fixing.

It's also been a challenging year for me personally, with an emergency appendectomy on top of the more typical ailments of middle age, and it's easy to get fixated on my physical limitations and struggles. But when I take a step back I can recognize how much I have to be grateful for: My aches and pains, while real, are relatively minor. I'm able to hike in Point Reyes and run in Golden Gate Park on a regular basis. And I'm still here, still breathing, still able to enjoy the gift of this existence.

This year I resigned from teaching Interpersonal Dynamics (aka Touchy Feely) at Stanford in order to teach my Art of Self-Coaching course three times a year while maintaining my focus on my coaching practice. This ended my formal association with Touchy Feely, a relationship that began in 1999 when I took the class as a student, and significantly diminished my involvement with a community that has contributed immensely to my growth and development. I generally enjoy working alone, but for this very reason it's essential to maintain my professional relationships in this new chapter, and I'm profoundly grateful to know so many talented coaching and teachers--first among them, my own coach Mary Ann Huckabay, who I saw just yesterday.

There's a long list of other people I'm thankful for as well--Amy and my family, my clients and students, the writers who inspire me--but today I find myself appreciating a group of people whose efforts often go unnoticed: the administrative and technical staff who make it possible for me to teach and to maintain my coaching practice. I'm so grateful to everyone at Stanford and to my clients' assistants--and this is a timely reminder to thank them directly.

Yesterday Mary Ann and I were talking about mortality, a subject I find myself returning to regularly these days. Far from leaving me feeling morbid or gloomy, it makes me thankful. It reminds me that every single moment is an opportunity to express my appreciation. I fail to do so frequently, letting petty grievances and absurd resentments consume my attention. But then a day like today comes along, and it's easy to stop and say: Thank you.

Thank You, Veterans

As we remember veterans and acknowledge their service today, I'm thinking of four specific individuals and what I learned from them.

Ten years ago my professional duties included commenting on students' written assignments in a class at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Two of the students assigned to me were veterans, both of whom had seen combat. At the time I had little understanding of what it was like to be a veteran in contemporary society, and reading these students' reflections helped me realize that this was a topic that I needed to explore further. Much of my work involves reaching across dimensions of difference--gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation--in order to be a more effective coach and teacher. And yet I'd failed to appreciate that being a veteran can be an equally meaningful aspect of personal identity, particularly in an era of extensive armed conflict.

As a result of this newfound perspective, over the next few years I made a special effort to work with veterans and to learn more about their experiences. A theme that emerged from these conversations was the gulf that can exist between veterans as a community and the larger culture's awareness of that community and what it means to be a member. Today, while I try to avoid stereotypes, I pay close attention when I learn that someone's a veteran, knowing that their military service may have had a significant impact on their life. In addition, I have a heightened sensitivity to other often-invisible forms of difference, such as religious faith or social class.

A few years after the experiences described above I was working with another veteran in a different capacity. His communication style was relatively reserved, and I offered some critical feedback in response, suggesting that greater expressiveness would allow him to be a more effective communicator. He was receptive to this feedback, but after several exchanges along these lines he pushed back. He explained that his communication style was a function of his life experiences, including his military service, and in some circumstances it had been essential to minimize his emotional expressiveness in order to fulfill his duties effectively. He also noted that while he had been trying to respond to my feedback, I had not acknowledged these efforts--it was as though any expressiveness on his part was going unseen unless it was conveyed in a particular way.

This was a powerful lesson for me. While my feedback was offered with the best of intentions, it was also a type of intolerance that reflected a blind spot on my part--I wanted him to conform to my more overtly expressive communication style. While it was valuable for him to learn that his default style wasn't having the desired impact, it was just as valuable for me to realize that I needed to pay closer attention to subtle forms of emotional expression and to better understand the role of formative experiences--not only military service, but also family background, national culture, and professional training—in shaping people's communication styles. While I try to challenge any assumptions I might make on the basis of these factors, I continue to benefit from a greater awareness of the role they can play in communication.

Finally, in 2008, while I was beginning the process of reaching out to veterans, I had the privilege of working with Jake Miller, a West Point alumnus on active duty in the U.S. Army who had come to Stanford to earn an MBA in the midst of his military career. Jake joined the school's Leadership Fellows program that year and subsequently enrolled in the Leadership Coaching class (which has since been integrated into the Fellows curriculum). Jake and I worked together closely in the Fellows program, and I had the opportunity to observe him many times in the coaching class, and he exemplified a characteristic that I've come to believe is a hallmark of great leaders: a commitment to ongoing learning and development.

Jake arrived at Stanford with a wealth of real-world leadership experience and could easily have chosen not to participate in the Fellows program, which was only in its second year and still very much a work-in-progress. He also had a leadership style that was clearly well-suited to his professional environment and might not have felt the need to further expand his range. And yet he took full advantage of the school's leadership-related classes, routinely striving to make the most of every opportunity. I once asked him why he was immersing himself so fully in these classes, and he replied that after completing our MBA program he would be returning to West Point to teach leadership, so he felt an obligation to absorb everything that Stanford could possibly offer. Today Jake leads an aviation battalion, and I know that the hundreds of soldiers under his command benefit from his determination to continue to grow as a leader. I remain inspired by his example and seek to apply it in my own development as a coach and teacher.

I've worked with many veterans over the years, and hopefully the memories of my experiences with these four will allow me to say to all of them: Thank you.

 

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Thank You, Veterans (2018)

Thank You, Veterans (2012)

 

Photo of the San Francisco National Cemetery by John Picken.