Grandma

I am a story teller, so some of you may have already heard this, in fact all of you might have, but at the risk of boring you, I am going to tell it again.  In 1976, at the celebration of her 70th year, my Grandmother announced that she had reached a point in her life where she no longer needed to hold anything back and she could be totally honest with people.  I remember thinking at the time that I had never thought of her as someone that held back. On the contrary, I found her to be extremely open with her thoughts; having very little filter.  She was never hurtful.  Actually she was very kind, but she was also quite direct, at least that was my experience as her grandson.  As we approach holidays, her words come back to me and I am struck by the notion that it must be something in the DNA of the clan, as even though I am far from turning 70, I think that I have hit the point of not holding back, sometimes to the chagrin of others.  So, I feel compelled to say a few things.

For all of you who are friends or family, thank you for sticking with me through everything life has thrown my way.  I am sure there are times I have been way too direct, and not known that I should circle back and correct the comments.  I spent a great deal of time thinking that having the "truth" on your side was an absolute defense for anything that might come at you.  I now realize this isn't always the case.  Sometimes there are things that are more important than being right and having everyone know it.  There are people's feelings to think about and the game we are in - life - is long term, not just for today.

For all of the engineers and developers in the world, thank you for all that you do.  There are times I think that I was born in the wrong part of the century and would have been better placed in the part of the century where steam was still king and large industry was the way of the world.  I was having lunch with a friend the other day and there was a show playing on the History channel behind him and it was all that I could do to stay engaged in the conversation.  I can be such a nerd that way.  But, even after all of that, when I look at the things we have today, and things that are coming our way, I am so thankful for all of the smart people who have figured out how to do things.  We live in an amazing world that continues to change at breakneck speed.

For all in the medical world, thank you for helping myself and my family to have a healthier lifestyle.  Once again, I believe we are living in an amazing time.  Medical advances are advancing at such a rate that often times diseases and situations which would have been deadly only a few years ago can now be managed for years, if not decades.  When I was born, some friends of my parents had a child born with cystic fibrosis. At that time, the average life expectancy was only a few years, but she lived into her 40s because of medical advances.  Today the average life expectancy of a person with this disease is 37.  That is a drastic change.  Keep up the good work, stay out there ahead of us.  We need you to do your job so that we can live our lives in the best ways possible.

Finally, thanks to all of the teachers and the teaching institutions.  There are times that I become frustrated with the world of education and I worry that we are not turning out thinkers, but rather people who will just take their place in society to do what they have been told to do.  But when I stop and actually listen to some of the things that education accomplishes at a time we keep taking funding away from them, it is pretty amazing.  You do not have to listen very hard, or go very far, to find a story of a teacher using their own money to buy supplies for their classroom because the school  district does not have the funding to take care of the basic needs of the classroom.  Thanks for all you do.

So, with all that I have to give thanks for, and the time seems right to do exactly this, I finish where I began, with my grandmother.  Where she decided that the time had come to be more open and honest with her feelings, I think that the time has come where I have become more cautious with what I think and feel, and how I express all of that.  So I am going forward more careful than before, or at least I am going to try.  We will see how that goes.

Happy Thanksgiving