New Eyes

I remember hearing a comedian once talk about having kids and seeing the world through new eyes. A sunset was now "pink ink" in the sky and when your foot went to sleep, it got "all squiggly." At that time, we had children who were young and it was so very true. Rarely did we go through a week, and often not even through a day without having the opportunity to see something in a way that we'd never seen it before. This was truly a gift that I never realized even existed and it came with having children around.

Typically these moments of enlightenment were around things that were very loud, or very bright, but you never really knew where the next one would come from.  For instance, I remember that Megan had decided, based upon conversation that she had listened to between adults, that the little piece of grass in the middle of a boulevard was called a "cricket."  It took years for us to find this out. She'd overheard us talking about a metal cricket sculpture in the median near a friend's home and just assumed that was the word described the boulevard. We will never forget it. In the same vein, I remember Andrew believing that a car we had rented had the ability to adjust the radio volume to the "ambient sound level" of the car. Really it was just dad messing with the volume when Andrew could not see me doing it.

Fast forward about twenty years.  As of December 1, I have a new job.  And by the way, I love it. And by the way #2, I'm seeing the world through new eyes, or maybe just eyes that I had forgotten I had.  I've taken on the challenge of Operations at a distribution company in a line that I know absolutely nothing about.  Or do I?  It's amazing to me that the further and further I dive into it, the more it is like the lumber history that I knew so well.  Every time I turn around, we are working on something that I remember working on in the early days in lumber.  The difference is that now I am in the petroleum business.  But, interestingly enough, it is about buying inventory, protecting that inventory, selling it and getting it delivered to the customer, all the time making sure that we take good care of the employees and keep them all safe.

Just today the snow started to fly and I was transported back to a time when we worried mostly about getting our people to work safely, getting product to our customers and making sure that we could be ready to do it all over again.  By the end of the day, I think that we actually were able to accomplish all of that.

Of course, today I hadn't been home ten minutes when I got a call that one of the company owned trucks had been in a wreck.  Again, I found the old training drop into place, making sure that first and foremost, all of the people were okay and then making sure that everyone knew that it was only a wreck and we would take care of it all tomorrow.

So, even though I get to look at a whole new industry, and all new people, doing things that I didn't even begin to understand a month ago, much of all of this is so familiar that it takes me back to when I got to see the world through the new eyes of my children.  Now I get to see the world through the new eyes of the employees that I am managing, working to make the way they do their job easier and more profitable.  What fun this is going to be.

For those few of you that have asked if I am nearing the end of my career, ready to retire and do something easier, I tell you not just no, but hell no. I love what I do and I love seeing all of the ways that people figure out to accomplish things they need to accomplish on a daily basis.  I know there is probably a best way, and I look forward to figuring that out, but there so many different ways to get from point A to B that I love discovering them all. Come with me on this ride, and take the challenge yourself in the things you do every day. Find the joy in looking at everything around you as though you were seeing it for the first time - through new eyes.