By Karey Love Shaffer D’Penha
April 24, 2008
Statically 80% of all employees in the workforce today are dealing with some major personal event in their lives - from health issues to serious family issues and everything in between. Given that businesses are run for and by people, this statistic is staggering. Successful companies are mindful of personal issues, yet find a way to accomplish their mission against the odds.
Our success in life has very little to do with our circumstances, yet has everything to do with how we chose to respond to events and people especially in the tough times. It is easy to be kind on our good days; the real difficulty in life is choosing kindness when everything inside of us feels angry, hurt or unappreciated. It is those times, when we have to dig deep to find the light within to chose kindness.
As we get older, the actual events on a particular day fade and we are left with memories and impressions from interactions with people. If we take a moment to reflect, I suspect that you will find as I have, countless people who made an impression or a memory from a simple act of kindness. Often those interactions occurred when we were experiencing one of those significant life events, which evidently is 80% of our existence. If we wait for the perfect time to serve one another, when we are doing well, we miss out on those priceless moments to truly experience our humanity with another.
I am fortunate to have the experiences of my youth in a not so perfect family with challenging circumstances. We all have family; some of the most interesting battles an individual will face in life are not on the world front, but on the home front. As we reflect on our family experiences, both good and bad, it is hard to argue for world peace until home peace is acquired. Does peace require that we always see eye-to-eye? Hardly. It does however require that we respect one another, no matter how tough the situation, when everything inside you wants to lash out. In those moments if we can just hold still long enough to feel our emotions run through us and identify them, we then have the ability to choose a response.
My cookie baking grandmother had two signs on her kitchen wall I remember growing up. One had a picture of Christ which said “I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it” the other was simply this “Chose Ye This Day Whom Ye Will Serve”. It didn’t say, chose this month, next year sometime in the future, it said; “Chose Today” all day whom you’ll serve. If we have a bad day, which we will, we do the best we can that day, then we get another chance to choose. She was the mother of fifteen children and the grandmother of lots. She managed to make us (all her granddaughters, daughters and daughter in-laws) porcelain dolls which she hand painted, not an easy task.
My swearing, drinking, smoking grandmother didn’t have signs in her kitchen; she had piles of plastic, news papers and cardboard. We knew better than to mess with grandma’s piles. She believed that we were all going to live in a garbage dump if we didn’t start getting serious about recycling. She wasn’t going to listen to us complain about what she did to contribute to the garbage pile we made planet earth. My grandmother would visit the elderly and sick weekly in her neighborhood (she was in her 70’s) spend sometime chatting, collect their recycling and drive her pick-up truck to the recycling center and make enough money to support her small social security check. The guys at the recycling center loved to see my grandma Velma, her loads were always so clean and well organized, they paid her extra for that and she let us know not to mess with her piles. Try slipping grandma some money to help ease her burden, she would find someone less fortune than herself and give it away.
My grandfather was called the candy man because he would give out suckers to all the children at church. He always had at least 100 suckers in his pockets at a given time and as soon as church broke a sea of children of all ages would swarm around grandpa. Disgusted parents would ask if we planned to pay for the dentist bill and he would say, “Come on, what can one sucker do?” In his youth, grandpa jumped the rails from Ohio to Montana to find work to support his family during the Depression. He was the only white guy on an all black minor league baseball team, only team in town so it didn’t much matter who the folks were. He was the pitcher and they called him “Monte”. Grandpa was a great story teller, no matter how many times he told the story; he would light up like it was the first time, with his arms swinging to emphasize a point. As we got older, we’d hear the same story that delighted us as small children and would challenge the facts of his story. He didn’t care, it happened just as he said it did, we were just happy to see him. He brought us boxes of suckers, which did do havoc to our teeth. Every so often, one of grandpa’s silly songs will come to mind and I can tell he’s checking in to let me know he is still around.
They go like this (my siblings can sing along)
“I don’t like work and work don’t like me, that’s why I’m a bum, bum and sing this melody. Halleluiah, I’m a bum. Halleluiah bum again. Halleluiah, give me a hand out and I will get in line again.”
“You got to kiss your mama, treat her right or she won’t be home when you call. (in a woman’s voice) I don’t like that kind of man, who lives on the installment plan. You got to kiss your mama, treat her right or she won’t be home when you call.”
My mother makes the best bread in town; she is famous for her bread rings, dinner rolls and baked treats. She has the ability to make something beautiful and useful from things that most would find ordinary. It isn’t until she brings her vision to life that people see what she saw in her mind a long time before they get it.
My mother took some college classes she did well in the classes that she wanted to learn about, doesn’t need a piece of paper telling her that she is smart. With eleven children of her own, she is the master program manager. She could manage to feed us all on what ever was left after my Dad paid the bills. She is a master as finding a deal. She created a sophisticated coupon system combined it with weekly store specials and would make a list and navigation route to acquire all the best deals in town to feed her family. If we went with her for this mass shopping experience (a lot of shluping), we’d get to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant or at Wendy’s. She taught us to take care of ourselves (without a doctor visit unless it was life threatening) and younger siblings at a very young age, partly for sanity partly because life is tough and it is good to learn while you are young to stand on your own two feet.
My mother was always the one that defended our need to be kids and play once in awhile. We always enjoyed those Saturday morning cartoons, when she scolded my dad for making us work to often on the weekends. The neighbor kids would love to come to our house after chores were done, mom’s only rule for our massive water fight, no water in the house. Everyone, everything that could hold water and everything outside was fair game.
My dad is known by everyone in town as Mr. Shaffer. Everyone had to go through one of Mr. Shaffer’s math classes at least once if they attended Junior High or High School. He was the Math gate keeper for our small town in Montana. His reputation is legendary, ask anyone who attended school in our town, they know Mr. Shaffer and that he likes Bananas, not Apples. He has a collection of Bananas; stuff related to Bananas that students gave him through the years. When you gave oral board presentations, you didn’t get a grade you got “Nice Work”, “Banana” or an “A for Effort”, yah, effort doesn’t start with an A, his favorite joke.
When we had him as our Math teacher, he made us call him dad in front of all of our classmates, which was so embarrassing. He also made us give him a hug and a kiss before we left the van each day before school, which also was embarrassing, more so as we got older. He taught us stuff like “Moss Grows on the North Side of a Tree” and the “Shortest Distance between Two Points IS a Straight Line”. Both of which I have used to get out of some sticky situations in life, work and school.
My Dad taught us to work not just for the family but for others less fortunate than ourselves. When we cut wood for the winter, we’d bring wood to one of our neighbors whose husband passed away. That wasn’t just the first year; it was every year for as long as we cut wood and could bring it to her. We had a big garden and my dad would always give food to anyone who passed by or was in need. Only rule, you needed to pick the food yourself and help with some weeds while you were there.
I’ve been surrounded by examples of ordinary people managing to do extraordinary things one day at a time.
