CuppaGemma

Being able to shift knowledge from one application or kind of work to another completely different arena is a good skill to have.

It’s exercising your thinking. Adaptability can widen your perspective because you don’t limit what you do to only being useful in one context or for one specific set of events.

“There is always another way.” “No one knows everything.” “Pay attention.” “Ask a different question if the ones you have don’t get to the root of the problem.”

Those were concepts I kept in mind as I worked with mothers, babies and health care professionals as a lactation consultant. In some ways those concepts mattered more then the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics or my observations on position and latch. Solving mechanics is one thing. Respecting that you can and should always be learning is wholly another.

It’s easy to fall into a pattern of If this then that. You can kind of gloss over and see this dyad as just another set to deal with. You can miss out on what the root cause of something is by relying on habit and the convenience of check lists to make sure everything is fine.

But if you choose to look at each case with careful attention, and if you choose to really sit down and make holistic assessment of all that is happening, you can have a much richer understanding of the problem(s) at hand. You can also with this kind of thinking allow yourself to consider solutions not to be pat, but something that must really be crafted and recrafted each time.

It not be the most effective way to complete a long checklist. But it may be the most in depth way to solve a problem.

The question becomes how committed are you to make a difference? Is maintaining the status quo and completing what was asked all that you need to do?

It’s an interesting discussion to have with folks. Why do you do what you do? And how committed are you to it? Is it a paycheck for paycheck’s sake? Or does it have value?

And to what sort of paradigm do you chose to align yourself as you walk through life? The good easy paycheck that lets you have a nice car house and holiday? Or something that might have less in the personal wealth category as defined by the IRS but more in the intrinsic value when it comes to personal ethics?

As a single mother with two adolescent children I know full well what it means to run a house and balanced budget. But I also know that I want the boys to be proud of their mom at “Bring your child to work day” because she does something that matters with a team who shares respect for one another, not just makes money.

“You can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat people they no longer need.” My grandmother would often tell me this, though I don’t know whether it’s fair to attribute the quote to her directly.

“When you trust someone it’s good, it’s very very good. But when you don’t, it’s even better.” My father’s friend a machinist has told me this with the same degree of frequency as Gram would the above.

We could consider their advice like opposite ends of a see saw with the fulcrum of reality shifting left or right depending on the moment and folks involved. It is perhaps a sad commentary on our society to realize how disposable we view people, their skills and their contributions.

“Always talk with people.”

My mom embodied that one and the door to her office was always open. She transcended silos by welcoming folks as equals and always having coffee and cookies on hand. She taught me the value of building relationships because she was authentic in her caring.You don;t have conversations because ten minutes of listening to someone blather about stress at home will get them to work harder or do something for you. You listen because people matter.  Just to listen, not to judge. It is the person, not their status that you pay attention to.

The value of listening and of treating others with respect are often forgotten.

We are caught up in he said she said nonsense, or in powerplay games where the object of desire has no value and even lacks sense to an outside observer. These are ongoing lessons that as adults we deal with much like volume on the Van Wyck. It’s just there and you need to get to the Whitestone Bridge. As a parent it’s a brown sigh.

Well guys, I’m not going to molly coddle you into a lovely image where everyone is good and the story always has a happy ending. Things happen. We must deal with it. We’re not in Tokyo anymore.

So how do you model? What route do you show?

Unlike a school semester where you can have lead time to plan and prepare what you will teach and when, this is live stage with no rehearsal and plenty of interruptions. Sometimes the result is a headache.  Or you feel inept since the tick list of items to deal with is increasing exponentially and the check list while long doesn’t have the substantive impact you would like.

That’s when you throw the tallies out the window. You sit down with people and talk.

Doesn’t solve things per se, but it takes the brunt of hurt away. And sometimes it makes the huge problems reduce to little gnats that are only inconvenient irrations that can’t follow you when you keep walking.

On summer holiday my father would take us to several different places. He liked to go to car shows and get parts to restore his roadsters, but he also enjoyed the simple task of walking around and rummaging through piles to find an interesting tool an old book or something or other that could be haggled over and showed to mom. He liked the hodge podge markets that had a bit of everything.

I thought about this as a friend observed my shopping habits for groceries. “Strategic.” I want in then out have a list in my head or on the back of a receipt and prefer the experience sans children. I tend to go to butcher, the fruit and veg market and the little import store that has good bread. Stop and shop is like cleaning the toilet, necessary but unpleasant, so I prefer to get it over with efficiently.

It’s about choice, and there are times when meandering loses its luster. I don’t want nine varieties of juice. I need this OJ (and thanks much for putting the packaging style back to what we all know) that grapefruit juice and this type of shampoo. These are fixed and unless something is going to make my life that much easier or cheaper, I am not going to change habits.

In Tokyo we had a the milkman come and leave us bottles outside three times a week. It was easy, the milk was cold and the rattle of glass bottles and his motorbike got me up before five. Nothing to lug up the hill and if needed I could just ring the little Meiji store and ask for an extra bottle if I were running low.

Here I am bombarded by constant reorganization of items, additional product varieties, and overly large containers. And with our attention and time increasingly committed to other things some Web sites seem to be evolving into Sunday flea market stall meets Costco with bells and whistles and please please someone twitter this now! going on.

Time out. You lose my attention with too much noise. Hold on a tick, why would I stick around on this sort of site for that kind of content tumbled in with this kind of content.

Darn, it’s like integrity gets lost with the rush to mash, to link, to cobrand, to widgetify, to do something anything everything in order to keep the reader there a bit longer. Rummaging to find what you need is tiresome. Rummaging because you can’t figure out what it is you are supposed to be there for is worse than an irritating sales pitch, it’s memorably bad to the point of comedy.

Maybe we’ve lost the point. If we know who we are and what we are about- that’s clear and consistent. If we know who we are trying to reach, and what their interests are, and how our site or content fits with those interests, two points for the Gipper.

But if we keep adding and changing and shifting and thising and thating, it’s only a matter of time before the shininess of it all gets lost and feels formulaic.  Glaze over and click away. Don’t come back since trying to find what you need is like getting to Solla Sollew, the Dr Seuss story about a place with no troubles.

The milkman had a solid sale with us because he was consistent.

He made it easy for us and we liked the uniqueness of his service. He didn’t also try to get me to buy vegetables or chocolate or another newspaper subscription. He did his product and did it well. He kept our business because he built a relationship with us. Making sure to give the kids a “service” (which is how you would describe for free in Japanese) of a yogurt drink or a little apple juice when we went by. His shop was likely at the station since it was built.

I wonder about how long sites last with so much noise and change. Clearly the needs of audiences are different- but the desire to have something that is consistently itself- whether it’s  an online magazine, or an Internet tool is there at an integral level. I think they sit flashing like storefronts somewhere off the Internet superhighway, bright and frozen in their empty moment and always waiting for the crowded tomorrow that will not come.

“Men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.” George Bernard Shaw

“Everybody said so. Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right.” Charles Dickens

“Human nature is not obliged to be consistent.” Lucy Maud Montgomery