(cont'd) How can we do something surprising, and memorable with our lives? How can we turn this job, in small but important ways, into a better representation of ourselves? Most of us would easily say that we are our jobs. That's obvious from the late hours we all keep. So then, it is bigger than work, isn't it? It is about us. How do we wish to define our lives? So that when we are sixty, or seventy, or eighty and we're sinking down onto that cool floor of '0 Hare airport, with playoff tickets in our pockets, perhaps we too can know that we led A Happy Life? Is it important to be a Person and not just a slave to the commerce of Professional Sport? Do we want to be Remembered? Or do we just want to be the guy who sold the guy who sold shoes that came with the little pump? Recently I was asked by the son of a client, in so many words, "what do you stand for?" I was lost for an answer. At 14, I wasn't lost for that answer. At 18, I wasn't lost for an answer. At 35, I was blown away that I had no answer. I could only look at the fade of a 12 year-old boy, concerned about his dad, needing my help, just looking at me for the answer I didn't have. The look on that kid's face is a part of me now. And the feeling I had, and have now, is pushing me forward, writing this Mission Statement.
1:17 AM, Miami, thoughts: My dad was one of the good guys. He studied at West Point, went to Korea in the conflict there. Later, he left a glittering life in the military to move to California, because my mother did not take well to the army life. My father never complained about it. He was prone to tell his war stories, but never in a beery "you gotta listen to me" way. He was graceful and he was funny, and he didn't complain. For the late part of the sixties and the early seventies, even while doing volunteer work for United Way, as I previously described, he was an operator of Telephone Answering Services. He had two of these businesses. Long rooms filled with telephone operators who coolly answered your phone for you when you were away from home. "Can I take a message?" Almost as soon as he began this business, the first automatic telephone answering machine was introduced onto the market. Our conversations at the table were often about the future, and whether the world would accept these new machines. "I just can't talk to one," said my mother. "Neither can I," said my older brother. "Nobody wants to talk to a machine." "They'll never last," said my dad. "People only like to talk to people." Within three years, mechanical answering machines were everywhere. The whole idea of a human answering your phone while you were away was no longer important. People were talking with machines, regularly and familiarly. Making funny phone messages, personalizing the machine of forward motion that had arrived in their homes. There was no way back. The machine was a part of life, but only when everyone learned to personalize it.
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