What Kind of Person?

November 30, 2012

The Nov. 12, 2012 issue of Fortune magazine asked 21 high-profile people from all walks of life for the one piece of wisdom that got them where they are today.  The responses were typical tripe . . . except from Scott Griffith, Chairman and CEO of Zipcar.  Griffith said he received this advice from his brother 15 years ago:

"You have to think about what kind of person you want to be when you’re done with this experience.  Think about coming out of this a different person than you go in.”

Mr. Griffith got this advice shortly after he was diagnosed with stage 2 Hodgkins lymphoma.  But he came to see how this advice could be applied to any challenge – positive or negative – in his or anybody else’s life.

Think how different things would be if Pete Rose had asked this before betting that he could get away with gambling during his Major League Baseball career; or if Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens or others had asked it before the start of their steroid-stained MLB careers.

Which takes me to more recent fallen heroes:  Lance Armstrong, and Generals David Petraeus and John Allen. All three have done so much that is so good, most of which has unraveled with their ruined reputations.

If they had only asked, “What kind of person do I want to be when I’m done with this experience?”

They have come out of their experiences different than they went in, but not at all as they had hoped.

We used to say, “No good deed goes unpunished.”  It’s also true these days that no bad deed goes undiscovered.

Fracking in School Sports

May 1, 2015

First there were rumors, then there were reports, and now there are beginning to be results from geological surveys warning that the process of fracking in oil and gas exploration and deep ground extraction is increasing the frequency of earthquakes in several parts of the United States.
I want to say, “Duh! How could it not?” Why would it surprise any rational human being that the delicate blue marble we inhabit would not get off kilter when we bore deep into the surface with drills and explosive charges and then pump water at high pressure into the tunnels we create and the crevices we exploit? When I put that picture in my mind, I shudder.
Often I picture the world of school sports like this marble we inhabit. Sometimes I see exploiters drilling deep into our core, dropping explosives, applying pressure, and extracting what they believe are valuable resources while laying waste to everything else, including very much that is very precious to very many other people – in fact, to most athletes, coaches, administrators, officials, parents and spectators.
We should pay attention to the times when we feel our foundation shaking, even just a little. We should make it difficult for the exploiters to extract our elite, especially when they disregard and lay waste to everything else that holds our world – educational athletics – together.