Laughing

A few days ago my friend Mike asked me how I was. I said "good", and he told me I was transparent, and he knew it wasn't true. He's one of the few people I someone manage not to trick lately. I put on a mask every morning when I leave my house - a mask that smiles, and says "I'm happy with my life, and I am capable".

When I take the mask off each day my face feels heavy. My real face says, "I'm unhappy. I don't feel loved by anyone. I'm overworked and overwhelmed. How is it that I work so hard for nothing?" The real face doesn't smile. Hasn't smiled, in a long time. . .

Until this afternoon, that is. After feeling short of breath and dizzy for most of the day, I was happy to take a break from working with the day camp kids and teach a violin lesson with a 10 year old girl who I've worked with for a few years. To make playing her review songs more fun, I came up with a game to play them in a random order. She would roll the dice, and whatever number it landed on was the number song we would play. Our efforts at being random didn't work. Alexa rolled a 2 (we changed the number 1 to 7, so 2 was first), then a 3, then 4, and when she rolled a 5 next we couldn't believe it.

Song #5, called "Oh Come Little Children" is the first song Suzuki students learn that starts on an up bow, and usually they forget this. Sometimes I remind them ahead of time, other times I don't, to see if they remember on their own. After Alexa rolled her #5 she ran back over to the piano as I played the introduction, with no up bow warning. Alexa played the first note a down bow, realized it by the second note, just when I did, and screeched her bow to a halt. I stopped, at the same time, and in the same manner as she had, and we laughed.

I laughed because the situation was so predictable. I laughed because the screech had sounded so funny. I laughed because Alexa and I had stopped at the same moment, thinking the same thing. I laughed because Alexa was laughing and smiling. I laughed because I hadn't laughed in so long.

We started the song again, still giggling, and I sure had a big smile on my face. And for maybe 90 seconds today, in the real world, I had no mask on. I was me. I was real. I was happy. I was loved.

If You Have Customers, They're Always Right

Bad Example #1 - Getting New Customers
Over here at the corner of "the best intersection in Monroe County" three things happen. Envision a lower level of a house divided into three sections. The section to the left is an insurance agency. The middle section belongs to the homeowners - it is their kitchen and dining room (the second floor makes up the remainder of the living quarters). The right hand section is an arts school. Ron, the homeowner, is also the owner of the insurance agency. His wife owns the arts school, which I am hired to manage.

Ron loves to give tours of the old house. Lately, he's been proudly showing all his friend, clients, and insurance reps the arts school's new Lego room. The school is successfully running Lego Education camps each week of the summer. Today, while I was reheating some soup in the microwave, Ron came through with a man and his young son, giving them a tour. As they come into the kitchen from the Lego room the man says "my son is a Lego fanactic! Do you still have spots left?" I wait for Ron to introduce me, and have me get them registered, but he ignores the question and points out some shelves he repositioned in the kitchen. The man asks again, and Ron stammers, and says "yeah, those classes are popular". I'm still standing there. The man asks a third time, and this time Ron directs the man's attention to the wall behind his range, standing right next to me, and suggests that if he put a backsplash on the wall for Ron (the guy must be a contractor of some sort) his son could go to Lego camp. As they walk back into the insurance agency I hear the guy pusing for more details, and Ron just says "we'll work something out".

I'm confounded. Why not just introduce me, and I could have easily given the father a registration packet that would have answered his questions and got his son signed up for camp? In business you have to take the bait and make the sell. Putting the customer off discourages them, and doesn't get you any more business.

Bad Example #2 - The Customer Is Always Right
We tend to use the saying "the customer is always right", when the customer is actually wrong, but in order to keep their business, we treat the situation as though the customer is actually right. What happens when the customer is actually right, but is treated as though they are wrong? In this situation, the customer (myself), writes a scathing letter and withholds payments.

To make a long story short, the HOA for the townhouse complex I live in has not been able to follow through on a number of things covered in the monthly fee that residents pay. In the winter, the driveways and parking lots were not plowed. When I approached the management company about this, they assured me the plowing had been done. They told me my trash collection had been set up, when it had not. Now, when I tell them the grass is not being cut, they tell me (and I read on their website) that it gets cut weekly on Thursday. The lawns are four inches long - they were on Wedesday, they still are today, Friday. Either the management company is lying, or that is some fast growing grass!

I don't know the inner workings of management companies, but I know that in any business the road to success is not paved in ignorance, but in satisfying customers needs, especially when you have agreed, and been paid, to do what the customer is asking of you.

Good Example #1 - Honesty and Assistance
I called the law office of Someone and Someone Else this morning.
"I'm looking for some information about the townhouse I bought several months ago", I told the woman who answered the phone. I explained my situation - the the air conditioner is not working properly and I'm trying to find the name of the person who installed it, as it was brand new when I bought the home and may still be under warranty. I was told that the seller's attorney (who is either "Someone" or "Someone Else") could potentially get that information from the seller. The woman was at first confused as why I was contacting the seller's attorney, not my own attorney, but listened to my request carefully. She asked for the address of the property, my name, and address.
"I'm only here until noon today", she told me "And we keep many files in off-site storage, so I may not be able to get the file today. Would you be able to wait until Monday?" I was surprised at her willingness to help me, and told her that would be fine.

Why would Someone and Someone Else be so helpful to a person who wasn't their client? They could have easily written me off. Someone and Someone Else obviously have good business principles. "If we're nice to this girl," they're thinking, "even though she's not our client, maybe she will be our client next time she needs a lawyer. Maybe she will recommend her family and friends to us. If we're not nice to her, maybe she'll go bad mouth us".


Conclusion:
Doing good business means treating your customers and their concerns kindly, and with respect. Blowing them off just upsets them, and loses you business. Treat people badly: everyone loses. Treat people well: Everyone wins.

Proven Results

As my friends date, get engaged, and then married, I am left absolutely baffled.

People are making their marriage decisions on hearsay, not on evidence!

Maybe I'm overly scientific or overly logical (highly likely), but if someone you are dating says "As your husband, I will provide the income to support you and our 2.7 children" I'd expect that he would have measures already in place to accomplish this - A job, and preferably one that makes more than minimum wage. I wouldn't marry someone who was waiting until after the ceremony to go start earning money. I don't think I know many (I do know some) who would. Guys prove to girls that they can provide the family finances by having a job. If I were looking to marry someone who could contribute financially (which I am), I'd want proof, not promises. (This is just one example of what a guy may need to prove - he might also prove dedication to family, ability to fix household items such as plumbing and cars, and good financial management, just to name a few).

Many of the females I know who are starting off their marriages this summer are going to be housewives. They will cook, and clean, and raise children - yet they currently partake in zero of these activities on a daily basis. Now, if I were one of the guys who was considering marrying one of these girls I'd be looking for some proof. I'd want to see that they can prepare three meals a day, and then clean up the dishes. I'd expect that they would have some sort of home, or room of their own, and they were able to maintain it's cleanliness and organization. I'd want to know how often they washed their towels. I'd want to see that they could live within a budget. I'd want to witness their interaction with children, or at least know that they had some experience. I've not seen any of this, though. I see guys choosing to marry girls who say "I'll make you dinner every night", yet the girls have never managed to make dinner every night for even themselves before. The girls are not giving any proof that they can perform normal housewife duties. In fact, while their words are full of promises, for some of these girls, their actions are proof of the exact opposite!

My bafflement is for the following reasons:

1 - Guys are typically far more logical than girls, so shouldn't they be going through more of a reasoning process?

2 - Why on earth would any person marry someone who has not shown you they can and will do what they say they will?

3 - There are plenty of girls out there who have proven that they can do what the offer, including girls who offer to be housewives. Why are these guys not picking the girls with proven results to be their wives?

Marriage is like medication. Say you have a sinus infection and your doctor offers you amoxicillin (which your health insurance covers and so you pay nothing out of pocket) or to be part of the drug trial for some new pill called Medication X (which would be at no charge). All other factors equal, I'd choose the amoxicillin because it's been tested, already, so I know it's going to work.


Note: I've never been engaged or married, so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about. This is just my method of evaluation (in everything), and I fail to understand why it is not the preferred method of more people when it comes to engagement and marriage, especially males.

Note 2: If you're opposite of the rest of the world, and a guy/girl you are dating provides you with the specific evidence you are looking for, and you don't marry them, that's just as ridiculous and non-sensical, in my opinion.

Note 3: This does not apply to everyone who gets engaged and married, or even everyone I know getting engaged and married this summer, I've just seen enough people in this situation to notice that it is fairly common.

Broken

In my college choir, which for some reason I auditioned for and got into, every concert was ended with the hymn "A Mighty Fortress". We performed the song from memory each time, yet the words were meaningless to me. The only gratifying thing about the hymn was the organ solo before verse four, and the key change. Other than that, it was repetitive, boring, and pointless.

Last summer, along with "Click, Click, Click" by New Kids on the Block, and some country song called "In A Hurry", "A Mighty Fortress" was constantly running through my head. I sang, and sang, and sang the song, and now, five years after learning it, the words were meaningful, not just a bunch of gibberish. I meditated on God's strength and power, His ability to provide, but mostly His sufficiency. The final words of the hymn struck me the most:

Let goods and kindred go
This mortal life also
The body they may kill
His truth abideth still
His kingdom is forever

"Certainly", I thought "if I lost everything important to me - my favorite things, my favorite people - I'd still love God and be fine". So I sang the song! I did it out of happiness - I felt like I was on top of the world, and nothing could bring me down! I told God that He could take anything I had, anything I loved, that none of it mattered, that He was first and I'd be fine.

God took me up on the offer.

For nearly a year I've been watching things in my life crumble - endeavors, hopes and dreams, relationships, goals. As I feel a year of destruction coming to an end I only have a couple things to say.

First, be careful what you pray for. Be careful what you sing.

Second, and more important, God has broken me. A year ago I was prideful and arrogant, thinking I was absolutely indestructible - and I didn't even know it. Today, I see some real truth in the song. It simply says that in spite of my destruction - physical or emotional - God still is. It doesn't tell me to ask or pray for pain and hurt and loss, it doesn't tell me I have to be happy about it if that is what happens, it tells me that God is the indestructible one, not me.

My Aloe Plant and I

Steve gave me an aloe plant for a housewarming gift. It was a clipping from his aloe plant, which I'd seen transported from all of his homes in a small turtle shaped pot. It was a symbol of a friend of his who had died in their childhood. The day after I closed he came to my parents house, to help me take a car load of stuff over the the new house, and brought the aloe plant with him. He handed it to me and hugged me. It was small, and green, and I could see the roots and dirt through the glass jar it was in. It was cute, and sweet, and I liked the plant right away.

Steve and I got in my car, and headed for the post office before going to my new house. The glass jar holding the aloe plant didn't fit in the cup holder of my car, so I handed it to Steve and asked him to keep it safe. On the five minute drive to the post office Steve wedged the plant between the passenger seat and door, and when he opened the door at the post office the plant fell to the pavement and the jar broke. We laughed. He went in to mail his package, and came out with an extra envelope to scoop up the dirt and plant from the parking lot. He took an empty water bottle from my backseat, cut the top off, and emptied the dirt and the plant into there. The water bottle fit into the cup holder, where it stayed until we got to my new house.

At my house, I put the plant on the windowsill in the kitchen, and I commented about hoping I didn't kill it. Steve said he'd kept his alive through college, so certainly I would not kill mine. So far, I haven't. I water it, and it has been growing. After a month, Steve brought over some larger containers, and replanted it in the bottom of a juice bottle, where it lives now. I've watched the leaves grow up and out. I've watched two shoots come up on either side of the original plant. I see the leaves turn towards the sun. The soil the plant is living in is moldy, and it's just an empty juice container, but it's still alive and thriving.

Today, when I watered the plant, I thought about it, and it's history. It seems to me like it's been through a lot, for a plant anyway. I feel compassion for it, even if it is just a plant. With me, it's never lived in a nice pot. It's been dropped on the ground. It's been repotted a number of times. Right now, it's home is moldy. But it's thriving, anyway. And I thought "plant, I feel the same way. Do you know how many times I've been dropped on the pavement and everything around me broke? I feel like I'm living in a big pile of mold now, too! But, plant, I am still growing and thriving, too". I felt like maybe everything would be okay. Because if the plant can do it, well so can I. If the plant can do it, then I'll do it with the plant, and we'll be okay.