Dave's Sip of Authenticity (revisited)
A Reflection of Personal Values
Dave suddenly had chocolate milk all over his face. It shot right into his glasses and started dripping down his shirt into his lap.
He could feel it in his nostrils and went into a brief panic. He was drowning. He tried to take a breath and, instead, let out a long, loud snort.
He grabbed some paper toweling to wipe off his hot face, blue shirt, crimson tie and navy suit pants.
"I'm sorry," Dave said softly, trying to express his regret that such a stupid thing should happen during an executive staff meeting in which the key players in the company (yes, all men) were trying to finalize contingency plans for the upcoming year.
"That's OK," the president replied for the whole group of six other vice presidents. They sat around a rectangular conference table, eating high-cholesterol lunches of cold French fries, tough Reuben sandwiches and milk. Yes, it was 1978 -- before President Reagan's go-go business climate of the 1980s.
No one spoke for a moment.
"Damn suit," Dave finally said. "I just got it dry-cleaned."
Several of the guys chuckled. Dave quickly realized it was not what he said that was funny. He glanced around the table and detected a lack of comfortableness -- mixed with some pity and a realization that such an incident could happen to each of them.
Dave could see each of them questioning themselves about how they would react, if they had received the chocolate milk bath.
The vice president of finance announced, "I'll get some more paper toweling." He left the room on the run.
But that didn't relieve the tension.
"How are you going to explain that one to Jan?" the vice president of manufacturing finally chided. "Come home with chocolate milk all over yourself?"
"I'll do my Superman switch before I walk in the front door," Dave abruptly shot back, and they all laughed with a little bit of relief.
"How about dropping your suit off at the dry-cleaners on the way home?" one of the other guys suggested. "Jan won't think a thing of it, if you walk in the door in your underwear."
"I'll take my chances with a stained suit," Dave replied with a grin.
That evoked another round of more relaxed laughter.
As the group went on with its meeting, the chocolate milk incident quickly disappeared as a focus amid business-related assumptions and projections. But Dave privately cussed those pint milk cartons and vowed to always bring a solid coffee mug to the weekly staff meetings so he could drink from a cup.
For the first five years of his life with Parkinson's he had gotten by. He thought he had mastered America's masculine way of drinking from a carton without a straw. He'd carefully grab the carton with both hands, steady it on the table, tip it slightly and bring his head down to drink from the v-shaped spout.
Dave could usually judge how firm his grip would be around something that could be crushed, such as a milk carton.
But he was edgy that day -- and daring. He sat straight in his chair and raised the carton to his lips while it was still full of milk. Suddenly an involuntary squeeze from both of his hands collapsed the carton, forcing the chocolate milk into his face like a syringe.
Chocolate milk in a carton was one more item to add to Dave's internal list of "What to Do, Ifs," a mix of merely embarrassing situations as well as the truly dangerous that he learned to anticipate, diffuse or avoid through the years as a person with Parkinson's.
It was also the day when he recognized that authenticity in business and in his personal life was one of the keys to his well-being. This observation from Laure Junot Abrantes, "Letters of Junius," ran through his mind at the time:
"There is a moment of difficulty and danger at which flattery and falsehood can no longer deceive and simplicity itself can no longer be misled."
Now well into his retirement, Dave uses his "chocolate milk story" to illustrate the relationship he had developed in the late 1970s with the senior management team of a successful cheese manufacturing firm (where he was the only employee with a visible disability). He believes it shows he had learned how to diffuse the tense moments that sometimes occurred due to his Parkinson's by just being his natural self and not taking himself or his disability too seriously.
Today he realizes he was reaffirming the value of authenticity before it later became a buzzword and business management concept in the 21st Century. It was when business people started asking, “Are our actions congruent with our values?”
Dave's takeaway tip from his story: Measure your every-day actions against your values.
Here’s to elderhood and vulnerability!
Jim Hasse, ABC, GCDF retired, author of “Opening Up” newsletter
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Even though I continue the personal values learning process, I've found that as I age I care much less about mistakes - verbal or physical. Life is so much easier.
Medical professionals are trained to work toward optimum results. I understand that. But I feel I never connected with a physical therapist who, for instance, would give me both the pros and cons of a particular path toward my development as an individual with lifelong cerebral palsy.
During my early years, I needed some practicality, some authenticity about how far I could progress physically. But, of course, no one knew. Perhaps that was too much to ask. After all, when I was born, doctors thought I had little chance of walking or talking or going to school. And no one wanted to say (and I didn’t either), “This is probably your limit.”
Just before I entered high school, I admitted to my grade-school physical therapist that I still didn’t feel confident crossing a street because I could not rely on my balance. I feared falling amid the traffic.
“No problem,” she replied. She promptly took a tape measure and measured the cross walk outside of our school building. “See, 16 feet. Practice walking that distance indoors unaided every day. You’ll get it.”
That was 1957. Today, I still can’t walk across a street without my crutches or my walker. And I still have nightmares of getting off a city bus without my crutches and standing on the street corner terrified because I don’t have the confidence to cross the street.
After four years of “hugging” the walls for balance in high school and pushing a grocery cart to gain balance and carry books between classes during my first two years in college, I finally bought myself a pair of Canadian crutches and learned how to use them – without the advice or consent of a physical therapist.
Over the years, I’ve also “graduated” from crutches to a walker and from a walker to a mobility scooter. So, now I have all three to use when and where each makes the most sense.
Living a life of vulnerability has given me unique opportunities to see how far I can go and match what I do with what I value. So, at age 80, I can say, “This is my authentic self.”
* When did you learn to act comfortably according to your values?