Nuance and Old Age

nu·ance  (näns, ny-, n-äns, ny-)

n. 

1. A subtle or slight degree of difference, as in meaning, feeling, or tone; a gradation.
2. Expression or appreciation of subtle shades of meaning, feeling, or tone
I spent some time with a friend of mine today.  I was gonna say that he was an old guy – which he wouldn’t like – so he’ll just be a friend that I really look up to (I’ll tag his name).
With age comes experience and expertise.  It’s great to be able to lean on someone that has more “age” than you do.  Ask them questions.  No matter what you’re processing through, they will be able to give you nuance – on whatever questions or issues you might have.
It goes together – nuance and old age.

Is Perfect Important?

I straight stole this from Seth’s Blog – check the original post here.

He asks tons of question – 16 to be exact and number 13 was the one that caught my attention:

Is perfect important? (Do you feel the need to fail privately, not in public?)

He was connecting perfect with failure, and more importantly, he didn’t give an option for not failing – just asked though if you need to fail privately or publicly.

Failure is not a bad thing.  It’s a great question.  The insight into public or private failure is key.  I think sometimes in leadership – you can’t choose – so fail well.

What? How?

There are other one word questions I can ask about the oil spill going on right now?  I can ask all of these questions and direct them to BP, the government, and many other entities that won’t give me an answer.

It’s been going on for weeks.  It’s a sad story.  But of all the one word questions that I can direct to multiple entities, I have to stop and ask myself these 2 questions.

What?  What is my perspective on this?  What is my role in this?  What should I take a stand for with this?  How?  How can I help?  How can I teach through this?  How can I connect to this as a human being?

What are you doing?  How are you making this yours?

Life and Questions

So how do you handle life and questions?  You like that I started with a question?

I was thinking about this today.  I was wondering why is it that when we have questions – that we need answers.  Is it a western mindset?  Is it just an American thing?  Is it a modern thing?  It can’t be a post-modern thing and if it was, then no one would care.

I was wondering if the eastern mind can live in the questions.  I know in the rabbinic tradition that learning was marked by questions – that the rabbi would know whether you were progressing in thought by the questions that you asked.  Those students lived in the questions.  They kept asking questions.  They kept thinking of questions.  Learning would not progress with the questions.

I wonder how education and formation would be if I lived in the questions.