When we last left our Abecedarium, I had discussed my difficulty in deferring to those with greater knowledge and skill than I, ending with committing myself to the word Endurance for this “E” essay.  It’s a little freaky how prophetic my word choices for the next-in-the-series seems to be.  I had better be very careful in choosing an “F” word at the end of this essay!

My very patient long-term readers have been breathlessly following our home renovation saga.  For you newbies, Trish and I decided last spring to redo and expand our kitchen as well as put in a new main bedroom suite above our garage and family room.  Over the spring and summer, we worked with the builder on design; picked out cabinets, granite, appliances, fixtures, and a million other things you need to choose; “locked in” construction to theoretically start in October; and, made plans to move into her sister’s house while she and her husband wintered in Florida.  It was a great plan.  We packed up the kitchen, living room, and garage (into our sun room, basement, and office) and awaited word on when demo would begin!  Thus began a saga that is only now trickling to an end.  We knew that the valley on the other side of the mountain would be worth the climb up the shear cliff in front of us.  We knew there would be unexpected twists and turns.  We just figured we’d be able to handle it all with grace.

As I write this, sitting at the island in our new kitchen, we are really close to being done.  I feel calmer than I have in months.  Trish and I are starting to laugh a bit at some of the difficulties we encountered along the way.  Just a bit, though.  There are still some raw topics.  Getting through this construction has truly been an exercise in endurance and it got me to thinking about the role “learning to endure” has played in my life.

It is true that pushing yourself through difficult times makes you stronger.  I ran track in high school and focused mostly on short distances.  One meet, our state-champion miler was out with an injury and the coach had me run the mile.  Me, the sprinter who normally ran the 440.  (By the way, these references show how old I am.  We did not use metric distances when I was in high school.  By “440” I mean 440 yards, a quarter mile.)  The 440 is a really tough race because it’s too short to pace yourself but too long to be an all-out sprint.  Keeping something in reserve for that last 100 yards while not falling behind the pack was a constant challenge.  When I heard the crack of the starter’s pistol for that mile race, I ran out like I did for a 440, realizing in less than half a lap that that was a big mistake.  I backed off my pace but had no prayer of keeping up with other milers.  I ran hard and lost badly.  After that meet, the coach had me run more distance drills during practices.  I hated every minute of it; however, my 440 time began to steadily drop.  I had more endurance for the last stretch of the race because of the challenge of pushing past my normal limits.

I have an endless list of “endurance” stories in both my personal and professional lives.  Perhaps my most instructive one was when we were negotiating to outsource the department I lead to ownership by another company.  The “we” I’m referring to is myself and the rest of the department leadership team.  This was not something initiated by senior management of the company.  In fact, convincing THEM that this deal was in their best interest was the toughest part of the process.  We started by making inquiries with the target parent company and then began our pitch internally.  We didn’t discuss this with the members of the department because we had no idea if it would go anywhere.  Once it appeared the deal had legs, we made the plan public.  We thought, since there was basic buy-in from both sides, that this process would proceed quickly—a few months.  It took, start to finish, about 18 months—and about a year from when we made the organization aware of the plan.  The twists and turns, the drama and intrigue, the impact of the politics and individual agendas wore us all to a frazzle.  As the head of the organization, I bore the responsibility of the decision and the commitment to make it work out well as a heavy mantle.  It was not easy.  It was not perfect.  I’m sure there are many who would say it was the wrong decision.  But we made it happen and for at least a while it was a positive move on balance.  Getting through the process took a heavy toll yet I came out the other side stronger than I had ever been.  It made me a better leader and a stronger decision maker.

I count this whole renovation among my endurance lessons, as well.  The granite for the bathroom was eventually cut correctly for the sinks the builder ordered, although he ordered the wrong dang sinks!  He ordered square sinks; we wanted round.  Sounds like a small detail, but it was just the last straw.  I was in the airport in Charleston, exhausted after a few fabulous days with my college friends, when I got the call.  Not the call you want to get when you are tired, hung over, and your stomach hurts from eating too much rich food.  I was so angry when I got home that I called the builder and yelled for ten minutes.  I only allowed him to speak when he agreed to pay the balance on what we owed the granite supplier.  Hopefully, over time those square sinks will not dig at us, but for right now, we just hate those sinks.  Now, however, the bathroom is complete.  The granite is beautiful.  The carpet is in (this time with no stains or mold).  The new platform bed frame is awaiting the mattress.  All furniture has been returned to its rightful place.  Now that the dust has settled—and I mean that literally, since dust is EVERYWEHRE—we see how beautiful the valley is on the other side of the mountain.  We have endured.  We are the better for it.  We will never, EVER go through a home renovation again but I’m sure there will be other challenges that we will need to endure.

One valuable lesson I learned throughout this whole process was the need to force myself, literally FORCE myself, to focus at least as much on what was going right as on what was going wrong.  It is easy, of course, to allow yourself to focus on the bad.  It is critical to make the choice to not lose that perspective.  Easier said than done.  So, why was this whole renovation thing so hard and so traumatic?  Because it was an FFT.  We’ll discuss that next time.  (Hint:  Fans of my spirit animal, Brené Brown, already know what that means.)

My model for a good manager and leader throughout most of my career was someone who was in perfect control and had all the answers. There was an expectation at my places of work that “the boss” was always the smartest person in the room. When I first moved into leadership positions, I also modeled that behavior. Everyone seemed to want me to have all the answers, so I pretended I did. I didn’t, of course. No one has ALL the answers, ALL of the time. But that was the macho leadership model I was taught. As I grew older and hopefully a bit wiser, I began to see a different model. The leaders I began to admire and emulate were not the loud, brash ones. In fact, they were often not the most visible people and certainly not the most vocal. They led from out front when they needed to do so, but mostly they deferred to those who had the most expertise in the topic of the day. They were humble (you KNOW that will be my “H” word); they knew that they were NOT necessarily the smartest person in the room and they actively looked to surround themselves with people who were smarter than they were. In some organizations, leaders like that do not advance because the culture of that organization requires a macho leader. However, in good organizations those are exactly the leaders that excel.

Learning to defer to those with greater expertise was hard for me to do.  As we have amply discussed, I am a control freak and us control freaks want things done our way.  It makes me cringe to type this, but the reason I want things done my way is because I believe that my way, my beliefs, my views are the best; that I am the smartest person in the room.  Ouch.  Earlier in my career, admitting I didn’t know something was seen as a real liability.  I remember meeting with someone in engineering and asking for their thoughts on something that they knew a lot about and I knew nothing.  I thought that was a wise thing to do.  I found out later, through a friend, that that senior engineer saw my questioning as a sign of weakness!  I was blown away by that!  Why on earth should he think that a young chemist should know about a complicated engineering problem?!  You can imagine the dampening effect that comment had on my willingness to ask questions.

As my career progressed, I began to learn to ask more questions instead of assuming I had all the answers.  Counterintuitively, this became easier the more senior I got.  For some reason, the senior person in the room was allowed to ask the “stupid questions” because their seniority gave them legitimacy.  I felt free to ask someone to explain what some acronym meant, or what some test meant, or what the assumptions were around some marketing data.  Time and time again, I could see body language in others that told me that I wasn’t the only one who had a given question.  But others were not comfortable asking for fear of being judged.

Pretending you understand can be really dangerous.  Remember the Great Recession of 2009?  Part of what drove the economy into the ground was the collapse of firms holding billions in Collateralized Debt Obligations, wherein financial firms packaged up high risk mortgage loans into “high return” investment vehicles.  As people defaulted on the loans, the financial firms who held those CDO’s lost tons and tons of money overnight; losses snow balled; firms went bankrupt; you know the rest.  That is probably a really wrong explanation because I do not understand CDO’s.  But in Monday Morning Quarterbacking the causes of the Great Recession, much was written about complex financial instruments that people (professional financial managers, not ordinary investors) were buying but that they did not understand.  They did NOT understand the risks!  But they couldn’t admit that they didn’t understand.

What I found, toward the end of my career, is that the more questions I asked and the more I deferred to people smarter than I was on various topics, the smarter I actually became.  I was learning every day.  My skill is in being able to take in new information, tie it to what I already know, and ask questions to make sure I am not making faulty assumptions.  I actually WANT to learn that I have made faulty assumptions because I revel in learning new things.  This is making my retirement a lot of fun!  Add this to the things I wish I had learned earlier.

Let me tell you, then, about the last couple of weeks since I wrote about Control.  When we last left our home renovation saga, the granite people had just found a new slab to hopefully match the granite they had cut incorrectly for the bathroom vanity in the new bedroom, and I was gearing up to watch the Eagles play in the Super Bowl.  After I posted that last essay, I got the reminder about my colonoscopy on Monday.  Yes, I had scheduled a colonoscopy for the morning after my hometown team played in the Super Bowl.  I spent the Super Bowl prepping for the scope.  I reacted badly to the new prep I tried, suffering from severe nausea, chills, and a racing heart.  It barely registered that the Eagles lost.  I did not sleep all night and was comatose the next day after the procedure.  Then, for good measure, my laptop crashed in the middle of a Zoom call with my college friends.  The hard drive died a violent death.  The granite people went radio silent again.  More and more details kept popping up that slowed down the completion of the renovation.  The guy came to install the carpet in the new bedroom and, when he unrolled the carpet, found that it was stained and moldy from top to bottom.  Over this same time period, my Mom was moving to a different senior living facility and I was coordinating from afar with my sister, who did the lion’s share of the work.  I was left with worry and anxiety that all would go well.  We ran ourselves ragged over three days moving back into the house anyway since the kitchen was done, dodging the painters who were still finishing up.  And Bridget, of course, threw up in her carrier during the literally half mile drive home.  I couldn’t control anything.  I couldn’t fix anything.  I had to defer to the expertise of those around me and trust that they would make it all happen.  And it has.  Or it will. 

We are back in the house.  The kitchen is freaking beautiful.  Not perfect, but perfection cannot be the goal.  The cats are settled.  The rest of the house, outside of the new main bedroom, is coming together.  My laptop has a brand new hard drive; most of the data were saved; and, it’s faster than the day I bought it.  Mom is settling into her new community.  I’m about to go away for a few days with my college friends.  There has been a lot of deep breathing, some pulled muscles, and fights with Trish over little things.  But, like most things in life, this is working out.  Over and over again, I have to learn the lesson that most things DO work out.  It’s a lesson in Endurance.

At the end of last week’s first essay in my year-long Abecedarium, I committed myself to the word “breathe” for this “B” essay.  I’m not sure I am going to commit to the word for the next letter at the end of each essay, but having done so with “breathe,” I’ve spent a lot of time over these past two weeks ruminating on the breath.

The instructor at our Thursday Stretch and Balance class at the Y always begins with a few minutes of breathing exercises to center us.  I am always amazed at the impact that those few minutes of deep, structured breathing has on my physical and mental state.  Why this happens is really no mystery.  Our autonomous nervous system, which controls things like breathing and heart rate and digestion (functions that happen without us needing to consciously focus on them), has two parts.  The sympathetic system is what drives our flight-or-fight response.  It is typically characterized by short, shallow breaths and is often accompanied by release of cortisol and adrenaline.  In fact, just taking short, shallow breaths can make you feel anxious.  The parasympathetic system controls our rest and relaxation response.  It is characterized by slow, deep, diaphragmatic breathing and is often accompanied by the release of endorphins, the hormones that calm you down.

This Stretch and Balance class is at 8:00 am, so I’m not totally awake when we get there.  I’m clearly not ready for vigorous exercise.  However, after we have done those few minutes of breathing exercises, my mind feels clear, my body feels ready to go, and I’m ready for Downward Dogs and Tree Poses.  Before we transition from breathing exercises to “work,” the instructor suggests we pick a word to express our intention for the day.  Something always comes to me that fits.  It might be about calm and peace, it might be about getting things done, it might be about focus.  Whatever it is, in that moment my mind knows what I need that day.  That sort of clarity is so valuable.

Part of what I’ve been ruminating on is why I don’t do deep breathing exercises on my own.  I know that from a vigorous exercise perspective, I do way better with an instructor.  The effort I can inspire in myself pales in comparison to the effort I will output at the suggestion of an instructor.  I have accepted that, which is why I go to exercise classes most of the time.  But breathing?  Isn’t that something I should be able to do without Jane instructing me to do so?  Can’t I spend a few minutes each day deep breathing? 

The problem is shutting off my very active inner voice.  When Jane is talking us through three part or four part breathing, my mind is focusing on her voice and her direction and other mind chatter is silenced.  When I attempt to direct myself to do these exercises, the “random chatter” side of my brain has no respect for the “breathe to a count of four” side of my brain.  And before I know it, I’m breathing with shallower breaths again and my “random chatter” brain declares victory.

I’ve gone through stretches of time when I am fairly consistent with Mindfulness Meditation, which is all about controlled deep breathing.  Honestly, I’ll do it for a few days in a row and then just forget about doing it.  I have not been successful at making it a high enough priority that it becomes a must-do in my daily life.  Maybe ruminating on this publicly will make me hold myself more accountable.  (I’ve already been asked if I’ve started the Mandarin lessons on my Rosetta Stone.  My very valid excuse is that it’s under a pile of crap in the office in the house.  But once we are back home and unpacked, the accountability will resurface.  Ni hao.)

Being so conscious of the impact of breathing over these past couple of weeks has made me painfully aware of how often I am in need of a deep breath.  Many of those instances have surrounded the inevitable issues that have popped up around our home renovations.  I actually asked the project manager this week how many Xanax pills he needs a day since EVERY DAY unexpected issues arise.  He laughed.  But he never answered my question.  Trish and I continue to take turns melting down over our lack of control and desire for this to just be done.  When we saw that the sinks ordered for the bathroom vanity didn’t fit (which is holding up cutting the granite for the bathroom, which is holding up the tiling, which is holding up the plumbing), I found myself involuntarily closing my eyes and taking a deep breath.  When we saw that the HVAC guy had inexplicably left a two-inch roundish hole in the ceiling of the new bedroom (that had JUST been painted) next to where he cut the opening for the heat pump filter, I rolled my eyes—and then found myself closing my eyes and taking a deep breath.  When Trish tripped AGAIN over the gate into the backyard that has yet to be rehung, we both yelled—and then took deep breaths.  Nothing changed in the moment before the deep breaths and after, but we calmed down a bit.  We knew things would be addressed, problems would be solved, and we’d find a way to deal with the outcomes.  I’m finding myself taking deep breaths just writing this paragraph.

Think about how many times you tell yourself or someone else to take a deep breath.  I was thinking of that during a recent Zoom call with my college friends, since we often share our stressors with each other.  I think of that when I talk with my Mom and she’s dealing with stressful situations at her retirement home, or when my sister tells me about the frustrations of being on the board of her HOA.  Deep breath.  In to a count of four.  Hold for a count of four.  Out for a count of five.  Repeat.  Whether it truly helps you be in more Control or just gives you the illusion of that, it still makes a difference.

I mentioned in my last essay that Trish’s sister and husband have been kind enough to turn their home over to us while they winter in Florida and our home is renovated.  We shared the house for the first month and because they have a cat also, we kept our two in their large, finished, very comfortable basement.  It was not a hardship.  They had plenty of room.  We had a cable box.  However, I felt compelled to get up at the crack of dawn (well, pre-dawn this time of year) and go down to feed them and hang with them since we sleep upstairs.  Once Megan and Tom headed off to sunnier climes with Junior, we let our cats out of the basement.  It took a little while for them to venture forth, but once they did, the boundary setting had to begin.

The reason for this is, as anyone who has cats knows, they are the world’s potential energy police.  Any item resting above floor level—say, a bottle of vitamins on a counter—has potential energy since being at floor level is a lower energy state.  One need only convert the potential energy to kinetic energy by, say, knocking the bottle off the counter.  Once the bottle reaches the floor, it is now in a lower energy state and the universe is happy.  Cats are known to patrol the world, particularly in the middle of night, making sure all potential energy is converted to kinetic energy, bringing the universe to that more stable lower energy state.  If the item is breakable, all the better!  Breaking a glass into a thousand pieces increases entropy, also a thermodynamically favorable process.  You’re welcome.

We spent the better part of the last couple of days re-training the cats about where they could go and where they couldn’t.  No to the counter.  No to the table.  No to the Christmas tree.  No to the mantle over the fireplace.  Setting these boundaries requires consistency and immediacy.  It’s exhausting.  In case you’re wondering, we are well aware that they will go where ever they really want when we are not around.  That’s why we go around removing breakable items from high places and packing away narrow cords that seem to just scream, “Chew me!”  And by “the cats” I really mean Bridget.  Beau is a curious but generally non-destructive Very Good Boy.  Bridget is like a two-year-old with a four-foot vertical jump.

I’ve been thinking a lot over these last couple of days about how important boundaries are between all living things, how important it is to set boundaries in almost any relationship, and how hard it is to define them and then be consistent enforcing them.  So, let’s discuss that a little.

For the purposes of this essay, I’m going to define “boundaries” as “expectations of acceptable behavior.”  The boundaries we are probably most familiar with are those a parent sets for a child.  I cannot speak from personal experience from the “parent” side, but I was indeed a kid, so I can speak from the “child” side.  My parents did not have difficulty setting boundaries for me.  I am a rule-follower to the core and that, coupled with my strong need for acceptance and approval, meant that if I so much as slightly disappointed my parents, I would dissolve into tears and self-flagellate for days.  While that made for an easier time of it for my parents, it also meant that when I went off to college the lack of imposed boundaries was a problem.  It is true that you don’t know your own limits until you push past them and my college friends will readily attest to my efforts to find my limits.  I was clearly not alone in this journey.  What saved me was holding over my parental boundaries until I learned to set my own.  While I still believe I could have gotten more out of my college education (scholastically), I still managed to never earn below a B+ (although during one particularly challenging semester I did choose to take a difficult elective as pass/fail and I do believe I dropped another early on).  These were all good lessons as I learned to set boundaries with others in my life.

It is easiest to understand boundaries when there is a power imbalance, like the parent/child relationship.  Another prime example is boss/employee.  Most people understand boundary setting between a boss and their employees.  The boss sets standard expectations of behavior:  “You will show up on time and do what we have agreed you will do.  If you do this, you will get paid and the company will invest at some level in your growth.”  Bosses sometimes set other boundaries, like “you won’t come whining to me about every problem you encounter” or “you won’t talk to my boss without talking to me first.”  Boundaries are important from employee to boss, as well.  Bosses will indeed keep piling on responsibilities and deliverables until employees push back.  With the perceived power imbalance, this push back can seem like a tall order.  Employees may fear they will lose their job or be “black marked” if they push back.  I’ve got a little secret for you:  bosses most often pile work on their most valuable employees because they can depend on them.  We are just as afraid you will leave as you are that you’ll be fired.  Push back!

Setting boundaries in personal relationships is toughest of all.  In the early aughts, when I came back from my assignment in Mexico to lead the organization of which I used to be a member, I found myself in the unenviable position of becoming the boss to most of my friends.  I had to very quickly establish boundaries on our friendships and it was not fun.  I could not let my friendships influence my business decisions and most of those friendships changed permanently because of this decision.  I could not be their confidante around workplace issues; I could not favor them in decisions around assignments or promotions; I could not be infinitely accessible to people with whom I had more of a history.  I was so sensitive to not letting my personal knowledge of some people influence my thinking that I probably ended up disadvantaging them on several occasions.

Boundary setting in my most critical relationship, fortunately, has been fairly smooth.  Maybe it’s because Trish and I met later in life, when we already had been able to succinctly define our boundaries to ourselves, so we could more easily express them to someone else.  I’ve learned what she needs from me in certain situations (she likes to be left alone when she’s sick; she needs space when she’s flustered or angry; she needs to talk out disagreements quickly).  And she has learned what I need from her (get me won ton soup when I don’t feel well; give me similar space when I am flustered or angry; process and process and process any disagreement).  I have also learned the most critical boundary:  never, EVER eat the last cookie.

A while ago, I wrote an essay on toxic people.  This sense of toxicity often comes from people not respecting your boundaries.  We all have those acquaintances who want to be closer to you (or more important to you) than you feel.  It is really uncomfortable to enforce those boundaries and I admit to having been meaner than I would have liked in some situations.  Even those within your inner circle have to respect boundaries—there is a line between going along with something that wouldn’t be your choice because your friends want to do it and being miserable because you crossed an important boundary.  I often lose sight of that line, although many might say that I am just passive aggressive and need to suck it up better.  Working on that.

As with Bridget and jumping up on counters, consistency in enforcing boundaries is always key.  This is often the rub with most of us.  Sometimes you are just weary and give in.  Sometimes you are feeling more magnanimous or compassionate and don’t hold an important line.  Do the best you can.  Just as important as it is for you to set and enforce your boundaries with others, be aware of boundaries that others are setting with you.  You may rarely get the direct feedback you need but the hints and body language are always there.  Have that explicit discussion if you can.  Boundaries can become more flexible if there is a spoken understanding.  But never eat the last cookie.

In my last essay, I hinted at a need to discuss this topic.  As many of you know (and can’t escape), Trish and I are undertaking a major renovation of our house.  I promised (threatened? warned?) that this renovation was going to rule my life for several months and, thus, influence my writing.  Anyone who has taken on a project like this one knows that there are going to be unexpected twists and turns.  Trish and I, even though we’ve never been through this before, gave ourselves a little talking to about being flexible and patient before this all got going.  Well, we’re two Virgos who like things the way we like them.  So let me tell you how all this is going so far.

We were supposed to start construction around the first of October, with a duration of 8-12 weeks.  Since we are getting our kitchen expanded and remodeled as well as adding a new main bedroom suite above the garage and family room, it made sense for us to move out and let the builders just have the run of the place.  Trish’s sister and brother-in-law, who live less than a mile from our house, graciously offered us their home while they wintered at their condo in Florida.  Sounds like a great plan, no?

The first unexpected change was Tom and Meg deciding to delay their departure to Florida because they had a number of commitments here in Philly through October, November, and December.  Cohabitating was not the original idea, particularly since we have two cats, they have a cat, and any cat owner staff will tell you cats don’t mix well without a lot of patience, treats, and the occasional vet visit.  Then, the start date of the construction kept slipping.  First to the middle of October.  Then to the following week.  Then the week after that.  The plan was to start by yanking the roof off the garage and family room and framing the addition, giving us an additional week to transition to Meg and Tom’s and get the kitchen cleaned out.  The Thursday before the Monday start date we were told, “Yeah, no.  Gonna rain Monday.  We’ll start by demo’ing the kitchen.”  It was a busy weekend.

Once the kitchen demo got underway, the project manager rightly raised concerns about the plan to put only one support beam below the addition.  By the time the architect got around to looking at things and pronounce the one support beam sufficient, the framers had already moved to another job and wouldn’t be available until after Thanksgiving, three weeks hence.  Work slowed to a snail’s pace.  Finally, we had the electrical walkthrough for the kitchen, deciding to not wait for the addition to be framed out first!  Yea!  And the electrical estimate came back four times the estimate in the contract.  So, we are now at Thanksgiving—almost two months after we thought we’d be well into the project—and we still hadn’t demo’d the roof over the garage, while the kitchen was down to studs and swinging light bulbs and we were wondering if the whole project might come in at 4x the estimate.  Punch, punch, punch.

I’ve written before about needing to push yourself outside of your comfort zone to keep your coping skills sharp.  However, that is a conscious choice: choosing to do something to keep yourself from overly fearing to do that type of thing in the future.  When I was younger, that meant moving to Mexico alone for 3+ years, speaking about sixteen words of Spanish before I left.  Now, it’s making myself drive to the airport.  On a weekday.  I’ve also written multiple times on the concept of coping energy (here, here, and here).  Those essays discussed, respectively, the importance of developing reserves of coping energy, building those reserves by focusing on what you can control as well as the actions you can take, and what happens when all the wheels come off at once.  This time we’re taking another sideways look at coping:  what happens when you get a string of unexpected issues that gnaw away at you little by little and what it takes to yank yourself back to an even-ish keel.

Now, one of the really good things about the relationship between Trish and me is that we rarely melt down at the same time.  In fact, I don’t think I can remember a simultaneous meltdown.  If it has happened, I’ve blocked out the trauma.  So, we just take turns.  She’d melt down and I’d calm her.  Then I’d melt down and she’d calm me.  Fortunately, we’ve continued to follow that pattern these last couple of months.  Something would happen; one of us would freak out; the other would calm them down; repeat, switching roles.  It has taken its toll, as I wrote a few essays ago.  Once again, we have shown ourselves that either it’s not as bad as we thought or simply that we’ll get past it even if something in our plan needs to change.

Where are we today?  First, sharing a home with Megan and Tom has been an unexpected joy!  We had to work out a few things, as expected, and we’ve had a lot of fun.  They left for Florida today and I’m really going to miss them (and their cat, Junior).  I’m already meal planning for when they come back for Christmas!  Next, there was indeed a misunderstanding on that electrical estimate that was cleared up two days later.  The roof is now off the garage and family room and the addition is going up.  Electrical in the kitchen looks about done.  Are we done with the punches?  Surely not.  So far, though, it’s all working out.  Sure, it’s supposed to pour rain and gust heavy winds tomorrow and the guys assured us they would tarp the heck out of the addition.  Will there be water damage?  I hope not, but if there is, we’ll deal with it.  It will get addressed.  There will be additional meltdowns and unexpected issues.  We’re in a calm enough spot right now for me to write with some confidence.  I promise I’ll find some other aspects of this project to write about going forward.  I think you’ve read enough about my coping issues!  Until then, it’s back to reestablishing routine and building up some reserves for those next punches.

One of my college chemistry professors had a bumper sticker pasted to his office door.  It said, “It takes alkynes to make the world.” This is a chemical play on words that my science friends are rolling their eyes at and my non-science friends are impatiently thinking, “Get to the point, Sherri.”  Alkynes are organic molecules that have a carbon-carbon triple bond.  There are several alkyne molecules that are critical to life forms of various types (including us) so, yes, it takes alkynes to make the world.  Additionally, the word is pronounced “Al”—like the man’s name—“kines”—with a long “I”.  This sort of sounds like “all kinds,” as in “it takes all kinds to make the world.”  This saying is another valuable truism.

We all know this intuitively yet it is often hard to remember in practice.  When I was younger, the issue was the struggle to understand and accept myself which led me to judge those different from me as being inferior.   Of course, this was also balanced by a paranoia that they were indeed better than me.  When you get older, the issue around putting that saying into daily practice often revolves around fear and regret:  Fear that someone different from you is dangerous and/or regret that you didn’t choose that path yourself.  So, the best thing to do to uplift yourself is to diss them.

We’ve all heard the jokes that begin, “There are two kinds of people in this world.”  In my exhaustive research for this essay, I went down a bit of an Internet rabbit hole on examples of this joke.  The funniest ones, by the way, are visual:  pictures of a neat desk, for example, along side a wasteland of paper and tchotchkes with a table underneath.  I know that these dichotomies of extremes are oversimplifications, but they do often make a point.  Here are a couple that have resonated with me:

There are two kinds of people in the world: entrepreneurs and corporate types.  I could never be an entrepreneur, even though it looks really glamorous and can make you really rich.  To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be passionate and persistent to a degree I just can’t muster.  I was, however, a really good “corporate type.”  I worked well within that structure.  Entrepreneurs and corporate types often get really judgy with each other.  One is not better than the other, though!  We need both.  Without entrepreneurs, we’d never get new businesses.  Without corporate types, we’d never be able to grow those businesses to the level that they need to be to serve the community.

There are two kinds of people in the world: creative types and execution types.  Look, we all know we need both types and rarely do you find both characteristics in one person.  Creatives tend to value ideation more than execution, though, and vice versa.  It’s natural to value what you like and what you do more so than those characteristics that don’t reflect you.  And herein lies the problem.

For those of you still waiting for me to make a point, these dichotomies got me thinking about this challenge of embracing things that are new or different and finding common ground.

My regular, very patient readers know that Trish and I are starting a major renovation of our house.  When we last left our story about a month ago, I was really unsettled getting prepped for this and waiting for it to start.  While I’ll tackle stories about rolling with punches during construction later, today I wanted to talk about our living situation.  Since our whole house is basically impacted with this construction and we have two cats that are neurotic enough already, thank you, we decided to move out.  We are amazingly fortunate that Trish’s sister and brother-in-law live half a mile away and offered us their home while they winter in Florida.  I can’t even begin to describe how generous this is and my gratitude to them!  We are cohabitating this first month, since they leave after Thanksgiving, and this had led to an unexpected pleasure—getting to know my in-laws more fully than I’ve been able to during various family gatherings.

I was pretty nervous about sharing the house, particularly over an extended time period.  It’s their home and I really wanted to respect their “life flow” but know that no matter how hard we try, our presence will be disruptive.  My relationship with my in-laws is way more important than having a temporary place to live.  What I’ve found over these past few weeks, though, is that we are finding common ground even as we navigate our differences.  Here a couple of examples:

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who pack a dishwasher as efficiently as possible and those who randomly toss items in.  I’ve plumbed this territory before.  I actually brought this up during one of our preparatory discussions, wanting to understand little habits like how they loaded the dishwasher.  Tom and Trish both said, “Who cares? They all get washed.”  Megan and I both started twitching a bit and said, “But we need to be able to get as many dishes in there as possible!”  I looked at Meg with new-found appreciation and respect.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Sleeping Beauties and Price Charmings.  The Lawlor women have a special skill.  Trish, for example, can drink six expressos at bedtime and the warmth of the liquid will put her right to sleep.  Megan apparently has similar sleeping skills.  Tom and I, awake at 6:00 am to feed the cats, have bonded over their ability to fall asleep so quickly, and sleep long and loud. Clearly, our level of tolerance is beyond gallant.

There are many other examples, mostly small things, that I’ve found over the last couple of weeks that I (or we) have in common with Megan and Tom that I never knew before.  And finding those little commonalities makes me feel even closer to them.  What could have been a “family tragedy” has really been a lot of fun! (Here’s hoping Tom and Meg are also laughing…)

Finally, I have also been thinking about “there are two kinds of people in the world” in the context of how divided our nation has become as we emerge from the midterm elections.  We can blame 24 hour news channels and social media, which have certainly exacerbated our divides, but it’s more than that.  It seems like we’ve stopped seeing each other as whole human beings and just define the “other” by a single characteristic:  political ideology, race, class, whatever.  I firmly believe, though, that we all have far more in common than we realize and if we’d just take a little time to get to know each other better, maybe we’d find a way to bridge some of these divides.  I’ve written before about the dangers of making assumptions about the whole person based on some (probably irrelevant) defining characteristic.  I’ve also written about the key workplace advice I got early in my career to always look for something you like about, and can learn from, each person you meet.  That advice works just as well in our broader lives as in the workplace.  Don’t get stuck on “there are two kinds of people in the world.”  There really aren’t.  We are all just humans.

The origins of this essay come from a recent trip home to Atlanta to see my family. We were in a Shabbat service, the Saturday after Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The Rabbi at my Mom’s retirement community was talking about how lopsided the Torah was at this time of year, meaning almost the whole scroll was rolled up on one of the ends.  We read a section of the Torah each week during Shabbat services and the sections are determined such that in one year’s time, we read the whole thing. A couple of weeks after Yom Kippur, we complete the annual cycle and, during the holiday of Simchat Torah, reroll the Torah and start again. The rabbi was talking about the importance and symbolism of this process of reading and re-reading the Torah every year. “We celebrate the end of the cycle,” she said, “in part because we are excited to begin a new cycle. We don’t mourn the ending because we realize that every ending is also a beginning.”

That comment struck me, in part, because the primary reason I was there was to recognize my Dad’s yahrzeit—the anniversary of his passing. We lost Dad twelve years ago, one week and one day after Yom Kippur. Recently, a good friend lost her mother and during that service, the priest talked not about death, but about transition. That resonated with me as well. Her soul was transitioning to its next phase. Her earthly life had ended; her heavenly life was beginning. Many of us continue to feel the presence of a loved one long after they have died. I feel that way about my Dad and my maternal grandmother. I always feel their presence. I don’t think of their deaths as an ending, but as a transition to whatever is next; a beginning.

As I continued to ruminate on this topic, I began to understand how broadly that thinking could be applied. Throughout our entire lives, we are experiencing endings and beginnings but we don’t necessarily see the connections. We don’t see how those endings are really beginnings and that the beginnings can’t happen without the endings. A prime example that comes to my mind was a forced work transition I went through in the mid-2000’s. I had a career path in my mind that I was trying to make happen. It just wasn’t working but that didn’t keep me from continuing to beat my head against a wall. Finally, I was moved into a different position (which was a whole lot better than just being fired). I was devastated. I thought my career was over, that I’d never realize my dreams, that I was an utter failure. But that ending was actually the most awesome beginning I ever could have imagined! The job I was moved into turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding roles in my whole career. I loved the work; I loved the people; I loved what I was learning. And that role led to my next career change which took me in a direction I never could have achieved had I stayed the course in that previous role. This was a realization in hindsight, mind you. Don’t think that I was Ms. Maturity in how I approached that transition! I ended up super happy in spite of myself, not because of any healthy attitude. But it taught me that important lesson of looking forward and not mourning what could have been.

There are so many examples each of us have on how we’ve handled endings. School transitions are a good one. Grammar school to middle school to high school to (maybe) college to (maybe) grad school to your first job. In each case, you leave something that is familiar and known and head into the Great Unknown. Some people focus on the ending—leaving friends, a routine, even just a place that feels comfortable—and struggle to embrace the beginning. Others wave goodbye to what is ending and run headlong into that beginning. I’ve written before on the fact that there is no one path to success or happiness, that what is most important is what actions you take once a decision is made or a path chosen. This recognition that every ending is a beginning is a big part of that mindset.

Personal relationships of all types follow this thought pattern as well. It has been said that people come into our lives “for a reason, a season, or for life.” This means that relationships, even very close ones, can last for a short period of time around a particular need, for a longer period of time, or throughout your whole life. It is not a failure if you part ways once a relationship has run its course. That ending will only lead to a new beginning—for each of you. Some friendships need to end, just as some romantic relationships need to end, to allow each of you to grow. No doubt it’s often very hard to see that during the time period a separation is occurring. What’s dangerous is getting stuck in the ending and focusing on the loss instead of learning to treasure the value brought by the relationship. As a wise friend once reminded me, that hole in your heart is not loss—it’s an opening. Everyone who has crossed my path over these six decades has taught me something and helped create the person that I am today. Without all those experiences, all those endings and beginnings, I wouldn’t be the “me” that met Trish. Every one of those endings lead to a beginning that kept me moving forward.

I’m remembering that now, as we asymptotically approach the start date for our home renovation. (A little math humor for my STEM friends.) The house is all packed up. I’m sitting in a folding chair in an empty living room with no art on the walls. It feels like my first apartment in my 20’s! I feel uprooted; unsettled. It feels very much like an “ending.” I know, though, that this discomfort is really about a “beginning.” Remembering that helps me find my way forward, just like it did every time I changed schools or jobs or even relationships. It’s scary when something ends and something new begins. Let the possibilities of the beginning excite you.