Every Day is Groundhog’s Day

As we head into February, the thought of living life where every day is Ground Hog’s Day has become a reality.  Ten and a half months ago, I remember wondering how we would be able to live in a lock down world, where we minimize our time leaving our homes, work from home and limit in-person social interaction (outdoors and 6+ feet).  After all of this time, the “new” normal has taken hold and we have all found new ways to live our lives, interact with friends, methods of entertainment and the way we work.  I talk about looking forward to the day we can go back to “business as usual” and recently was talking to someone who cannot wait to get out of his house and be face-to-face with potential clients.

Oddly enough, I have recently been feeling a new type of anxiety – one of leaving the house.  I am OK with going to the local Shop-Rite and some of the other places nearby so that we can function.  But the moment something new comes up.  For example, I just got my haircut which was something that I usually would do when my hair reached a certain length and started getting unruly.  With the number back up at new high levels, I have held off on going.  Yes, some friends started to refer to me as “Shaggy.”  The last time I went was in mid-September.  Living within a realm of Groundhog’s Day, that would have happened somewhere on the fringes of my memory.  I started to have some anxiety around going and leaving my house to someplace different.  In the back of my mind, I began to wonder, are my fears real or perceived?

Fear, according to Merriam-Webster, is ”to be afraid.”  One of the base emotions that drives us is fear (the other would be love), the sense of danger that is one of the triggers that helps us to protect ourselves.  For some, fear can be stifling.  For example, if there is a severe lightning storm, the anxiety caused by the fear of getting electrocuted could save our lives.  That is an example where the anxiety has a real underlying fear.  Logically, I knew that there was nothing to fear in getting my haircut.  The place that I go minimizes the people in the place, everyone is masked and safe protocols are followed.  Still, I was leaving my bubble of safety.  By the time I pulled up to the place, donned my mask and walked up to the door, I was my usual chipper self, without a hint of anxiety.  My fear was perceived. 

We have become so home-bound, we forget that the things that we treated as normal still go on.  People  shop safely, fly safely and for the most part, do the right thing.  If you are uncomfortable by the one or two people who are acting selfish (as in inconsiderate of the people around them), avoid those places.  Tomorrow I will wake up, like every other day, and engage in the same routines as the days before, as if it was Ground Hog’s Day.  Oh yeah, I forgot…it will really be Groundhog’s Day!

Drawing Circles Around Ourselves

 For four months, my life has been existing primarily from within my house.  I can probably count the number of times that I have been to the store, social visited with friends, etc.  Most of the time when I leave my house, it is the same as sticking your big toe into the pool to see if it is cold.  Trying to stay balanced, you gingerly poke at the top layer of water to determine what you will do next.  I do realize that I work from my house, conduct synagogue business from my house and Zoom socialize from my house.  My children live at home, so we stay together safely as a family.  I have unknowingly gone and drawn a safety or comfort zone around my house.  There are a few other circles that I have drawn where I feel safe, but not many.

Why am I talking about circles?  A number of years ago, I gave a speech regarding our individual comfort zones and how once they are designated, we find it difficult to step outside them.  I likened the comfort zones to circles – circles we draw around ourselves to feel comfortable, circles our parents drew to provide us with a sense of safety and the circles drawn by others to influence us.  The longer the circles are there, the stronger they seem and the wider the drawn lines symbolizing the boundaries become.  But, Wayne, you are thinking, if we draw them, can’t we just erase them?  One would think that.  I remember learning that one of the ways to train a baby elephant is to tether them to a post with a chain.  Once they realize that they cannot escape, as they grow up, it becomes a conditioned reflex, so much so that replacing the chain with a rope will keep the elephant still.  While a full-grown elephant can go pretty much wherever they want whenever they want, due to this learned habit, their comfort zone has become ingrained in them.  Humans are no different once the circles have been drawn.

For me, the key was to realize what I have done by drawing the circle of Covid safety around myself.  I feel safe (that is good), but get anxious about venturing out (that is not good).  I do not want to confuse this with going forth into the world with a mindset towards safety and a diligence to protect ourselves and those around us with the unusual amount of people vying for Darwin Award.  (Yes, I am referring to those who think they are immune to disease, disregard the events of the past five months and think they know better)   Now that I can see the circles that I have drawn around me, I can work towards erasing them by deliberately making planned ventures outside of the house.  Social visits in person, going shopping (when needed), etc., help to overcome these “fears” that have developed.  I am happy to wear my bandana and go out.  Because of this, I am starting to have less anxiety and working towards expanding the circles that I have recently drawn around myself.

The Famiy Curse

As a young adult, I found out that there was a family curse, one that possibly lead to the death of my paternal grandmother years earlier.  I was shocked!  A family curse?  My mind raced off to the literature I read (minimal at that point), comic books (which I did read) and cartoons (go Bugs Bunny), and had the immediate vision of either a twisted, wart covered old hag or some robed old wizard with a long pointy beard and a pointy hat covered in stars, from the “old country”, casting a hex upon our family.  Based on my facial contusions, my parents continued that my grandmother had diabetes, inherited from prior generations.  The “spell” on me was broken, popped like a pin pricking a balloon.  While diabetes is serious, I was confused as to why this was a secret, cast under a dark cloud, and only mentioned in hushed voices behind closed doors when no one could hear you.

There are many thought leaders that point out the best way to motivate someone is through love or fear.  Love gives us that warm, welcome feeling of belonging and connecting with others.  Fear raises the fight or flee instincts buried within us and makes us do things to protect ourselves, binds us together against a common enemy and then we can step back and think about it afterwards.  As I am sitting here with some statistics, I am amazed at the capacity of fear.  For example, as of May 3, the United States had 32 million confirmed cases of the flu, which resulted in 18,000 deaths.  If I came to you and said that globally, 100,000 caught something, 3400 died from it, and only 100 confirmed case in the United States (at that date) – which would be the bigger concern?  Obviously the one with the larger statistics should be of utmost concern.

Getting back to my family curse.  As my parents explained to me, in the early 1900’s, pushing further back to small town (shtetls) in Europe, Diabetes was a fairly unknown disease, who’s consequences were deadly.  It was this broad unknown that people felt was brought upon by the evil eye.  Yes, that meant that I came from a group of people that were superstitious (red bendl under the crib, stupid piece on the challah, etc. superstitious), and attributed bad things to things done wrong.  While we understand Diabetes today, there was a point in time where my ancestors did not, so they assumed it was a curse.  Yes, when faced with the unknown, we tend to fear what we do not know and our fight or flight instincts kick in.  The key today is to maintain healthy practices (which you should do anyway), like washing your hands, using your cough / sneeze pocket, instead of coughing or sneezing into your hands, and stay home if you do not feel well.  While we face this current health crisis, it is important that we follow valid health sources (not politicians and newspapers) and maintain a level head.  Be assured that this too shall pass as we become more educated and no longer feel that dark cloud hanging over our heads.

Halting Creativity

In the movie “The Wall,” during the song “another Brick in the Wall,” the accompanying visuals show a classroom filled with students, where the students all of a sudden have the same face.  During the same song, they are seen on a conveyor belt moving towards a meat grinder.  The underlying point, through the dystopian and horrifying representation, is that the students molded into the same image; following the same mold without deviation.

As we get older, does this “you must follow the masses” mentality help or hinder creativity?

As the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos has gone on to create one of the most disruptive technologies.  Prior to that he worked on Wall Street.  He tells the story of informing his boss at the time about his intentions of leaving his company and starting his own business.  After taking a two-hour walk to discuss Jeff’s thoughts on his potential new venture, the boss agrees that it is a great idea, but someone else should do it (wanting him to stay and follow the mold).  Lucky for us, he left the job and started the company that has forever changed the way we shop.

I have sat in meetings where a great idea has come up – “That is not how we do it here,” is sometimes the response.  Or, in a group discussing change where a measure of creativity is utilized.  Everyone agrees, nods their heads, and then through some measure of subtlety, leave the room as if the conversations never occurred.  This can be stifling to ones endeavors, shut down creative thinking and, potentially, lead to others rolling their eyes and have the thought bubble appear over their heads stating, “Here he goes again.”

There is this thinking in the arts as well.  In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand displays a potential impact of a mass entitlement mindset, where creativity is put down, and if you are creative, the masses should receive the profits.  In George Orwell’s classic, Animal House, the pigs end up enforcing an attitude of “You will do as we say, not as we do,” to keep the farm animals to not show any creative thinking.  In music, there have been examples, most notable was a folk singer that had the label of being the voice of a generation.  He played the traditional folk instrument of the acoustic guitar, sometimes accompanied with his harmonica.  But, oh the outrage, the heckling and the booing when he came out for his now legendary second set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when Bob Dylan went “electric.”

As we have seen in the extremist world, having any independent thoughts can lead to ostracizing, or in the most extreme, beheading.  We need independent thinking.  We need individualism.  We need creativity.  Without them, we would still adhere to the often used quote (for which I could find no original source), “If men were supposed to fly, he would have been born with wings,” and not have air travel.  Without creativity, humans would never move forward, we would still be sitting in the dark, still be using columnar paper and travel by horse.

Where Has Integrity Gone?

“I meant what I said and I said what I meant,” said Horton the Elephant.

Except for Horton, how would you react if someone looked you in the eyes and said that line?  Would you be able to take them at face value?  How often do we expect someone to follow up on his or her words, or year after year tell us one thing and then do the opposite?  Is this someone you know personally, at work, a volunteer or even an elected official?

This is not an article declaring or deriding our political process, though as we go through the Presidential primary season, some of our candidates might easily seem to fall into my weekly thoughts.  Let us be honest, for all the public outcry over the Senate and the House of Representatives passing the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), which legally allows certain political persons to be excluded from the law, and most of voters passed the bill without reading the voluminous documents.  That election cycle, I did not agree with the process and refused to vote for the standing Congressmen, whether Democrat or Republican.  As unfavorable as the polls were, most elected officials were voted back in.  For a government, that Abraham Lincoln stated was “…of the people, by the people, for the people…” why do we continually re-elect those that do not do our bidding?  These are our representatives who tell us what they think they want us to hear, get elected, then do what they want.

That is an easy target.  How about the people we come across where we work or volunteer.  How often do we sit in a meeting and someone says they will handle what is being discussed.  Then at the next meeting, the item was not addressed, and the conversation feels, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, “like déjà vu all over again?”  In other environments, there are times where we look towards leadership for guidance.  Guidance, believe it or not, is most effective when based on action not words, which means that we are more apt to follow in the footsteps of the leader, as opposed to words expressed or written.  Why?  Because as humans, we follow the dictate that believing is seeing. 

Why do people not step up and what is the lesson that I am driving at?

As if in answer to my question, I received the following from Darren Hardy:

Looks like one of the reasons people do not follow through is a fear of leadership, fear of making the decision, fear of followers and fear of failure.  This is again most noticeable in an elected position, where the role becomes more important (prestigious) than taking any action. Promises are made, never kept. Rhetoric is spoken, action never taken.  The Pink Floyd song, Dogs, states it correctly when they sing, “You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to…” If they fear failure, why do they think we will not notice that they do? In the subsequent election cycle, they point their fingers, make excuses and continue the lies, yet we ignore their track record, as if history does not matter, and believe them anew when they say their positions and will be accountable for their promises, only to be disappointed again.

As a person in leadership – be bold.  Napoleon Hill, in his book The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, wrote a lesson teaching Self-Confidence.  Leadership is having self-confidence, being bold, be willing to make mistakes, take responsibility and be honest.  Lead with integrity.  Now, those are the traits / people I prefer to follow…