You are not in control

In 1998 adventurer Bear Grylls became one of the youngest people ever to climb Mt Everest.  When asked how it felt to have conquered the world's highest mountain, he said: 

“I didn’t conquer Everest:  Everest allowed me to crawl up the one side and stay on the peak for a few minutes”

I read these words while taking a six-day break last week in Zimbabwe.  Zim is hardly a paragon of stability – in fact if you were an expatriate you might accurately describe it as a “hardship post”.  No one – rich or poor - banks on having running water and the electricity supply is similarly tenuous. Yet strangely many have adapted to this.  Residential properties in the more affluent suburbs almost always boast a bore-hole (or at very least some form of water storage system) as well as a generator.  Such people show that managing instability and unpredictability, at least to a point, is possible. 

But there is a point beyond which the illusion of control wears thin.  Where the forces that ultimately determine the extent of one’s wellbeing are just too titanic, unrelenting and malignant to counteract  with one’s resources.

From the vantage point of this relatively un-newsworthy third world nation, I reflected on some of the things that were making world headlines.  The Euro Zone Crisis, stubbornly impervious to any form of intervention.  The worsening relations between Turkey and Syria and the new leadership in Egypt - both with the potential to profoundly impact the global power balance.  And what about global warming?  Seriously, much as I try to do my bit, will my meagre contributions matter in the long run?  Not while America and China keep farting stuff into the atmosphere the way they do.

I found myself pondering this amidst the stoical majesty of Domboshawa Hill, an impressive granite monolith forged umpteen years ago by forces either too ancient or complex to describe here.  And with respect to those headlines, I sensed the powerlessness that the poet Wilfred Owen felt in the face of the “monstrous anger” of World War I:

“It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined”

Suddenly I felt like an ant tenuously treading the delicate meniscus of a puddle, aware that at any second the surface tension could give way.  Similar to the indebtedness Bear Grylls felt towards Mt Everest, I felt more keenly than ever that my place on this mountain called Life is more an outcome of divine permission and goodness than anything else.

“Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

James 4: 13 to 15

How I lost 10 years of my life

When I was 24 I ended up in a bad relationship.  I say, “ended up” as though it was something that just happened to me.  The reality is I went in with both eyes open.  The girl in question was 2 months pregnant having rebounded from a highly volatile and misguided relationship with another man.  Though two family members questioned whether it would work, I blundered on regardless, imagining I could make more of the faulty building material than others could.   In short, I would be the exception to the rule.

2 weeks after my 25th birthday, the child was born and I became a de facto dad.  We got married 18 months later.   3 years after that; the marriage was on the rocks and in April 2001, it went uncontested to the divorce courts.  It was only in 2003 that I could truly say I’d re-discovered the path I was meant to be on in the first place and with it, the will to really live again.  In all, nearly 10 years of my life had swirled heedlessly down the plughole amidst a fog of aimless conflict and bitterness.

I had some part to play in it all.  I was quick tempered and at times, a certifiable arsehole.  Also, In believing the fraught foundations could sustain the weight of a lifelong partnership, I had reduced the thing to a simplistic, weak-willed cocktail of noble intentions and romantic illusions.

“The prudent see danger and take refuge – but the simple keep going and suffer for it” 

– Proverbs 27: 12

The other night Lisa and I watched a series of challenging talks by Andy Stanley on the topic of life’s destinations.  The central message Stanley calls “The Principle of the Path”: good intentions are always trumped by the path in life you choose – your direction determines your destination not your good intentions.  

“You can have a plan for a beach holiday in Miami, you can pile your car high with swimming gear and surfboards – but if you go north on I 85 instead of south you won’t be having a beach holiday anytime soon”

We were suitably chastened by this.  How much are we basing our direction in life on the theoretical compass bearing of a well-intentioned wish list rather than on concrete actions that actually lead to the desired destination?  How often do we take on the practical, hard-as-nails challenge of marrying action with sentiment?  Are we viewing everyday life critically enough to identify the hidden traps and pitfalls that might take us off the path?

We watched Andy’s DVD with a couple who has recently lost everything in a bad business deal and who are having to make a fresh start.  The wife insisted they’d seen the DVD before.  The husband had no recollection of it and wondered why.  “Because it was 2 years ago and everything was hunky dory back then”.  Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians:  “if you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall”

Mercifully many of the intangibles I lost through the winnowing process of divorce have been restored to me and I am living an abundant life.   This is thanks to my precious wife Lisa and the God of Grace who presides over our marriage.  

But the Principle of the Path remains a chilling warning nonetheless.

Are Winners Overrated?

 “History is written by the Victors,” said Winston Churchill and few of us would disagree. 

Indeed, this would apply not just to history but also to popular culture where a minority of front-runners set the pace and who the rest of us – at least for the most part - look up to and often seek to emulate.  But what gives society’s “winners” (apart from the permission we give them) the special privilege and prerogative to set the bar the way they do?

Yesterday I watched the movie “Moneyball”, a biographical drama about baseball visionary Billy Beane.  As general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Beane is the guy who scouts for and selects the best baseball talent that the club’s money can buy.  In 2002, faced with severe budgetary constraints (relative to teams like the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox), he joined forces with a Yale economics graduate to develop an entirely new way of looking at player selection. 

“The problem with baseball”, asserts his brainy side-kick, “is that clubs buy players when they should be buying wins”.  His hypothesis was that while richer clubs were spending large sums of money on superstars – big hitters, base stealers, the guys who create theatre and build match attendance – a large pool of less explosive but nonetheless competent players  (overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws) were readily available at a lower price.   And so while the club could no longer afford superstars like Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi, it could conceivably “recreate” their influence on the field through a composite of lower profile players.

And so Beane and Brand set about creating a team from, as the latter refers to it, “an island of misfit toys”.  A 37-year-old batting legend past his prime and with less than a year of baseball left in him.  An injured catcher who could no longer excel in his former position but who could bat and keep first base.  A little known pitcher with a highly unorthodox throwing style.  In short, the breakthrough for a cash-strapped club like the Oakland A’s, lay in looking at performance stats from an entirely different angle.  But would it work?

The record reflects that the A’s had the longest winning streak in Baseball history that year – 20 straight wins.  All this at a cost of 250 000 payroll dollars per game while the Yankees were paying over $1.2m apiece for their victories.  It was an extraordinary achievement – one that earned Beane a job offer from the Red Sox worth $12.5m.  Satisfied with being the guy who had turned Baseball selection upside down, he stayed with Oakland.  But In 2004 the Red Sox – who had swiftly embraced Beane’s selection philosophy, broke an 86-year World Series drought.  I was in Boston when it happened – an eye-witness to a euphoria that might have rivaled the end of two World Wars combined.  Two days after the win, 5 million Bostonians lined the city’s streets to welcome their beloved team back from St Louis.

So maybe history isn’t exclusively written by the victors.  Yet such examples are so few and far between that we’re unlikely to see things differently for some time to come.  In the corporate world alone, we’re surrounded by organisations that approach people management the way rich baseball clubs did back in 2001.  To say nothing of flawed education systems and top-heavy, self-interested governmental policy.  The result is almost always the same – the orthodox talent rises to the top while the rarer yet quieter strengths are slowly suffocated before being ejected from the system entirely.

In honour of his achievements and the lesson he has taught me, I dedicate Apple’s legendary advertisement to Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane.