Been Doing A Lot Of Learning

Charlottesville, Virginia

June 19, 2020

Is there systemic racism? Is it "better" to be a liberal or a conservative? Do I support BLM or not? How do I feel about wearing a face mask? Which is better - the NYT or WSJ? Obamagate worse than Watergate?

Thanks to all of you who have shared your perspectives on these and other subjects with me over the past few weeks. And thanks for listening to me stutter and stammer my way through my attempts to articulate my thoughts.

I was successful in my career because I was a consensus builder. I attempted to listen to various inputs and articulate a game plan that everyone, or almost everyone, could buy into. Not necessarily the best approach if you want the corner office, but most night's I was able to sleep reasonably well because I was true to my team approach.

I've been in a funk the past few days, and I wasn't sure why. I thought it might be the cloudy, rainy weather we are having or the fact that I keep struggling with my Noom diet. Or that I fell short of my 10,000 steps per day goal. Or that in spite of my determination I still have too much stuff. Or that my walkabout is still sidelined. All of those contributed I am sure. But this morning it occurred to me that perhaps the biggest contributor was/is the frustration I feel about the questions above. I mistakenly thought if I did enough research, I could find answers and armed with that knowledge, I could build a consensus. I was naive. What worked in my career is not going to work with these types of questions.

I now realized it is a waste of my energy to try to convince others of the "rightness" (or perhaps the "leftness" might be more applicable?) of my positions. While I will continue to seek out challenging conversations so that I can be better informed (I enjoy when my neurons are flying around), I need to turn my energy toward working on those social issues that matter to me. I will write posts on this blog on these topics, not as a way of changing anyone's mind, but to document my journey through the maze created by these and other questions.