Touches

Success in basketball depends on how many “touches” you get.  You can’t shoot the ball or get points or get assists if you can’t get any “touches”.

If you’re a dependable ball handler or shooter, you’ll get lots of “touches”.  Your coach and team mates will seek you out. 

However, “touches” don’t come easy.  You have to position yourself to get “touches”.  You have to become “touch-worthy”!   You have to hustle to get open and strategically position yourself to get rebounds.  And then you have to DO something positive with the ball once you get it! 

And so it is in life and work.  We often have to scramble to get quality “touches” and be an integral part of the “game”. 

Some people are content to sit on the bench as part of the “team”, and may even actively avoid getting “touches” … which would mean they’d actually have to DO something with the ball if it ever got to them.  And when the ball does end up in their hands, it’s like a hot potato – to be handed off to someone ELSE as quickly as possible.  While it’s possible, thus, to presumptively elevate oneself to an esteemed position of “triage gatekeeper”, this is not a luxury assignment most organizations can afford.  And if it’s not consistent with the actual job description, an achievement gap of unresolvable proportions may develop. 

Consider, alternatively, one who actively SEEKS OUT and scrambles to get “touches” … to a point of picking up overflow from OTHER people’s workload.  Your team mate gets stuck in a “corner”, and you go “bail him out”. 

And what about VERTICAL VECTORING – doing part of the boss’s job? 

A staff associate – an actual “triage gatekeeper” for the organization – oversaw a massive workload for the Director.  She “touched” almost everything that crossed the Director’s desk.  At first, she simply organized, categorized and prioritized – “curated” – the workload before moving it to the Director’s desk.  Then she started to take lower level/less significant things out of the pile to do herself … only asking the Director for his review/approval and signature for those things that required it.  Over time, she began to put her personal “touch” on increasingly important workload elements, including major correspondence and staffing ... all the time learning new things about the organization and its affiliates, learning new things about management, establishing vital resource alliances, problem-solving, and strategic planning.  With this expanded role, she became recognized as THE key “Go To” employee within the organization, and was promoted to the level of Assistant Director.    

During her tenure, the organization underwent multiple reorganizations, including the reigns of three different Directors and two major budget cuts.  In a very real sense, her highly valued “touches” made her “untouchable” for downsizing. 

Bottom Line:  Go looking for “trouble” – go for extra “touches” that can make a difference.  And add value to everything you do.  Don’t just pass stuff along and try to fly below the radar.  You’ll catch a lot of “flack” by putting yourself in the line of fire.  But there are no “sidelines” in life.  There is no “bench”.  If you’re not “on the radar”, you’re not in the game … you’re toast!  Get as many “touches” as you can and become “Untouchable” when the “chips are down”.  Quartermaster

Struggle

Ever since Adam and Eve – and perhaps even eons before Adam and Eve – life has been a struggle for most folks much of the time … getting enough food to eat, protecting against life-threatening incursions, dealing with in-laws and outlaws, competing against folks who have nothing better to do than outsmart, undermine and outdo us, working for never-satisfied bosses, living with never-satisfied parents, sharing a bathroom with six other people, etc.    

Here are some additional things with which more than a few people struggle:  Can’t find a job, can’t hold a job, smothered in debt, unhappy at work, poor relationships, poor health, unreliable transportation, unstable home life, too many restrictions, too many dependencies, limited life & work options, uninsured, too few affirmations, always dealing in emergency situations, each perturbation is a catastrophe, can’t afford necessary repairs/upgrades or amenities …

The truth is: Life’s Tough!

The CHALLENGES are formidable

The RESPONSIBILITIES are awesome

The EXPECTATIONS are out-of-sight, and                                       

TIME is always too short

I’m taking the liberty here of suggesting there are two fundamental kinds of struggle: 

Necessary

And

Unnecessary

Very simply, struggling “necessarily” is struggling to do what we’ve gotta do … whether or NOT we understand or accept the fact that we’ve gotta DO what we’ve gotta DO.  

Two special cases of “struggling unnecessarily” require acknowledgement:

The first falls to those who have to navigate unnecessarily difficult circumstances.  If you were born in Syria or Yemen or thousands of other places, including Germany during Hitler’s reign, you would have had imponderably difficult circumstances to navigate.  If you have ever had to endure abuse either from family or persons in authority or from back-street bullying, you would have imponderably difficult circumstances to navigate ... and you would struggle unnecessarily.  Often, the only way to overcome such unnecessary struggle is to become removed from the circumstances.  Easier said than done, of course!  But this is precisely why there is such an overwhelming emigration of massive numbers of people out of Africa and the Middle East seeking less imponderably difficult circumstances in Europe and the US. 

The second special case of struggling unnecessarily falls to those who were born with or who acquire a debilitating chronic disease or condition.  Such condition may not be surmountable and may represent a “new normal” for that individual. 

I personally believe that the more richly Blessed and less encumbered of humankind have a significant responsibility to assist those trapped in such difficult circumstances / unrecoverable conditions navigate the vicissitudes of life. 

Now to brass tacks.  The most insidious case of struggling “unnecessarily” arises, most curiously, from NOT doing what we’ve gotta do.  Such inattention to “necessities” leads to the accumulation not only of the stuff we’ve “gotta do” anyway, but of the associated adverse consequences and delayed ramifications of not doing what we’ve gotta do. 

Errant preconceived notions about how the world works – or should … but doesn’t – constitute the most frequent source of unnecessary struggles.  Who struggles the most “unnecessarily”?

Those who don’t know the rules, who don’t accept the rules, who want to make up their own rules … living life on their own terms, relying on unfounded assumptions, having unrealistic expectations, banking on unwarranted entitlements …

Added to the natural inclination that we’d simply rather NOT if we don’t HAVE TO, this leaves us in dire straits, perpetually – and unnecessarily – eternally “clawing our way back” from the precipice of “not making it”. 

NOTE:  It’s not all our fault!  We didn’t get to this point without the enabling of society at large and of our very own parents making life LOOK and BE easier than it really is, while subsidizing our welfare to the tune of roughly $300,000 during our formative years … complete with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, “allowances”, “Trick-or-Treat” gleaning, etc., while we were presumed to be capacitizing ourselves to take on the mantle of autonomy / independence, but chose, rather, to defy all the authority we could get away with!      

A final special case falls to those who not only struggle “necessarily” to meet expectations but struggle “unnecessarily” to EXCEED expectations.  Struggling “unnecessarily” in this case substantially advances the individual and his or her “stock” in life, and is the gold standard for success!   

Bottom Line: Do the necessities.  As the man in the automotive service commercial used to say,

“You can pay me now [to change your oil],

or you can pay me later [to replace your engine].”

And then do as much MORE as you can manage.  Add VALUE.  Add a PERSONAL TOUCH.  Force the issue in creating your own Destiny by struggling “unnecessarily” to make an exceptional difference. 

Treat the “necessities” as an inextricable part of living … even as part of the family:

“He ain’t heavy,

He’s my brother.”

Boy’s Town Nebraska Motto

Necessities are part of the “Cost of Living” which you can’t disown, else you disown your own Destiny.    QM

"Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteris­tic of the organism is striving. Describing life otherwise was like painting a tiger without stripes. After so many years of living with death [as in Stage IV Lung Cancer], I'd come to understand that the easiest [path] wasn't necessarily the best. …  We would carry on living [… with all of its striving], instead of dying."  Paul Kalanithi