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Pain

Loss

by Ron Potter January 26, 2023

I’ve lost both of my parents and all my aunts and uncles. Although my father died of wounds from WWII earlier than he should have, he likely would have died by this age anyway. He would have been 103 this year had he lived. Thankfully, I still have all my siblings but the loss of family seemed natural to me.

Loss of High School Friend

The loss of friends, however, seems different and for me hurts just a little bit more. I had a high school friend who I had been companions with since we had been a few months old. Our parents were friends so we were together right from the start. Throughout our high school years, we were almost inseparable. We had fun together and got into trouble together. Even the one cop in the small town we grew up in knew us and our parents. For high school kids, that can be good and bad.

I have one memory of some new walkie-talkies that my father bought. I took them to town and grabbed my friend as we went out “looking for trouble.” The only thing was our one cop in town seemed to show up wherever we were and put an end to any pranks we had in mind before we could get in trouble. We couldn’t figure out how he always knew where we were and what we were up to until we discovered that his police scanner could hear our walkie-talkies.

I couldn’t imagine being away from him until our lives diverged after high school. I headed for college. He went to Viet Nam. After he returned we just didn’t seem to have much in common anymore. That was sad to me but I figured it was part of growing up.

Cancer

But then years later he came down with cancer and came to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I was living at the time, and he was getting treatment at the U of M Medical Center. I’m so thankful that he and his wife (who also graduated from the same high school) reached out to me and let me know what he was going through and arranged times together when he was in town for treatments. Our old friendship began to rekindle, and we had some wonderful times together.

A few months later my friend’s son called me and said his dad was bedridden and couldn’t speak and I should come and see him if I could. I immediately drove the 3 hours it took to get to his home to find him in bed with no hair and extremely emaciated. I wouldn’t have recognized him if I didn’t know who it was. His wife and two children told me he had been bedridden and comatose for a couple of days. I stroked his forehead, talked of some of our fun times together, and told him how much I missed him. He squeezed my hand!

After talking with his wife and two children I headed back home. By the time I got there, his son had called to say his father had passed soon after I left. I saw him during the last few hours of his life and I may have been the only one whose hand he squeezed. I just had to cry. We had been together for 18 years, apart for a few, then back together again for about a year before he died. Losing a good friend like that was very different than losing family to normal aging processes.

Post-College Friend

Another friend who graduated from Michigan, as I had, came to work for me a few years after I finished school. We became very good friends. In fact, after that first construction project together when we headed in different directions, we always kept in touch. As it turned out, our kids were not too different in age and they have known each other since childhood. In this blog, I couldn’t even begin to tell you all the fun we’ve had together through the years including river rafting, “up North” (Michigan) trips, and others.

I always had to laugh because he was one of the very first users of spreadsheet programs and recorded many aspects of his life and plans on them. If he was telling me about an upcoming trip I would finally say, “Show me the spreadsheet.” He would smile and then bring out the spreadsheet. He even began to incorporate color as technology advanced.

Cancer (Again)

He retired a few years ago but soon after was diagnosed with cancer. After we found out, he began to tell me all the things he wanted to do and accomplish while he still had his health. I said, “Show me the spreadsheet.” He smiled, then showed me the multiple-page, color spreadsheet. It was all there, everything he wanted to accomplish. He had some ups and downs but we were able to enjoy each other’s company on a regular basis.

He died recently. I was able to see him a few weeks ago on one of his good days but I’m having a hard time coming to grips with the loss. The next day I was in my doctor’s office for a regular check-up and I couldn’t stop crying. It took the doctor several minutes to diagnose grief over something physically wrong with me.

Grief

One definition is, “Grief is a strong, sometimes overwhelming emotion.” It certainly has been strong in my life with the loss of my friend, but I don’t think it has gotten too overwhelming where my own physical or mental health is concerned. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be careful and aware to make sure it doesn’t.

What is the Purpose of Loss?

I don’t know the answer to that. I’m sure there are some intellectual answers about making you stronger or preparing you for other or deeper losses. I just don’t feel it at the moment. This is terribly sad to me.

God set the example when His only son, Jesus, was crucified. God’s loss and Jesus’s sacrifice provided salvation for me.

I know that loss is supposed to make us stronger and it probably will in the long run. But right now it’s just painful.

I raised the question with a group of friends the other day. One of them who is a reader of my blog said he thought I was experiencing it because I would write about it in my blog and it would help many others.

All of those ideas are probably part of the answer but right now I just feel sadness.

Maybe that’s part of the answer. Much of the world tells us we should be happy all of the time. That’s not true! We will and do experience sadness in life. It’s unnatural to think we won’t or shouldn’t.

Handle your losses with dignity.

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Cane

by Ron Potter July 21, 2022

My daughter asked me if it bothered me to use a cane. My answer was “no.” I had grown up with a father who lost a leg at Anzio during WWII. He used a cane all of my life and it never slowed him down. Now I use a cane but it is very natural for me.

Bottled Gas

After WWII, America was moving away from coal and oil to a new way of heating and cooking—bottled propane. My dad delivered bottled propane gas for a living. The cylinders weighed nearly 100 pounds empty. He never complained. Also, many of the rural homes needed copper tubing strung for the heat and cooking. Most of them just had crawl spaces with no basements. He would usually take off his artificial leg so that he could crawl under the old farmhouses to get them gasified. He also built the house that we grew up in as kids with never a complaint.

I remember one time when handicapped parking places were very new. As he and I pulled into the parking lot, I said “Dad, look, you can park near the front door.” He commented that there were a lot of people who needed it more than he did and we parked farther out in the lot and walked in. I didn’t think of it at the time. He was just my dad and that’s the way things were.

Never Complained

But as I look back, dad was one of those people who never complained. There was someone who always needed it more than he did. Today I look back and think that nobody needed it more than him but he was an example that someone always needed more help than him.

Here was a “kid” that never really left our hometown until he was drafted into the Army. Then he was sent to England and from there sailed to North Africa. He and his friends fought against Rommel all across North Africa. Even though he was hurt in North Africa, he requested that he stay with his buddies as they moved on to Italy. It’s been well documented that poor leadership in Italy left them exposed on the shores of Anzio where the Germans surrounded them and picked them off at will. That’s where he lost his leg and ended up being shipped home.

In one of my recent blogs, I talked about being aware that someone was always worse off than you and never lose your humor.

I can’t think of anyone who was in worse shape than dad. He lost a leg.

Don’t Lose Your Sense of Humor

But I’m also aware that he never lost his sense of humor. Growing up we were very close to my mother’s family. We were often there but I do remember that my dad was often the center of humor. Even today, my cousins speak highly of my dad and how much they enjoyed him. He never complained and he always kept his sense of humor.

Regardless of your circumstances, remember that there is always someone who has it worse than you, and never lose your sense of humor.

I had a great role model and will never forget the lessons I learned from my dad in the short time he was around.

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Blog Personal

Bananas

by Ron Potter July 14, 2022

I’m sorry for the missed blogs the last several weeks. In the last several years I’ve never missed a blog until my recent health issues. I was shocked at how many blogs I had missed which speaks to the health issue I’ve been experiencing lately.

We are blessed enough to own a cabin in Northern Michigan. There are only 16 cabins on 500 acres of property. It’s a wonderful place to rest and recuperate. One of our long-time friends owns a place just a few doors from us. Unfortunately, he is suffering from cancer that he was diagnosed with almost as soon as he retired.

When we stopped the other day to see how things were going, his wife said he woke up with a desire for bananas and wanted to know if we had any. We did have bananas and went back to our cabin to retrieve them. When we returned she came to the car to retrieve the bananas. I said, “It was a good thing you came to the car because if I had brought them up to their cabin, they would have all been spoiled by the time I made it to the house.”

She laughed and said that I had not lost my sense of humor.

There are two lessons to learn from that story.

There is always someone in worse shape than you so don’t get hung up on how bad you have it.
Never lose your sense of humor. No matter how bad things are, humor always seems to help.

Sorry for the Delay

Again, I’m sorry for the absence of blogs over the last several weeks. Hopefully, my health is good enough that I’ll be able to keep then going.

Let me recap the lessons from this week’s blog.

Always Someone Worse

No matter how bad you feel, there is always someone worse. There’s a group of us that usually play golf together at least once in the spring. Of the four of us, I have inherited liver disease, one has cancer, one has a neurological issue, and one has heart disease. There is always someone in worse shape.

Never Lose Your Sense of Humor

Laugh at everything. Things are always easier to handle with humor. Never lose your sense of humor.

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Blog Facing Adversity Regrets

Regrets—Text to Corinthians

by Ron Potter April 14, 2022

We started off these two blog series with Paul’s text to the Corinthians. He listed the following items:

Afflicted but not crushed
Perplexed but not driven to dispair
Persecuted but not forsaken
Struck Down but not destroyed

We then looked at Daniel Pink’s book The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. Pink identifies the four core regrets:

Foundation
They begin with an irresistible lure and with incredible logic.
Boldness
Thwarted possibility of growth. The failure to become the person—happier, braver, more evolved, than we could have been.
Moral
Deceit, infidelity, theft, betrayal, sacrilege.
Connection
Meaningful relationships.

Together, they make some interesting connections. In Paul’s letter, we experience great difficulties and painful points in our lives. But in the end, they don’t break us. We are not crushed, driven to despair, forsaken, or destroyed.

In Pink’s book, the four regrets of foundational, boldness, morals, and connection are capable of breaking us and in all cases are self-inflicted. In Paul’s writing, the pain and suffering are no more or less than those identified by Pink. However, in Paul’s letter, there is a sense that these things happen in everyday life. While we should examine our own behavior and beliefs to determine if we are contributing to the affliction, perplexion, persecution, and personal destruction put forth by Paul—in the end, it may have nothing to do with our own behavior. Daniel Pink says that it essentially has everything to do with our personal behavior.

Regrets: Self-Inflicted

If you look at each of Pink’s regrets, there is a self-infliction:

- Foundational: It starts with an irresistible lure. This may be food, sex (also mentioned in the moral section), or materialistic desires. I’ve mentioned that my irresistible lures are new cars (I’ve had a new one every three years over the past 50 years). And watches. The self-inflicted part happens when we let our logic run ramrod over knowing that certain things are just wrong. I have an incredibility logical mind. I can convince myself that almost anything can be explained through logic. And I’m good at it. My self-infliction is in allowing my logical brain to convince myself that my logic overrules irresistible lures. I’m just too “smart” to be dictated by my feelings.
- In the boldness category, Pink makes the point that we’re just not bold enough to try new things. I’ve had three major careers since graduating from engineering school. The first was walking steel 160′ in the air. The second was developing a software company at the beginning of the microcomputer age. The third was TLC (Team Leadership Culture) consulting all over the world. A lot of people would say to me, “I couldn’t do that, I was never qualified. How were you able to accomplish three different careers and work all over the world?” It’s because I was bold and willing to try new and different things. I never felt qualified either. It just seemed like the new and bold thing to do at the time. Our lack of boldness is self-inflicted when we feel that we must be qualified first. If you’re bold in trying new things, you’re never qualified.
- Moral. In this one, I focused on sacrilege. It doesn’t have to be a religious issue. Sacrilege means “violation or misuse of what is regarded as sacred.” What do you consider as sacred? Violating it will cause suffering.
- Connection. I have at least three groups of good friends. Two of the groups are (or were) centered in Ann Arbor where we lived for 35 years. One group is built around our GPS4Leaders App. We’ve gone through good times and bad but have stuck together for several years. The second ground of guys have given ourselves the name “Space Cadets.” This is a group from several professions and we spend our time discussing clients and how to add the best of who we are to help them grow and become better. I feel very close to this group. We also moved to Grand Rapids, MI, a few years ago to be close to one daughter and our two grandchildren (our other daughter and grandkids live around the world and are currently in Tunisia). We are now a part of a Grand Rapids church and have developed several friends there. We’re very blessed with all of these connections.

Pain: Everyday and Self-Inflicted

Paul talks about the difficulties that we face in this world. If we have examined ourselves and feel we’re seeing everything clearly, these are difficulties that we face just because we live here.

Pink, on the other hand, talks about regrets being self-inflicted. We can avoid that by examing ourselves and our motives. It often takes that close friend who we trust who is not afraid to point out our flaws and shortcomings. But we must have someone that we’re that close to and who is willing to tell us what they are seeing in our behavior. Avoid self-inflicted pain—the world is full of enough pains for us without the ones we cause ourselves.

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Blog Culture Facing Adversity

Struck Down

by Ron Potter March 3, 2022

We’ve been looking at a text written over 2,000 years ago. A partial reading of the text says that we are afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down. We now come to the last word in the sequence, Stuck Down.

Being Struck Down is Painful

While being persecuted seems very painful and personal, being stuck down seems to be the ultimate of pain and suffering.

Maybe you’ve been struck down in the past. It might have been a baseball to the head that knocked you unconscious. Maybe you didn’t see the low beam or branch. These are very painful and physical.

I was never a fighter. However, there was a time in high school when the school bully decided to pick me out of the crowd and make an example of me. He was a couple of years older than me and much larger and stronger. He slapped me hard on my left cheek. It stung and brought water to my eyes and nearly knocked me out. But when I recovered and just stood there, he didn’t like that. So he struck me on the other cheek with similar results. I guess at that point he decided he wasn’t going to be successful in either starting a fight or knocking me down so he simply walked away.

Years later a friend told me how impressed he was that I simply stood there and took it. He thought it took real grit, self-control, and humility to accomplish. I had felt almost ashamed for many years for not fighting back or defending myself and yet here was my friend telling me how impressed he was with the grit and strength that I showed during that moment.

Last Word of the Four

Being struck down seems to be the most destructive and painful of all of the four descriptions. It can either be physical as in the example I gave or it can be emotional and maybe not even seen or noticed by others. But it will feel as if you’ve been struck down physically when it happens. Maybe it’s a simple word said by someone in a team meeting. It may have been intentional or completely innocent but it feels as if you’ve been struck down.

Being struck down is painful and destructive. It may even cause you to change who you are. It can affect your character and your outlook on life. And yet, it happens.

Dealing With Being Struck Down

There is no good way for dealing with the feeling of being struck down. My only suggestion is to endure. Remind yourself of who you are. Fall back on your character and belief system. You may have been struck down physically or emotionally. Either way, endure. Live through it. Become stronger. Grow. The text says that it will happen. We will be struck down. In our lifetime, we will not avoid it. At some point, we will be or feel like we’ve been struck down.

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Blog Culture Facing Adversity

Persecuted

by Ron Potter February 24, 2022

We’ve been looking at a text written over 2,000 years ago. A partial reading of the text says that we are afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down.

In this blog we’ll be looking at the third word on the list, persecuted. One of the definitions from the dictionary is “Subject to hostility and ill-treatment.” Another one says to “harass or annoy persistently.” While being annoyed by someone can be humorous (for a period of time), the other words of hostility, ill-treatment, and harassment are powerful, personal, and damaging.

Dealing With Persecution

One of my favorite fictional characters is Jack Reacher from the novels written by Lee Child. Reacher, retired from the Military Police, is simply walking across the United States to see it up close and in person. However, his “simple” walk turns into some sort of personal persecution in almost every small town. It’s interesting to me that even though he is unjustly persecuted in each novel, Reacher never seems to be too upset by the persecution. He simply starts some logical investigative work that he learned in the military to “get at” what is causing the persecution.

As our ancient text says, we will be persecuted for no apparent reason. Reacher lives with that kind of persecution everywhere he goes. The text says nothing about justly or unjustly, it just says we will be persecuted. Almost nothing makes us feel worse than being persecuted.

Tough to Deal With

Unlike the first two words of our text, persecution is personal. It feels like we are being harmed.

I was working with one company for several years when my client saw me enter the office of someone he didn’t trust. He immediately called me to his office and fired me. He also began to persecute me. He bad-mouthed me whenever he had the chance. He identified me as a liar and troublemaker. He said I could not be trusted and therefore should not work with anyone else at the company. I was devastated. I had always maintained a very high reputation at all the companies I had worked for and this seemed to be both personal and very damaging.

I talked with this person’s boss (whom I had also worked for and believed I had a good reputation with). The boss gave me some advice. He told me that when this person found out that none of the accusations were true (the boss still believed in me), he would never apologize (it wasn’t in his nature) but he would ask me to continue working for him as if nothing had happened. The boss was right. Within a couple of months, the person asked me to come to his office and began talking about what needed to be done next with his team. He never apologized but simply went on about our work together as if nothing had happened. In fact, I worked with him and his teams at two other companies when he took new jobs.

Persecuted

Persecution happened. I almost quit consulting believing I had done something very wrong or bad, but just didn’t know what. I was being heavily persecuted but it seemed to come from nowhere. Our ancient text doesn’t say that we will deserve the persecution, it just says we will be persecuted.

Sometimes we’re persecuted for a reason. Maybe we were the first to persecute the other person and now it’s payback time. But that’s not what the text is referring to. It doesn’t give a reason. It simply says we will experience persecution. To deal with the persecution there is reason to examine yourself to make sure you were not the instigator, but like my example above and the text says, “you will be persecuted.” When that happens, the only advice I have is to be patient with yourself. You may never know why you were feeling persecuted. The text simply says “you will be persecuted.” This takes a lot of humility and grit. It’s not easy to remain calm during persecution—but be patient. Eventually, things will clear up.

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