GoodFriday: On generosity, attention & leadership
Happy GoodFriday!
Here's something I heard, thought, and did this week.
Something I Heard: Generosity
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
— Simone Weil, in a 1942 letter to the poet Joë Bousquet
Something I Thought: Attention
My wife had an interesting thought about how we communicate with our kids.
It was my son's birthday this week, and like all birthdays we do our best to go above and beyond to make the kids feel special on their day. We decorate the house, take them to their favorite places, get them the gifts that mean the most to them.
But what she found interesting this time wasn't any of that. It was how he reacted to the way she engaged with him.
She was locked in the whole day. If he had something to say, she was in the conversation. If he said something funny, she laughed and told him how funny he was. If he wanted something special to eat, she made it happen.
At the end of the day he told her it was the best birthday ever. Not because of the gifts or the places we took him, but because of how engaged she'd been with him all day.
She told me about it that night and said, "Treat your kid like every day is their birthday."
I think that's a beautiful thing to remind yourself of. Especially since attention is the currency we value most. Give your kids all of it, and every moment with you starts to feel like the best moment of their life.
Something I'm Doing: Leadership
Last week my son and I did our first GORUCK Challenge. Simply put, the event was amazing. It shattered all expectations and we can't wait to do another one.
The most interesting part was being put in a position of leadership. I volunteered to be team lead, which meant I was in charge of 26 people I had just met. We had to fill sandbags, get organized in ranks, march down the beach, and carry out physical challenges.
The sandbags and water jugs we filled at the start had to be carried the whole three hours. After each challenge I rotated who was under the weight. A couple hours in, people start to get tired and the bags start to get heavy.
Here's the part that got me. As team lead, you're not supposed to carry anything.
That was completely foreign to me. I was fresh. I was capable. Every instinct I have says pick up the heaviest thing and take it off the guy who's struggling. At one point I tried to pull some weight off somebody's back and another participant told me to hand it over. He reminded me I wasn't supposed to be carrying anything.
My job was to lead. Watch who was fading. Maintain ranks. Communicate clearly. Pay attention to 26 people instead of carrying one bag. That was a bizarre feeling.
Since I work one on one with clients, I don't often get the chance to lead a group like that, and I'd never had to lead one by doing less of the work than everyone else. I'm thankful for the experience and looking forward to applying what I learned to my daily life.
Until next week!
-Cameron Harn
