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Kevin Stories 02.29.24 : Wild Horses
This will be my last offering for the Romance Month of February for it's a leap year and I wanted to end with a mystical mystery I've never solved. I was 42 years old. I had made some big changes in my life, I had left my old church. I had taken on a new job at an Internet software company called CyberDesic. I had been given the opportunity to teach a course about the Future of the Internet at Bradley University.
Before all these things happened, I had been an independent consultant working under the DBA Visual Rhetoric. I told stories through graphic design and I got involved with bringing that talent to creating some early commercial Websites.
My writing ability came in handy, too.
I still had an office on the third level of our quad level home. I only had one corner of that room. The rest was our family room for my wife and our three sons and my wife's mom. I had a phone in my office with a business line and this new fashion device called an answering machine.
There was a cassette recorder inside it that relayed my welcome message and recorded the missed messages of callers. I checked it every night for my new job and to catch calls from former customers.
I came home from my night class at Bradley. The kids were in bed. My wife was in bed. I had to capture a few insights from my class and I saw there was a message for me on my answering machine.
There wasn't a message but I could hear a song playing faintly in the background. Took me a moment to realize that it was a cover of the Rolling Stone's song Wild Horses but a girl was singing it and her voice had an otherworldly sound.
I combed the Internet until I found out the recording was released by a group called The Sundays. I found the recording on the Internet and listened to every word. The song was so romantic and profound and spoke of a some day future.
I wondered then and I still wonder now if that song just happened to be playing in the background or actually was the message. Did someone get a wrong number and declined to say anything? Was it a glitch? Or was it the most improbable and impossible scenario?
Someone had left it as a love message for me either from the past or from the future.
Maybe you wouldn't spend a moment worrying about it, I have such a big imagination that I consider all possibilities. So, today, I leave you with this song to think and feel about...
#kevinstories
AVOID UNNECESSARY COMPETITION
“The photo shows a fast race between dogs and a cheetah. The goal was to see who was the fastest. Everyone was surprised that the cheetah did not budge from its place. We asked the race coordinator what happened.
After seeing this picture, he replied: Sometimes trying to prove that you are the best is an insult. We do not need to go down to the level of others to show our strength.
Think carefully and save your energy for what you deserve. The cheetah uses its speed only to hunt, not to prove to the dogs that it is the fastest and strongest."
Please always ensure that you use your strength, energy, resources, time, skills, and expertise wisely and avoid unhealthy rivalries and unnecessary competitions.
We can learn a lot from the natural instincts of other species behaviors. I was scuba diving yesterday and saw the most amazing sight. It is called a bait ball. when small fish swarm in a tightly packed spherical formation about a common center. It is a last-ditch defensive measure adopted by small schooling fish when they are threatened by predators.
In this case it was a bait WALL. Literally about 30 feet wide by 100 feet long. One of the most impressive sights I have seen underwater. Bait balls work as a cohesive unit with everyone playing their role. The fish in the middle are like the operators. They have no idea what is going on or if a predator is nearby, they just swim. The fish on the outside are in constant lookout for predators. Within the school itself, there is no centralized intelligence aware of how the school has configured itself. Rather, the schooling behavior is the consequence of relatively simple rules followed by each individual fish in the school, such as remaining close together, moving in the same direction, and avoiding collisions with each other.
As teams, we could stand to follow similar less choreographed rules. Move in the same direction and don't step on each other's toes. Help each other out.
The bait ball reacts to movements from a predator with lightning reflexes, rhythmically streaming up and down with rapid direction changes. When a predator approaches, they can split and re-form behind the predator. In our case, they split around us until they realized we were not a threat and they re-formed.
Similarly, when competition is threatening, react swiftly, but don't veer too much from your north star. Re-form and continue down the path you know will help you grow your company.
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