Sometimes it all just goes so wrong. Like tonight for example. I was at a casual, family BBQ. After awhile, when everyone had eaten enough to feel compelled to loosen their pants, a friend and I were told (as two of the younger adults there) that we needed to help the hostess move the furniture back into place. Mostly that meant moving pieces of a large, hefty L-shaped couch back where they belonged. This alone would have been fine. Truly. However, the big fun here, was that we had to latch each individual piece of couch, to the one next to it. Blindly, and by somehow lifting bulky components onto the little, proper male/female metal parts at the very bottom of the couch.
Now, he and I were game mind you, to do most of these. We were making good progress. The engine was going up the hill. The nail was almost into that wood. The runners were almost at the finish line! (catch my drift here?) But, a few of the pieces were tricky to latch on to one another. THANKFULLY, there was however, no shortage of supervision from about 9-10 other people standing around. They were pointing, gesturing, making wonderful suggestions, and generally telling us what to do. AND…as a bonus, asking us why we “did it that way?” etc. All of this couch seat driving, was NOT very helpful. But it did remind me of one too many meetings attended over the years, that had felt this way. One too many events over the years…that had gone this way…one to0 many projects, over the years that had crashed and burned this way. TOO many cooks in the kitchen, too many chiefs. Not enough warriors. Not enough doers. Not a culture of let’s all pitch in, you know…like the AMISH do when raising a barn for a neighbor.
So, what am I getting at here? So what about the couch? Identify your mission. Find your crew. Find the 5-6 notes in your chord at work, at church, at the rescue shelter, in your community. Plot the course. Re-focus on your purpose. Assemble your pieces in harmony, and go do good work. Now if we can only finish getting this recliner to latch on correctly! See you at TEDxyoungcirclepark.org !
