Sowing and Waiting

I think one of the great moments of parenthood is seeing your planted seeds take root and grow in your kids. It comes in flashes -- brief moments which could easily be missed if you're not looking for it.

I've had quite a few of those moments recently. I hesitate to speak of them because, like a young flower, I fear that they're way too fragile and I'm passionately risk-averse! Instead, I pray for them and trust God to continue to order their steps. What I can say is...

• Thing 1 (the eldest) is finding his identity and his voice. Praying hard for his breakthrough!
• Thing 2 (the princess) is blossoming in almost every way! Her light bulb isn't just "on", it's radiating.
• Thing 3 (the toddler-in-charge) lightens up the room when he marches in. Yes, he marches.
• Thing 4 (the infant) does what babies do -- look cute.

Until next time...

The Burden and Blessing of Preparation

Never really gave "it" much thought...until I started speaking up at meetings.

While sitting in the back of crowded conference rooms, I often observed and listened to people with lots of brass on their shoulders, experience on their resumes, and gray strands in their hair. At some point along my journey, I must've broken that pattern by either asking a poignant question or offering some differing (yet enlightening) perspective. I was probably surprised that I didn't get put back into place by some really smart guy sitting at the big boy table. Nonetheless, at some point, I transitioned from being a mere notetaker piggybacking someone's meeting invite to becoming an honest-to-goodness stakeholder (with his own meeting invite and a seat at the big boy table!).

Since that moment, here's my most shocking realization: out of a crowded conference room of 30 people, you'd be lucky to find 5-6 people who actually "get" what is being discussed or how the issue at hand can be resolved. That's a good 80% of folks who are either pontificating (i.e., talking a lot but not stating anything of substance), skating (i.e., not talking and hoping no one realizes that you're clueless), or simply faking their way through (i.e., peppering in a few off-topic statements or anecdotes when you hear something you're remotely familiar with)! On many occasions, I've been outright shocked like the character "Neo" (Keanu Reeves) from "The Matrix" movie in the days after he was unplugged...

How can this be? Not exactly sure. What I can say is that speaking in public is a lot like basketball. The moment you walk onto the court, everyone starts sizing you up and establishes a pecking order in their minds -- mentally ranking who they think are the best players and outright dismissing those who they deem lesser-skilled players. However, all kinds of problems arise when a "lesser" player outperforms his pre-game ranking (like watching a reverse, two-handed dunk against the consensus "best" player). Much of the same happens when an unsuspecting meeting attendee speaks in such a way that everyone else must quickly recalibrate their respective pecking orders and accept the fact that this "new guy" is a legitimate contender for "smartest guy in the room"!

The irony here is that almost everyone in the room has something to boast about. CEOs of this, and Program Directors of that... The last thing you'd expect is for a bunch of seasoned, senior professionals to actually be intimidated by an intelligent, well thought-out question or comment from someone they don't already know or haven't already figured out. With such credentials, one would think that they'd happily take on any and all newcomers, confident in their abilities to shrug off any intellectual overthrow attempts from younger, less-experienced whipper-snappers.

So what's my point? Simply put, "knowledge is power". Watching the facial expressions change when New Guy puts his knowledge on display makes the burden of preparation all the more worthwhile. One trip to the whiteboard to explain how simple your suggested solution really is -- well, at least it's simple to you -- makes you appreciate the nights of studying and refining your core communication skills. When it's all said and done, there's no better feeling than to dine heartily on the fruits of your own labors!

The Eagle Blog

I figured that I should get this blog written up and posted while it's still fresh in my head...

For a good chunk of my life, my dad doubled as my pastor. And for reasons I can't clearly recall, he always gravitated to biblical and societal references to eagles. He recited Isaiah 40:28-31 as his prologue before every sermon and he often told the story about "The Eagle and the Chicken". Well, I couldn't help but recall this popular anecdotal story while talking/preaching to the eldest kid this past week. Humble apologies -- I added some personal touches to the original story:

Some time ago, an eaglet fell from his nest and was rescued by a chicken farmer. The farmer placed the baby eagle in his chicken coop and raised it alongside his many chickens. The eagle grew up as a chicken, doing what chickens do, believing he was a chicken.

One day, a stranger was passing by and stopped when he saw a grown eagle living in a chicken coop, pecking seeds from the ground with the other chickens. The farmer explained to the man that the eagle was no longer an eagle since it had been raised as a chicken. The man lifted the eagle onto the fence and urged the great bird to fly and take its rightful place in the clouds. The bird first looked up but then hopped back down to the ground to be with the other chickens.

The man asked the farmer if he could take the bird on a short trip. He placed the bird in a cage and placed the cage on the back of his truck. He proceeded to drive up to one of the highest points in the mountains. He took the eagle out of the truck and held it high for the bird to see the great sights. After a few moments, the man released the bird over a cliff and still thinking as a chicken, the bird flailed its wings and began to fall. Almost by instinct, the bird extended its wings, felt the lift from the air and began to soar. While flying high in the clouds, the eagle realized that he had great vision and looked over a great distance to see the chicken coop he used to call home. He knew that he was in a place now where few birds could fly and from that point on, he would never be able to return to living life on the ground.

Needless to say, this story speaks for itself. Time will surely tell if my teenager really understood the message in this great story.

Starting out

In case you were wondering about my inspiration and plans for this blog...

My daughter -- a fine blogger in her own right -- and I were having a little discussion about the word "irony". I thought the phrase "common anomaly" would be a good example to hopefully bolster her understanding of this new word. I mentioned that the phrase simply plays on the irony of the two words -- in my case, using "Common Anomaly" as a blog title is really a way to wink to all of you intellectuals out there surfing the Web.

Now that Common Anomaly is a reality, what do I write about? I have so many things that I could write about -- work, family, sports, religion/faith, current events, politics -- but the last thing I want is to be psycho-analyzed via a bunch of quirky, all-over-the-map posts which could easily diagnose me as intellectual (a good thing) yet unstable (much less so)!

So...after giving it some thought, I'm leaning towards talking "family" with some occasional excursions into the worlds of "sports" and "current events". So with that said, keep your eyes out for future posts and pictures!

Day One: Let the Journey Begin!

While I haven't been wildly optimistic about starting this little expedition, I am looking forward to seeing where this journey takes us.