All relationships have a beginning and an end. Look at the relationships in your life. Where and how did they start and stop? In some cases, your most important relationships had a ceremonious start. A wedding? a kickoff? A ceremony of some kind? A public event where you lay bare your love and commitment towards another person, a project, or an idea. I think of it like a “birth” process. On the other hand, your most important relationships that ended likely had a ceremonious end. A divorce? A termination? A graduation? A funeral? A time where you had to account for what happened — good or bad — and you looked forward to the future. I think of this like a “death” process.The birth and death processes ultimately end with some type of closure. When a new human is born, families/society (hopefully) often celebrate and initiate the newborn in some way. When a human dies, family/society (hopefully) come together to lay bare their love for that person in a memorial service. Your audience (mostly) only remembers how you start the song and how you end it. Make each moment special. How you start and stop matter.

You and I use thousands upon thousands of gestures (micro and macro) every day to express ourselves. We furry our eye brows when confused or angry. We open our eyes in surprise. You and I may swallow when nervous. Imagine how much we are communicating without even realizing it? The puppeteers behind the muppets cannot express emotions the way we can; they can limited expressions and gestures. Every gesture the muppet made to express itself mattered. Imagine you could only change your facial expressions in 3 ways to express yourself. You would need to really think about how you wanted to change your face and what you really wanted to communicate to avoid being misunderstood or being ignored. The reality is that we have an abundance of gestures we can make, we are often misunderstood, and many times we are ignored. The other reality is that we can do something to change that — we can think like muppet puppeteers.When we want our work to resonate, we can think about using a strong gesture — symbol — to speak for us. What’s a strong symbol?Silence, a hug, a question, a call, a text, an ear, a talk, and lots more. These actions seem small, but as the muppets show us, a carefully placed small gesture can make all the difference.

Start by creating or doing something new that helps someone solve a problem. When we start adopting new and novel ways to solve our problems, the culture changes. You can only do that if you stop and see people as they are first.

I talk a lot about the person as an individual because I have a working theory that what we can truly control is our self. If that theory is true, then what matters is our story and how we live our story to serve others. There might be people who share a similar story grid, but it’s not the same. You and I might share a few threads in common, but we are not the same. Your story is just as beautiful and just as tragic as mine. There are so many aspects about what you do that make you the powerhouse that you are — you are not 1 of many in some cohort of people.Be careful not to lump people into a cohort too quickly. As easy as it is for us to simplify people, do the hard work of seeing people and their beautiful personal stories first. Interestingly, I think when we stop and appreciate someone for the beautiful person they are, we start to see they aren’t so much different from us — they’re just doing their best, they love, they cry, and like you, they wish someone would give them the benefit of the doubt.

If you get the little details right, then the rest of the piece falls into place.

I’m working with a composer who wrote a musical and had it arranged for several instruments and computer track. The composer engaged me to reduce the music so that the score could be played by 2 people. Welcome to the world of music reduction — you’ve seen this world before, but in a different way.My mission is to take the body of the composer’s work and reduce it to its essence. I get to ask questions like:Who is this for?What was intended?What is this for? What is the effect we’re trying to create?I then remove everything that doesn’t help me answer those questions. What’s remaining is essential and elegant. We can, and arguably should, become the music reductionists of our lives and our work.

You’ll encounter a person behind you in line anxious for you to hurry up. You might get annoyed by that person. It’s possible you’ll want to tell that person to back off. You’ll get upset — what’s that person’s problem?Then you see them running off to be with their family. That person has noisy kids. They were anxious to get what something to make their kids stop crying. Finally, you end up feeling sorry for that person. Oh wait… you’ll also feel like a moron for allowing yourself to get upset.

Everyone who wants to lead has a reason to lead. The best leaders lead others not because of status or fame — they lead because they care about those they serve. Plutarch, ancient famous biographer from back in the day, writes, that the best leaders fear the people in their charge. “They remain vigilant and keep their constituents from harm.” (How to be a Leader, Plutarch). I lead others because I care for and desire to be of service to others.

“Granger stood looking back with Montag. ‘Everyone must leave something behind when he dies’ my grandfather said… Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.” — Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451Every thing you and I do leaves a fingerprint on the ones we serve. Instead of shooting for the one big thing that you want to be remembered for, aim for the little targets you can hit every day. By the way, I just finished Fahrenheit 451. I experienced a book that could have been written about today. I found the subjects and themes highly relevant. I am glad that I invested my time there.

I think about what I am most scared of often. Why? I believe it’s good to know what keeps you up at night so that you can be ready to confront it should I be attacked. What scares me? The majority.You and I, humans, are easily influenced by the majority. We often adopt the views and beliefs of those who we believe are most like us. What’s scary is that the majority’s ideals are often not rooted in stipulated facts and contrarians to the majority are often not welcomed. I worry about any type of majority exercising power over our ability to think and speak freely. I also worry that we don’t expose ourselves to enough different ideas to challenge our long held beliefs.I may be a worry wort. But I am also a contrarian, and often not in the majority. Interestingly enough, there’s no other place I’d rather be.