http://garretgillespie.com/blog Slaying Dad's Demons Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:35:19 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Essays & Insights By Garret Gillespie Garret Gillespie no Garret Gillespie ggillespie@garretgillespie.com ggillespie@garretgillespie.com (Garret Gillespie) 2006-2007 Slaying Dad's Demons http://garretgillespie.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/powerpress/rss_default.jpg http://garretgillespie.com/blog http://garretgillespie.com/blog/2009/11/kids-will-believe-anything/ http://garretgillespie.com/blog/2009/11/kids-will-believe-anything/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:22:56 +0000 Garret http://garretgillespie.com/blog/?p=245 http://garretgillespie.com/blog/2009/11/kids-will-believe-anything/feed/ 3 Abraham Lincoln,Believe,Brad Paisley,Jim Morris,Joe Louis,Kids,Tom Monaghan,Vince Papale,Walt Disney "Kids will believe anything. And believing something is the first step toward achieving it.” - I was flying down to Arizona recently and between getting boarded and being able to fire up my laptop, I had a little time to kill. "Kids will believe anything. And believing something is the first step toward achieving it.” I was flying down to Arizona recently and between getting boarded and being able to fire up my laptop, I had a little time to kill. So I checked out the Spirit magazine stowed in the pouch in front of me. My mind was elsewhere and I wasn’t paying very close attention to what I was reading until I came to a column at the back titled, "Blessings Counted: Brad Paisley, The country star on luck, true gifts, and underage thinking." I was struck by Brad's description of his early performing experience. “I grew up in a small town called Glen Dale, West Virginia. When I started playing guitar at age 12, the people there gave me more gigs than I could handle. They would constantly say, “Kid you’re great.” Looking back at those videotapes, I don’t think I was great. But if you tell a 12-year-old something enough, he’ll believe you. Kids will believe anything. And believing something is the first step toward achieving it.” You know, he’s right. You give a kid enough encouragement while he's a kid and there'll be no stopping him when he's an adult. So what kind of encouragement did I get as a kid? Did anyone tell me I was great? Yeah I can remember being told I was great. A lot of people told me I had a great voice. Like I said in The Interludes' Coney Island Baby post, Kim and Michelle told me I had a good voice. Good enough that they didn’t give up until I joined choir. Then there was the day the football coach told me I had good size and should have played. I continued to get a lot of encouragement from the people around me as I grew up. I was working as a janitor during a summer term attending college, and my supervisor told me I was too smart to work for someone else. In the Air Force, my CO, a full bird Colonel, told me I should be behind his desk, not him. That impressed me. Many people have told me I have a great voice for broadcasting. Despite the encouragement of these and others, it’s taken me more than 40 years to finally start acting on their encouragement. If I agree with Brad—and I do—that a kid will believe anything, why has it taken me so long to believe them? Maybe it has something to do with when I heard the messages. The earliest messages I remember are during and after high school. What about before high school? I don't remember a lot of encouragement before then. I’m not saying there wasn’t any, but I either didn’t hear it or at some point I stopped believing it. Something had scared me. I was smart enough in grade school to be in the advanced classes, and I had some cool teachers, but the only memories that have stayed with me are of getting my tail chewed for not getting homework done or not writing very nicely. Left hander, what can I say? What about at home? It's been said that one of life's injustices is that our self-esteem is pretty well established by the time we're about 5 or 6 years old. Before we even have the chance to choose how we'd like to feel about ourselves, the choice is made for us. It's rough, but it's reality. So given the fact that I have a hard time digging up much in the way of encouraging messages I received up to the age of 12, I think I can deduce there either weren’t many or some other messages were louder. So, if I didn’t get positive messages at home, can I give myself permission to bash my parents for not giving me the right encouragement when I was a kid? Can I try to make myself feel better by dragging the memories of my parents through the dirt? I can justify all of my failings by listing all the ways my Mom and Dad failed me and for a short time I’ll probably feel a little better, but in the long run it won’t do anything but sully my family name and make me feel like garbage. It’ll also waste a bunch of time I can instead be using to make real progress. My Dad fought his demons to the best of his ability so I’d make it farther than he did, Garret Gillespie no 6:47 http://garretgillespie.com/blog/2009/10/mule-sense/ http://garretgillespie.com/blog/2009/10/mule-sense/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:54:39 +0000 Garret http://garretgillespie.com/blog/?p=211 http://garretgillespie.com/blog/2009/10/mule-sense/feed/ 0 Abraham Lincoln,D-Day,depression,doubt,dream,Dwight D. Eisenhower,faith,fear,great leaders,hope,Life,mule sense Choices. I still have choices. Sometimes the turmoil surrounding me tries to make me feel helpless. Like my situation is hopeless and out of my control. It’s not true. If there’s one thing my situation is teaching me, Choices. I still have choices. Sometimes the turmoil surrounding me tries to make me feel helpless. Like my situation is hopeless and out of my control. It’s not true. If there’s one thing my situation is teaching me, it’s that I can lose control of almost every aspect of my life except my attitude and my freedom to choose. I choose to get up each morning. I choose how to face each day. I choose to be positive or negative. I choose to keep going or to give up. Which reminds me of an old dry well and a wise old mule. You see there was a farmer that had an abandoned well on his property. Though the well had been dry for years, all he’d ever done to close it up was throw some boards over it. Well, as luck would have it, one day his old mule wandered over those rickety boards and Crash! Down she went. Incredibly, the fall didn’t kill her, but it definitely scared the bajeezes out of her and her brays attracted the attention of the whole farm. Everyone came running. Initially pleased that she had survived the fall, their joy slowly turned to despair as their attempts to rescue her failed one after another and they slowly ran out of ideas. Finally, the farmer made the difficult decision that they would just have to bury her right there in the well. He gathered his neighbors and they went to work. Of course, as the first shovelfuls of dirt landed on her back, that poor old mule’s cries intensified, but as the farmer and his neighbors continued; her cries slowly faded and were finally silenced. Amidst sadness and tears, they continued their work and it was some time later that the farmer thought he heard something. It was the sound of shuffling, and it was coming from inside the well. He stopped his work and, while the others continued, leaned over to look into the well. To his astonishment, there was the old mule! She was much higher now and his curiosity about why she wasn’t buried compelled him to watch as his neighbors continued. As each shovelful of dirt landed on the old mule’s back, she would shake it off, take a step up and be closer to the surface. Eventually the level of the dirt that was supposed to bury her was high enough that she simply stepped out of the well and walked off. Like the farmer’s old mule wandered over that hidden well, I’ve made mistakes and find myself in a deep hole from which no one can save me. In my situation, I’m faced with choices. I can give in to my depression and discouragement and simply stand idle while the problems and challenges heap up and bury me. I can panic amidst the challenges thrown down on me and waste huge amounts of energy throwing myself against the walls or trying to claw my way out until I’m exhausted, bloodied and beaten. Or, I can get a little mule sense and do everything in my power to stay calm, fight back my fear and doubt and confront the challenges before me with a clear head. Instead of being overwhelmed by the enormity of my problems as a whole, I take each shovelful as it comes, shake it off, learn how to rise above it, and then use my new knowledge to take a step up. With each problem I overcome, I find myself rising higher and drawing closer to the top of my own dry well. Shaking off future challenges is less difficult as my confidence grows from my successes, and eventually I’ll reach the surface and regain my freedom. There may be someone who can just lift me out, but if that’s the way I make my escape, this hole will remain and I will have gained little knowledge of how to avoid it in the future or how to get myself out when I fall in again. I want this hole filled in, which means I have to overcome these challenges on my own so this particular dry well will no longer be a risk to me. I want to remember the lessons I’m learning. The knowledge and experience I’m gaining by shaking off and overcoming the problems and struggles heaped on me in this hole will make it far less likely for me to fall into the same hole again. Garret Gillespie no 8:41 http://garretgillespie.com/blog/2009/08/the-fight-of-your-life/ http://garretgillespie.com/blog/2009/08/the-fight-of-your-life/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:14:45 +0000 Garret http://garretgillespie.com/blog/?p=200 http://garretgillespie.com/blog/2009/08/the-fight-of-your-life/feed/ 7 101st Airborne Division,Abraham Lincoln,Darcy Andries,Diabetes,Fight,John Sarkett,Life,Success,Thomas Edison I’m flying down to my hometown, Phoenix, this weekend. I’ll be saying goodbye to my sister. At 53, her body is wasted by a lifelong battle with diabetes. Miraculous kidney transplants have carried her nearly a decade beyond her predicted life expectanc... I’m flying down to my hometown, Phoenix, this weekend. I’ll be saying goodbye to my sister. At 53, her body is wasted by a lifelong battle with diabetes. Miraculous kidney transplants have carried her nearly a decade beyond her predicted life expectancy, but her strength is exhausted and she’s too weak to be on the list for another. She’s tired of the dialysis roller coaster, and ready to concede her battle to the disease brought on by a pancreas that couldn’t keep up. I’m awed by the fight she has waged, and I can’t fathom what she and her dear husband must be going through in making this decision. Soon her fight will come to an end and the disease will have won…or will it? She’s beaten the odds for her life expectancy; she’s touched countless numbers of lives for good; she’s been at death’s door more times than I can remember, each time fighting back to have a little more time with her husband and family. Many times and in many ways she has cowed this disease that has slowly deteriorated her body. For that I consider her victorious in the fight of her life. And she leaves on her own terms… How are you doing? I was in a class recently and the teacher shared an experience that got me thinking. He described conversations he had engaged in with a couple of close friends.  During the course of the conversations, each of his friends shared that they were giving up on goals or commitments they had made to themselves or to others with the explanation that “they are just tired of fighting.” They’re just tired of fighting. Of course, they also could’ve said they’re just tired of growing; or climbing; or improving; or learning; or changing. Sadly, few of us ever have the pleasure of knowing when our “fight” is going to be over. One of life’s most daunting mysteries is that the future remains unknown until we arrive. Our challenge is to keep fighting; learning; increasing, with no knowledge of how much time we’ll be given, or how long our fight will go on. Often, even the desired objective changes in the midst of the fight. There’s a billboard along the highway near my home displaying an image of Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President and one of the greatest leaders who has ever lived. Written beside his image are the words, “Failed, failed, failed, and then…” Do you think he ever got tired of fighting? According to John A. Sarkett, in Extraordinary Comebacks, and Darcy Andries, in The Secret of Success is Not a Secret, Abraham Lincoln could have decided he was tired of fighting after the death of his fiancée Ann Rutledge, or after his first or second dry goods store failed. He could have decided he was tired of fighting when he was defeated in his bids for Speaker of the House of Representatives, for the U.S. Senate, for Vice President, and again for the Senate. Instead, he chose to fight on. And how grateful we are that his “greatest concern (was) not whether (he had) failed, but whether (he became) content with (his) failure.” Which failure do you think should have given him enough reason to be tired of fighting? Almost a century later, on December 17th, 1944 the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division joined the Battle of the Bulge arriving in the city of Bastogne ahead of German forces. The 101st formed a perimeter around the city and withstood German artillery with minimal supplies and with many members of the division having been deployed so quickly they arrived without winter clothes. On the fifth day of the siege, the German artillery barrage paused and two German Officers delivered a letter from the German Commander, Generalleutnant Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz, requesting the surrender of Bastogne. Acting commander, General Anthony McAuliffe’s single word response was “Nuts!” In the end the 101st held Bastogne until reinforcements arrived never allowing it to fall into enemy hands. At what point do you think they were tired of fighting? Another half century later, Garret Gillespie no 7:42