Uncertainty and Risk

What Matters Most……..Commentary by Jim High

Uncertainty and risk are two things most people try to eliminate from their lives, but I hope to explain why in order to really live you must accept some level of uncertainty and risk in your life.  I spent 35 years in the insurance business dealing with uncertainty and risk, but that is not what I’m talking about.  Insurance after all is just a way, with the payment of a monetary premium, to arrange to transfer your uncertainty and risk to some large insurance company.  And the only way they have of taking care of you is with money.  Does any amount of money replace a life, or a home? 

But, while I’m on the topic of insurance, and I do think you should buy it, let me also mention that Risk Management is actually more valuable than insurance, because by analyzing what your risks actually are, and making changes to prevent accidents and problems from developing in the first place, you can keep a lot of the uncertainties from happening.  That’s way better than just getting paid money if they do.

It’s the personal uncertainties and risks of life that I want to talk about.  Most people as I said just try to eliminate any uncertainty and risk from their personal lives, but that can lead to a very dull existence. 

The days of our lives are all we really have in this world, and we ought to make as many of them between birth and death as memorable as we can.  The ones we remember most vividly are the days that were full of uncertainty and risk, and what we did to overcome it with success in spite of anything and everything.  Let me illustrated with a few examples of how uncertainty and risk are actually good for you.

I think of the time when I learned to fly an airplane, and especially my first solo flight.  Talk about risk and uncertainty that was it.  You know it’s coming, but you don’t know when.  Then one day the instructor calmly gets out of the airplane and tells you to take it up for three circles around the airport and three landings all by yourself.  That’s not the time to be afraid, to back out, or to say you are not ready yet, so you do it.  You overcome your uncertainty and you don’t think about the risk, and in return you gain a skill and the feeling deep inside your soul that you can do anything you set your mind to accomplish. And that is one of life’s most valuable lessons.

Another great example is the two month trip I took to Europe with a friend back in 1979.  We bought a VW Diesel Rabbit and took delivery at the airport in Brussels, Belgium, the day we arrived on our flight from Atlanta.  We signed the papers in the airport’s parking garage, loaded our bags and headed out without any reservations for hotels, or even a fixed itinerary for where we would spend the next 60 days. The result of that uncertainty and risk was the most wonderful trip of my life.  Experiences I will never forget as we did things that tourist never get to do.  We never had a reservation, but always found a delightful and interesting place to sleep each night.

Our cheapest hotel room was at the Hotel Iran in Madrid, Spain, just a block from Plaza Mayor for only $7.50 per night.  That’s only $3.75 each.  It was in Madrid that I saw my first and only bullfight.  Our last night in Monte Carlo we gambled at the casino with the last of our French Francs and almost didn’t have enough to pay our bill to the nice French lady at the B & B before heading off to Italy.  In Rome we wanted to find a place near the Spanish Steps area, but have you ever driven yourself into Rome?  We hadn’t either, but we made it, and found a parking garage just a block away where we stored our car while we toured Rome for five days on foot.

When everything in your life is certain it shuts down your thinking and creativity.  And it is thinking new thoughts, asking new questions, and meeting new people, that allow you to create the new experiences that add to the richness of the days of your life.

These two quotes explain why you also need some risk in your life.  From Anais Nin, “And the day comes when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom.”  And from Eudora Welty, “How can you go out on a limb if you don’t know your own tree?”

What Matters Most…….Never fear uncertainty and risk in your life.  Learn to deal with it and in the doing you will discover a most wonderful adventure.

© 2012 #2  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

THINK / What's Next

What Matters Most…Commentary by Jim High

Right after I graduated from Mississippi State University several of my college fraternity buddies were hired by IBM.  I went home to take over the operation of our family’s insurance agency due to my Father’s illness.  But my friends and I shared one thing in common, IBM’s famous one word slogan – THINK.

I truly thought it was the best slogan I had ever heard, and in those early days of television everyone heard, or rather saw, the single word, THINK, at the end of every IBM commercial.  Only one word, but it said volumes about what IBM as a company was all about.  And for me it helped me to stay on track to accomplish the enormous task in front of me.  Twenty two years old, my Father with cancer and unable to get out of bed, trying to learn, operate, manage and maintain a customer base that included the City of Tupelo, both the city and county school systems, the largest bank in town at that time, as well as the insurance program for the North Mississippi Medical Center.

After the death of my Father, I also became the provider for my family that consisted of my Mother, Grandmother, brother and sister, as well as the two ladies, and several sub-agents that worked for the agency, so you can understand how important that word –THINK – became to me.  I even cut it out of magazine ads and taped it up in my office.

You see most every problem or challenge you have in life can be handled if you allow yourself to THINK, because it is acting without thinking that causes all the problems.  It worked.  The agency grew and prospered, and so did IBM.  I always wondered why they dropped that slogan.  I’ve never dropped thinking about solutions.

Not too long ago one of the top rated TV shows was West Wing staring Martin Sheen as President Bartlett.  It was on for several years and I watched every episode.  President Bartlett was a President we could all rally around and he must have followed the slogan – THINK – because he always did the right thing, which I’ll admit is easy if you are just following a script, but at least the script writer was thinking.

President Bartlett had a famous phrase he said at least once every episode – “What’s Next.”   I always thought it was a great way to live your life, to accomplish your goals, to get things done.  “What’s Next” – says I’m finished with that, let’s move on.  It was the moving on to “What’s Next” that made the show exciting.  They solved the problems of the country and then moved on.  They never sat and rest on their laurels.  They never worried over the past, or worse lived there.  “What’s Next” says let’s go forward.  So I would suggest that you think about what’s next in your life, your business, your religious beliefs, your family, your health, and every other area of your life. 

Let me apply some of this philosophy to some of Tupelo’s most pressing problems at the current moment realizing that if we – THINK – about them, we can solve them all, and then asking “What’s Next” moves our city forward.

Let’s be realistic and honest when we think about how the Tupelo Public School System lost its excellence.  Let’s fix the problems where ever they are, inside or outside of the school system, and then ask what’s next, so we can continue to improve because nothing is ever perfect.

Does the Major Thoroughfare Program have its eyes set on what’s next?

As wonderful as it is, the new Toyota plant at Blue Springs is almost at full employment of 2,000, and will soon be making 600 Corollas a day.  CDF, What’s Next?

We have, after six years, gotten the results of the railroad study.  We still have the problem, and it is getting worse.  What’s Next?

Soon Tupelo will have a new up-to-date modern Aquatic Center.  What’s Next?

What Matters Most…..….you get the idea!  If we just THINK, all problems are solvable, and if we always ask, “What’s Next,” we will always be moving forward and not backwards.  You might want to write these two ideas down as words to live by and post them on your refrigerator or bathroom mirror, or where ever you post things you never want to forget.

THINK / What’s Next

© 2012 #1  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Endings and Beginnings

What Matters Most……….Commentary by Jim High

Saturday will be the end of 2011.  But every ending is followed by a new beginning, and Sunday will be the beginning of 2012.  This, of course, happens every year as we celebrate New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.  Parties, champagne, food, football, and for most of us, resolutions will mark this day.  But actually these two days are just two points on the calendar of time.  Sometimes I think we make way too much of the passage of time, and way too little of the present moment in which we actually live.

Whether it’s today or tomorrow, this week or next week, or May turning into June, every ending is always followed by a new beginning.  There is really nothing special about New Year’s Day that we can’t have every day of our lives. 

And this also applies to our New Year’s Resolutions.  During the past few months I’ve lost just over 30 pounds.  If I had waited to make a New Year’s Resolution to lose some weight, I’d still be the same weight I was months ago, and actually I’d be putting off doing anything about it by turning my desire to lose weight into a New Year’s Resolution instead of into action in the present moment.

How many times have you made a New Year’s Resolution, waited until New Year’s Day or the day after to put it into action, and a week or a month later lapsed back into your old habits whatever they were?  Yes, we have all done that.  So when you decide to do something don’t put it off.  There is no magic in New Year’s Resolutions, in fact in my opinion, they are harmful.  The best time to do anything, change anything, start something new, or stop something is the instant you decide to do it. 

And don’t worry about all that planning you think is necessary before you start in the direction of your goal.  You can make adjustments as you go along.  Planning can and does get in the way of action a lot of the time.  You just have to know what you want as the end result, not every step of the way planned out before you start.  In fact, keeping the end result in mind, not your plan, is the most helpful way to actually attain your end result.  Starting is what works, and planning to start is not starting.

Think of it this way.  Nothing is happening in the past, whether that past was just yesterday, last month, or years ago.  The past has already happened and we can never change it, but we can improve ourselves and our surroundings for today only in this present moment.  And nothing is happening tomorrow either, because tomorrow is not here yet.  What we have is today, and even today is divided up into a lot of small present moments.

I’m not saying forget the past or don’t plan for the future.  Both of those things are important.  But much more important is to learn how to live in the present moment.  So how do we do this?  We need to be aware of what is.  Sounds simple, maybe even a little confusing until you give it some thought.  Understanding reality is what I mean by the term “what is,” and that requires some thinking on your part.  Deal with reality, with what is happening now, with what is, and you will begin to live in awareness of the present moment.  And the present moment, when you really think about it, is the only time and place you can actually do anything.

So right now, this present moment, as you are reading this column is the time to decide to act.  You can start whatever it is that you need to start.  Use your New Year’s Resolutions to make adjustments in the actions that you have already started.  And remember that every day can be a new beginning.  Just as there is no magic in New Year’s Day, there is no magic in Monday, or next week, or tomorrow.  The magic is right now in the present moment.

What Matters Most……..Everything in your life – the state of your body, your health, your livelihood, your home, the present condition of every phase of your life – is conditioned by what you have done in the past.  But the condition of all these things can be improved tomorrow, next week or next year by the thoughts, feeling and actions you decide to make in this present moment.  In other words, you choose your life.

© 2011 #26  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Love

What Matters Most……..Commentary by Jim High

One of the books that is a part of my early morning ritual is Divine Sparks by Karen Speerstra.  She calls it the collected wisdom of the heart.  Actually it is a book of thousands of quotes about various words, ideas and concepts from almost 1,800 different people arranged in alphabetical order.  The first word is “Abundance” with seven quotes, and the book ends with the word “Zoroastrianism,” where five quotes are displayed.

So how does one use and make sense of such a book?  I decided to read it straight through by reading all the quotes for each word starting with the word abundance and reading only the quotes for one word each day.  I started at the first of the year, and since there are just over 500 words, I won’t finish reading this book until about the middle of next year. I also try to determine the best quote for each word and highlight it.  Sometimes there are several best quotes, after all these are all quotes from people famous enough to have their quotes remembered.

Last week I had made it to the word love.  Love has more quotes listed than any of the words so far, fifty nine in all.  I’ll probably not find another word in this wonderful book with more than fifty nine quotes, which is understandable because to quote someone we’ve all heard that “Love makes the world go round.”

But reading those fifty nine quotes on love got me to thinking more deeply about love.  Where does love come from?  Does love exist apart from our lives?  Why do we humans love?  My answer is that love comes from within us, love therefore doesn’t exist apart from our lives, and humans love because it is the easiest and fastest way to receive love from another person.  And the love of another person is what humans want most in this world.  Unconditional love from another person, I submit, is the greatest feeling in all the world.

The more love we have in our lives the better lives we have.  The only way to get love is to give it away.  Love over comes hate just as light over comes darkness.  Love solves all problems.  Love is the essence of life.  As babies and small children, we are loved and cared for by our parents and others, and the measure of the love we experience then determines the love we have that can later by freely and unconditionally given away to others.  Love is learned early in life by being loved.

My brother and sister and I have often remarked how lucky we were to have grown up in a home full of love and stability.  Even with four generations under one roof, my Great Grandmother didn’t die until I was eight years old, there was never an argument, disagreement or even a slammed door that any of the three of us can remember.  One of my favorite pictures is of my Great Grandmother and me sitting on the living room couch.  I’m about three years old and she is reading to me.

Love is such a complicated and powerful emotion that the Greeks had four words for love.  Eros is used to describe passionate love, with sensual desire and longing.  Storge means affection in Greek and described the natural affection like that felt by parents for their children.  Philia means friendship or brotherly love.  Agape means unconditional love.  Agape is used in the biblical passage known as the "love chapter", 1 Corinthians 13, and is described there and throughout the New Testament as sacrificial love.

What Matters Most…….I’ve picked three of those fifty nine quotes to help answer that question.

“Everything wants to be loved….You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk.” –Alice Walker – The Color Purple

“Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves, without any insistence that they satisfy you.”  --Wayne Dyer

“You know I’m really convinced that if you were to define love, the only word big enough to engulf it all would be life.  Love is life in all of its aspects.  And if you miss love, you miss life.  Please Don’t.”  --Leo Buscaglia – Living, Loving and Learning

© 2011 #20  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Voting Matters

What Matters Most………..Commentary by Jim High

Last week the voters of Mississippi said “NO” to the Personhood Amendment and many Mississippians breathed a sigh of relief that maybe, just maybe, it is a sign that Mississippi has turned the corner, and can now begin to address the issues that matter and that will begin to move our state forward instead of backwards.  Regardless of your opinion for or against the Personhood Amendment two things need to be said and understood loud and clear.

First, it was a very poorly thought out piece of legislation and for that reason had it passed it would have brought many unintended consequences to a great many women and their families.  This is probably the major reason that it lost.  So we should learn from this how important it is to get proposed legislation right before it becomes law.  A lot of the problems we face in our country are due to the unintended consequences of poorly thought out and constructed laws, that might correct one problem, but cause many other unintended  problems.  And then we complicate this problem by passing even more laws instead of backing up and starting over.

Sometimes issues are so emotional and ideological that reason, logic and sometimes even justice go out the window.  We can and should prevent that by thinking laws through completely in advance.  The voters of Mississippi proved themselves worthy of thinking in advance when they voted down Prop No. 26.  And we are all better off because rational thinking matters.  Voters around the country seem to be getting the message also because last Tuesday many elections overturned laws that the majority did not like and did not want, like the law in Ohio to strip public union workers of their collective bargaining rights, and the various recall elections held in several states.

The second thing last week’s defeat of Prop No. 26 should tell the people of Mississippi, and the nation for that matter, is that issues that are purely religion based have no place being enacted into law in a nation founded on the principal of separation of church and state.  This is becoming all the more important as our great nation continues to become the melting pot of free people from around the globe that it has always been, and was intended to be from the very beginning. 

As I was growing up in Tupelo in the 1940’s and 1950’s we only had Protestant and Catholic Christian Churches and a very small group of Jewish people.  And we were all either white or black.  Look at Tupelo today; it is very different.  We have a Muslim Religious and Community Center, a Temple for the Hindu faith, an Eastern Orthodox Church, large numbers of Latin American Catholics, and also many new people from Japan and other Asian countries.  In addition the Christian churches now come in an almost endless variety both inside major denominations, and as completely independent stand alone congregations. 

With all this diversity it should be perfectly clear that the religious beliefs of any of these different faiths and their particular beliefs, whatever they are, should not be codified into the laws of our city, county, state or nation.  Freedom of and from religion needs to be maintained as an inviolate principal of the United States of America.  If we are not tolerant of others regardless of their faith and beliefs, how can we ever expect to live in peace with one another?  And isn’t living together as one people, one nation, and one world what the human condition is all about.  I believe that it is.

Our world continues to grow and evolve.  There are now 7,000,000,000 of us on planet Earth.  We evolved over hundreds of thousands of years from separate small tribes, and we all still have our tribal mentality, but we must learn to lay it aside and recognize the humanity in all people, knowing that everyone is our brother, our neighbor, and that we are all our brother’s and our neighbor’s keeper.  That is the future.  That is the take away lesson from last Tuesday’s elections, not just here in Mississippi, but all around the country.

What Matters Most…………VOTING MATTERS.

© 2011 #23  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Paul Eason's Wonderful Life

What Matters Most….Commentary by Jim High

Actually this column is about two lives, the wonderful life of Paul Eason, and the wonderful life given to me and thousands of others by Scoutmaster Paul Eason.  This month he will celebrate his 90^th birthday.  I first met Paul 60 years ago when I was eleven years old in Boy Scout Troop 12 sponsored by the First Methodist Church.  Back then Paul seemed old to me, but he was only 30.  The troop met in some left over space on the second floor behind the organ.

Paul had already started the monthly campout program that continues to this day.  Once a month in rain, snow, heat or extreme cold Troop 12 was going camping.  I remember in those days we would walk up North Madison Street, which was mostly gravel beyond Highland Circle and camp out at Livingston Lake, just across Green Street in those wooded  hills and hollows.  We went other places also like Shiloh National Battlefield, Camp Yocona, Ruff’s Farm, and every May after school was out we would take a special trip usually to the beach in Florida and stay at some military base.

Paul’s record of monthly campouts without a miss is nationally recognized as the longest in all of Scouting.  And he literally helped hundreds of boys who got their Eagle Award only because of his efforts.  That is certainly true in my case.  Being a fat kid Personal Fitness merit badge was going to be a big hurdle for me when it came to the mile run, and even when I entered Tupelo High School I was not yet an Eagle Scout.  But Paul worked with me at Robins Field every afternoon for at least a month until I passed that final requirement and became an Eagle Scout.

Paul worked with every boy in some special way.  He always seemed to know just what any of us needed.  And we did fun unusual things, too.  Not many boy scouts get Bird Study merit badge, but Paul took a group of us every Sunday morning at dawn for an hour or two before Sunday school for nearly a year, and we would go all over Lee County looking for different birds until we had found and identified the 50 birds required. 

After college I returned to Tupelo and to Troop 12 working side by side with Paul Eason as his Assistant Scoutmaster for 19 years.  That’s 228 more monthly campouts and I made most of them.  Several years ago we had a big reunion campout at Camp Yocona on the occasion of Troop 12’s 500^th Monthly Campout.  The record continues and totals almost 800 now.  Maybe I’ll live go on the 1,000^th campout, which will be really something.

After many years of going to Camp Yocona for a week each summer, Paul and I decided to take the troop to Pickwick Lake for several years for a week’s campout instead.  I had the job of quartermaster and went to Piggly Wiggly in Iuka each morning during the week to buy the groceries to feed 50 hungry boys three meals, which they had to cook for themselves.  The folks at the Piggly Wiggly in Iuka still remember me all these years later.  I guess they are hoping I’ll show up with three helpers and buy nine or ten baskets of food every day for a week.  We had a grand time and the boys passed many of their merit badges, plus all of them spent time skiing behind several ski boats that we had at our disposal during the week.

I could tell a thousand more stories, but must include a word about our annual campouts at Tishomingo State Park where we would build a Monkey Bridge across Bear Creek.  This was a rope bridge that allowed us to cross the creek by walking on the rope without getting wet, unless of course you fell in.  That bridge and the twenty foot tall lookout towers that we sometimes built by lashing logs together always gave every boy a real sense of accomplishment.

What Matters Most……….If a person has any true understanding of life they got it from someone.  We got it from Paul Eason, and we learned from him to pass it on.  There are so many people out there who want guidance and who cannot get it.  If you can make a difference for at least one person, then you have tremendous merit indeed.  Paul Eason’ wonderful life made a difference in the lives of thousands.  Happy Birthday, Paul!

© 2011 #22  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Thinking about Miracles

What Matters Most………………Commentary by Jim High

Reaching the word “Miracle” in the book of quotes I’m reading got me to thinking.  What is a miracle?  Can miracles be explained?  Can what was once considered a miracle in one culture and time be explained in another time and culture?  Is anything really and truly a miracle?  Do miracles occur outside of religious faith?

The most wonderful thing about life is using our minds to ask questions.  If those early humans that wandered out of Africa three or four million years ago had never asked questions, I doubt modern humans would exist today, for it is the questions and the answers they promote that drives the progress of mankind.  If you never ask the questions, you will surely never get an answer or a solution to your problems.  And remember that sometimes the most important question we can ask about anything is, “What if.”

The quote in the miracles section of the book that got me to thinking about miracles was this one by Augustine of Hippo, who lived between 354 and 430 AD.  He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province.  His writings were very influential in the development of Western Christianity.  His quote, “Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known to us about nature.”  We know so much more about nature now than in the time of Augustine over 1,500 years ago that many things considered miracles in his day are totally understood today.

So what is a miracle by definition?  The dictionary says that a miracle is an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause, and as such is considered the work of God.  So by definition miracles are not something that take place outside of religious beliefs.  But notice that the definition says “all known human or natural powers.”  That word known was what Augustine was talking about.  He knew way back then that miracles don’t contradict natural laws and if they seem to it is because we don’t understand or have not yet discovered the reasons some things happen.

“It was a miracle,” is a phrase we hear a lot about things that really are not miracles at all.  The tornado spared your home and you say, “It’s a miracle.”  It’s too bad about that family next door that didn’t get a miracle.  You find something that was lost for a long time, but was finding it really a miracle or just luck.  We tend to confuse luck with miracles.  If you win a prize in the lottery it was luck not a miracle, regardless of how badly you needed the money.  An even if you are cured of some terrible illness, it was the medicine, not a miracle.  Even if you are miraculously cured without treatment, as sometimes happens, this just means that we don’t know yet how it happened, but someday we will discover enough about nature to understand.

Back in the early 1950’s when I contracted polio and spent a few weeks in Le Bonheur Hospital in Memphis, and then came home without braces or paralysis of any kind, I’m sure that some said it was a miracle.  Some of my family and friends may have even prayed to God for a miracle, and thought they saw one when they saw me well and whole.  But the boy in the room with me at the hospital was not so “lucky” as I was.  Prayers for him did no good and his miracle didn’t arrive.  We must always measure what we might think is a miracle by reality and by those others in the same predicament or with the same problem who didn’t receive a miracle.  As Augustine said, it is our understanding of nature that prevails in life, not miracles.

What Matters Most……….These three quotes capture for me what a miracle really is.

“To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.”  --Abraham Maslow

“To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.  Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.” –Walt Whitman

“There are two ways to live.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle.”  --Albert Einstein

© 2011 #21  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467