Honesty Is A Good Plan

The weather has shifted once again. Our snow melted after only two days. The ice evaporated in a surge of fifty degree heat. Today, it feels like spring has sprung, even though we expect more chilly nights and rainy days.

Is this climate change or global warming? It's difficult for an amateur like me to know. However, I am convinced it is just as difficult for the professionals to know, too. With all their technology and the specialized equipment the have on hand, the faithful Farmer's Almanac remains one of the most effective and efficient standards of long range weather prognostication.

There's a problem here. Most of the professionals seem to be defending a position that has been cast in concrete. It has to be the way they have declared it to be. But the hard  evidence continues to mount demonstrating that perhaps, just perhaps, they are wrong. Maybe the fluctuations in weather cycles are just that - fluctuations. Weather has always been variable and unresponsive to human manipulation. It makes sense to me that people need to be ready and willing to adjust to the changes without coming to the conclusion that the sky is falling. It's not!

People in leadership often face a similar problem. They stake out a strategy or a position on inaccurately or incompletely informed certitude. They simply have to be right because they have chosen a position they believe to be right. Then, reality begins to contradict their choices and those positions become harder and harder to defend. Yet, in order to save face and not appear out of touch, defending such hastily drawn opinions is exactly what many people do.

Admitting error should not be a problem for an honest leader. Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes we rush to judgement and follow a strategy which, in the long run, would be better off if it were abandoned. But an investment in time, energy, and resources holds precedence over common sense and flawed decisions are advanced anyway. What a waste.

CANDID SOUL endorses the opinion that honesty is the ethical and moral choice of champions. There will always be armchair quarterbacks who will kibitz and bluster about how they could have and would have done better. But, they didn't get in the game. They sat on the sidelines, ate their pretzels and drank their (root) beer. Ignore them. They are, as the apostle wrote, "sounding brass and tinkling cymbals."

If you are in a position of leadership and realize you have made an error in judgement, face it squarely. Deal with it honestly, correct it immediately, and move on. If people abandon you in the process, it is likely they were not with you in the first place. If the gripe or complain, let them come up with a better solution. And if they do, be willing to at least evaluate the benefit of their suggestions. They might just have a viable answer.

Soldier on, warrior of the Kingdom.
 

Good Grammar-Used Well

It’s snowing again, painting another winter scene across the yard. I love it. The road is covered with ice and snow, traffic has stopped moving, and once again I have a legitimate excuse for not going anywhere. It’s a writer’s dream come true—nothing to interfere, nothing to distract me from the work at hand. I only hope the power doesn’t fail. I would be left with just a couple of hours of battery life on my old Vaio computer. If that happens, I will have to rely on my other computer, my trusty old Eberhard-Faber Model 2.0, no battery required. (That is not a typewriter.)

I can barely remember what it was like before we enjoyed computers and word processing software. My first real attempts at writing were banged out on an old Royal, a typing machine from a bygone era. I was posting weekly devotionals for our church members and I was typing five carbon copies at a time. (What was a carbon copy?) In order to prepare enough copies for every family, I had to repeat the process four times: slow, inefficient, and filled with grammatical gaffes. I have never recovered. To this day, my use of grammar is a challenge.

Good grammar is, more or less, a necessary evil. It is an assault on creativity, forcing a somewhat disorderly, creative mind to become regimented, engaging in a process that is unimaginative at best, and boring as all get out. The rules of grammar are inflexible, or mostly so. They are often ignored when people speak and all too often when they write, as well. But, bad grammar does not produce good reading.

For the individual who  is serious about being a writer, grammar rules. Without it, writing loses its capacity to clearly express the thoughts and perspectives of the writer. The proper use of grammar separates the veteran writer from the novice and the serious from the frivolous. If you have a message to convey that is worthy of being read, you need to use good grammar. If you don’t know it, study it. Learn how to use language correctly, so that when you abuse it, that will be obvious and will obviously be on purpose.