Category: Journey of Life

“On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact mid-point, everybody stops and turns and hugs. As if to say, ‘Well done. Well done, everyone! We’re halfway out of the dark.’ Back on Earth we call this Christmas.” – Doctor Who

I confess, I’m addicted to data.  I love building graphs and colorized charts to visualize that data.  When we installed our Tesla Energy solar panels back in September, I was delighted to have our house powered by that ancient and reliable thermonuclear fusion reactor that shows up each day in our sky.  But, I wanted to see the data!  I soon discovered a wealth of information available from our new Tesla Energy Powerwall system.  I began mining it and even created a simple python library, pyPowerwall, to make it easy to manipulate.  Using that and Telegraf, InfluxDB, and Grafana I had an observability platform and dashboard to feed my data and visualization appetite.  Naturally, the graphs were in full color.  

It’s getting dark.  You don’t need a graph to tell you that.  Our days get shorter in the winter.  We all observe the blanket of darkness that gradually pulls over us, stretching deeper into our mornings and evenings.  But what you may not know is how dramatic that change can be in terms of energy.   Our solar energy system went online at the beginning of October, with 35kWh of energy captured from the sun every day.  It has been on a steady ramp down since that first day.  As we tick inescapably towards our winter solstice, in just two months the energy we get from our heavenly benefactor has dropped in half to 17kWh per day.  The day-to-day graph shows the flattening of the curve as it bends down ominously towards the winter solar abyss of December 21st.   It’s victory over us is felt in the cold wind, the fading colors and the melancholy shadows that scrape against our souls.  Darkness is here.

Light a candle.  Our human family has witnessed this solar dance since our beginning.  We measure the sky and plot the stars to know where we are. We embrace the rhythm of the year by decorating it with celebrations and traditions.  In the darkness of the winter, we light our lights.  We illuminate our winter journey with candles.  We adorn our homes with fragrant greens, twinkling lights, cheerful ornaments and glowing fires.  All the while, we know, the light is coming again.  The glory of the sun will return!   But for now, we celebrate.

It’s almost here.  The dead of winter has arrived.  Cuddle up with a warm cup of coffee or tea, your loved ones and a glowing fire.  The light will return.  We are halfway out of the dark!  Celebrate it. 

Merry Christmas! 

“As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has – or ever will have – something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.” – Fred Rogers

Did any of you brave it out on Friday to see the bustling crowds at stores or the mall?  We did.  I’m a glutton for punishment I suppose, but I do enjoy the excitement, festive mood and the occasional good deals.  To be fair, there was much less this year.   Especially the crowds and the good deals, but the festive mood was still there. Regardless, it was a fun date with my sweetie to parade around the town and spot a good deal or two.

We started putting up Christmas decorations even before Thanksgiving, but this past weekend was the final sprint. Trees, lights, candles and greenery now adorn every room in our house and even flow outside. Present boxes, sweets, music and greeting cards begin their annual appearance.  And, as some of you know, it was the first candle lighting of Hanukkah last night.  As the days grow darker and a bit gloomy, the warm glow of the candles, fireplace and the Christmas lights are healing salves to the soul.

I’m clumsy.  I love helping set up the trees, string the lights and set out the decorations.  But in the process, I manage to bump things and there is the evitable breakage.  I was setting up a small tree next to our dining room and added a small string of LED lights.  It was a low-cost variety and had that irritating 60Hz strobing.  I decided to solder in a rectifier, which did the trick, but in the process, I knocked over one of those big LED-lit candles we have.  It fell to our unforgiving tile floor and the wax broke into bits.  

“Oh great,” I said to myself and then heard the expected, “What did you break now?”  My poor motor skills are well known to my family so they came into the dining room to see the show. They managed to piece the candle back together.  To our surprise, the candle still worked.  The glow of the light in the candle warmed up the entire cylinder and to our surprise, created a marvelous new display, illuminating the cracks and casting new shades on the surface.  It was beautiful!   It looked like a landscape wrapped around the candle, with dramatic shadows to create depth.  The result was a natural and unique work of art that now sits on the shelf.  The broken candle created something new, giving inspiration and perspective that didn’t exist before.

We are all broken.  We all have cracks.  We experience hurts, failures, disappointments, physical limitations, mental struggles and other self or externally judged imperfections.  As my youngest often reminds me, especially when my obsessive compulsiveness kicks in, “Nobody is perfect.”   She is right! The reality is that part of our immeasurable value and enduring purpose is the incredible uniqueness of our seemingly broken bits.  Where we are fractured, the light shines through us best.  Glow!  We are creating something new by embracing who we are, striving yet shining. Our uniqueness gives inspiration and perspective that didn’t exist before.  Don’t hold back.  Be the best “you” you can be and shine!

“We were born to be free, to expand our horizons by going where we have never gone before, and not to hang out in the relative comfort and safety of the nest, the known. There is a place within us that is courageous beyond our human understanding; it yearns to explore beyond the boundaries of our daily life.” – Dennis Merritt Jones

My mom was a teacher.  She taught 3rd grade most of her career.  Growing up, my friends thought it was great that my mom was a teacher, but it wasn’t always great for me.  Most kids got sent to the principal’s office for acting up or misbehaving.  Not me!  I got sent to my mother’s classroom.  Corporal punishment was still in play and the principal proudly hung his “board of education” paddle on the wall of his office as a deterrent.  I would have preferred a meeting with that “board” any day, if I could have avoided being sent to my mom’s classroom.  I can still picture the horror on her face as the teacher explained my activity and then hearing the stern, “Just wait till we get home.”  

It seemed like most of my “acting up” happened during recess and on the playground.  I guess it was an irresistible smorgasbord of trouble waiting for me, but really, I just loved experimenting.  I tested Newtonian physics of balls bouncing off all sorts of surfaces, including other kids.  I loved exploring fencing techniques with pretend light saber sticks and branches. I even helped other kids prove or disprove their own theories.   A cute little girl with glasses and a confident attitude once declared to me an axiom, “You can’t hit a person with glasses.”  Much to her dismay, I was able to prove her wrong.  I fully expected to be thanked if not awarded some scientific prize for my discovery, but instead, I was granted another visit to my mother’s classroom, one that had particular impact on me, literally.  

Recess!  What a glorious thing.  There are a lot of life lessons that you can learn during recess.  You also get a chance to see curious characteristics of our human traits on display.  One particularly interesting observation my mom made was the power of fences.  Having had the opportunity to work in many schools with different playgrounds, she noticed that when kids went out to play, if there was no fence, the kids would huddle together, close to the building or by the door.  Nobody ventured out very far.  When there was a fence, the kids would scatter and run all the way out to the edges, running up and down the fence line.  Why is that?

For those kids, the fences created a sense of safety, confidence and certainty.  With that in place, the kids used the entire space to explore, create adventures and have fun together.  I believe there is a good leadership lesson here.  We often talk about unleashing the potential of our team by empowering individuals to creatively solve problems, take on responsibility and innovate.  A good leader can help us manage the unknowns by bringing clarity, direction, and expectations.  They also promote psychological safety by establishing a culture that avoids the blame game, encourages risk and values continuous learning. Those structures help us navigate, explore and create results without fences.  But that is only part of the story.

The leadership lesson here also applies to us individually.  So much of our life and the world we live in has no fences.  It can be intimidating.  Our human tendencies, evoking survival instincts at times, will be to huddle close to what we know, where we feel safe, secure, confident and comfortable.  But if we do that, we miss out on the greater prospects and the rewards that can be waiting for us.  We need to take bold risks.  We should gather our courage and set out on an adventure into the unknown.  Experimenting, exploring, discovering, creating, solving and ultimately enjoying greater outcomes than we would otherwise.  

Spend some time this week in recess!  Examine your fence line.  Ask yourself, what is helpful and what isn’t.  Take a brave step and go beyond, explore outside the fences and enjoy our spectacular world.  And, hopefully, you won’t end up in my mom’s classroom.