The Sandcastle

The other day I had to give a delivery driver instructions on how to find our site in the park. Fortunately, I had already been thinking about how to tell friends and family how to find us so he got here just fine. It doesn’t always work that way, though.

I once had a friend give me directions to her house but she forgot to tell me I needed to jog left at one point to end up on her street. She was thrilled when I actually arrived. Because I had been up that street before to a different destination I automatically took that jog. It doesn’t always work that way, either.

My favorite story about giving directions happen to a bunch of computer programmers. They participated in a team building exercise where they were to write direction for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They were told the table held a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, a plate, and a knife.

We could all do that, right? Try it. I’ll wait for you.

Hmm. Hmm.

La la.

Dum diddly dum.

Ready? Let’s see what happened.

One employee was chosen to pretend to be a computer and follow the directions exactly as written.

One set said remove two slices of bread from the loaf. The computer could not do it. The loaf had no opening through which to remove the bread.

Another set got the bread open OK and put the slices on a plate. Then it said to pick up the jar of peanut butter and open it then pick up the knife. Couldn’t do it. Jar in one hand, lid in the other, no hand available to pick up the knife.

Another set gave all the correct instructions right up through spreading the peanut butter on the bread and setting everything down. Then it said repeat the steps that gave instructions for the peanut butter except using the jelly. So the computer picked up the jelly, opened it, put the lid down, picked up the knife, used the knife to get some jelly, spread it on the bread and set everything down. Then it picked up the jelly and stopped. It was trying to repeat the directions from the peanut butter section but there was no lid to remove. Every computer programmer will tell you a repeat command needs to be followed by a stop command.

So how did you do with your instructions?

What else would you like to give us directions for doing?

TTYL,

Linda

My Dad took me on my very first RV trip when I was ten years old. He rented a fold up trailer that had six bunks in it and we went with two other families to Giants City State Park. It rained all weekend but we kids didn’t care.

Many years later, he and my step-mom bought a class c motorhome and went traveling.

Thanks, Dad, for teaching me about this wonderful life Dave and I are now living.

TTYL,

Linda

In this morning’s dream I was part of a small group of Americans chosen to help foreigners learn to speak English. The method of doing that was to assign us a very small cabin-type room in which we were to complete a project as a group. We had a few foreigners assigned to us and we began work on our project with everyone making an effort to speak clear English while doing so. As we proceeded, one by one more foreigners were added to our group making the room very crowded. Eventually, they began speaking among themselves in other languages which none of us Americans understood. Finally, I became exasperated and demanded to know if they had not come to this project to learn to speak English. “No,” one replied. “We already know how to speak English. We came here to learn to speak American.” Finally, the overcrowding of our room became unbearable and we decided to break into two smaller groups. We intended that some of the Americans should be part of each group but several of the foreigners decided to stay together to become their own group without the interference of the Americans.

That dream set me to thinking about language and it’s impact on belonging. We belong to many groups. Our primary group speaks RVing. The members of the group we met with last night speak railroading. When we meet with Dave’s former coworkers they speak computers. I know a few diabetics and, when together, we speak carbs. My newest group is Weight Watchers and they speak points. What groups do you belong to? What languages do they speak?

TTYL,

Linda

As you may have guessed, I sometimes have some weird dreams. Sometimes they seem to make sense. This morning I woke up having just finished a dream in which I was a student and the master (Think Yoda or The Karate Kid) was explaining to me, “Start when you are ready. Do what you do. Stop when you are done.”

Does that make sense? Of course it does. Let’s think about it.

“Start when you are ready.” How often have we started a project because we thought we should rather than because we were ready to do so? How did that work out? I’d guess not well. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until you can gather the right tools? And the right motivation? Do we sometimes have to declare ourselves ready just to get started? If so is that OK?

“Do what you do.” How often have we tried to do what someone else thought we should do? How often have we tried to imitate someone else’s perceived success? Wouldn’t it be better to recognize our own talents and develop them? Let’s try being ourselves and see if that works better for us.

“Stop when you are done.” That seems so obvious, but is it? How do you know when you are done? Is perfection required? Or can we stop at good enough? How do we decide when it is right to stop? Instead of just going on and on would it be better to pick a point at which we just stop?

Start, do, stop. I wonder if I can?

TTYL,

Linda