Flight Disruption

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Sometimes when escaping the rat race you find yourself becoming a rat. 

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Air travel brings out something in people that, in normal life, stays hidden. It’s the combination of the expense, non-negotiable departure times, lots of uncertainty, and lots and lots of people packed into tight confines. Then add travel disruptions, crying babies, potentially rude airline staff and it escalates the tension. During air travel you see who people really are. And you may learn some unpleasant things about yourself.

Years ago, I watched a father change his baby’s diaper while laying his baby across two tray tables during a flight. That scene has never left my mind. 

Yesterday, I listened as an older man complained loudly about his wife who, he said, was constantly late. “She’ll be late for her own funeral,” he repeated over and over to the gate agent for us all to hear. His wife was shopping and when she arrived, he blasted her. She blasted back saying she was not late, they had plenty time and we heard their fight go all the way down the jetway and onto the plane.

There’s gamesmanship over arm rests. No words, no looks, but an aggressive passive aggressive competition over a two-inch wide piece of elbow space.

Larger people raising the arm rests saying they’re painful and dig into their sides.  Passengers pushing the arm rest back down saying, “Sorry. I bought this whole seat and don’t want you spilling into it.” Loud snorers having their seats violently shaken to wake them up. People missing flights and having meltdowns so loud that security has to come take them away.

Once in Atlanta, a passenger from my flight confronted me in the terminal, screaming at me inches from my face. I’d never seen this person before, and people were forming a circle to watch. I kept asking who he was and why was he so angry. He kept hollering and finally walked off. I was terrified. Turns out I was upgraded to a first-class seat, and he thought I had sabotaged his upgrade. He started drinking and got off the plane looking for a fight.

Now this sounds so self-righteous but I’m no saint. I’ve flown nearly three and a half million miles and, at one time, I felt the airlines owed me. I made demands, I raised my voice and I’m embarrassed by who I was back then. Today I try to stay quiet and grateful. However, I still fail. A few weeks ago, fifteen minutes from landing in Mobile, the flight turned around and flew back to Dallas due to a mid-flight mechanical issue. I got off the plane and asked a few questions and their answers, I felt, were unsatisfactory and my body language showed it. Imagine a person miming disgust. That was me. We went through three planes that day, all with mechanical issues, until we found one that finally got us home seven hours late.

I love being in new, far-away, places which makes air travel necessary. But getting there can be awful. It’s unfortunate that sometimes in the process of escaping the rat race you find yourself becoming a rat.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.

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Life Stages

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A young man asked “My customers keep telling me I remind them of their children. What should I do?” 

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A young man approached Tuesday after my seminar in Orlando. “I’m twenty-four years old,” he said “and when I’m making sales calls, people say I remind them of their son. How am I supposed to take that?” he asked.

He felt he wasn’t being taken seriously. He worried that he wasn’t doing a good job. And, he felt it was kind of an insulting to say.

I remember being in his shoes. I launched into my career intending to kick tail and take names. I wanted promotions, bonuses, raises, awards, recognition, and celebrity. My job was selling food to restaurants in eastern North Carolina. I went door to door in each town’s restaurant row with Thermoses full of heated samples, a bag of small souffle cups and plastic spoons to offer tastes. I sold cheese sauces, and gravies, corned beef hash, chillies, coffee, and tea. The list goes on.

Today I see the interactions that young man told me about differently. I told him to smile then say, “Tell me about your son.” Listen and smile and ask one follow-up question. “They’re giving you a compliment,” I told him, “It’s not an insult. And people love talking about their children so let ’em. And then gently guide your conversation back on track.”

Like most people his age, I was in what psychiatrist Carl Jung and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr call the ego-building stages of my life. I was trying to shape how people saw me and how I saw and felt about myself. I was working to build an impressive image and, wow, how I’ve changed.

Sometime after about age thirty-five for most people, image building begins to matter less. You don’t stop doing it, it just matters less. A new search then begins for something to replace that image-building feeling that had been so important. The new search signals a shift in identity, it can arrive as a mid-life crisis, and has been known to reveal, for some, a God-shaped hole in their life.

According to Jung and Rohr, a satisfying replacement to image building can only be found by reversing course. Becoming less noticeable instead of more noticeable. Less image conscious instead of more image conscious. According to Rohr, the first half of life is about building your container of who you are and what you stand for and then filling that container. The second half of a life well lived is about draining that container and then destroying it. A full complete reversal from ego building to ego abandonment.

It’s been this way for eons. The young warriors seek fame and glory. They whoop and holler and conquer. The elders shower them with praise and rewards for their work and their bravery. Conquering is the job of the warriors. Praising is the job of the elders.

“I can tell you take your work seriously,” I said to the young man. “I bet you’re an asset here. Your boss is lucky to have you.” “Well,” he said, “maybe, yeah, I guess.” We shook hands. He walked away smiling from the compliment. I walked away smiling from giving it to him.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.

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Organ Recital

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My friends and I attend an organ recital together each week. It’s not what you think…

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The pickle ball bug has bitten. A buddy put together a group of guys all about the same age to play each Wednesday evening not long ago. We all showed up, most of us knew each other, debated the rules for a while, and we got started. It’s now a regular thing.

Each time we gather we shake hands, we catch up and bit, and each of us, whether we’re asked or not, goes through what’s called The Organ Recital. It’s a part of what happens when men of a certain age or older gather. Maybe women, too, but I can only speak to what the men do. We talk about what hurts on our body, how well or poorly we’ve been sleeping, who we know that is sick. We talk about digestion. About what foods are kind to us and which ones we struggle with. Which spices upset out stomach. Which medicines help and which ones don’t seem to do anything at all. It’s the Organ Recital. It doesn’t last long. Usually someone says, “Hey, enough. We sound like old men. Let’s play.” And that ends it. And then we start putting on knee braces, patella tendon straps, and tendonitis sleeves. It’s so sad.

My father has a golf group that has set up rules around their Organ Recitals. He and his buddies have played golf every Friday morning for the past decade or more. Their rule is that once the last putt falls into the cup on the first hole, the organ recital must end. It’s a rule they’ve all embraced. However, my father says, many of his friends are now nearly deaf and they keep giving their organ recitals anyway because they can’t hear anyone telling them to stop. It’s the rare privilege of the hard of hearing – not being able to hear when you’re being admonished.

My dad is quite the pickle baller himself. He plays several days a week at the Via Senior Center in Mobile. He’s got a regular crowd and they pair up to play and then they swap teams and they do it for hours. Men and women. He invited me a few weeks back. I guessed I’d be the youngest person there, which was true, and that I’d have an unfair advantage because of that, which was untrue. I got my tail beaten repeatedly. These so-called seniors are savage pickle ball players and what they may lack in speed they make up with precise ball placement. At one point my 85-year-old father and I were playing together and across the net was an 83-year-old lady and her sixty-ish year-old daughter. Father son versus mother daughter. The mom had a wicked serve and at any time could place the ball within a millimeter of wherever she wanted it. My dad and I just barely won, and I walked off the court laughing at the thought that my youth – which is very relative – would create any advantage.

At some point in the match, I lunged for a well-placed shot from the 82-year-old mother and pulled something in my lower back. I soldiered on, unwilling to admit to myself that an 82-year-old was making a fool of me on the pickle ball court. I, of course, dutifully reported my injury the next week at my pickle ball group’s Organ Recital. But when asked about the opponent who did this to me, I kept things a bit vague.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.

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Quiet Quitters

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Lots of talk about “quiet quitters” with my clients these days. Here’s what I’m learning about them and about the companies who aren’t having any problems with them. 

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Quiet quitting is all the talk with my corporate seminar clients these days. Many don’t understand it, nor do they understand why someone would do it. My clients could, of course, go through some extra effort to ask their employees about quiet quitting but most won’t because it’s too much work. Which is, ironically, what quiet quitting is all about – not willing to go the extra mile because of the extra work required and its dubious benefit. It’s easier to believe a popular narrative than actually sleuthing it out, getting some answers, and fixing it.

For those unaware, quiet quitting is where employees simply refuse to hustle, refuse to step up to extra challenges or opportunities presented by workplace leaders. The employees have serious doubts if the extra work or hustle will lead to anything beneficial. The phenomenon is largely affiliated with the youngest elements of today’s workplace, roughly those under about 28 years old.

For generations the workplace assumed the youth would bear the brunt of the hardest work. Called apprentice to master, pay your dues, whatever, the young ones are supposed to arrive early, stay late, and work hard so that they can get ahead. However, many young employees today – the quiet quitters – don’t believe that bargain exists anymore. It appears, they say, the system is about lining the pockets of those at the top with little thought paid to those doing the entry level, grunt work. There is little reason to believe that “pay your dues” will ever pay off, they say. It’s the way of the past, not of today.

Here’s what I’ve seen recently. The workplaces loyal to a pay your dues model struggle with young employees. They’re workplaces full of quiet quitters. Any suggestion of pay your dues is met with a quiet response of “this place is probably not for me.” The Covid pandemic, like pandemics before it, took what was eventually coming and put it into our laps right now here today and this workplace attitude is one of them. Others are mental health awareness, virtual meetings, and working from home. They were being discussed, they were on the horizon, but now, post pandemic, they’re right here  in our laps.

My clients not experiencing the quiet quitters are early adopters of what they saw was coming. Many employers aren’t aware of it, or they sense it but are unwilling to accept it. What is it? Simply, the workplace model has flipped. In the thriving, non-quiet quitter workplaces, the senior workers – who were once served by the junior workers – are now serving the junior workers. They’re asking, “What do you need to be successful here and how can I facilitate it.” Pay your dues inverted. The reason? Technology. Parenting trends. Schooling. Lots of things. Fight it if you want but you’ll eventually lose. The traditional workplace has flipped, and it is, like it or not, the future.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.

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Of Ants and Airlines

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I had a seven hour delay home back from Dallas last week. While I waited, I finished the biography of Alabama-born biologist Edward Wilson and began applying Wilson’s research to the problems I was experiencing with the airline. 

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Let’s talk about ants. Not females, like Aunt Martha. But bugs. Ants create complex colonies where every one of them exists to support the growth and safety of the colony. Ants can’t help it. It’s not their choice. They’re driven entirely by instinct. No ant finds food and considers keeping it for themselves. They turn and tell the colony and then lead the colony back to the food. This instinctual, non-selfish, altruistic behavior is the reason for the species’ remarkable success.

I learned this reading the biography of biologist Edward Wilson on a flight one week ago today that was ultimately delayed seven hours trying to get from Dallas to Mobile. Wilson has deep Alabama roots. He may not be the most famous person from our state, but he may be the most influential. His achievements are remarkable, and he is, clinically speaking, a bad ass.

Wilson also said that selfishness has value, too, but only in individuals. A selfish person will win against an altruistic person. But selfish groups will fail.  Altruistic, non-selfish groups, will grow, they’ll succeed. They’ll eat and breed and survive and thrive.

Ants don’t have a choice in the matter. But people do. And our bias, our instinct, is towards individual selfishness. We must work to overcome this instinct, bond as a group, and become altruistic. It’s hard, but it works.

We’ve seen this play out on grand stages. I listened to Nick Saban discuss the loss of the national championship a few years back because some of his players played selfishly as they were thinking about their NFL draft position.  

And we see this nationally, as our once unselfish nation has moved towards selfish goals and selfish politicians. As a result, no one can deny that our nation, once described as the shining light on the hill, is dimming.

Now, I’m a workplace consultant and I can’t help but try to apply these lessons to what I experienced on last Friday’s flights. I read about one airline who has begun a new way to compensate flight attendants in a way that benefits the attendants. The airline finds ways to help their passengers, their pilots, their gate agents and on and on. That’s the airline I fly the most and I’ve had zero issues on my nearly forty flights this year. Zero.

And two of my three flights on this current airline this year have had significant delays. Are they selfish? I don’t know them well enough to know. But it sure appears so. All of Wilson’s research on selfish groups and their demise played out in front of me over those seven hours of flight delays. And I wish someone could get this message to their CEO and send him outside to study ants.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.  

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The Buddha (AL Public Radio Pledge Drive)

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On this week’s Keepin’ It Real, Cam Marston tells us about the Three Poisons and the three good things taught to us by the Buddha.

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About 2500 years ago, the Buddha listed the three things that bring unhappiness. They’re referred to as The Poisons and these things, he essentially said, will put you into a pit that’s very hard to get out of. My take on it is this: any harm caused between humans comes from these three things. What are they? They’re Anger, Greed, and Ignorance. I can say, with confidence, that any harm I’ve done to others has come from one or more of these emotions, feelings, or attitudes – I’m not exactly sure what they are. All the oldest religions and philosophers that I’m aware of say much the same thing – anger, greed, and ignorance brings bad stuff. That’s certainly part of the messages I get on Sundays.

Thankfully, the Buddha also provided an antidote – they are compassion, generosity, and wisdom. Any goodness between humans comes from one or more of those three. The three poisons and the three good ones are written on my office white board so I can remind myself from time to time to do more of those on the right side of the white board and do less of those on the left side. It’s nice to boil down so many of life’s complexities into two simple groups of words, though actually living them is a completely different story.

It’s fascinating that these ideas were written 2500 years ago and remain highly relevant today. I sit in an airconditioned room, typing on a computer that’s capable of umpteen thousand calculations per millisecond or something like that, we’ve put a telescope in space a million miles from earth that’s trying to take a picture of the beginning of the universe, I can poke at my phone and a pizza shows up at my house, yet our modern society can’t shake the same problems Buddha was addressing 2500 years ago. In some respects, we’ve come such a long way as a species yet, in others, we haven’t moved the needle in 2500 years.  

The APR fund drive has only been going on for two days now, though it may feel like 2500 years for us regular listeners. And the challenges facing APR are the same challenges we hear about a couple of times each year. Funding for the station comes through listener donations.

Last month I sent APR money to be used towards a matching grant during my morning and afternoon Keepin’ It Real broadcast. My challenge to you is this – If you enjoy my Keepin’ It Real commentaries, toss a little money towards the station. I did. The station needs your help to keep going.

And, I think the Buddha would agree, your donation shows your compassion, is an act of generosity, and reflects your wisdom. It won’t guarantee you a spot in heaven or enlightenment or whatever, but it might help. And I know some of you that are listening, and frankly, you could use some help.

I’m Cam Marston, and I’m just trying to help APR keep going.

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Old Cap

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On today’s commentary, I share a little bit of my family’s history and, maybe, a bit of my family’s future.

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My grandfather, George Allen wrote a weekly column in the Mobile Press Register from 1967 to 1975. He was chief of the Seafoods Division for the Alabama Conservation Department. He proposed the column after the many unsafe boating practices he witnessed. After about a year his columns meandered into personal stories and memories. The paper let him keep going. And even after moving to Atlanta, the Press-Register kept his columns, called Adventures with Old Cap. He died in 1979. I was about ten. I remember him but we never really connected.

In 1986 for Christmas, I received a collection of his Old Cap columns which my uncle had painstakingly gathered, retyped, and bound. It’s next to me as I write this, Post It notes tagging my favorites stories, old family photos pressed into the binding, and my own early writing folded and included between pages, hoping my grandfather’s writing talent would somehow osmose into my early stories. Reading the stories, I feel a slight connection with him. He references me as a baby in some of them, which brings a smile each time I read them.

My grandfather’s oldest child was my mother. Mom had a column in the same newspaper in the eighties and early nineties. Hers focused on professionalism, business etiquette, and customer service. She also did short local TV and radio broadcasts at different points in her career focusing on those same topics. My mother died about six months ago in early March. Lots of the kind notes I received said that my mother will live on in me, like, I suppose, my grandfather lived on in her and now in me through her. At the time it all sounded like mystical mumbo jumbo.

Singer songwriter John Hiatt asks this: “Is it true we are possessed by the ones we leave behind, or it is by their life we are inspired?” I think it’s both. And that’s partly why I write and record these commentaries. It’s hard to put into words how much I enjoy doing them and why. It’s been a complete surprise. I feel the spirit of my mother and my grandfather as I write. The family tradition makes me feel like I can and, to a degree, that I should write them. And, like I said, I can’t quite explain how much I enjoy it. I get to express myself, tell stories, and I’m keeping the family tradition alive.

Friday afternoon my phone rang. It was my college daughter from Oxford, Mississippi. “Dad,” she said, “I just got out of class and I had to tell someone what just happened. I turned my paper in on Monday and today the professor read it to the whole class. He said it was so good he had to read it and is going to try to find a publication in town to print it.”

A lump formed in my throat, and I smiled so big. So did my mother. So did my grandfather.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.

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Teaching a Teen to Drive is a Right of Passage that All Parents Can Relate To

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My wife and I have done this twice before and we can do it again. I think. 

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A ballistic object is defined as something that behaves like a projectile. However, when you and I refer to a ballistic object we usually mean something that goes fast and when it hits something else it causes lots of damage. Ballistic missiles come to mind.

A car can become a ballistic object. They can go fast and if it collides with something else the damage can be awful. And mature drivers know this, and self-preservation keeps their automobile ballistic object running safely and under control.

However, I’m writing this in my head while in the passenger seat of my car, my feet pressing against the floorboard, hands grabbing for anything secure, and my mind racing: “Should I grab the wheel? This has to eventually get less scary, right? I just gotta survive, show confidence, and find things to compliment.” Behind the wheel is my fifteen-year-old daughter.

A rite of passage for every teen is learning to drive. A rite of passage for every parent is teaching a teen to drive. No amount of handling a car in an empty parking lot or on a dirt road prepares a teen for their first merge onto a busy interstate at 65 miles an hour. Nothing prepares the parent for this, either. No amount of explaining that hand over hand is the best way to turn the steering wheel can make a teen understand that it’s safe to accelerate out of a turn and unsafe to accelerate into one. Only the horrifying feeling of the car being nearly out of control teaches that. And the parent feels it, too.

In my yard one early one morning many years back, I watched a car come slowly around the corner and run right into my mailbox. From the passenger seat came a man who began apologizing profusely. His face a combination of embarrassment and anger. Behind the wheel was his fifteen-year-old daughter. They were driving quiet streets early in the morning to teach her to manage the car. He’ll have the mailbox repaired Monday, he said, and he’s very, very sorry. I smiled, told him my day was coming, and not to worry. He thanked me, embarrassment still all over his face, and they drove away, still way too far on the right side of the road.

Well, my day is now. It’s    right now. It’s right now. My wife and I have already done this with our two older children. We can do it again.

My daughter pulls into the garage. “How did I do?” she asks. “Better,” I say. “Much better.” It’s the truth. She climbs out. I stay put, and in climbs her twin brother.

“Let’s do this!” he says, a little too full of energy for my comfort, throws the car into reverse and starts rolling. “Stop!” I say, “Look over your shoulder and at the back up camera before the car even begins moving.” And it begins again. My feet pushing holes in the floorboard.

I’m Cam Marston, just trying to Keep it Real. Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend, everyone.

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Rush

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Some tactics used by masters of propaganda back in some dark times are still in use today and remain very effective.

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Leni Riefenstahl is known today for her savvy efforts at creating Nazi propaganda during World War II. She constructed images that deeply influenced the masses. And today, many organizations who are hoping to gain followers, whether they know it or not, copy her manipulative techniques.

Big bold colored banners placed in highly visible places showing the symbols and emblems of their group. Pictures of frenzied crowds wildly cheering their leaders who stand waving, smiling, showing quiet confidence, their expression saying, “you should want to be with us. We’re the powerful. We’re the influential.” It’s incredibly manipulative.

I am, of course, talking here about sorority rush. My daughter arrived on her campus a week before rush began to assume her role as banner committee co-chair. Her team worked until the wee hours every morning painting the banner for use the follow day which was then hung from her sorority house’s balcony. Mind you – there were no rush-ees on campus.

The sorority sisters gathered on the house lawn in front of the banner late each afternoon. They wore costumes in the theme of the banner – Disney, Wizard of Oz, the Circus – for the sole purpose of taking pictures to post on Instagram. They were hugging each other, cheering, horsing around while laughing and smiling gratuitously. From what I saw, their goal was ten million pictures each day. The banner was then removed, crumpled and thrown in a corner, and the process began again for the next day.

Meanwhile on Instagram, the freshman females were stalking – figuring out which sorority looked most fun, which had the prettiest girls, which one they should aspire to. This whole tableau was done by each sorority to try and get an edge. They wanted to be the “cool” sorority. The leader. They wanted the freshman girls to want them so that sorority could have the “pick of the litter,” so to speak.

It was exhausting my daughter said. And bear in mind, rush hadn’t started. The next week, when the freshman arrived, the intensity escalated.

This manipulative persuasion campaign, this carefully manufactured veneer, yielded a bumper crop of new best friends for my daughter’s sorority. It was a raging success. Bid day squeals, heard from far away, have become an Instagram meme, like 5000 car tires simultaneously skidding to a stop. It’s insanity. But, I loved hearing about it.

Those long hours, those late nights, and those friends working together forge the long-lasting friendships and memories my daughter and her friends will share. They’re the stories they’ll tell and retell throughout their life. Whenever people work together for a common goal and sacrifice to achieve it, a bond is created. My daughter told stories of the work she and her friends did. What I heard are the memories she’ll relive over and over again.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.

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