Ed's Blog

Books, People, Relationships, Learning and Teaching

As you can tell from the title of this post, sometimes I get a little carried away in my quest to write about things. But, I really do like to relate things together, to draw analogies and to get philosophical about life.

First, in case you haven't read this, I highly recommend Mitch Albom's "Tuesdays with Morrie." I read it 2 years ago while on vacation. The book is about spending the last days of life with Morrie, Mitch's old college professor. Morrie has a terminal illness, and Mitch Albom spends time with Morrie and gathers the dying man's thoughts, philosophies and insights about life. Although the book is about death, it is definitely an "up-lifting book." Despite this terrible illness, Morrie provides more lessons on life as he shares his thoughts ... and, basically, if you want to get to the theme of the book, or the moral of the story, it's that life is about - people. Relationships.

Basically, no one is ever on their deathbed wishing they had spent more time working. No. People always want to see their loved ones one last time. Basically, people are all about people and relationships, sharing, caring and being with one another.

Naturally, we all need to work, and the lesson is not that you should spend more time golfing or goofing off, but, quite often we end up "putting the cart before the horse," and we get sidetracked away from people and relationships. Family and friends are vitally important. We need to share, and care, and basically ... we're like the wolves, meaning that we're social creatures and that we really can't cut ourselves off from others.

As I said, this does not mean we should spend our time goofing off and avoiding work. Far from it. In fact, "an idle mind is the devil's playground." If we truly care about people, we'll spend a great deal of time working. Working for our jobs and livelihoods, and working to help others that are less fortunate or working for the common good - preventing poverty, environmental protection, and peace, for example.

As many great people before us have discovered, in order to be truly productive and to get things done, we can't do it alone. Once again, people and relationships are key. Management and organization involve getting people on the same team, cooperating, collaborating, and coordinating activites toward a common goal - helping out people - both in the short-term (helping the poor, making products, providing services, etc.) and for the long-term (helping the next generation or generations). A terrific book to read about someone who worked very hard, organized activities, got people to cooperate, worked for the common good, and did a great variety of things ... is .... "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life," by Walter Isaacson.

As I blogged about before, I had a small family reunion of sorts a few weeks back. As you can read from the previous blogs about this, it was my Aunt Martha who said - "Well, maybe this all happened for a reason," - meaning my Mom's illness. It was, in fact, the impetus that started my Aunt Martha to organize a little get-together. (I also want to add, and give credit, to my sister Diane, who suggested calling Aunt Martha to begin with. Unfortunately, due to several travelling restrictions, she could not attend). Why bring this up again? There's another NY Times bestseller (like the books mentioned above) called "The Celestine Prophesy," by James Redfield. It's a fun story, fiction. The basic idea behind this book - "there are no coincidences." Things happen for a reason. The chance encounter you had with a friend last week - not a coincidence.

Although Redfield's book is written from a spiritual perspective, and although it does not promote any religious doctrine directly, "The Purpose Driven Life," by Rick Warren is written from a Christian perspective and also discusses the above topics: there are no coincidences and people are key - in fact, we are spiritual creatures who have been created for a purpose.

My coincidences? Well, from a people perspective I've gotten reunited with my cousins and their families. I'm hoping we can keep the relationships going. While in Syracuse I also ran into an old friend - Rob and his wife Cindy. In addition, I got a phone call from my old college buddy - Nando. I'm hoping to stay in touch with him and hopefully reconnect with my other old college buddy - Victor .

A big purpose to my blogging is to reconnect and stay connected with family and friends. Also, since I have my blog connected to my professional website, I'll also write things that may be of interest to my Information Systems students. They can get to know me from a different perspective, if they want to, and I can share some insights and teach some non-IS related knowledge.

Future blogs: Down the road ... I will write something on Systems Theory and how things tie together ... all kinds of things.

- Ed

posted by Unknown @ 10:01 AM