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It was a scant
ten seconds that I had to say goodbye to Virginia before whiteness
enveloped the swiftly rising little plane. Shortly after 19.00
(7pm) I took to the skies once more on another journey of my life.
I had a short goodbye with my parents, drinking a
raspberry latte in the little lobby area that passes for Norfolk
International Airport. I'm starting a new segment of my life: I
should be excited, anxious, sad . . . a whole range of emotions.
Yet, I sit here in my little one-seat aisle and simply think about how
fun it would be to navigate a plane through these cumulous
clouds. What am I feeling? I don't know, but a grin slowly
creeps onto my face as I think of what I've gotten myself into
now. It is the eve of my return to Oxford, and I thought it time
to dust off the old website and bring everyone up to speed.
After my acceptance to Oxford’s Said Business
School, I still had a good half-term of work to do before the academic
year ended. I also had Summer
Eights Bumps, the pinnacle of inter-collegiate rowing in
Oxford. My
goodness
that was a long time ago. There were Balls to go to , dinners to
attend, and many people to thank [Trinity
2003]. The last weeks were a mad rush of writing and
meetings, and
then I found myself three hours before I was supposed to leave the city
and I hadn’t even begun to pack!
My few job opportunities that I had this summer fell
through when I returned to the States. After hop-skipping the
country for weddings,
I returned to Virginia Beach and took up my job in a friend’s
shipyard doing manual labour. The summer passed rather quickly
from that point on [Summer
2003]. Many nights were spent at the dinner table discussing
all
nature of things with my parents.
I relaxed, but not quite. I had many things on
my list, but they never really seemed to get done. As I result, I
sat in my beautiful room, with my gorgeous view of the inlet we live
on, sipping whiskey (Scotch) with my parents, my dog curled at my feet
. . . And not fully at ease.
I have still to learn the fine art of building my
list of things to do, doing them, and then being done with them.
Building is not a problem. Doing hangs me up sometimes. And
I have a very hard time saying something’s done and leaving it
alone. Steve, my supervisor at Oxford, says that brings out
traits of perfectionism in me, though I’m not so sure. I don’t
want to get it perfect, because, in anything that we take on in life,
perfection, in the objective view, is not possible. I do,
however, want to do whatever I do well, and be satisfied in knowing
that, whatever the end result, I did all I could to make it the best I
could. I may go even further and say that it is not so much the
end result that is of concern to me, it is the process by which that
end result is created. This may ring a bell for many of you as
the old ends vs. means argument. Where it differs is that, in my
view, I cannot control what the end will be, but I do have sway over
the means. As such, I find that it is often hard for me to see
when I have reached an end, because so little of my attention is
focused on noticing it. An example may help.
Let’s take kicking a goal in football (that’s
soccer, Americans). What is the obvious desired end result?
To get the ball in the goal. But what has to occur for that to
happen? We have to kick the ball in the direction of the goal,
with enough speed to get it there. But there other other factors,
many other factors, to making a goal that we have no control
over. For instance, a defender may make a miraculous diving
header and knock the ball away. Or there may be a dip in the
field that causes the ball to bounce over the goal. Perhaps the
goalie just happened to have anticipated our kick and could react
quickly. ‘Sure,’ we may retort, ‘those are partly out of our
control, but we could have studied the defender’s tactics and, knowing
a header was possible, we could have taken another step. we could
have walked the pitch (field) before the game, making a mental map of
all the divots in it. If we knew that the goalie trained with the
same coach we had, then we could expect him to anticipate our usual
kick, so we would aim a little differently.’ The problem is that
we do not always have the time or the resources available to make such
a detailed analysis for a shot on goal. When we do, our chances
of making the goal will most likely increase. But just because we
did not make the goal does not mean that we are a bad football
player. If we use the information available to us and act as best
as we can on that information, then whatever the outcome, we have done
our best. Our responsibility and out accountability lies in doing
what we are able to do, not in the result of a problem that is larger
than ourselves.
Now this doesn’t mean that we don’t care if the goal
is made or not. We really do want to make the goal, and if we
don’t then we will figure out where we can improve our chances of
making it next time. Or, before we even take the first shot, we
could spend a good deal of time looking at all the possible situations
that may develop and preparing contingency plans for them. This
is what NASA does (or should do) in all of its missions, because the
cost of not meeting the project goals is so high. But in the
world of policy formation, of international affairs, and even of our
personal relationships, we often must act on incomplete information
without time to thoroughly think it through. In those cases, we
may wish for the best outcome, but we must realize the scope of
external factors that we were not able to control, and accept that,
whatever outcome attains, we did the best we could. I find
comfort and satisfaction in that.
This year at Oxford, I am going to focus on having
the courage to do and change the things I can, the perception and
humbleness to accept the things I can’t have an effect over given time
and circumstances, and building the wisdom to know the
difference. It’s gonna be good.
~Sam
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