I want to do something hippie themed…

…in honor of the Great Alignment.  To somehow tie it to what I want to write about, and that is to misabuse a business buzzword one of my boss’s boss’s boss (his name was ‘Sir”) was very fond of using.  He liked to say that he was aligned with me if he felt he both understood what I meant and was good with the decision.  Not unlike what the radio phrase, “Roger”, is meant to convey: I understand.  Wilco, on the other hand, meant I will comply.  One never said that in conjunction with “Roger”, because the intent of “Roger” is implicit in the “Wilco”.  I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to sound that one out, or I can answer the question if posed.  But I digress, sort of.  I’m never really far off the path but that don’t mean I won’t get lost picking strawberries.  Where was I?

Oh, yeah, the great alignment is happening, and all I can think of is that the county can’t be more MISALIGNED.  We do not agree with each other on a path forward.  There is no consensus.  We’re kind of fucked.

But that is ok, I’ve been here before, and I know the way out.  That is more AA themed, but I bet I ain’t the only hippie to ever ask if anyone else wants some coffee while I’m up.  Service was something that I thought I learned in the army, but it was really transformative when I was going to groups.  If I’m doing service for others then I am less likely to be in my head worrying about the past.  It is the best way to learn mindfulness, I thought.  Just serve.  Just see what needs to be done and do it.  But how do I serve a country that doesn’t know what it wants?  Can we slow down and see if we can see a path forward towards a mutual goal?  If all we ever do is tug against each other, we will never make headway.  I’d rather build a dock we can use than argue about a bridge that will never be built.

My boss’s boss’s boss used to use the term as sort of synonymous with ‘grok’ when we talked about leadership.  Because to grok something is to more than just understand it, it meant to embrace it, to consume the idea and make it a part of you.  It meant that you used this concept as the scaffolding onto which you molded the self you were choosing to be, and that self was an outstanding leader of the mightiest fighting force the world had ever seen.  He was kind of a hippie in that he was very radical in his concept of Leader.  He was before his time in that he knew that a true leader was more of a servant than anything.  Even your Jesus tried to teach you that when he knelt to wash the lady’s feet in oil.  Jesus was always trying to teach y’all stuff, and even the ones that we was with couldn’t seem to grasp it.  You could tell Jesus was getting tired of it, too.

Jesus was probably my favorite hippie, but Bob Marley was real and the Dude was better if we are going with fictional.  And my boss’s boss’s boss was real, and he was cooler than the Dude, in my eyes.  Don’t be shocked, in my defense I had not yet seen the movie.

So I don’t know how to help humanity right now, I don’t know how to be of service.  To people, anyway.  But I could help dogs, so now instead of a leader of a fighting force, I instead try to be a good leader for a furry force.  It helps me cope with feeling like the sky is falling and having no power to affect it.  I focus on what I can affect.  The dogs are happy.  I’m happy.  That is good enough to get out of bed in the morning.