Everyone around the table looked at each other. There was silence in the room. This was the third time they had met off site as a team to do their strategic planning for the business. Their coach had just asked how they had done on their five goals for the quarter. No one, including the CEO, was willing to own up until Don, one of the young up and coming members of the leadership team, said “we sucked—we didn’t make one of our five goals.”
Karalee and I were driving from Sechelt to Gibsons on BC’s sunshine coast to catch the noon ferry back to the mainland. The day before we had celebrated our 34th anniversary and were happy after having had a four-day mini break together away from the busyness of regular life.
My mobile rang this April morning and I answered it on the car speakerphone. It was a reporter from the National Post newspaper. He asked if I heard the news and with a sinking heart I said that we hadn’t. He then told us that our good sailing buddy John Ridsdel had been murdered by beheading by the Abu Sayyaf terrorists who had kidnapped John and four others off the docks of a marina in the Southern Philippines September 21, 2015.
A few years ago, I suffered a torn retina in my left eye that became a detached retina, which was immediately operated on. A side effect of the retina surgery was that a cataract developed in my left lens.
For over a year my vision was impaired. The cataract developed so fast that almost every fifteen days I could tell of negative changes in my vision. As I lost more and more of the vision in my left eye, I was left only being able to see smudges of color.
In my experience, it is really hard to appreciate the value of inexperience. When I look back at my life, some of the most powerful experiences came about because I just didn’t know better. Here are a few examples of times when I went into new adventures inexperienced.
Everyone in the room looked at each other. Then they all looked at me. For an hour we had struggled to make a decision. Round and round we went, looking for more information to guide us, wishing we could just walk out and defer our decision. With all eyes on me, it was time to push through the obstacles.