Thought For The Day  

 One ship sails East,
Another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That determines the way they go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of fate,
As we voyage along through life,
'Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.  

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

1850 - 1919 

Storms

4-27-11 Tuscaloosa Wedge Tornado

Last weekend Pam and I were in Tuscaloosa, AL for the Christening of our second Grandson. (Yes, I know, I can't believe I'm a grandfather either!)  It just so happens that our visit coincided with the first anniversary of the devastating tornado that wreaked havoc on the city. A year later there are still areas that look as though the storm just passed through yesterday and others that have managed to rebuild and replant and begin a new phase of existence.

We stayed with my "Tuscaloosa son" (never have liked the ring of step-son) and daughter-in-law in their house which was mercifully spared even though the storm passed directly overhead while they huddled in the basement thinking that their young lives were over after only 5 months of marriage. Directly across University Boulevard barely 100 yards away, others were not so fortunate as the entire neighborhood was leveled.

There are many other types of storms in life and I have learned that none of us get through this journey without a few storms of our own.  Unfortunately, these other storms can be just as devastating to people, families, and businesses as the tornado that ripped through Alabama last year.

We are all in a battle for economic survival these days as our economy struggles to recover from the bursting of the real estate bubble and the inevitable storm of consequences in the banking and financial markets. Once set in motion, the peripheral damage has been like a row of dominoes crashing into each other in a way that eventually touches us all.

In our business, we have "hunkered down", to quote some of my old UGA buddies. In football lingo that means digging in at the line of scrimmage and  refusing to yield to the opposition.  In laymen's terms, it means that we have gotten lean and mean, we have trimmed ourselves back to the bare necessities, and we are working harder than ever to operate more efficiently and productively and to be more tuned in to our customers and the market. At a time in my life when I thought I might be slowing down the pace, I find myself working just as hard as I did 30 years ago (a time in which a business consultant told me I needed to hire three other people to do what I was doing alone).

Though we can't deny or avoid the myriad of ways in which the current economic storm has affected us, we CAN control the way in which we deal with it.

We have all had the wind knocked out of our sails a bit, but at times like this I remember the wise words of the great Floyd Patterson, who emerged from an impoverished childhood in rural North Carolina to become the youngest boxer ever to win the Heavy Weight Championship of the World, as a 21 year old in 1956.  And after losing his title, he became the first boxer ever to win it back. It was he who said, "It doesn't matter how many times you get knocked down; the only thing that matters is how many times you get back up".

Isn't it amazing that a simple statement like this could strike a chord in the heart of a young boy that would resonate in his being for the rest of his life.  These words that I read as a ten year old back in 1960, along with my faith, have served me well as I have battled through the storms of my life. 

The Boxer 

Simon & Garfunkel In Honor of Floyd Patterson A Great Warrior Who Taught A Young Boy A Valuable Lesson

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