Alan C. Fox

I’m newly married. As you might expect, this means I’m making changes in my life. This morning I began to work on selling my vacation home in the San Juan Islands, a home I built more than twenty-five years ago. It’s a beautiful place, surrounded by tall trees, where my family and I spent many joyful days.

Michael is the general contractor who built my Friday Harbor home and has helped to maintain it ever since.  Over the years we’ve become good friends, sharing our life experiences, our hopes, our disappointments.  Whenever we are both on the island we visit and have dinner together. We have watched each other’s children grow up.  We have moved from being active in our respective businesses, working sixty hours a week, to wanting to slow down a bit (though neither of us has entirely managed that yet).

Today I called Michael to discuss the house but then, as often happens, our conversation turned elsewhere. As we talked I began to feel sad, but not about parting with my home away from home.  I’m not sad about no longer visiting the San Juan Islands with my family.  We will see each other somewhere else.  I’m sad about leaving behind the friend I’ve known for so many years.

It might seem strange, but sadness is one of my favorite emotions.  Sadness is deep, and it invites intimacy.  When I’m sad my barriers come down and I can gratefully accept comfort and support from those to whom I feel close.  That’s a very good thing.

Years ago I coined a phrase, “Life is loss.”  That’s not meant as a downer.  I know that life is often about what we gain – new friends, new experiences, new abilities. But ultimately our friends move away, our memories fade, and our abilities change and disappear.  That’s sad, but to me it isn’t unhappy.

Where do I go from here?  I just don’t think I’d be getting up there very often, so I’m planning to sell the house Michael built, largely with his own hands, so many years ago.

I’m sure that Michael and I will share a final dinner, toast to our friendship, and promise to stay in touch.  You know how that goes.  We’ll really mean it. But will we ever get together again?  I’ll cling, for a while, to the idea that it’s possible, even though, in my experience, a distance of almost a thousand miles is seldom overcome.

I had close friends in high school, and I’ve enjoyed previous intimate relationships, all now consigned to the twilight of nostalgia.  My life, every life, at some point changes irrevocably, as it did for my grandparents when they boarded a ship in Europe, more than one hundred years ago, leaving everything and everyone they loved behind, to begin a new life in New York.

Contemplating the changes I’m making in my own life, I already feel an emptiness in my heart, which I know will be filled by my new marriage, discoveries to come, friends I will meet. But I can never replace the memory of Michael and our building a home in the woods, our talks, our solving problems together. In a library Michael recently read my blog on hiking.  He laughed out loud and received a stern look from the librarian. Another memory we share.

So this morning I raise an imaginary glass to the past, good times, and to a very dear friend who may soon be found in the mist of what has been.

Alan

A friend of mine, Barbara, has a son, Ben, who is a junior at a private high school in Los Angeles.  Ever since he was a toddler Barbara has taught Ben to be nice. Ben is respectful and polite. He is also smart and full of ambition to make his fortune and to save the world.

One serious problem for both Barbara and Ben is that many of the other parents at the same school want their sons and daughters to grow up to be CEOs, and think that to become a successful executive they must not only be assertive, but also arrogant and devious.  Recently, a classmate plagiarized one of Ben’s papers. The classmate is both a friend and one of the top students in the class.

I agree with Barbara.  I believe that it pays to be nice.  And so, I offer the following seven benefits of being nice. I’m sure you can come up with many more on your own.

1. It feels good to be nice.
2. You can be a CEO and be a nice person. I’m a CEO.  I think I’m also a nice person.  But, if I had to make a choice, I’d rather be pleasant than pompous.
3. If you’re unpleasant to others they will most likely return the favor. Let’s not forget the example of Leona Helmsley who, according to Wikipedia, “had a reputation for tyrannical behavior that earned her the sobriquet Queen of Mean.” Leona served 19 months in prison after a conviction for federal income tax evasion. She was turned in by disgruntled contractors and employees.
4. If you’re nice to others they are more likely to be nice to you. Life is much easier when your friends and family are fully behind you.  This also applies to your life partner.
5. Being nice to others opens doors. Carlos, a friend of mine, was hired for a top executive job because he helped a neighbor by shopping for her groceries while she was sick in bed for a week.  She happened to be the assistant to the woman who owns the business.
6. People who are nice tend to be happy, and create a circle of supportive warmth around them. Would you rather swim in warm water, or ice?
7. You will live longer and enjoy yourself more. For many years my dad has been the perfect portrait of a man who is kind, helpful, and supportive of his friends and family.  We all love him and help him in his life.  My dad will celebrate his 103^rd birthday in three months.

The choice is entirely up to you.  You can wake up each day with a snarl or with a smile. In my life, I see a lot of happy faces around me.  I don’t see many frowns.

This morning I received a text from one of my daughters.  “Good morning Dad.  I hope you have a great day!  Love you.  Sara.”

I’d like to pass that along.  I hope you have a great day!

Alan

Each of us has hopes, dreams, and plans for the future. I’m extremely goal oriented, which means that I always have in mind a list of my goals and priorities.

For example, one of my top priorities is health. This is the sine qua non (“without this nothing”) of my life.

But how about those big life goals – relationships, family, money, work? What are the two or three biggest goals in your life? A happy relationship? Being the best in the world at a certain profession? Becoming a millionaire?

Most of us, if we think about these questions at all, begin with today and imagine an ideal future. What do we want our life to be like in ten, twenty, or thirty years?  What, if anything, do we want to accomplish.

When my children were young my wife and I were interviewing for a nanny. Our top candidate, Nancy, was an executive assistant for the CEO of a publically held company. I found it strange that she wanted to leave a high paying job to be a nanny for young children. I asked her, “What do you see yourself doing five years from now?”

She hesitated. “I really don’t know.”

After we offered her the job Nancy called me and said, “Thank you for your offer.  I’ve thought about your question, and I still don’t know what I want to be doing in five years.  But I do know that I don’t want to be a nanny.”

I was disappointed that she turned down the job, but I was also relieved because I knew that, after a few months, she would have left and we would have had to interview candidates again.

I suggest there is a more unusual and helpful way to look at the larger goals in your life. Instead of looking forward, plan your life backwards. Pretend you are seventy years old (or one hundred if you are already seventy), and write down a short list of what has given you the greatest satisfaction in your life.

Pay no attention to what really happened or didn’t happen. Write down, or think about, not the reality you know, but the fantasy of what your ideal life during the past ten, twenty, or thirty years looked like, just as you actually wish it would happen.

By doing this you should be able to create a list of what has pleased you most in your life. Accumulating ten million dollars? Raising happy children?  Enjoying a peaceful, quiet life? Being the best piano teacher in town? Helping hundreds of children learn to read?

When you allow yourself to look back at your life, rather than forward, your most important aspirations will become visible, just like the hues in the coloring book you filled in with crayons when you were young.

By doing this exercise, today and in the future, when you are actually seventy, or one hundred, you will have a better chance to set goals to help you turn your dream of today (as viewed from the imaginary perspective of a distant tomorrow) into a reality you will have actually lived.

When I am closer to the end of my life than to the beginning I want to look back with delight, rather than regret.  Planning my life backwards is an excellent tool I often use to make that happen.

Alan