Two captains of ocean-going tankers recently retired.  Each had enjoyed a career of more than thirty years.  Each loved the sea and had worked his way up from deck-hand to captain of ships that were more than one thousand feet long – so big they could not fit through the original Panama Canal.

One significant difference between their careers is that the more senior, Brig, always followed orders. Twice during his career he had saved his ship after he sailed into the heart of a storm.

The slightly less senior captain, Freedom, had, on three different occasions, refused to sail into a storm that had been forecast because he feared it might imperil his ship and crew.  In one of those storms a slightly smaller ship sank.

One year before they retired, each captain was nominated for the British “Captain of the Year” award.

My questions to you are:  First, should either captain win the award?  Second, if so, which one?

Since Brig and Freedom were both nominated, I’ll assume that each captain was fully qualified for the award and that one of them should win.

But I would vote for Captain Freedom because he refused to sail into three storms.  I find him to be the better role model. He followed one of my most important principles in business:  Avoid disasters.  One disaster can sink a ship, a business, or a career.  Following the rules, and following instructions, is a good idea but not foolproof.

Perhaps my vote is colored by my extremely brief career as a boat captain.  More than twenty-five years ago I bought a twenty-six foot power boat with all of the proverbial bells and whistles.  Fortunately, one was a GPS system that had just become available.

One fine Sunday morning in 1992 I set out with eight or nine passengers for a one-hour cruise from Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands for a day in Victoria, British Columbia.  One of our passengers was a foreign national who could not, by law, stay overnight in Canada.

After a beautiful day together we boarded my boat in the inner harbor of Victoria for our return.  The weather was foul. Our ship-to-shore radio was broadcasting gale warnings.  Totally inexperienced, I had no idea what a “gale warning” really meant.  I revved up our dual diesel engines, and off we sped.

Twenty minutes later I began to realize what a “gale warning” implied, as six-foot waves began to smash over the stern of my boat.  Ultimately one of my two engines sputtered to a stop.

When you have two engines and one fails, you get scared.  At least I did.  But I didn’t want my Greek passenger to face an immigration problem if we returned to Victoria, so I powered on.

Our GPS faithfully guided us back to Friday Harbor, though the two hour trip was one of the most harrowing of my life.  All of us finally stepped safely off the boat, and I never stepped back on.  I put it up for sale the next day when I learned that a power boat about the same size as ours sank in the gale and its three passengers were lost.

Captains Brig and Freedom, I would be happy to sail with either of you.  But I’ll never again sail with Captain Alan at the helm.

As I have often said, and now in capital letters, BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY.

Alan

This is a photo of me at age nine or ten pretending to play the French Horn.  Even though it was almost seventy years ago I can tell that I’m not really playing the instrument because I’m smiling, and also because I’m looking directly at the camera.  When you’re really playing the French Horn you can’t smile (because you have to purse your lips) and your eyes would be focused either on the music in front of you or on the conductor, not the camera off to your upper right.

Why is this important?

My father was a professional French Horn player. Though I didn’t realize it when I was young, he was also the best brass instrument teacher in the world. Musicians traveled from all over to study with him. The principles he shared with his students, and that I learned from him as a child, still apply directly to many aspects of my life and serve me well to this day.

Dad is now 103 years old, and is at home recovering from a recent major surgery. Even so, he remains the consummate teacher. Last week he reminded me of an important concept that he always imparts to his students.

“If you are on a desert island with no hope of rescue, and no other human being exists within a thousand miles, when you practice playing your instrument you must always focus on what you’re doing, and always do your very best.  Always.  That’s the habit you must cultivate to play your very best when you really need to.  You are a professional.  A professional never settles for less than his or her very best.  Nothing else is acceptable.”

It has taken me many years to apply this lesson to my writing.  I’m very quick, and discovered in school that ninety percent of my best was usually good enough for an “A”.  Why bother trudging that difficult trail from ninety percent toward one hundred percent?  It was always easier for me to just take a mental nap.

For the past four or five years I’ve become more serious, and more professional, about my writing.  I don’t settle any more for a “good” first draft.  As Robert Graves wrote years ago, “There is no such thing as good writing. Only good rewriting.”  I have to admit that, like a diamond, my best work never reveals itself in a blinding flash of insight.  It must be thought out, then cut, then polished.  That process takes time and energy. But I’m not looking for “A’s” on my report card anymore.  Now I’m aiming for the top of the mountain, and by that I mean the very best I can do.

I’m sure you have already thought of other applications for this “desert island” principal.  At work?  Do your very best even when no one is looking.  In a relationship?  Do your very best even when no one may notice or appreciate it.  With a hobby?  Do your very best to satisfy yourself.

From now on whenever you contemplate whether or not your performance is good enough, I invite you to use my father’s secret code and ask yourself:

“Desert Island?”

Thanks, Dad.

Alan

In 1991 I flew to the big island of Hawaii to witness a total eclipse of the sun.  The hotel required a six night stay, which was pleasant enough, but the highlight, or one could say the highdark, of my visit was the total eclipse of the sun scheduled for the next-to-last day.

The west coast of the big island of Hawaii boasts three hundred and sixty sunny days a year, so I didn’t even consider the possibility of clouds.  The first five days were bright and beautiful, but when I woke up on the day of the eclipse I was dumbfounded to see an overcast sky.

I’m an optimist.  I was certain the clouds would disappear before the moon blotted out the sun.  But no.  I stood on a hotel room balcony, desperately looking up at . . . clouds.  I watched the eclipse on CNN and I’ve been disappointed ever since.

So when my son suggested that we take the family to see the eclipse scheduled to cross the entire continental United States on August 21, 2017, my answer was an enthusiastic “Yes.”

At 8:30 am on the appointed day thirteen of my family members landed at the busy airport in Casper, Wyoming.  We bought a few souvenirs then headed downtown where there was a festival.

For the previous ten days all of us had studied the weather reports for Casper.  Every forecast predicted full sunshine all day, so we were confident.

We parked near downtown – free parking (unlike Los Angeles where the parking meters gobble quarters as if the existence of the city depended on the income) –and walked to the festival where three or four hundred people had gathered. We passed the time by shopping.  I bought a special “Total Eclipse” baseball cap from an artist who had created his own special design for the event.

The day remained bright.  We used our eclipse glasses to watch the moon take its first bite out of the sun.  Gradually, the sun was transformed into a crescent moon.  Finally the crowd counted down toward totality.

“Three . . . two . . . one . . .,” and there we were, eyes uncovered, looking at the dark spot where the sun had shone.  We observed the sun’s corona, a bright ring which surrounded the mask of the moon.

I was struck by two thoughts.

First, how rare it must be in the entire universe for a small moon to blot out a much larger sun in precisely this way so that we are able to observe the sun’s corona.  As a layman it seems to me that while there may be life on many other planets there can’t be many other total eclipses that happen in exactly this way.  I stood at a special place in the universe witnessing a unique event.

Second, I was alive on a planet in a solar system where the sun and planets move in predictable, immutable orbits, each separate, yet all bound together by gravity, a pervasive force we cannot see or touch.

I recalled words from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on, nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

In a little more than two minutes the sun and warmth returned.  Light clouds appeared as we enjoyed a fine outdoor lunch before flying back to Los Angeles to continue living out our more ordinary days.

Alan