Not Likely to Forget by Doug McVadon

My first week with a "bad back" is over, and looking back, things will never be the same. I will never (probably) reach down quickly to pick something off the floor without bending my knees. Used to be easy before Wednesday, September 5th at about two in the afternoon.

On the floor, staring up at the rough hewn beams of the floor above that makes the ceiling at Atherton Lofts, hearing Ginny typing, catching my breath that won't come normally because of this sudden catch in my back, I wondered what had happened to me. But I have to go to the bathroom! Worse, I have to go see the President!

Both Presidents came to town the day I threw my back out. 

I had been eagerly expecting to see Obama in person at his acceptance speech, but found out that same afternoon that I wouldn't be able to go after all. When they moved the speech inside about 60,000 of us had our dreams crushed. But I wouldn't have been able to go anyway!

Not with my "bad back." Ouch, don't like saying that.

I watched Clinton that night in Charlotte on TV from the floor of my den, ice under my lumbar. And settled for Biden and Obama on the small screen the following night, now sitting, with my brace on.

My body won't do my bidding.

It is a hard sentence for me to say, write, type, think.

Now I know why Viagra is so popular. I would take a pill if it would make my back work like it used to.

And I have to keep going. The day and a half when I gave up my calendar, put out the word that "all bets are off" that I was "down for the count" were not happy for me.

I would not be attracted to the life of the invalid, my brother's life, where everything is about how I feel, how my body is doing, am I better? and the big decision of the day is whether to get up and do the laundry. 

By Friday I was back in action, but I know it is an illusion.

Now after seeing a chiropractor four times in seven days, icing, wearing a velcro back brace and walking even slower than in the zendo with Natalie, I realize it is my first warning.

There could be a day when I cannot do all the things I want to do, the things I think I must do, to make money, support my family, maintain my reputation, expand my competencies.

And so this week was very good. 

I finished the Boatsman Gillmore Wagner cultural integration report and had numerous conversations with the owners there, a big deal. But I didn't do what I had in my calendar: drive to Greensboro Tuesday to co-lead the final session of our 10-person leadership program at NewBridge Bank with Gary, then drive back and lead the Mastery Program for three days. That may now be what I did "in the old days."

Gary led the leadership program's final session at NewBridge. Gary led the Mastery Program.I was there for major portions of it, providing coaching and context, but he led ALL the distinctions. I didn't even go on Friday until noon.

It was coming from "over there" wholly for the first time - meaning the source of the Mastery Program was over there with Gary. He was BEING and KNOWING the distinctions, with colorful and evocative examples from his own fascinating life. No story about Doug's racket in a Swiss train station this time (that 5 year old tale is ready for retirement), replaced by Gary's hilarious recounting of his racket in line at Disney World. The Mastery Program has turned again, as it did when I took it from Andrew and made it my own in 2006.

I didn't know exactly how to do it, but I knew it when I saw it: when the distinctions that comprise this thing we call Mastery start to be generated by another, in sequence, in the listening of the participants. All that was there this time with Gary, and so I knew.

The words of James Baldwin are echoing in my head this morning from a quote we use in Mastery...

“Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges.”

I don't think we use the middle sentence, about “not daring to imagine,” and clinging “to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed.”

I think we should put it back in.