Compassion – Dave Glardon

There is No Strength Greater Than Compassion

June 22, 2020June 22, 2020 by Dave Glardon, posted in Uncategorized

Good morning! I hope your day is off to a great start.

It’s good to be back with you. Yes, I took a week off. This would not be the time to say, “You were gone?” Writers have fragile feelings. We like to think people are hanging on every word and can’t wait to read more from us. Okay, stand-up comedy made my feelings a little less fragile. It all changed the night some guy in the back of a sold-out crowd yelled, “You suck!”

I think I’ve told that story before, so I won’t go into it now. The point is, I lived through it. And after that night, I was never again afraid of somebody sharing their own thoughts so vocally. In fact, I almost looked forward to it. That’s what happens when you have a six-hour drive home to lick your wounds and come up with all kinds of vile expressions to put somebody in their place.

Thankfully, I never had to use any of them, because it never happened again. It’s hard to believe that, in fifteen years of comedy across most of the nation, nobody else felt the need to humiliate me in front of a crowd. I guess when you’re ready for them, you have this look on your face that says, “Go for it!” Kids always do behave better when mom has a wooden spoon.

Having a thick skin is one of those things that can be good or bad, depending on the situation. When your grandchild is crying because of a popped balloon, that’s a time for compassion. When they’re crying because you took away their steak knife, sympathy is a little harder to find. And then they say, “I don’t like you!” and you start crying. Oh well.

We’re living in a time when we all need that perfect balance of compassion and a thick skin. People around us are hurting. They’re sick. They’re afraid. They need comfort, not some jackass telling them to “suck it up, buttercup!” Yes, life can be tough. They know that. They don’t need a reminder. What they need is somebody to say, “I’m here. How can I help?”

That doesn’t mean we take the world’s problems as our own, but to the extent that one of us is hurting, we’re all hurting. When a player gets hurt on the field, the team circles in to protect them, because even the most uncelebrated lineman is just as important as the quarterback. Try playing without a few of those linemen and you’ll see what I mean.

To be sure, there are times when the best thing we can do for somebody is to make them stand on their own. Even the Bible tells us, give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day – teach a man to fish and he’ll buy a boat and you’ll never see him again. Well, something like that. Which explains why my wife gave me a copy of “Fishing for Dummies.” Point taken.

Your first day on the job, you needed somebody to show you the ropes. Hopefully somebody was willing to help. And there’s little doubt some hotshot was standing off to the side, making snide remarks and waiting for you to fail. Every company has at least one. So, here’s the question – which one of those people made the biggest difference, for you and for the team?

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And sure, it may be easier to just cut that link out and cast it aside, but what you end up with is a shorter chain. It makes more sense to beef up that weak link and make it as strong as the rest. In fact, if you could do the same with all those weak links somebody else tossed aside, you’d have the biggest and strongest chain around.

We can’t solve the world’s problems on our own, but looking the other way won’t make them magically disappear. Like anything else, if we each take a small bite out of the problem, it becomes that much more manageable. Help those who can’t help themselves and encourage those who can.

The best pitcher can’t win a game without an equally strong catcher. And even the guy in right field (you know, where the dandelions grow) is just as critical to the team’s success. There are no unnecessary players – in sports, or in life. Winning teams aren’t built by exclusion – they’re the natural result of each person helping every other person become the very best they can be.

That’s all for now. Have an awesome day!

Follow @dglardon

Be Mad. But Be Mad At The Right People.

June 1, 2020 by Dave Glardon, posted in Uncategorized

Good morning! I hope your day is off to a nice start.

Well, it’s a brand-new month. The year is almost half-over, and we’re finally allowed to get back out and interact with the world around us. Masks and social distancing are still part of that, and probably will be for a long time. But it does seem like we’re finding ways to cope with a virus we still don’t fully understand and make the most of the situation.

Yet once again, we’re in crisis with protests across the entire nation – not against masks and closed nail salons, but against something much more sinister. Most of the protests are peaceful, and for a cause we should all stand together to uphold. This isn’t political, or at least it shouldn’t be. It’s about human rights, something this country has fought wars to defend.

Sadly, there will always be some who see these things as little more than an opportunity to incite violence and destruction. They are the minority – a fractional percentage of those who stand peacefully. But, through their actions, they degrade the message of hope and unity that others are trying so desperately to share.

It’s beyond heartbreaking – it’s truly sickening. But that small faction only has the power that we give them. When we let their violence obscure a message of humanity and lump them in with all those who are protesting peacefully, they win. When we give violence a voice and amplify that voice louder than all others, we enable it. Hate prevails because we allow it.

When riots broke out in Los Angeles over the verdict in the Rodney King case, my daughter, who was still in elementary school, asked why people would destroy their own neighborhood. I told her she was seeing less than one percent of the population in those neighborhoods doing these things. For every person on the street, hundreds were at home praying for it to end. The same is true today.

So far, five people have died as a result of this violence, and many more have been injured. It’s understandable that we would be outraged. Yet, in the same month, store employees have been killed for asking patrons to protect others from a deadly virus by wearing a mask. Were we equally outraged by that?

It would be as unfair to blame the death of those store employees on everybody protesting state shut-downs as it is to blame the destruction we’re seeing on everybody who is standing peacefully against the violence that triggered this latest round of protests. Place the blame where it lies – with those who perpetrate violence, not those who are standing against it.

It’s easy to blur the lines, especially when we don’t have a personal stake in the situation. But we do have a stake. We have a stake in restoring peace and stability, and we have a stake in making sure no citizen faces the risk of death for suspicion of committing a non-violent and relatively petty crime. This isn’t about us versus them – it’s about who we are as a nation.

I try to avoid controversial topics in my posts, and I try to keep them lighthearted and motivational. But there are times when we must all speak out and address the elephant in the room. This is a big elephant, friends, and it’s not going away on its own. We have to make it go away, and we have to do that in a manner that benefits humanity rather than tearing it down.

This has been a tough year for all of us. Every time we think we’re seeing the end of one crisis, another takes its place. Yet somehow, instead of standing together as we did following the 9/11 attacks, we’re allowing each crisis to divide us further. Our perspective is clouded by politics instead of being guided by a sense of morals. Until that changes, things will never get better.

Violence begets violence, and silence breeds indifference. Somewhere between the two lies an appropriate response. If it’s acceptable to protest the inconvenience of social distancing, it must also be acceptable to protest the immorality of wrongful death. In fact, it’s more than just acceptable – it’s a responsibility we share as citizens of a free nation.

While we must never accept violence, we must also never allow that violence to stain a message of compassion. We’ll get through this. The riots will end, and peace will once again be restored. But our response to those standing peacefully against a grave injustice will say more about us as a nation than any number of fires we have to put out in the process.

That’s all for now. Have a peaceful and blessed day.

Follow @dglardon

When Seeing is Believing, Take a Closer Look

June 11, 2019 by Dave Glardon, posted in Uncategorized

Good morning! I hope your day is off to a great start.

Now that the weather is a bit nicer, I’ve been trying to get out and take a walk more often. Lunchtime is usually a good time to get away, because it gives me a break from my desk, lets me get a little exercise, and keeps me from gorging on food I really don’t need anyway.

I work downtown, so there are always plenty of places to walk. And there’s never a shortage of people to make the walk interesting. Most simply walk past, give a brief nod, and maybe say hello. Some sit on a bench and look longingly at a world that seems to have passed them by. And then there’s the guy who was chirping like a bird and having a loud verbal argument with himself.

I wish I was making that up, but that’s what I encountered yesterday. Last week it was somebody else, waving his arms and yelling loudly at somebody who wasn’t there. Or, at least from my perspective. Who am I to say there was nobody there, just because I couldn’t see them? In his mind, he was in a full-blown confrontation.

It’s easy to form an opinion on what’s going on with some of these people. Drugs may certainly have been involved, but there are a dozen other possibilities that are much less nefarious. You could be looking at a military veteran who saw things in person that no network would ever allow us to see on TV. You just never know.

Perception is a tricky thing. It’s an important part of quickly assessing a situation in which our safety may rely on our ability to accurately perceive what’s going on. But it’s also a very biased opinion based exclusively on what we’ve experienced and learned to date. We think we know enough to assess the situation, but quite often we’re completely wrong. Worse yet, we may never know.

I remember in high school, walking through a loud and crowded hallway between classes, there was a guy with long stringy hair walking through, seemingly oblivious to everything around him. His head was cocked to one side, his mouth was open and slightly drooling, and he was clapping and snapping his fingers to a beat only he could hear. I was certain he was drugged into oblivion.

A couple of months later, one of my teachers was talking about human miracles and how we can overcome otherwise crippling handicaps to live a normal life. As it turns out, that student wasn’t on drugs. He was blind. He was able, in the middle of a crowded hallway, to listen to the echoes from his claps and snaps to know exactly where he was and what was in front of him.

I remember thinking what a miracle that was, the challenges he had to overcome. Imagine learning the floor plan of a large school so well that you know each doorway and what’s behind it. Water fountains made an entirely different sound, and I’m sure the echo off the lockers was distinct. And he was able to selectively shut out all the background noise to hear only his own echoes.

As I said, sometimes you just never know. It was probably my first big lesson in judging a book by its cover and, nearly fifty years later, I can still see him stumbling through the hallway to get to his next class. I often think about my first impression of him and how incredibly wrong I was. He wasn’t intentionally dulling his senses – he was using them to a level most of us will never achieve.

Every person you encounter presents an image that may or may not be entirely accurate. The young woman who looks like she was out all night partying, but in reality, nobody ever taught her how to apply make-up. The guy who’s nodding off at his desk because he has a severe case of narcolepsy. The overweight person who’s eating candy to ward off insulin shock.

It would be easy to form an opinion based on two or three seconds of observation. And, even when our opinion is accurate, there’s still a lot more we don’t know. Maybe that person is on drugs. But why? What have they experienced in life that’s led them to the choices they’re making today? More importantly, if we’d been in their shoes, would we have responded that much more responsibly?

We’re all very different people, and we all have unique gifts, abilities, troubles, and needs. And we all share this planet together. Instead of crossing the street when I saw a man having a fight with himself, maybe I could have helped talk him through it. Maybe I could have calmed the “other person” down. Who knows?

It’s been said that we should never judge a person unless we’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Until we do, we may never know how hard that walk might be.

That’s all for now. Have an awesome day!