Death Lessons
Most people refer to these as life lessons, and I understand and support that. As I’m finishing my journey of life, I was reminded last night that we learn lessons that can be useful up to the point of death. I had a mild seizure last night, nothing about which to be alarmed, but it occurred while I was in bed, supine, a new experience. During all previous ones I had been upright, and able to grab a counter or piece of furniture to prevent falling. It reminded me that the end is not far off, and prompted me to think of what I had learned on my journey.
The first death lesson I can recall learning was from a twelve-year-old girl, one of my piano students. She was playing a piece of music that contained accidentals. Those are sharps, flats and natural signs contained in the body of the music, but not in the key signature. I stopped her after the second one that she played as though the accidental was not there. I told her she was ignoring he accidentals.
Dead serious, she turned to me and said, “No, Mr. Heath, I’m not ignoring them. I’m just not doing anything about them right now.” I think of this every time someone tells me I’m ignoring some attribute or situation in analysis. Ever since that day, fifty-five years ago, I have refrained from telling someone, “You’re ignoring (fill-in-the-blank).”
My next death lesson came twenty years later, when a professional acquaintance told me, referring to someone opposing progress on a program for which he was responsible, “He needs to understand . . . “ and I don’t remember what it was that he needed to understand. I do remember a Damascene moment, and replying “Why does he need to understand anything? Doesn’t he merely have to accept it, whether he understands it or not?”
My acquaintance was so astounded he asked me to sit down and talk through the idea of acceptance versus understanding. We discussed the many thousands of things we didn’t understand, and determined that most of them didn’t need to be understood. Rather, they needed to be accepted. I don’t understand transgenderism, but I accept that it is real. I don’t understand why some people need to tear down others to make themselves feel good, but I accept that it occurs. Acceptance seems to beat understanding every time.
My third death lesson came ten years after the second. I was in a foreign country delivering management consulting services to a large company. A Vice President of my employer and I were meeting with an executive of the client firm. I presented the cost-benefit analysis for one of the executive’s programs, including the date when benefits and costs would become equal. The executive told me to move that date earlier to make the program appear more beneficial. I refused. Before I could explain why I refused my employer’s Vice President ordered me to do as the client wanted, or be fired. I stood and prepared to leave the room, fired. The client executive remarked, “I like that.” My Vice President said, “You mean my firing him.”
The executive asked me to return and to explain my refusal. It was simple, I saw no way to bring the break-even point forward, and when the prediction failed the executive would bear the consequences. I was unwilling to do something against his interests. The executive then offered me a job; my own company was more interested in his money than his welfare. I declined, because as an employee I would lose objectivity.
The lesson to me was that if I decided to act unethically because I was afraid of losing my job, I wasn’t doing my job anyway. Seven years later I walked away, started my own consultancy, and followed the three death lessons I had learned. I never assumed that someone was ignoring something, because she might simply not be doing anything about it at the moment. I placed acceptance ahead of understanding, and decided it was rarely necessary, not to mention often impossible, to understand. And I walked away from business I couldn’t do ethically.
I will not die rich in the conventional sense, but I am wealthy beyond belief. I have learned three valuable death lessons, and have a chance to share my bounty with others. It doesn’t get any better than this.
The piano 'lesson' has reminded me of an encounter I had with a customer this Saturday at work:-
There is a music school on the floor above where I work. Every Saturday we have to listen to someone playing slow, single, mournful piano notes, repetitive and tuneless. I often wish the teacher would show off to her student and play a decent melody, but that only happens rarely. This Saturday a customer asked me if the piano being played was annoying. I thought him unusually considerate. I replied eagerly 'Yes, its awful. Those mournful, tuneless notes go on for hours and make it difficult to concentrate' He replied 'that's my daughter up there getting her weekly lesson.
Haha.. I walked right into that trap!
I just want to share one of my favorite poems and one I recited when my mother passed away because it captured the essences of how she lived. Your words remind me of hers. by Sir Wotton
How happy is he born or taught
Who serveth not another’s will;
Whose armor is his honest thought,
And simple truth his highest skill;Whose passions not his masters are;
Whose soul is still prepared for death;
Not tied unto the world with care
Of public fame or private breath;Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than goods to lend,
And walks with man, from day to day,
As with a brother and a friend!This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.