A Swaggering Story That Speaks to Our Time

October 22, 2017 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

There are three extraordinary aspects to the storytelling in Marshall, a new movie appearing in theaters this week.

Its protagonist, Thurgood Marshall, was the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Several years before he took the bench, Marshall argued Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a high court case that found state laws establishing separate schools for black and white children to be unconstitutional. But long before his career peak or landmark victory, Marshall was a young NAACP lawyer struggling to represent a black defendant who was charged with raping a white woman.

That courtroom is where most of this movie takes place, and it’s the first story element that struck me. Marshall was virtually unknown back then. He seems to think he’s “all that,” but unlike the swaggering hotshot that we’re meeting for the first time, we know something that he doesn’t, namely, all that he’ll go on to accomplish. This absence of knowledge means that it could be anybody’s bright future that glitters in his eyes.

The second arresting feature is Marshall’s complicated, flawed personality.

We meet a whip-smart prankster who can be charming but also full of guile. In action, his bravado makes him the life of the party one minute and an arrogant jerk the next.

Before the Connecticut case, we see Marshall enjoying the high life of jazz era Harlem. But he also decides to leave his beautiful wife and celebrity friends behind to fight for civil rights in some of the most hostile corners of America. To leave these comforts for a life of combativeness and fear is either the definition of foolhardy or tremendously courageous.

It is the ambivalence of these details that enable us to share in his story. Brazen but also exposed, this Marshall is never too good to be true. It may have been the bright future in this man’s eyes and his relatable personality that caused Chicago’s Chance the Rapper to buy out two theater seatings of the movie—his announcement appears below—so that kids from his old neighborhood could encounter a role model who feels like the real thing.

What really got my attention though was the third turn that the story takes.

As the trial unfolds, Marshall confronts the fact that he is an out-of-state lawyer who cannot speak for himself or his client in this courtroom. Because he was not admitted to practice in Connecticut, Marshall literally has to “speak through his local counsel,” a young insurance attorney unversed in either criminal law or racial animosity. In other words, without his rhetorical skills and righteous passion, what everyone knows is Marshall’s best hand has been tied behind his back and that he has to learn to fight without it.

Chadwick Boseman, the actor who plays Marshall, described this element of the story in an interview when the movie was released:

Jeffrey Brown: You wanted to make your big courtroom speech?

Chadwick Boseman: Had to, you know. But the more I read it, I realized that this was the exact obstacle that would make the movie interesting. The truth of the matter is, when you’re acting [in the courtroom scenes] you’re silent. Your non-verbals are dialogue, subtext. And that’s actually just as hard, if not harder, than having the huge speech at the end….

Of course it is. A lot harder.

The young Thurgood Marshall was a black lawyer in a hostile community that had already made up its mind about the guilt of his client. The future of the NAACP, particularly financial support for the organization, depended on his success in cases like this one. As if these pressures weren’t enough, Marshall had to improvise his client’s defense with an untested accomplice at his side. He didn’t know where his attitude and talents would take him, but they would have to be enough. And all the while, he carried his own baggage.

During the same interview Reginald Hudlin, the film’s director, emphasized that the Marshall he wanted to portray was not an angel but a saint. He explained the difference this way:

Well an angel kind of implies perfection. A saint means, you know, you push through your humanity. You do something greater than.

That’s what Chance the Rapper wanted those young audiences in Chicago to see. A flawed individual, not unlike them, pushing through his circumstances and his humanity.

There is some real hope in that.

The Job of Sorcerer’s Apprentice

July 2, 2013 By David Griesing 1 Comment

Some of the most necessary & satisfying work can be helping everybody else’s work to go smoothly. At its best, it’s nearly invisible. As orchestration, it can be akin to wizardry.

This time last year, I met two people clearly thriving on this sort of work. One was a “volunteer,” in the middle of helping an event with a thousand moving parts to go smoothly. The other does it full time. For each of them, you could feel just how much their chosen work fit.

I caught mid-stream magic being performed by Geo Geller at the #140edu Conference, a gathering of wired educators that was held last summer at the 92^nd Street Y in New York. A minister with nearly all portfolios, Geo was tracking down speakers, adjusting the lights and air, helping with taxis and luggage, coordinating with the Y’s staff, and untangling technology, that is, managing by wandering around. It was hot and I was decompressing from my time up, so for me it was some jokes, Geos’ finding me the T-shirt that came with the gig, and finally, just watching him work.

I met Dave “Pics” Bradley the night before the conference. Dave’s a hall monitor at a high school in Toronto. His day begins with tweets about the weather or the day’s schedule and ends with pictures he took of the school day in motion.

In his daily walkabouts, Dave sees first hand what teachers and administrators miss in the capillary action between classes and scheduled appointments: plots foiled, celebrations captured, bullies interrupted. Or it’s a friendly word on a lonely day from a friendly guy with a big hat and a camera. How essential is the job he’s doing? Check out what the Toronto Star thinks, along with Dave’s interview & video clip.

MAYBE IT'S THE BEARDS — MAYBE IT’S THE BEARDS

There can be a lot of satisfaction in work that makes everything else that’s going on…work. Here’s to Geo, Dave and all the other magicians who are actually doing it.

It’s a position that every workplace should want.

It’s a hat you might consider trying on.

Oprah Winfrey, Confessor

January 15, 2013 By David Griesing 22 Comments

I wrote about Lance Armstrong in early October and later that same month for a couple of reasons that relate to the work we do.

When you make mistakes that affect your ability to continue working & your reputation, you need to “speak for yourself about what happened” if you hope to regain your productivity. First off, it’s looking in the mirror and owning your mistakes so that you have the chance to be trusted and have influence again.

Coming to this acceptance also involves seeking the counsel of wise people around you—if you’re fortunate enough to have them. It’s only after “the owning” and “the reflecting” that you tell those you’ve affected what you did, why you did it, what you’ve learned, and how you’re going to do things differently in the future.

Each step hard, but necessary.

While its taken 3 months (or at least as many years since the allegations against him started to build), on Thursday Armstrong is promising to come clean to Oprah Winfrey. In an intimate television kind of way, her backstory is joining with his. Afterwards, we’ll draw our own conclusions.

We care about all of this because we need role models in our work—people to show us how—and for many of us, Armstrong fit that bill. Disciplined. Motivated. Triumphing over hardship. We were fortified by his example.

We also care about this because we know that the moral training we have today often comes from such “teachable moments” (as the president once reminded us)—that is, as long as we take them.

So we’ve followed the arc of Lance’s story. It was hard to absorb the allegations about a doping conspiracy he masterminded, to see him fired as the spokesman for products we buy, and finally to watch him have to break ties with his LiveStrong foundation. We were saddened by his apparent betrayal and surprised by his retreat into silence. Was it embarrassment? Was it shame?

In recent weeks, there have been some odd, Armstrong-initiated pop-ups. A surreal picture of him reclining in his den below his victory jerseys with the remark “Back in Austin and just layin’ around.” Rumors that he was figuring out what he had to do to get back into the competitive sporting circuit, and how admissions he might make would impact the lawsuits & investigations still swirling around him.

The picture and its tag-line suggested denial. The rumors suggested the machinations of lawyers and media advisors instead of soul-seekers.

We’ll see.

Because what he’s looking for from Oprah is not merely a stage that’s big enough for him and his story, but also for a confessor who will help to change our perception of him. Facilitate our forgiveness. Lance Armstrong’s goes to Oprah’s mountaintop in order to be healed in our eyes.

When our turns come it won’t be about teams of advisors or media blitz, and maybe not even about a catch in the throat when you get to the hard parts. Because it’s not about orchestration. It’s just about telling the truth and being genuinely sorry.

Otherwise you shouldn’t bother.

A Holiday Present Worth Asking For

December 22, 2012 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

The path to fulfilling, purposeful work is hard to walk alone.

Too often, even the smartest, seemingly most accomplished people don’t know how “to get out of their own way” to figure out what they should really be doing with their lives. The push towards clarity usually needs to come from the outside. Who that someone is, of course, is everything.

Most of my work has been inauthentic. I studied things, took jobs because of what others told me I should be doing with myself. I can’t believe that at this age I’m still living somebody else’s version of my life! The lens that looks beyond the here & now is unfocused. I squint, but still can’t see what I’m aiming for. I can’t see past my day-to-day to a more satisfying future. Well of course you can’t. Because you’ll never be able to see clearly through the fog of, say, a parent’s vision for you, through eyes that have always played an outsized role in what you think and feel about the world around you.

So the helpful holiday present I’m recommending may seem, at first, to come from exactly the wrong direction. While a skillful stranger with none of the presumptions you grew up with can provide the catalyst for rethinking your life’s work, you’re probably going “home for the holidays” in a couple of days. As incredible as it may sound, you might also find someone there who can help you out with this.

I’m relying solely on anecdotal evidence mind you, but in my family and in nearly every family I know anything about, it seems that similarities in personality and perspective skip a generation. Now admittedly, some of it may be due to the concerted efforts of daughters not to become their mothers, sons their fathers, and so on, but I think it goes much deeper than this. That great aunt, great uncle or grandfather may have a lot more in common with you than any of the others around the holiday table, and this family member has a present with your name on it.

All you have to do is retrieve it.

What richer or more familiar repositories of stories, life lessons and family traditions are there than the older relatives you’ll be spending time with in coming days? I’d start with the one you always connected with most naturally, because you’ll cover more territory when your conversation with them starts to roll. And roll it will.

As in other situations, you can help your luck along here by thinking beforehand about what you’d like to find out from them, and then doing a little research so you know more about his life or her career when they were your age. You might be surprised at how someone with similar wiring confronted hurdles like the ones you’re facing. You also might be surprised by how much you’ll learn about yourself when you start tapping into all that accumulated wisdom.

What’s less surprising is how few of us ever get around to asking.

Karl Pillemer, who teaches courses on human development at Cornell, wanted to do something about that, while also preserving some of what was being lost. He is the guiding force behind the Legacy Project, whose website and YouTube channel provide access to life lessons collected from hundreds of older adults on topics ranging from marriage and parenting to their careers.

In his own life and work, Professor Pillemer has also come to appreciate the personal benefits that are realized on both sides of the Q & A, and certainly on the answering side. In a recent interview, he offered this simple advice:

Ask them for their life stories, but try to tap their life’s wisdom. If you ask a person for advice, it empowers them. It honors a person’s life experience.

Who helped you along the way? What mistakes did you make? How did you make ends meet? Did you ever want to settle for less? Why didn’t you?

With the holiday season upon us, and New Year’s resolutions ahead, being home for the holidays may provide you with an unexpected opportunity to think productively about the future direction of your life and work. But the present won’t be given to you unless you ask someone for it.

Getting Beyond Our Failings to Something Better

November 15, 2012 By David Griesing 2 Comments

This season has been a harsh one for heroes. When you bring your values into your work, the example of others who have done so matters. So a season like this takes its toll.

Lance Armstrong was pulled down first by his win-at-any-cost rush for glory, and finally by his inability to reach beyond his grimace for a grace note. There’s a time for everything, and even Lance knows that it’s probably too late for him to say anything meaningful now. So instead this week he posted a picture of himself basking in the glow of all those yellow jerseys with the “passive/aggressive” caption: ““Back in Austin and just layin’ around…” One tweet (“Smug and deluded”) captures some of the reaction. For those of us who hoped for better, “Sad” would also be true.

Today it’s David Petraeus. His contrasting exit from the stage spoke of personal honor, the way a man should act when he’s disappointed himself and others. But in our need for role models, are we selfish to want something more in this instance too?

David Petraeus’ contributions in war were even more critical to this country’s interests than many of us realized given the failings of the generals he has had to push aside to bring a measure of competence to our expeditions in Iraq and Afghanistan. (In the just published The Generals, there appears to be American blood on the hands of far too many of Petraeus’ high-ranking colleagues.) So amidst a startling shortage of Pentagon talent, Petraeus stepped up for his country both on the battlefield and in the corridors of power.

But his extraordinary record of service and character also begs the question: Wasn’t there a better way to reach a productive future than for David Petraeus to withdraw from public life: a better way for him, for America, and for the rest of us?

There may be troubling facts around the Petraeus downfall that have not yet been made public. But given what we know today, I find myself wishing that his bosses had helped him find a way to not only take responsibility for his lapses of judgment but also to keep on making his unique contributions. Shouldn’t what has happened here be about more than one man’s conclusion that he let himself and his country down? Doesn’t David Petraeus seem to be the kind of man who could redeem whatever disgrace he feels today though more hard work on behalf of his country?

Heroes are human. Caught between heaven and earth, we handle their earthbound parts badly. Isn’t there a way to approach personal failings that includes, among its many options, a path that promises redemption after penance is done?

In 2008 Barrack Obama gave millions hope they could believe in, but four years later that hero has also been brought down to earth, tarnished by limitations that a slim majority found less troubling than the other guy’s. Obama could never have met the expectations his campaign created in 2008, or that many foisted upon him. But here, what troubles the most is that the president never took responsibility for what he promised but failed to do. He never said:

“I chose to take the helm when the ship was floundering. I wasn’t up to it then, and as a result I didn’t get us to clear water. You know it and I know it. But the buck stops here. I didn’t get it done. This is where I failed, and over here too. But this is also what I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I will struggle mightily not to make them again. Remind me when I’m not being bold enough. This is a big job. I need your help everyday—and God’s too—to find the courage we need to move forward from where we are.”

The president never said this to us. Instead his excuse seemed to be that his predecessor and his opponents were even smaller men. Maybe so, but you can’t move beyond your own failings until you own them. Unfortunately for him and for us, we’re all in an unproductive future with him this November: from the hero of 2008 to the lesser of two evils in 2012.

This week Lincoln comes to a movie screen nearby. Hollywood or Steven Speilberg or both may have seen an arc extending back from our first black president to the man who emancipated our slaves—and seen timeliness in this. But Lincoln’s life is timely now for a different reason. Almost alone among our American heroes, he was singularly focused on trying to describe how meaning could be found beyond the tragedy, sacrifice, and his own personal limitations.

The humility, sadness and struggle to reach a better future are all captured in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. It was 1865. America was exhausted by an on-going war with bitter losses. Lincoln didn’t speak about having righteousness on his side. He got down into the moral mess of it, acknowledged while also struggling to look past the war’s unbearable costs to the forgiveness and rebuilding beyond. This is what he said.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully.

. . . Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

The pathway to something better that Lincoln spoke of in his time seems barely visible today.

It is grounded not in arrogance, but in humility and forgiveness.

Because we need to find the path again, it seems fitting that Lincoln will fill our fields of vision in what has been a harsh season for today’s heroes.

We have much to learn from him.