The Power of WOW - getting gruntled starts with you. Keep the wow and stay engaged!

[pamela]

March, Toronto earlier this year - Don’t tire of the great stuff so fast – keep the wow factor!

In my last blog I talked about the Power of WOW, so here are a couple of stories, lets say examples of what I mean. I have a Labrador who lives in a little community called The Beaches in Toronto. He's got to be a hundred in people years by now, in fact I think I’ve lost count – its wishful thinking, I don’t want to recall really how old he is.. But to my point immediately - for most of those 100 years, he has had at least two walks a day. Ok, there were days when we couldn’t be bothered or when it was 100 below outside and a blizzard, or a a hundred degrees plus and I was nearing sun stroke. But two walks a day over 14 years is a lot of walks. Lets say 350 x 2 x 14 = XXXXXXX. That’s a hell of a lot of walks! Anyway, He was born in Johannesburg, did his teens in Toronto, his late teens in Sydney and now as he enters what I care to say are his mid life years, he is happily back in Toronto living by the lake. Nothing in his world has ever really changed though, still twice a day, he gets a walk.

The remarkable thing about this is that even after his 100 years and XXXXX walks later, each day his leash appears he does what so many of mans best friends do - he goes absolutely and categorically, ballistic! Even with bad hips, arthritis and a bad knee you would of course think we had locked him in a small cupboard under the stairs for his entire life, never allowing him to see the light of day, except perhaps on his birthday, from the way he backflips to the sight of his leash and the then obviously promised, walk. It matters not what day of the week it is, whether the first walk was one hour or 12 hours before the second or whether it’s a long walk or a short walk. He goes nuts each and every time the leash comes out, knowing he is about to go for a walk. There is something to be said about living life that way – with the power of WOW. This i have learned over the years is a precious characteristic or even personality trait. It is an ability to still get that great feeling of excitment even when what's ahead may not be that new, that different or that adventurous compared to other things, but still you look forward to it and you see the brightness in it.

When i got Mugz the everready Labrador, I had just moved to South Africa. There was a great deal of bleekness in Southern Africa at that time, but there was also a great deal of brightness and hope. The wonderful thing about the African people was that they were willing to forgive and let people prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they were not worthy of your friendship and time before they let you down. They justified other peoples actions, they felt there was something to be learned from all. They apologised for your accidents or misfortunes 'oh sorry for that' as you stubbed your toe. One such man was Liverson. Physically, Liverson was one of the blackest men I ever met. He was a heavy man with a huge smile of startlingly white teeth, who shaved his head before it was trendy. But what was strange (and by the way, beside the point), was that at no time did I ever really see that he was black. You see, Liverson was one of those people with a heart so big that it was this heart that you saw before anything else. His voice was filled with laughter, his face, his actions, his words. Everything about him was laughter. Even when given a raw deal it was difficult to see that he was angered. He brought laughter into the world of those willing to open themselves up for it.

There are so many stories to tell about Liverson. Like that his dream was to take a freezer to his little village in Zimbabwe so that the children could have ice-cream. Or the story he told about the car that was able to fly. Or perhaps the story of his daddy who made sure his children had an education. I could not try to tell all of them but one was very close to me that I would particularly like to tell. It was about giving what you can when you can, how you can and seeing the power of WOW first hand.

Liverson as I mentioned is from Zimbabwe. As a land locked country it is located straight above South Africa. It had gained independence in 1980 although some would say that it was still dependent on a dictator regardless of the fact that apartheid was no longer practiced. Back then the Zimbabwe people were proud, educated and one of the happiest African people I had met. It was a far cry from where it is today, it was on the road to being a hugely successful nation. And as people, they had a genuine happiness about them and usually a smile that radiated from almost anyone you caught eyes with on the street, or spoke to in a store, a market or at work. These were people with opinions they would share and comparisons they could draw between yourself and their nation, their upbringing or their individuality, and Liverson was a great Ambassador for his country.

He and I worked together a great deal and over time had developed a great friend ship. We both had a passion for training and teaching people - helping others do better - and our business activities were generally related to the softer issues in companies. We were both working on a special project with a food manufacturing company and one week it took us to Cape Town. A beautiful city. You can read the travel guides to get the full flavour of its beauty and pick up any book on Africa and Table Mountain, the cities famous backdrop, will be prominently situated. Cape Town and Table Mountain were of little interest to Liverson though. What was most intersting about Cape Town to Liverson, was that it was a city located on the tip of Africa and that meant it was an ocean city. Liverson, I was to learn had never seen the Ocean.

This may not seem that unusual to some. To others it may be a frightening fact. To me it was an amazing oversight on my behalf and quite a surprise, because my own ignorance had made me assume that a University educated, extremely intelligent, professional consultant such as Liverson had surely seen the sea. He had not.

When we arrived in Cape Town the sun had already gone down and Liverson and I chuckled about finding our way to the hotel in the dark, which later had lost its’ amusement given that we got horribly lost and ended up in a deserted industrial estate quite the opposite direction, even Liverson was somewhat scared which meant I was now terrified. The sweat let loose from my brow and my insides felt like jello until we found civilisation and discovered that we were still alive. The hotel was on the waterfront. That night we dined in it’s roof top restaurant and watched the lights of the city.

Liverson smiled with all his teeth and while he looked out over the cities lights he ever so softly asked “ Where is the ocean?”
“You are looking at it” I replied “When you wake in the morning, look outside your window and the Ocean will be before you. Where you see no lights tonight will be blue waters tomorrow.” His eyes lit up like a small child and I know that inside him he was preparing himself for a new sight.

That morning Liverson glimpsed the Ocean. That afternoon we decided to jig work and take a look at it up close. I will never forget his words. “Oh my”, he said. “It goes on forever”. His eyes were fixed on the Ocean. He sat spellbound for several minutes as if taking a mental picture of what he saw.

I felt somewhat teary at this discovery. How much we take for granted and do not appreciate, when here was a grown, adult, man who saw the Ocean for the first time and marveled at its wonders. We celebrated his newly found images by eating a seafood lunch, packed with shrimp and lobster, crab and oysters. Something else Liverson had never done. Me, I just thought about how terrified I was of the ocean that once nearly took my life and how this man stood so thrilled, so happy, almost in awe of it’s nobility.

That afternoon also changed me in a small way, but one that has become quite meaningful for me ever since. It seems that each time I find myself looking at some new marvel – be it the Grand Canyon which I visited some years later, or the Canadian Rockies – I feel like I am drinking the sights. I am trying ever so hard to fix them a special place in my memory, one that I will recall later in my life. And often, I am looking for Liverson and I wonder what he might say or think if he were to see such a sight. I know he would say WOW!

The thing I loved about Liverson was that he always had a dream. Seeing the ocean was one and we would talk about that day for sometime to come. I imagine he had many and some he would only share with his wife or his children or may be with no other person and simply save it for his own dream files. This ocean dream he shared with me when we were busy working in a remote part of Southern Africa, the Northern Cape Province. We would fly from Johannesburg to a small town called Upington. Not very African-like in its name and when you drove through the town you could be in any small town in the world. In fact it reminded me of a town in Australia that I would drive through with my parents when I was small, on the way from Canberra to Sydney – it was called Golburn. A big wide main street lined with many small shops and then one department store and one large supermarket. But after our small aircraft ride to Upington we would began our journey by car. It was a four hour car drive through the semi-arrid terrain of the Northern Cape to an even smaller town called O’Kiepp, which was home to a copper mine now closed down. (I often wonder what happened to all those people). The journey was spectacular the first time and boring as hell the several dozen after that. You see it was flat, bleak land except for the occasional almost desert like mountain of dirt, and the road was straighter than any scissor could cut. It went on for miles.

We always stopped half way at an even smaller town whose name now escapes me. There was nothing there but a gas station where we stocked up on Coke and Crisps. Along the way we stopped at the fruit dryers and stocked up on dried apricots. Hundreds of drying boxes lined the dirt fields. Crate upon crate of fruit. But what else would you do in a land so desolate and arid as this but dry fruit. It was big business for some.

For the most part we just drove and talked. The journey alone was the most solitary and isolated I would ever make, and because of that I would only drive it alone on one occasion. Instead poor Liverson so graciously drove me back to Upington on many occasions and then made the lonely journey back to Okiep by himself. Each journey, no matter how straight and long, was a wow for me. The time we spent chatting was always worth the sea sickness that developed from the constant rocking of the car (Liversons terrible driving - speed up and brake, speed up and brake - Of course this sometimes seemed like it was a symbol of progress in South Africa as well ………..speed up and brake! but thats another story). I would learn so much about life in Africa, and it never failed to give me a wow.

I guess there are so many points to this story you dont need me to make them..... but if i could make one, it would be a simple one - never forget the power of wow! And never let your wow factor drop.... look for the wows and getgruntled!