It's so complex, it's simple

A couple of years ago, my now 11 year old daughter asked me where I thought the world was heading, given the speed with which life, dictated, of course by computers, iPods, and PDA's was hurtling along. I said that I thought it was all going to blow up, and we'd land up back in the horse and buggy times. I think that was more of a sentiment rather than a prognostication, however, it's amazing what a few short years can do. I never really thought it would all blow up, but sometimes that's just what we need. Amusingly, there are a number of well known mainstream journalists that have graciously identified for us what caused the financial meltdown, what went wrong, and exactly how the whole system exploded. Strangely enough though, they didn't see this coming, and they didn't really know how the system worked BEFORE the meltdown. They did get one thing right, however -- it's a lot easier to be a genius after the fact.

I have a simple point for this post. Sometimes we make things a lot lot more complicated than they ought to be. We do this with our actions, inactions, miscommunications, lack of focus, and by generally getting ahead of ourselves. I watched a story on the news this morning about a school in Georgia that is having success in educating autistic children; children that the mainstream educational system has no idea how to deal with. Their solution is to focus on the children's emotional needs in order to connect with, and get through to the children. Once this connection is made they find it easier to then attend to the children's educational and behavioral issues. I don't know if this is the silver bullet, but it is a simple idea, based upon a core human need. It does seem to be working, albeit in a limited sense, as it involves private education and is very expensive. Nevertheless, I am sure there are thinkers with more depth than those that introduced this educational approach who will figure out how to lower the cost of these services and generate them on a mass-consumption basis, in order to roll the program out to a larger population. Nevertheless, the idea itself, although visionary, relies on simple human interaction and connection, suggesting that we may have lost the art of actually connecting with each other. Therein lies my point --- sometimes the answers can be relatively simple, but still we just don't see them.

I realize these are difficult times, and I am as caught up in the tailspin as anyone else is; I worry that our business will not survive these torrid times, but I have realized something really simple through all of this. Dinner time is my most important time of the day, and I am going to try to make that meeting every night. I find it to be an amazing time of coming together, bonding, and discovery. I haven't figured out much else about how to addreess the issues we're facing, but I do know that I am going home tonight to have dinner, laugh, and be in a special place, and I think that you should all do that too.