Unsolicited advice
I’m not sold on giving advice, especially when no one asks for it. That disclaimer in place, I’ll now proceed to offer, what else, but a bit of unsolicited advice to Mauricio Herrera of Rogers and Geovanny Sarmiento of Bentonville.
They are the latest gubernatorial appointees to the board of trustees at the headline-weary Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville. Both also are relative newcomers to public service.
Back in the Middle Ages of my college years, higher education served in many ways as a training ground for learning to question authority and build integrity through character while learning to respect diverse opinions.
A large part of that education also involved learning to reason critically for myself rather than becoming just another timid sheeple wandering amid the flock.
With that in mind, I’d encourage each of the new appointees (and for that matter, anyone in higher-education leadership) to consider embracing those same time-tested values as a successful public servant.
Open, honest communication . . . ya just can’t beat it. Or you could go the other way. Others certainly have. It’s up to you.
Greatest regrets
I read a story not long ago in AARP’s magazine (yep, I’m there), written by a former palliative-care nurse, that told of the five most common regrets that her patients had in their waning days.
The most common regret cited was how they wished they had been true to themselves during their life.
In other words, they regretted choosing to do what others expected of them rather than what they actually felt or believed at the time.
The secondbiggest regret was that they wished they hadn’t devoted so much time and effort to work as opposed to spending more time with family and friends. This regret seemed most prevalent among men, yet a number of women felt the same way.
Third, they wished they could have better expressed their feelings on matters they deemed relevant and important. Too often, they said, they’d suppressed their own expressions simply to keep peace at the moment with others.
The fourth most significant regret was that they wished they had made an effort to stay better connected with family and friends, realizing at the end that love and relationships were all that really had mattered in a fleeting existence.
And finally, they regretted that they hadn’t allowed themselves to be happier more often. They saw how they too often had gotten themselves stuck in habits and patterns that prevented happiness.
They realized as the final sands trickled through their hourglass that happiness really had been as much a choice as most other events in their lives.
No advice here. Just some morsels for breakfast thought on this Tuesday morning.
Honoring an artist
It was nice to see Fayetteville’s nationally celebrated artist with a camera, Andrew Kilgore, featured in a news story the other day. He has an exhibition of his compelling black-and-white portraits titled “A Reluctance to Engage” on display at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Spring Street in Fayetteville.
The pictures are close-ups of willing participants in the Community Meals program.
I appreciate Kilgore’s remarkable eye and creative sense of moment that allow him to capture his subject’s personality and spirit in a single photograph.
In fact, I appreciated his skill so much that I asked Kilgore to take the cover photograph for the new CD I’ve narrated called Rhythms of Life from a Southern Journalist, featured on my website.
Incidentally, thanks to those who have visited the site and even ordered one of the 83-minute CDs, which contain 14 timeless columns set to original music by Papa Dave Chiodo of Fayetteville’s MDA Central Casting Studios.
And in what can only be characterized as a shameless promotion, I might as well attach this bit of feedback from reader and listener Scotty Freebairn of Little Rock who—land sakes’ alive— appears to actually have listened to it!
“A wonderful commentary. Definitely not a one-time listen. I’ll be listening to your words often. The music interludes add a special touch and it is just classy all the way around. I assume this is your voice in the narration, and your words are beautifully delivered. This is a very inspirational CD.”
Aw shucks, thanks for writing, Scotty.