Celebrating My Mother's Life, 26 Years After Her Death

26 years ago on a Friday the 13th, I was at a rehearsal for a Christmas play at Jimmy Swaggart Bible College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when the Dean of Male Students interrupted us to escort me back to his office. Nothing could have prepared me for that call from my sister, informing me that our mother, Norma Jean "Stormy" Falor, had died.

She was a fighter. She was a crier, She waited tables to put herself through secretary school after dropping out of high school to elope with her sweetheart in the Air Force and then facing the disappointment of divorce It was as a waitress that she met my father. After getting a break to join the steno pool at Toledo Edison, she worked her way up all the way to Executive Secretary to the President. (All while helping my dad produce his Masters thesis.) When John Williamson would fret and fume over corporate difficulties, she would take him by the arm and lead him to the glass walls of his 15th-story office, point to the streets of downtown Toledo below, and say, "Look at all those people walking around down there, Mr. Williamson, just as if the world weren't coming to an end!"

When I was born, the doctor had to inform her of my heart defect, warning her that I might not make it to infancy when surgery would be possible. She looked him in the eye and said, "Bet me!" She made many mistakes, some of which (drinking and smoking) drove me from her home and put her in an early grave. But none of that can ever blot out my admiration of her, my gratitude for all she was and did for me, or the sweet sorrow I feel that she did not live to see me come into my own and lead an extraordinary life.

I've lived more years, now, without her in this world than with her. Yet the memories and the love remain strong. I know she would be proud of me. The occasion of today's anniversary gives me the opportunity to express publicly, "I'm proud of you, Mom and I celebrate the brief, dazzling spark that was your life."

Late to the Rocket Launch

I'm a guy who likes to give advice. I'd like to believe that, over the years, I've mellowed from coming across as a know-it-all to becoming a person who gives advice back to pay off the good advice I've recieved.

Be that as it may, Friday marked an event that illustrates how easy it is for one to neglect one's own advice. I've been sharing a "hot tip" with the stock investing community for over four years regarding stem cell research companies. One of George W. Bush's earliest actions as president was to ban most stem cell research. It was as clear as clear could be to me that one day that policy would be reversed and a whole raft of companies specializing in this research would rise with the swelling tide of progress. On Friday, a West Coast company won FDA approval for the first-ever study of a treatment based on human embryonic stem cells. I have watched this company closely and have traded in and out of it several times in the last year.

When the announcement came out, the stock shot up over 50% between Friday and Monday. Was I already in this stock on Friday? No. Was I in any of the other stem cell stocks I've been watching for the last three years? No. I had recently moved my holdings to cash in the aftermath of the financial crisis, (a good move) but had unwisely allowed the other cares of this world to distract me from keeping tabs on the market.

This is a good lesson to learn: It's not enough to see an event coming, you have to be sure to set yourself up to benefit from it should your prediction come true. As Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, "People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning; then there will be no failure". How hard would it have been to bought on some shares in the days before President Obama's inauguration? Answer: not hard at all. So why didn't I take care of this in time? As my mentor, Jim Rohn, would put it, "It was also easy not to."

Luckily, I'm in on the secret that there is no lack of wonderful, exciting opportunities in life. I guess I feel the "missing" of this opportunity more strongly because I've been mentally invested in its eventuality for what seems like a long period of time. Practically speaking, the long term upswing for stem cell stocks in general will almost certainly dwarf the gains my favorite stock made on Friday and Monday. As the market would have it, the stock's price has pulled back on lower volume from it's lofty Monday highs and I have picked up a number of shares. All of this is well and good.

Nevertheless, I intend to be aboard the rocket beforehand the next time I forsee an inevitable blast off.

You Are Always Doing Your Best

Consider the propositon that you always do your best. As in, "all the time" always. You never do not do your best.

Notice the arguments that are coming up in your mind about this. You are thinking of times when you feel you could have done better. Or perhaps when you counted on someone else and you feel that they let you down. You're doing a great job of doing your best to prove this idea wrong!

I believe the truth is we don't know how to do any differently than our best. For example, even if you consciously decide to hold back from doing something as well as you believe you could do it, you are now doing your best to hold back. In this case, the focus has shifted from the doing of the activity to the regulation of your energy and talent. But you still do your best. If you have a deadline to meet but you feel like procrastinating, your mind will come up with all kinds of creative solutions to help you with your replacement goal of avoiding the work that needs to get done. You see, to look at the results of the work at the deadline is to miss the real issue, that you decided to focus your time and energy on something else.

If all this were true, what practical application would it have? Well, I can think of two that seem promising: first, it is futile to beat yourself up over so-called failures or mistakes. "I should have said ..." "I should have done ..." Nonsense. If you had thought of it, you would have said it or done it. Or else, you avoided remembering to say or do it for very good reasons that are possibly only known to your unconscious mind at present. Or even, you had reached a limit physically, mentally, or emotionally and decided to proceed anyway. But you did your best.

Second, understanding this concept gives you the opportunity to learn things you would never imagine about yourself when you tune out, mail it in, let it slide, etc. Where is it that you are, mentally, when you are not doing what you said you would do? Were you generating mental chatter? Dreaming of an aspect of life as you wish it were? Mulling over a grudge or a percieved injustice? You know, we get so good at hiding from others the fact that we do these things that we begin believing we don't do them ourselves. Nietzsche put it well, "'I did it,' says the memory. 'I could not have done it,' says the pride. Eventually, memory gives in." But these things are clues, valuable clues, to help each of us embrace afresh his or her unique brand of humanity.

After a few months of trying out this way of thinking I felt the muse agitating within and wrote this poem, "There Are No Mistakes"

There's no such thing as a mistake
Mistakes are an illusion
We always do the best we can
In spite of our confusion

Progress on the path of life
Slows when you care 'bout image
If there's no book on what you love
Just scribble down a new page!