Author: Rick Bellingham
Leadership Values A to Z
“The ecological freak is not questioning his share of the pie so much as he is questioning how we’re getting our flour. The problem isn’t technological; the problem is a matter of values.” —Denis Hayes, Earth Day’s first organizer One of the biggest outcomes (desired or undesired) of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to expose the fragility of our institutions and the failure of leadership. One of the biggest questions it has raised for me […]
Just A Little Justice
John died this week sitting on a bench in front of our condo building. He was an ubiquitous presence in the neighborhood for many years. John was a 72 year old homeless man with Tourette Syndrome. He walked around the neighborhood all day pushing a cart with all his belongings which he kept meticulously organized. John managed his homelessness with as much dignity as he possibly could. He had a variety of sleeping spots he […]
Knowledge and Feelings
One of my best friends and I have been texting during the course of this pandemic to try to stay connected in spite of physical distancing. I shared with him how strange it felt to be living a very privileged life while millions of people were experiencing pain and suffering. “Yes,” he said. “It’s guilt on top of sadness and anxiety.” I thought he captured succinctly what many of us are feeling who aren’t unemployed, […]
Starting Lines and Finish Lines
I have always loved the Olympics. I get excited when amazing athletes line up on the starting line and get ready to give everything up to realize their dream. I watch nervously as the winning athlete approaches the finish line about to achieve a goal that she or he has invested a lifetime pursuing. I’m always thrilled to see the joy of actually achieving desired results. Sadly, at this point, we don’t even know when […]
Vitality in Virtuality in a Covid 19 World
In 1995, I wrote a book on managing virtual teams. At the time, virtuality was in its infant stages. There was no Zoom, Hang Out, or High Five. The world wide web had only been invented in 1990. The internet, even in its excruciating slowness, still sparked the beginning of the virtual age. I taught virtual teaming at IBM and many other companies to introduce new ways of living, learning, and working in a more […]
Gratitude for the Gift
“The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.” —Henri Nouwen I have always been intrigued by the small slice of time humans have inhabited the earth. Most scientists agree that the earth was formed about 4 billion years ago and humans, in our approximate form, have existed a maximum of 400,000 […]
When Effort Becomes Effortless
“The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson When I turned 75, I took up playing the guitar. I have found it is not an effortless endeavor. I have to make great effort to remember the notes, find the right chords, keep the beat, strum the right strings, and remember the words. And things don’t come as easily when your fingers are not as nimble […]
Meaning and Motivation
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” —Thomas Merton “For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.” —Victor Frankl “We die. That may be the […]
Parenting for Interdependence
When I was a kid growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, I experienced what it felt like to be raised by a village. The whole neighborhood had an open door policy. I could freely and fearlessly walk into any house—the doors were always unlocked—and just hang out. Wherever we happened to be playing, the parents acted more like resources than cops. Any parent would take disciplinary action when needed with the full support of […]
Questioning Orthodoxy
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” —Leonard Cohen I just watched three new movies: Little Women, directed by Greta Gerwig, A Hidden Life, directed by Terrence Malick, and Two Popes, directed by Fernando Meirelles. All three spoke to the importance of questioning orthodoxy in different times and different places. Little Women was set in the mid-19th century in New England. It’s a wonderful, big-hearted movie that pays homage to […]
Demonize Digitize or Democratize
In this post, I’m going to discuss how demonization and digitization can undermine democracy and what we need to do to restore democracy in the world. I know…two pretty big challenges for a short post, but here’s my best shot. When I went through Army Basic Training during the Vietnam War, many of the exercises were designed to demonize the Vietnamese people. When we stabbed our bayonets into dummies, we were instructed to yell, “Kill […]
Language and Loss
Every year I like to look at the New York Times best books of the year and select a few that I want to read. This year I chose Lost Children Archives by Valeria Luisilli, The Topeka School by Ben Lerner, Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips, and The Yellow House by Sarah Broom. Coincidentally they all deal with language and loss in one way or another. Lost Children Archives discusses the language of silence and […]