Her voice is strong and powerful. She's smiling as she gives it everything she's got - and then some. The blown away crowd interrupts her at least five times: screaming, cheering. I knew she's good. But this good? This I was not expecting. I let it all in. That's when it hits me: it's when I realize I'm in tears. I can't stop the flow, this deluge. Then my shoulders start shaking uncontrollably. And uh oh: now I notice I'm crying too (little noises are coming out of my mouth). I'm trying to keep it quiet. The woman to my left, a total stranger, hears me, looks over at me, sees what's going on, then puts her arm around my uncontrollably shaking shoulders, and says "I know who you are: you're her Dad.". Good God! How does she know? Am I that obvious? She says "You should be proud of your daughter. She's awesome!". And now all the other people in our vicinity in this huge crowd, having overheard her, are pointing at me, and whispering "That's her father!". "Damn straight I am ..." I say to myself behind the waterfall of tears - not tears of sadness: tears of purity, tears of love, tears of pride, busted open pride. For many people (I suppose) the connotation of "performance" will be in producing results as in a job or as in a sport. For me, when Werner speaks "performance", I listen all of the above, and I also listen "performance as in a life well-lived". That's enough for me. That alone is worth the price of admission. I've released my attachments to smoking and drinking as a segue to a life well-lived (I could say the same about an unhealthy diet and inadequate exercise). I've released (for the most part) my needs to dominate and to be right. I've released assigning importance to my own opinions, realizing that all opinions are codifications of the truth, and I've become skeptical of all such codifications especially my own. And after releasing all of them, given what's made itself visible from underneath that erstwhile pile of obfuscations of the truth, I've finally released any and all doubts about Werner's assertion about integrity's impact on performance as a purely positive proposition. Without this final release, a life well-lived is unreachable, if not outright simply not possible. Sorry, but it isn't. |
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