Same Words, Different Conversation

I'm in Boston on business and stayed last night at the home of friends who have a smashing, sprawling apartment on Beacon Street with views of the Boston Common.  Makes me feel that any moment I'll run into Elizabeth Stewart Gardner, the eccentric Bostonian who built the beloved Boston museum with her name on the door (if you have ever been there to revel in the amazing collection she housed there, it's worth the trip to Beantown) when she wasn't entertaining royalty and such at her Beacon Street digs down the way from my friends' place.

 

In the guestroom, I noticed this morning a post-it stuck on a lamp, which had on it the following: "The stock market continues to drop.  I have to be very careful what I spend."

I laughingly commented to my host that it is consoling to know that his family, too, is conserving in this tight economic crisis.  He laughed even harder and said "Oh, we didn't write that.  After my mother died, I found that note in her papers, no doubt written in one of our earlier financial crises.  I stuck it there to remind myself that this time, too, shall pass."

Perspective.  We have needed more the ability to put tough times in perspective.  This country, our companies, our families, have seen bad times before and we got through them.

Maybe it's a good time to start a conversation with your colleagues as to what they remember (or what others have told them) of how challenges have been overcome.