Just Cured - Experience Fine Foods

My lapses in updating this site have nothing to do with inactivity. In fact, I have been engaged beyond any expectations I may have had. Unfortunately, none of my recent activities have had any connection whatsoever to the business of Just Cured. My short term project that morphed into a marathon became a series of marathons — one per day for the past two weeks.

I have spent my time in a series of conference rooms and offices inside a major U.S. law firm. Punctuate those two weeks in conference rooms with a few hours each day in a rather nice hotel room, a thirty minute daily walk on a beach, a handful of airplane flights, two nice meals and one peaceful evening, and you have the totality of my existence for those two weeks. We completed the project yesterday evening. There will be some details to be handled, but the all consuming part of my engagement is complete.

What we were working on was complex; but it should not have been complicated. We had some personalities involved who made the simple complicated and the complex impenetrable. Our work was intellectually stimulating but not much different from hundreds of similar projects I have completed — if only we could move beyond the personality acting as a roadblock. Every day was the same; our own personal version of “Groundhog Day” (thanks to the guy who made that connection for me). We started out by hearing a new (or old or resurrected) issue from our problem child; we spent the rest of the day solving the problem du jour for him; we ended the day convinced that the next would mark the conclusion of our project. Repeat. Innumerable times, ending with 14 in a row.

My family will attest to at least one interpersonal skill that I have no hope of mastering — I cannot suffer a fool. As a result, the last month or so has been most frustrating for me. What little patience I possess has been tested to the point of breaking. Two things kept me from completely losing control over this fortnight. One I was counting one; the other so unexpected that I was moved to write this.

The first was a trusted colleague, my counterpart for much of this project. We first met on this project but quickly developed a comfortable relationship. I cannot determine which of us was more upset by the impediment to our progress. I knew, however, that we would watch out for each other, and the success of the project, by stepping in or by being comfortable stepping back when one of us was at wits’ end or about to cause bloodshed.

The second was the simplest, most natural, oldest act of human communication. It was a smile. Not just any smile, mind you; it was a dazzling, joyful, light-up-the-room kind of smile. The smile belongs to the assistant (what in the days before enlightenment we referred to as a legal secretary) to our host at this law firm. As assistant to our host, she was also burdened with taking care of or arranging for my needs, from document production to coffee in the conference rooms. When we were introduced, she flashed that big smile and I took notice.

As the hours became days and the days became two weeks, I came to depend on that smile. I depended on her contribution and dedication to the project; her smile, however, became a lifeline of sorts for me. Hundreds of times over the two weeks, I visited her desk with some request and the conversation began silently:

Her: Raised eyebrows. (”How is it going?”)

Me: Rolled eyes; or shaking head; or finger-pistol pointed to temple. (”About the same.”)

Her: That brilliant smile.

That smile sent me a message of hope. One aspect of these projects is they become all consuming. We participants believe there is nothing else more important in the world. And for us, at that moment, there is no other world; the project is our world. That smile reminded me that there was a whole world outside my conference rooms. A world full of family and friends, of adventures and aspirations and dreams, of business to be conducted and goals to be achieved, of beaches and mountains, of butterflies and puppy dogs. A world I could, and would, re-enter just as soon as I pushed the last rock out of the way.

Each time she smiled just for me, I thought of all these things. And I calmed down. I got my heart rate and anger under control. I acquired a new measure of patience — just enough to face the source of my frustrations again. Until the next smile.

I told her last week just how much joy her smile brought to me. And I am telling her again.