My father is a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point and a career military officer. He is also one of those folks who teach life's lessons by telling stories. Looking back, I now understand that I didn't appreciate many of those life lessons until the actual situation arose in my own life.
One of the stories that he told countless times that I didn't understand was this:
As a student at West Point, one of the required classes for graduation was calculus. My dad hated calculus and, as a result, didn't pass it the first time through. So, the following semester he had to take that awful, dreadful, painful calculus again.
The class took place in a large, old, wood-paneled lecture hall with blackboards on 3 walls and stadium-style seating that held 300+ cadets. Day after dreaded day, the professor would come into the packed lecture hall and, without a word, would start writing a mathematical proof on the first blackboard...then on to the 2nd blackboard...writing...drawing arrows to various integers...scribbling....
My father was completely, maddeningly lost. He did his best to keep up, writing the proof number by number, trying to make sense of it all, but it was no use.
Finally, the professor would complete the proof, turn to the audience of lost cadets, and say in his best military voice: "Gentlemen, are there any questions?"
The cadet who sat in front of my father (who's name I know well but who, out of respect for my father, shall remain nameless) would raise his hand and, having been acknowledged by the prof, would stand at attention and say in a loud voice that filled the hall: "Sir! I have a more difficult solution, sir!" and proceed to explain a more complex, perplexing, convoluted means of achieving the same outcome. Each day the scenario repeated.
Having reached the punchline of his story, my father would look me in the eyes, grin, and nod his head slightly as if to say "and that explains why the world is the way it is, son." I probably heard that story a hundred times growing up, usually as a result of some situation my father had encountered with a neighbor, bureaucrat, fellow military officer, school official and the like. I never got it. Until I went to work.
And today, as I sit in endless committee meetings, deal with various state and federal regulators, confer with various consultants, go through the annual budget process, try to follow the arcane convoluted capital request process, try to make sense of the IT department's mysterious ways, try to comply with the Board's desires, listen as my Human Resources department explains our compliance policy, and confer with corporate wonks who have a complicated, redundant, intrusive answer (that will not work) for any given problem but, at the same time, can't find my hospital on a map, I visualize them in my head saying:
"Sir! I have a more difficult solution, sir!!!"
Onward, ever onward, my friends.
