Enough of us founder as we sail through life that we can come to thank the gods for whatever shape we are in when return home from our odysseys.  However, a few of us actually reach new ports successfully.  Those who have departed from the familiar and navigated the unfamiliar and reached their destinations can be, if not models for us, at least encouragements.

One such person is C. Kumar N. Patel.  In addition to having a name that does not fit easily into the “first name/ middle initial/ last name” format of most job and credit card applications, Patel has several other distinctions.  At the pinnacle of his career as a research scientist, he was honored by President Clinton for “revolutionary achievements,” something we tend to like in science but not in government.  That was 1996, when Patel was 58.

As always is the case with apexes, it is only downhill from there, and in 1998, at the age of 60, Patel had what he calls “a mid-life crisis.”  Distinguishing himself yet again, he had the sense to find some other way not to make his wife happy than by buying a red sports car and chasing younger women.  He used his life savings to start a tiny technology company.

Over the course of the last 10 years, what that company did changed three times.  It went from developing sensors that could detect diseases on the breath, to those that could detect pollutants in the manufacture of semi-conductors, to what has become (potentially) a laser system for protecting aircraft from antiaircraft missiles.  Along the way, Patel’s company, Pranalytica (after the Sanskrit word for “breath”) got a $13 million grant from the Defense Department, and that seems to have been money well-spent by our government.   It certainly was the turning point in Patel’s business plan.

There are several lessons here.  There is the general one that, in a time when the old economy has passed away and the new economy come, and thus when our government is seeking to invest our public funds into companies and projects that will benefit us all down the line, we can hope that we have more experiences like what we’ve had with Patel and Pranalytica.  Indeed, that would be a breath of fresh air!

There are personal lessons as well.  It took Patel some courage to turn his life in the direction that he did, especially at the age of 60.  What he says about his motivations we all should hear: “Everybody has to find a way by which they can do what they’ve wanted to do for many years.”

Moreover, Patel has found the experience of finally doing what he wanted to do not only reinvigorating but also rejuvenating.  Should he sell Pranalytica, at 70, he’d start another company.  He says, “If anyone wants to stay young, I would strongly recommend” running one’s own business.  “It focuses your mind so keenly because every single day you have to make sure you are bringing in enough business to keep employees happy.”

I couldn’t help but notice that he mentioned his employees’, but did not mention his wife’s happiness.  I have to wonder whether there isn’t some lesson in that as well.

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Alex Rodriguez, the New York Yankee third baseman and the highest paid player in The Game, has been in the news a lot recently, probably more than even he would like.  It started when his former manager, Joe Torre wrote about him in his new book, The Yankee Years.  Torre said that Rodriguez’ nickname among his fellow players was not “A-Rod,” as it is among fans, but “A-Fraud.”  If that weren’t embarrassing enough, not too long after, Sports Illustrated reported that Rodriguez tested positive in 2003 for use of “performance enhancing drugs.”  He had previously denied on “60 Minutes” that he’d ever done that.  So he found himself in the even more embarrassing position of making the now obligatory media apology for his behavior, which he did through ESPN’s Peter Gammons.

All of this is fairly high-profile shame management, and Rodriguez is now following what has become such a scripted procedure that I, for one, can’t tell anymore whether he, or any other of the other celebrities who find themselves making public mea culpas, is at all sincere.  Like sports commentator, Jim Rome, asked: Is he truly sorry he cheated or is he just sorry that he got caught?

Frankly, little of this would matter to DWC, except perhaps for how instructive it is that as a culture we probably do not really know how to be appropriately ashamed of ourselves any more.  In the process, we’ve also lost the ability to respond to appropriate and experienced shame in an appropriate way.  In our society, we are shame-boggled!

More particularly to the point of your life and mine were comments that Torre made about Rodriguez’ ability to be a team player.  Torre said that Rodriguez was not a successful team player because he was unwilling to fail.

Torre wrote: “There is a certain free fall you have to go through when you commit yourself without a guarantee that it’s always going to be good.  There’s a sort of trust, a trust and commitment thing that has to allow yourself to fail.  Allow yourself to be embarrassed.  Allow yourself to be vulnerable.  And sometimes players aren’t willing to do that.”  (Now we know that Torre said that because the syntax of it is so very Yogi Berra-like!  The writer that Torre “wrote” his book with would never have put the matter that way!)

Torre’s point was to contrast Rodriguez with shortstop Derek Jeter.  Jeter comes through when his team needs him the most because he is willing to fail, Torre says, while Rodriguez chokes.  Jeter “concerns himself with getting the job done, instead of how it looks,” Torre says.  But Rodriguez “was conspicuous by the awesome disparity between his skills and his ability to use them in the clutch.”  Rodriguez’ stats, the thing that matters most in baseball, bear out Yankees’ fans lack of faith in him, just as Jeter’s support the fans’ faith.

Torre’s book says that Rodriguez was over-fascinated with Jeter, but maybe for the wrong reasons.  Meaning, he didn’t seem to have learned from him the importance of being willing to fail.

Yet the tragic irony of Alex Rodriguez could turn out to be that the very failure and embarrassment he was trying to avoid, came to him many times over precisely in a way he could have avoided, were he more comfortable with failing.  This is what we are seeing in his admitting he used, albeit briefly, performance enhancing drugs.

For those of us not blessed with Rodriguez’ singular skill, perhaps we can more easily learn the benefits of being willing to fail.  Willingness to fail underlies the risk-taking necessary to live creatively.  Willingness to fail also seems to underlie one’s ability to be a team-player!  In both ways, willingness to fail is its own encouragement for coming through in the clutch.

And, maybe, if we were more willing to fail, we’ll be more likely to avoid embarrassing ourselves in extraordinary ways.  I mean, being able to be embarrassed just makes us human.  And being willing to fail is just one way we accept our humanity and the vulnerability that comes along with it.

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