Page 36 - Voices-2021-10

QUARTER NOTE
No Shortcuts, Please!
David Freedman, IP3
When I a youngster, I learned the hard way that
taking shortcuts can have a painful outcome. On
the way to my brother’s house, I got off the bus
and decided to take a detour through another
person’s yard, figuring I’d get to my destination
more quickly. What I didn’t notice until too late
was that there was a large St. Bernard in the
driveway. I learned later that this dog had been in
the garage for several days and was quite ornery
as a result. When I ran across his path, he picked
me up like a rag doll and shook me for a short
time before his owner got him to stop. I was
immediately taken to the hospital by my mother
where I received butterfly stitches in my back to
close the wound. Needless to say, I never tried
running across another person’s property again.
You might think that I’d learned my lesson!
A few years later as a teenager, I was hiking with
some friends and our respective families. One
friend suggested we take a shortcut to where we
would be meeting at the top of a hill. We got lost
and barely found our way back to the parking
lot. Meanwhile our mothers had called the park
rangersand reported us lost. Now I make sure to
follow the trail signs and maps when I go hiking.
Often it seems in our society that shortcuts
are valued more than hard work. When I watch
advertisements of people competing on such
shows such as American Idol or The Voice, I wonder
if the contestants ever realize how much hard
work actually goes into their craft as performers.
36 ONE COMMUNITY
It’s too easy for most people to assume that fame
and fortune is just around the corner, and all it
takes is going to an audition, impressing people
with your skill, and BAM! You’re on your way to
stardom. It’s much harder to convince someone
that the best results come after years of study
and practice. Although there are plenty of people
who value hard work and tenacity, there are still
others who would rather cut corners. They never
learn the harder lessons that instill a sense of
purpose—let alone integrity.
I’m not immune to this either. Most recently,
when I was working on my high-performance
leadership project to put together a new
Toastmasters debate club, I made this mistake yet
again. I’m used to putting speeches together in
a very short amount of time. Throughout much
of my Toastmasters experience, I’ve found most
of the exercises in the traditional program and
Pathways to be a breeze. I thought that a High
Performance Leadership project wouldn’t be
that much harder.
What I hadn’t counted on, however, is that
instead of taking charge of an assignment within
a structured environment such as a weekly
Toastmasters meeting, I would be creating a
project from scratch and learning to lead others
by establishing goals and mileposts for all of us to
reach. Needless to say, I didn’t do my homework
on the first part of my project, and my initial
meeting with my guidance committee could