It was 1957. The Space Age began as Russia launched Sputnik I, the first earth-orbiting satellite. The Little Rock Nine integrated an Arkansas High School as President Eisenhower sent troops to quell the mob and protect the students. US researchers invented the pacemaker. Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story debuted on Broadway and Leave It To Beaver premiered on CBS introducing a TV era depicting ideal American life. Hollywood legend, Humphrey Bogart of Casa Blanca fame, died while late in the year Peyton Place premiered, starring Lana Turner, stunning American moviegoers with a film that pushed the boundaries of sexuality on the Big Screen. France’s Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The cost of a first-class stamp was $0.03.

As an 11-year old 5th grader in Frieda Best’s classroom at Hugo Reid School, it could have been any Friday afternoon following lunch recess. On that day Mrs. Best devoted time to test her students on their multiplication tables. At the back of the room there was a chart. Every student’s name appeared on it. Across the top of the chart read, MULTIPLICATION TABLES 1’s-12’s.

Each student knew the drill with Mrs. Best.  If you thought you were ready to put your feet in the fire, you trudged to the back of the classroom to meet Mrs. Best. You told her you were ready to do your 2’s, 3’s, 4’s table…whichever one you had not yet mastered. Your job? Rattle off your multiplication facts table perfectly. If you succeeded, Mrs. Best placed a big X on the chart by your name and multiplication fact achievement. Success meant you never had to do that fact table again with Mrs. Best.

Was I math challenged? Mrs. Best never saidso. But clearly, I was not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it came to successfully mastering my multiplication tables. I’m sure Mrs. Best had figured that out pretty quickly.

“Russell, are you ready to do your 3’s tables?” She asked as she quickly surveyed the chart to see what each student was working on.

“Yes, Mrs. Best, I am ready!” Those words were false bravado, not a statement of certainty.

“Okay, Russell, do your 3’s tables,” she said encouragingly. And so, I began.

“1X3 is 3; 2X3 is 6; 3X3 is 9; 4X3 is12; 5X3 is 15.” I was on a roll as I moved triumphantly toward my goal… “6 X3 is 18; 7 X3 is 21; 8X3 is 25.”

“Russell, stop!” Mrs. Best said.   Oh, how I hated those words. They were all too familiar. “Russell, 8 X 3 is not 25; 8 X 3 is 24.” I had failed…once again. It would not be the last time.

At that moment, in the instant of my dejection, Mrs. Best would once again demonstrate her extraordinary mastery as both a teacher of academic skills and a mentor of life skills.

“Russell, you know your plan,” she would say. “Next Friday will come. You will have another opportunity to do your 3’s tables.   And Russell, what do you know about your plan for next Friday?   Why, Russell, you know your goal is achievable. You know it is controllable. You know it is challenging. You know how desirable it is to accomplish. You know it is measurable…because when you have demonstrated your mastery, the X will go up, won’t it!”

That 5th grade tale from long ago rings as true today as it did then. That’s why whenever I take the opportunity to tell this yarn to an audience, I always add a footnote: Mrs. Best, she was surely THE BEST.

She was a character educator thirty years before such a description was used to identify outstanding teachers.   She was a big time mentor to hundreds of kids over her long career. She taught me an essential life lesson: Have your plan and work it. Know your plan is yours. You will know it’s so as you embrace these facts: Your plan is achievable, controllable, challenging, desirable and measurable.

Mrs. Best wanted every kid in her classroom to take ownership of their plan for action. As a life values educator, she knew everyone needs a strategy to move from here to there. Her students learned that when failure hits, you can look at your plan to see what adjustments are needed to get where you need to go.

No classroom teacher at any level ever taught me so much about handling life than Mrs. Best taught me as I struggled through the multiplication tables in 1957.   She never let me forget, “You have your plan, Russell.”

Fast forward twenty years. It was 1977 and I was thirty-one. I don’t remember how it happened, but I learned that Mrs. Best, long retired from teaching, continued to live in her Arcadia home. I had not seen her since I left Hugo Reid to enter Junior High School. I wanted to thank her for the gift she gave me. And so I did. I arrived on Golden West Drive, parked my car and walked to her front door to knock. Soon, it opened. There she was…an elderly Frieda Best…my all-time, #1 teacher.

Before I spoke a word, she said, “Why, Russell, how good to see you!”

Is that amazing? As often as I have thought about that moment…like right now as I write these words…I know Frieda Best had a profound influence on my life. She had a professional and vocational calling. Her purpose: focus to help one child become empowered with their plan of action. Mrs. Best gave guidance to countless ones, using her influence not for a year in a classroom, but for a lifetime. She knew what she wanted to accomplish. She dearly loved her work with youngsters who were her precious treasures to teach and to guide.

I am forever thankful Frieda Best came my way. She gave me a solid-gold, timeless lesson on performance character…Have Your Plan.

 Appreciating you on the ethical edge!

Russell Williams, Founder/President

Passkeys Foundation/Ethical Edge

www.ethicaledge.org

It was 1981. Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th US President. In late March, he was wounded by John Hinckley Jr. Six weeks later in mid-May, Pope John Paul II was shot in Rome. On October 6th Egypt’s President, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated during a military parade in Cairo. Judge Sandra Day O’ Connor was nominated to become the first woman to serve on the US Supreme Court.

AIDS was identified. Two American and one Swedish physicists won the Nobel Prize for physics developing laser technologies. The FDA introduced an artificial sweetner, Nutrasweet. IBM introduced its first personal computer with the Microsoft Disk Operating System. On Broadway, famed choreographer, Gower Champion, was awarded the Tony for 42nd Street.   And in the same year that an aging Henry Fonda was recognized with an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar, he lit up the Big Screen with his daughter, Jane Fonda, in the film, On Golden Pond.

In 1956, twenty-five years earlier when I was ten, my dad sat me down in the living room of my childhood home requesting I listen to The Strangest Secret, the first spoken-word million seller Gold Record, written and recorded by Earl Nightingale. I was introduced to a significant lifelong exploration, stated precisely by Nightingale’s declaration of the secret: we become what we think about.

How is our mind the tool that shapes life experience? What can we learn about the power of our mind to guide behaviors, choices, relationships, work?   Why do the many live with unceasing distraction, fear, and worry while the few live with clear, purposeful and peaceful thoughts and actions? Is it true… as ye sow, so shall ye reap? Do we really become what we think about?

Now in our third year living in Santa Rosa, my wife and I enjoyed spending Tuesday evenings attending a lecture and meditation program at the Veterans Building in Sebastopol presented by a former UC Berkeley English professor, Eknath Easwaran.

Easwaran was born and raised in India. An established professor and writer in his homeland, he came to the US on the Fullbright Exchange program in 1959. He became a full professor at UC Berkeley and, ultimately, founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in Tomales, CA. Under his leadership, he educated 1000′s of individuals in meditation while writing more than 20 books including Love Never Faileth; Gandhi, The Man; and Words To Live By.

Those Tuesday evenings with Easwaran were explorations of the strangest secret and the power of the mind. The program’s format was two-fold. Part One was a half-hour topical, insightful message on life. Weekly, Easwaran crafted a no-notes message on how the power of our thoughts shape our world. His messages were delightfully seasoned with simplicity, humor, honesty and timeless wisdom. He was a teacher extraordinaire.

Part Two was a half-hour meditation. Easwaran taught that meditation’s purpose was to encounter one pointed attention of mind and heart by repeating to oneself memorized passages of sacred literature in silence.

On this particular summer evening in 1981, I encountered something unexpected. In the midst of the meditation, I opened my eyes. I gazed to the front of the room where Easwaran sat with eyes closed. Surrounding his head was brilliant white light, faintly tinged with gold. As I continued watching, I observed how this light was fluid as it moved above, around and beyond him reaching two-five feet above his head. It was a spectacle of Light I had never seen; It was an aura of serene beauty. Visually, I witnessed energy that surrounds one who is alert and focused in one pointed attention to Life greater than self. This moment confirmed experientially in my awareness what Nightingale had recorded: you become what you think about, and was illustrated to me in 1965 by Ethel Barnhart when she showed me the lesson of Light in her office.

What meaning did this moment offer? As a mentor, Easwaran was a wisdom teacher. He was a model of the spiritual life. He demonstrated grand influence for good. But why this intuitive, mystical encounter now? A greater understanding of that question would be revealed in 1987.

That evening Easwaran gave me insight into the lesson of one pointed attention. I would misrepresent this lesson if I limited the experience to the activity of meditation. At its essence, one pointed attention has the unique quality of moving the mind to be gathered up into a relationship with something bigger than ourselves. I call it, Our life in God. For one person, one pointed attention may be found sitting at the beach watching waves rhythmically ebb and flow. Another finds one pointed attention listening to Andre Bocelli. Then, another encounters it in a conversation with a wonderful friend; or writing a thoughtful reflection in a journal. One pointed attention offers continual learning of the mind’s partnership operating to accomplish one thing: influence for Good, sourced by God.

It was July, 1986, when I visited Easwaran one last time. That evening Judy I gave him a gift of two praying hands, carved from olive wood. The smile he shared with us when receiving the gift came from a deep ocean of love. His smile carried the same energy I saw encircling him many times after that first encounter, and, which he expressed in the introduction to his book, God Makes The Rivers To Flow: “Bring forth the noble work of art within you. My earnest wish is that one day you shall see, in all its purity, the effulgent (brilliant, luminous) spiritual being you really are.”

For the majestic message of one pointed attention, Easwaran came my way.

 Appreciating you on the ethical edge!

Russell Williams, Founder/President

Passkeys Foundation/Ethical Edge

www.ethicaledge.org