Take the First Shift

Transcript

I’d like to talk about taking the first shift.

Not as in a shift at work, taking a change, taking the first step in becoming a different person. Transformation.

I used to live in this neighborhood years ago here in Santa Tere in Guadalajara and I would notice that there were these flags in the apartment building and sometimes they would ask me to speak German.

Sometimes they’d ask me to speak English, how do you rude words in English. Which is fine its how a lot of people start to learn a new language, they start with the fun stuff first. Either rude words, stuff like I love you or chocolate cookies. Things that have emotional attachments tend to be easier to learn and they stick in your mind because yeah, you want those chocolate cookies.

They would ask me stuff about the rude words then they would repeat whatever phrase I said. Unfortunately it never got any further.

I would wonder what is it with these guys? I don’t even particularly like these guys but if they hadn’t asked me, can you teach me some English some more phrases? I would have said yes, absolutely.

I can come down at 8pm on a wednesday and well give you a little class out here.

But they never asked me and I was always kind of disappointed that they wouldn’t ask and I thought “what a wasted opportunity these people here are not doing too much with their lives, washing cars for spare change just scraping by occasionally even asking me for 5 pesos so they could afford a caguama or a 40 ounce beer.

And it was kind of disappointing to see that low level of ambition.

There is a fellow now living in this neighborhood and I guess he’s living a similar life, scraping by washing cars and this kind of thing. Every now and then I stop to talk to him because he is an agreeable fellow and he offers me a beer and this kind of thing. The other day I saw him sitting in the street with a bucket. In the bucket are garden shears like you’d use to trim a hedge and he says to me:

Look at these, see what these are? Moving into a new career.

At first, this is a little embarrassing to say but I thought what kind of violent thing is he getting into? Then he told he he’s becoming a gardener who will go around to different neighborhoods in Guadalajara and maintain people’s gardens.

Great, that’s really great. I congratulated him.

He said “Well what am I going to do? Sit here and say hi to you every time you walk past doing nothing? Or I pick up those shears and do something.”

And I thought wow I am feeling that. This dude is getting up off his ass and he’s going to do something with his life. Not such a small thing becoming a gardener, that’s quite a job and quite a lot of responsibility. Plants can take quite a lot of work to take care of well. Pretty cool.

And I thought about it later and thought “That’s a good omen.” If we can see people around us, perhaps people with a lot of momentum, people with little reason to change, something sparking within them and some fire is ignited and they say I am destined for greater things.

Its something within.

And yes that is surely a great omen and I ask you to reflect, perhaps you have noticed the same thing. Perhaps you have noticed that people are taking that first step into that first shift.

Who are they? What are they doing? What does that look like and what does that feel like when they take the first shift?