04.07.09
Prologue
“Winning-Choices” - Genesis
“Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances” - Bruce Barton
I remember it being a bitterly cold night that many years ago. The wind was slicing across my face like a razor blade and my cheeks were quickly numbing up. A driving icy rain had begun and I felt my wet pants freezing and sticking to my legs as I walked. It was very late at night and I knew I needed to select some shelter very soon. I’d been living in the streets on and off since I was fourteen, but now, for the first time in the six months since I turned sixteen and had been signed out of school by my father, it felt permanent. The alcohol and violence had taken over my family. When I wasn’t being thrown out I was running away. The streets of Jersey City had become my home. If it were warmer, I could be sleeping on my favorite bench in the park, but this nasty weather limited my options to the back seat of a car or a dimly lit hallway.
I spied an apartment building lobby that looked right so I jimmied the door and hurried in. Immediately warmer and dryer, I curled up in the corner near the mailboxes and slipped into a guarded sleep. Soon, I was abruptly awakened by someone’s shoe tip, prodding and poking at my ribs and a loud, angry voice shouting, “get the hell up you stupid bum”! I leaped to my feet to avoid the kicking, still in a sleep haze. Humiliated and fearful, I backed towards the door to the street.
My antagonist stood at the top of the steps, flailing his arms in the dim light like an animated, angry shadow, continuing to shout, “Get out of my hallway you dirty bum”! My sleepy mind began to clear and I felt anger replacing my embarrassment. I lifted my head and eyes, meeting his condemning gaze and cried, “Don’t you call me a bum! You don’t know me. I’m no bum”!
Fearing the police were already on the way to arrest me as a vagrant and trespasser, I quickly turned and ran out to the street. Confused and hurt, I realized that that I didn’t really know who I was either, but I had enough self awareness to know who I wasn’t. I wasn’t that person sleeping in hallways, cars and on park benches, in dirty, wet clothes. I was more than that. This man couldn’t define who I was, only I could do that. I had more to offer and more to do. This much I knew. I had a choice!
– G.G.R. Founder
“…but if a man happens to find himself…he has a mansion which he can inhabit for the rest of his life”. – Dignity, James Michener
“Winning–Choices
“Life is no brief candle to me. It is part of a splendid torch which I’ve got a hold on for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” - George Bernard Shaw
A Letter from the Bench
”He’s a man out there in the blue, ridin’ on a smile and a shoeshine…a salesman has got to dream, boys”. – Arthur Miller
“There is no wealth but life.” – John Ruskin
It’s been many, many years since that late night epiphany of my youth. In my winding, steady journey up from the streets, benches and hallways of Jersey City, I’ve chosen many unusual paths and traveled many different roads that are traced throughout the landscape of “Winning-Choices”
My life’s resume while strong with the sales, marketing, management, planning and activist history that is a necessary component of our revolutionary, personal growth and planning “movement”, is however, as you might already have surmised, a biography, best read like the lyrics to the timeless Frank Sinatra song, “That’s Life”. “I’ve been a puppet, a pirate, a poet, a pauper, … a pawn and a king, I’ve been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing; each time I find myself, flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race; that’s life”. Like the song, I’ve experienced the highs and lows, the tops and bottoms, and both ends of the spectrum in many of the situations of my personal and professional life.
I’ve been homeless and hungry, living off my wits in the street, and I’ve had champagne breakfasts on the veranda of the Notre Dame Hotel in Paris. I’ve lived in a five dollar a night room with a hot plate, and I’ve spent business weekends in the Presidential Suite of the NY Hilton. I’ve knocked on doors in the garment center in Manhattan, selling desk calculators that I carried under my arm, and I’ve been an international sales manager and VP for a two hundred million dollar systems corporation. I’ve been a teamster, a union shop steward, negotiating tough contracts to protect workers rights and fighting for a decent, living wage, and I’ve been a corporate supervisor on the other side of the table, working to produce a fair contract that allows both sides to prosper. I’ve lived on a wooden bench in the park and I’ve had a select seat in a corporate boardroom.
I’ve been both a resident and a volunteer at youth homes. As I kid, I’ve faced the cool, accusatory stares of police and car owners as they tapped on the window to awaken and oust me from my back seat “bedroom”, and as a speaker, I’ve gazed out at two hundred faces in an audience, applauding my point at a professional presentation. I’ve played ”three card Annie” on an abandoned building’s back steps for breakfast money, and I’ve taken a high risk, educated gamble in a once in a lifetime shot at creating a multi-million dollar, international, healthcare computer sales and distribution network.
I’ve sold products, cold calling offices in NYC, on straight commission, and no lunch money in my pocket, and I’ve negotiated million dollar investment deals, years later, in some of those very same office buildings. I’ve walked through the Port Authority in Manhattan as a field sales manager on my way to train a new distribution/sales network for the New York branch of an international systems company, as I passed by the blood banks where I used to sell my blood, many years ago, for five dollars a pop so I could clean up a little to look for a job. I’ve been a high school drop out and on a college dean’s list for four years. I’ve lived on stolen cupcakes and bologna sandwiches, and hosted professional and personal planning breakfasts for thousands of business people in fine restaurants and hotels all over the U.S.A., Canada, Great Britain and France.
I’ve been sent to a “boxing camp” for street kids with a penchant for getting in trouble and I’ve given seminars for disadvantaged young people on the merits of planning and making the right choices. I’ve been paid in frozen fish, working off the back of a rented seafood delivery truck and I’ve earned five figure corporate sales bonuses. I’ve sat alone on a cold park bench reading classics and science fiction anthologies, educating myself and keeping my mind sharp on the street, and I’ve taught sales, marketing and referral techniques in the classroom and in the field to hundreds of small business people in scores of cities in forty-states and five countries. I’ve been broke and I’ve been flush. I’ve been successful and not.
I’ve packed braziers, shoveled oil sludge out of the bowels of tankers, been a bodyguard on a vending truck, servicing cigarette machines and juke boxes, loaded trucks, carried slabs of beef in a freezer and washed cars. I’ve served my country overseas in the U.S. Army and I’ve served tables in Times Square restaurants. I’ve been a bartender and a bettor. I’ve been a salesman, a supervisor, a sales manager, a corporate executive, a consultant, a public speaker and owned my own business, etc; etc; etc; the picture is clear… How does the song go, “That’s Life”? I’ve succeeded greatly and I’ve not succeeded just as greatly. (We reserve the word fail for those who don’t try to succeed) I’ve fallen down, I’ve gotten up.
Remember when we were kids and it seemed most of our energy and thought process went into pondering that ages old Socratic question, “Who am I and where do I fit in”? As the years go by, we forget much of what it was like to be a child and the attributes we possessed, losing our inquisitiveness and burning desire to learn everything new, our sense of wonder and need to explore, our unbridled optimism and seemingly endless enthusiasm for life; and our blind confidence that we could handle whatever was in store for us. Our vision of a limitless future and feeling of immortality assured us that we could have it all. We thought not of obstacles, changing circumstances or limitations, self imposed or otherwise. This was America, we could be whatever we wanted, succeed at anything we tried, attain any goal, live any dream. Nothing could stop us but ourselves. Didn’t our parents tell us so?
Over the years, as life happens to us, most of us unfortunately misplace this optimistic view of our potential as people, writing it off as childhood naiveté, sometimes only once again embracing these marvelous attributes of youth as we come full circle in the persistent pursuit of the “Who am I and why am I here?”, riddle. Oftentimes we can only reach true success, happiness and balance in our lives when we find a way to re-access and embrace this bold, inner confidence, certainty and authenticity of our young selves.
When I was very, very young I wanted to be a Native American. Even then, I felt a strong, undeniable attraction to their way of life, their reverence, respect for animals and their worship of and connection to the earth. When we played in the park and chose sides for “Cowboys and Indians”, (long before we discovered the term was offensive to Native Americans) I never wanted to be and never was a cowboy. In an early, painful lesson in the inefficiency of setting unattainable goals, I came to realize that no matter how hard I tried or planned, becoming a Native American was not going to happen for me. I cried through the night. I had had my heart set on it. However, with all the resilience of youth, by a few months later I was over it and planning my next career. I would be a science fiction writer. Yes, that was it, or; maybe an astronomer. As long as it had something to do with the universe and outer space, I would be terrific, I knew.
Well,” the best laid plans of mice and men…..”
Over the next few years, as I began my early teens, my dreams dissolved as drastically as my home and family did, with alcoholism, poverty and violence driving me to the street and my family to disaster and dissolution. I no longer had the luxury or the inclination to lofty or even “normal” aspirations. My thoughts and concerns were more immediate and my hopes more practical and modest. In the next years, as I was in and out of the house, with park benches, hallways and parked cars more my home than not, I started adjusting and adapting my dreams to better fit my situation. If I could be a normal, functioning person, one who didn’t have jump up from the park bench in the morning to rush to go wash up in the hospital rest room before too many people started coming in, it would be OK. If I could have something to eat every day and a bed to sleep in every night, it would be alright.
If I could get to live in the beautiful, wooded suburbs, with a cottage like house with shutters and a white picket fence, just like Ricky Nelson, life would be good. It would be with a dog and a yard, where everyone in the family was happy and untroubled and the parents were just like Ozzie and Harriet. We’d play touch football in the colorful fallen leaves of autumn, and Thanksgiving would be at a big table with great conversation, plenty of food and a fireplace. It’s the American Dream, right? Function and live a normal, happy life.
It was in the constitution, I remembered; everyone was entitled to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. It wasn’t much to ask for, I thought as a kid, and isn’t it what everyone wants? Function, be normal and pursue happiness. Get off the streets and function like a normal person. If I could do that everything else would follow, I knew.
Well, all these years later and I’m still not a Native American, (although I call upon their wisdom throughout our “Winning Choices” program), and I didn’t become an astronomer, however, I have written some science fiction stories. Fortunately, I am functional (though normal might be a stretch) and I do own, live and work on a beautiful, twelve acre animal rescue farm, with a brown, four board horse fence, surrounded by my loving family. Ozzie and Harriet never showed up, not for me, nor did they make an appearance for my own kids, but then, that kind of “perfection” is neither real nor desirable, is it? Part of living and learning as a human being becomes understanding that our heroes have feet of clay, as do we all. We’re not wealthy (it’s hard to get rich supporting and maintaining a rescue farm) but consider ourselves rich in spirit and purpose, and still work confidently towards the financial goals and rewards of our plan.
Since those tough years on the streets, like many, I’ve fought to be a functional, growing, contributing member of society, to survive and succeed as a loving provider for my family, an example to my children, a good friend to my friends and a professional to my peers. I’m not wealthy, (yet), but consider myself rich in spirit and purpose. I’ve worked hard to go beyond survival mode, to know myself and pursue the elusive happiness that’s alluded to in the constitution. Isn’t that, at the very least, what we all basically strive to attain in life?
For me, I’ve found the foundation and components of life, living, and growth as a functioning, contributing, successful, balanced human being, to be about…, self discovery, self awareness and self respect, nurturing, education, adversity and adaptability, perspective and perseverance, energy and enthusiasm, self examination and self expectations, vitality and vision, passion, purpose and persistence, labor and learning, optimism, opportunity and obligation, aspirations, attitude and accountability, rhythm and resilience, imagination, inspiration and Interconnection, knowledge, exploration, education and empowerment, Service and sacrifice, relationships and respect, friendship and family, humanity and humor, responsibility, character and consequences, redemption and renewal, doubts and dreams, contention and completion, dignity, design and determination, hope and humility, empathy, evolution and epiphany, confidence and control, success and struggle, grief, gratitude and giving back, Compassion and Connection, tragedy, triumph and transformation, revitalization, reinvention, living and love, contrast and Conviction, Authenticity, Access and Action, Change, Challenge, Commitment, Community, Culture, Curiosity, Celebration, Contemplation, Clarity, Consciousness, Communication and CHOICES, CHOICES and more CHOICES!
Our lives are largely shaped by the CHOICES we make or miss, good or bad, the choices we recognize or let slip by unnoticed, and the choices we create for ourselves; envision, design, plan and act on.
“Winning-Choices”, the story we tell and the message we impart, has been culled and cultivated, for what it’s worth, from the implausible, imperfect, intense journey of my life. My story is meant only to be one of hope and possibilities, of tenacity and transformation; a message that no matter what one’s beginnings, no matter what one’s past, no matter what one’s present; all things are possible. In this magnificent gift of life we have been given, WE HAVE A CHOICE in what our life will be, what our life will mean. It appears the answer to the Socratic question of our youth, “Who am I and how do I fit in”, is a life long pursuit, and as we grow and move on in life, it takes us full circle, becoming a less self centered question of “fitting in” and more one of; “what is my role and my purpose here”?
Almost twenty years ago, the parks department in Jersey City was in the process of gentrifying the old neighborhood I grew up in, and they were gutting the park that was both my hang out and my bedroom in the homeless days of my youth. I reached out and told them my story and they graciously allowed me to acquire one of the old, beat up park benches I spent many, spine crunching nights “sleeping” on. It has stayed with me since, (I’ve moved with it twice) a part of my life, sitting in plain view in our backyard, a constant, welcome reminder of those days when all I wanted to be was to survive and be normal and functioning. In these more “normal” days, I still fall down and I still get up. When I think times are tough and life is beating me up a little, one glance at the bench reminds me of what tough was. When everything is going well and I am feeling a little full of myself, one look at the bench gives me needed perspective on how fragile it all is and how fortunate I am in my life today.
Mostly, the old park bench, eroded by decades of exposure to the elements and pleasantly scared with the initials of generations of young lovers and dreamers, reminds me that life is also about opportunities lost and seized, passed and pursued, and that tomorrow is indeed “the first day of the rest of your life”. My mind will wander to my brothers and sister, whose opportunity, promise and potential were lost to their disadvantaged start and the subsequent poor choices of drugs and alcohol that cost them their young lives. They all three wanted to be normal, functional, happy and to pursue the “who am I and where do I fit in” question of their young lives.
Sesame Street, that wonderful, enduring children’s show, has a scene where the characters all join in and sing, “Everyone has a voice, and everyone has a song….” They too, my family, like many others, had a song, a voice, albeit stifled too soon. The bench is a conduit to my consciousness of how so very much they are a part of my story and my life, my potential and my purpose, my song and my voice.
My dream now, and my purpose, I believe; is to use my voice, my song and my story, and my life’s acquired skills and experience, to help empower others to discover, access, and own their, special, unique voice, while adding their personal song to the world chorus. The mission is clear for me. To continue my personal journey to be a better, more successful, more balanced person of purpose, and to offer what I can to help others along in their own journey to the same end. My dream, to quote from our “Winning-Choices SpiritSearch”“OneWith” mission, is “to help empower people, even as I continue to empower myself, to capture the reflections of our own inner being and personal visions, and to design and direct our lives to be in harmony with these visions and values; so that we position ourselves and others to recognize the winning choices that support “who we are” and our extraordinary opportunity and obligation to serve and embrace the unique contribution we each can offer to build a better world, even as we continue to pursue our own, personal journey of survival and success”.
The equation is simple. We become better, more balanced, more successful, (as we each, personally define success) people of purpose and connection, and we help build a better world. Better People = Better World. WE HAVE A CHOICE!
We quote Mahatma Gandhi in our Vision: “Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in complete harmony.” We believe that everyone has a special spirit within, as unique as the individual, genetic makeup that makes us each physically human and one of a kind. We each possess a “Spirit DNA”. A more “AuthenticSelf”, a “HeroWithin” with its own, special, one of a kind potential for a life of purpose, prosperity and Gandhi like happiness as a connected, contributing human being, in balance. Each of us can enjoy a life of choices, a life that can make a difference. No matter how seemingly small at the time, we all have the innate potential to leave a significant, positive footprint on this earth.
Perhaps, one day, when I turn to reflect on my own mark, my own footprint, if I’ve stood tall enough and walked strong enough, I’ll see the long missing, distinctive prints of my family appearing on the road, merging into mine on the path to purpose, prosperity and balance I walk in their name, their memory in my heart and their unrealized potential in my mind, blood and spirit.
My father used to say he’d be a happy man if people remembered him by saying, “He did what he could”. “Winning-Choices” . It’s what we can do…..
Sincerely, Gerald G. Ryan
“ Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear, Five hundred twenty-five thousand journeys to plan……, how do you measure a year; in daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee, in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife? ……… How do you measure a year in the life? How about Love? Five hundred twenty-five thousand journeys to plan. How do you measure the life of a woman or a man? In truths that she learned or the times that he cried, or the bridges he burned or the way that she died? How about love? It’s time to sing out now, though the story never ends. Let’s celebrate….measure your life in love – “Seasons of Love”, from Rent