The Crown
Jeff Keplar Newsletter December 23, 2023 3 min read
Service is an Honor
Debbie and I have adopted a routine where we choose a TV series to stream and watch an episode together most evenings.
We just finished The Crown, a historical drama series on Netflix.
The 6th and final season has an episode about Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee celebration in 2002.
In it, Prince Phillip comments about the untold sacrifices she has made as the monarch of 32 sovereign states during her reign.
The Queen replies:
"Service is not a sacrifice; it's an honor."
An Unexpected Nugget
Little pearls of wisdom are revealed to us when we least expect it.
I had always adopted the attitude that sacrifice is a good thing.
Make the sacrifice of not doing what we want and know we shouldn't in favor of doing what needs to be done.
Sacrifice satisfying our interests in favor of taking care of others’.
Dad's Eat Last
Our son is now a husband and father.
We still see one another weekly (on a tennis court - like we have done since he was ten years old.)
As you might imagine, our discussions are different now.
Getting married and having children was life-changing for me.
It took the "self" in selfishness away and replaced it with "selfless."
It was transformative.
My son is now experiencing the same, and we recently spoke about it.
Putting the rest of the family's interests and needs before his is now Stuart's default.
It's what fathers do.
Compromise.
Sacrifice.
I shared a saying I once read that captures how we approach life:
"Dads are the last in the family to eat."
It's a badge of honor.
But after hearing The Queen's view, I prefer to adopt her way of viewing service.
Putting others' needs before your own is a privilege, not a sacrifice.
Losing Ego
Losing our egos is a skill that can be acquired.
For most of us, parenthood is the catalyst.
The birth of our children transforms us.
We make promises to them.
We want to be there for them.
We want to provide the best lives for them that we can.
We put their welfare ahead of our own.
Some things we do to pay the rent.
It is special to become aware when we are doing something because we care for another.
And, it becomes not just a thing we do but a way of being.
It's a gift.
When we have reached this level, by our intentions or not, we will experience a new level of performance in our sales and leadership skills.
A famous sales training system captures this with:
"They have to know how much you care before they care how much you know."
Around the Horn
For all of us database wonks out there, Dr. Michael Stonebraker is in the news again.
The relational database pioneer and creator of Ingres, Postgres, Illustra, and Vertica is exploring the idea of building an operating system on top of a database, a database application.
See the story here.
Thank you for reading and enjoy the holidays!
Jeff
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