Changing Jobs

This past Friday I ended ten years in Silicon Valley to make way for a new job in San Francisco. Before I move on, I want to savor just a few of the kind words with which my co-workers and bosses sent me off.

From a writer who has reported to me:

I've been a technical writer for almost 20 years (pass the Geritol, please), and you are by far one of the best managers I've ever had. Better than that, you are genuinely a kind and good person, something the world needs more and more.

From a boss:

You were always there to solve any issue and took every challenge. You always remained calm even under the most stressful circumstances. You were always there to help everyone. We are really going to miss you. Richard, please keep in touch.

From another writer who has reported to me:

It was nice to have a manager who trusts you, cares for you, supports you, and backs you in difficult times. Your approach to work and management was inspirational. You would keep a tab on most things and make it easy for me. Also, I loved the fact that you trusted me with responsibilities.

From another boss:

When I'm on my deathbed, you will be one of the people I will be so grateful to have known.

I'm not sure what to do with such lovely words. Maybe the effect we have on each other becomes apparent only when we look back. Maybe in all the ups and downs--the stressful moments before a product release, the unreasonable demands of dysfunctional VPs, the doubling of workloads with no added resources to help carry them--we strengthen, inspire, affirm each other in ways we are unaware of at the time.

Whatever. I will save these words for a rainy day, and, in the meantime give thanks for colleagues who say such kind things. I hope their words are at least a little bit right.

And to each of them I say with all my heart:

Thank you.
Farewell.
Namaste.

The Landmines of Kamrieng Commune

It's a guy thing, this love David has for things that crash and blow up: tipping over towers of building blocks and cheering mightily as they tumble to the floor, or watching stock cars collide in flames in NASCAR race films, or hurling toy trains from toy bridges. He shares this crashing fascination with other boys his age. He loves this stuff.

But when the crashing and blowing up are over, David gets up and asks for cheese puffs and chocolate soy milk. Snacks, not catastrophes, have the final say. All this crashing stuff is a small part of a larger story in which life goes on.

On the other side of the world, in Kamrieng Commune in Cambodia, six-year-olds like him share his fascination with exploding things--with one important difference: Kamrieng is strewn with landmines once planted by the Khmer Rouge and by the government.

There, boys throw stones at what seem like toys, the winner being the one who detonates the mine. What would otherwise be a typical boyhood fascination, far from ending in a snack, can sever limbs and sear flesh. The larger life-over-death story does not emerge--at least not there, not yet. In Kamrieng, life does not necessarily go on.

Add to this the physical hunger and poor nutrition resulting from the mine-pocked fields. Kamrieng borders a jungle and the soil is perfect for growing yellow corn. But farmers can be suddenly maimed or killed by the exploding mines. So the black, rich soil remains untilled while families do without proper food.

Someday the landmines will be cleared from Kamrieng, and the larger story will re-emerge. Severed limbs, seared flesh, and diminished lives will no longer have the final say. People will regain their trust in the typical thrills of boyhood and the soil that gives life to an incredibly beautiful land. Life will go on as it did before.

But not yet. Right now, there's too much work to do.

Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner

A few weeks after finishing The Kite Runner, I still get chills remebering one line: "For you, a thousand times over." It is spoken by the narrator, Amir, to his newly adopted son at the end of the novel. The two of them have just won an Afghan style kite tournament by cutting the string of the rival kite and setting it adrift. "Do you want me to run that kite for you?" Amir asks his son. "Running" a kite means retrieving it as a trophy. The son nods. That's when Amir says these words to his son--"For you, a thousand times over"

When he was a boy, Amir had often heard these words from Hassan, his childhood friend and the son of his father's Hazara servant. Hassan would say them to Amir when performing one or another menial task for him--or when Amir would ask him to run a kite: "For you, a thousand times over." Even despite the two boys' seemingly vast differences of class and race, Hassan's words carried enormous love and loyalty.

But this story is about more than Hassan's devotion to Amir. It is also about Amir's cruel betrayal of Hassan. The guilt from that betrayal haunts Amir--comes to govern his life, really--and is finally purged only at great cost in one explosive scene.

Eventually, Hassan is murdered by Taliban thugs, Amir adopts his son, bringing him home to California where he shows him the same love he himself had received from Hassan. "For you, a thousand times over," Amir says to the boy just before running the kite, then adds:

I ran, a grown man running with swarms of screaming children. But I didn't care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lips.
I ran.

Amir's memories of his childhood friend have taught him how to love. Amir is now the kite runner. This story of redemption makes me want to love more fully as well--the highest praise I can give any book.