I have just finished a chapter in a motivational book this weekend by popular speaker Mathew Kelly that speaks of the development of expectations, which sets us up for our own personal judgement later in life. While Kelly is Australian, they have the same attitude towards success as Americans, telling their children, “You can be anything you want to be if you work hard at it.” Kelly calls this the “Big Lie” that creates self- hatred later in life for many, because that belief is simply not true: no one person can be everything, and only one can be the best at anything. What we should instead be, he claims, is what we have been called to be – which might be ascertained by close dialogue through prayer with Spirit.
Trouble is, this only solves one of our problems – that is, having unrealistic expectations. I have read that among the things most asked about with psychics, one’s “calling” is near the top of the list. Few know for sure what their calling is, because few can distinguish the voice of Spirit.
It is not for lack of trying. It has dawned on me recently that we often only learn of our calling long after it has been answered, or not. When we look back on our choices in life, we are then able to spot those times when we were in the groove, and those other times when we were miserable and off-kilter.
But there is another way we find what our calling is, and, as it comes from the spirit, it is not always about material things.
This weekend we also watched the movie “The Founder,” starring Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the founder of the McDonald’s franchise. In the beginning, we see Kroc as something of a Willy Lohman, a 50-something salesman who is only marginally successful but who desperately longs to hit the bigtime. He sells for a company that makes gadgets for American businesses in the 1950’s. In the beginning of the movie, the item he is pushing with embarrassing failure is a milkshake maker that can do six milkshakes at a time. “Make them faster and the customers will come faster. It’s a chicken-or-egg thing,” he repeats over and over again as his cold calls turn him away or slam the door in his face. He takes a drink from his whiskey bottle here, and then there. What we see here is an unhappy loser.
Then he makes a call to the home office and finds a certain “McDonald Bothers” in California want 6 – that’s right, six – milkshake makers ASAP. He tells the secretary that this must be a mistake, and then calls the brothers. Says one, almost too busy to talk, “you’re right, that is a mistake. Make that eight machines.” 8 machines, when he could barely sell a few the week before – this he has to see!
So he drives out from Illinois to California to find out exactly what’s going on, and there discovers the McDonald’s drive-in restaurant, crammed with people. He gets the tour, and the story from the brothers. Over the course of years, they had discovered that 85% of people only ordered shakes, fries and burgers at the drive-ins, so they decided to only serve those items. To speed the process further – for people go to drive-ins for speed – they treat the restaurant like a factory, burger-flipping and French-frying and milkshake making all parred down to minimal movements that allow them to give the customers what they want in 80 seconds or less. Along with maintaining rigid quality control and a clean, family environment, this puts them on the map. They are outrageously successful.
Except for one thing. They tried to franchise, but found that it was impossible to maintain quality control, and so had largely given up the idea. This is where Kroc gets his genius lightbulb moment: the speed, the cleanliness, the quality, the simplicity, the gentle name and the golden arches (drawn in a design by one of the brothers) all equal gold to Kroc. He solves the franchise quality problem by selecting the right people and goes on to conquer the world. As the movie states at the ending credits, every day, McDonald’s feeds 1% of the world’s population.
That was all the fun part. The drama, and the lesson, come from the hassles between the brothers and Kroc. The brothers want to keep things exactly as they thought it should be. This includes the milkshakes, which Kroc sees as sucking down all of his marginal profits. A married woman, who later divorces to marry Kroc (as does Kroc to marry her), discovers an instant shake that is much cheaper and does not require expensive refrigeration. He pushes it on the brothers. The brothers are aghast – by God (and it really is about God for them), their customers are going to get the real thing or nothing at all! Kroc is stymied, because even with the dozens of franchises he has opened, he is still nearly broke.
Enter a brilliant financial advisor who tells Kroc: “You’re in the wrong business. You think restaurant, but you’re really in real estate.” From this, Kroc starts to buy the land on which the restaurants are built, giving the buildings themselves leases. This allows him to control his franchisees better, and also to cut out much of the McDonald bros control, for, although they own the restaurant name and concept, they now no longer own the land that the restaurants are on.
Kroc has them by the potatoes. He eventually forces the brothers to sell him all the rights, including their very name, and on he goes to become a billionaire with a new and improved wife.
Here is where it comes in on our life expectations. For the McDonald bros, business is one thing, but it must never supersede a sense of obligation and morality. If they cannot deliver quality to their customers, they simply do not deliver, regardless of the money. For them, they want financial success, but it is their sense of morality that is more important. As they are family, it is easy to understand how this came to be: they were raised this way. If they had been taught that they could be anything that they put their minds to be, they were also taught that they must be informed first by a moral code. In the movie, anyway, this code came above success. We can say that, in a way, they were not sacrificing anything in the end, because what they sought most – what was the greater part of their calling – was responding to the temptations with that thick moral code. In adversity – in life – they found their true calling. It was not success or love or fame, but a sense of self-righteousness that, in spite of bitterness over the Kroc deal, they would never regret. That was their true way.
Ray Kroc had another way. He was not an evil man. He did not feed his customers horse or cat meat. But he valued success over all other considerations. Although the movie paints Kroc as a slime ball, this wasn’t so cut and dry; the McDonald bros, through their conservative orthodoxy, were truly holding back the success of the franchise. So Kroc found a way, which was a bit slimy, but still gave the Bros 2.7 million dollars, equal to at least 30 million today. Not small potatoes.
In a way, everyone went out a winner: Kroc got his empire, and the Bros got some big bucks and a snoot full of moral righteousness. But in a way, neither got what they wanted. According to social norms and expectations, the Bros should have been a part of the great financial empire, and Kroc should have repented and become a good guy. But that would not have worked. According to the movie, it was going to go one way or the other: either the Bros were going to let the franchise – and Kroc – slide, or they were going to be forced out, allowing Kroc to go on big time.
The movie, as I see it, is about expectations, built in, as they are with each of us, over time through family and society and that magic we call natural inclination. It shows us that there is destiny, but that destiny is only part of each story, because each destiny is placed against another. Should a natural musician leave his sick mother and go to New York to make Carnegie Hall? Should a natural homemaker go on to become an accountant because of social expectations? Should a natural historian resign himself to work at a menial job so that his natural doctor sister can go through med school?
In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the hero is thwarted again and again from his natural path, to do the “right thing.” In the end, we find that it was the best path for him to take. The movie, I have read, was a bomb when it premiered in 1946, because people were sick of the sacrifice of poverty in the Depression, and of the sacrifice of WWII. They wanted material fulfillment – and they got it, and we baby boomers got many of those benefits. Was that for the better?
It is for personal history to decide, I think, what course of action was correct. Again, it seems that our true nature, what we really should be or do, is often not revealed until the end of our lives, or when there is great conflict in our lives, or both. They say that at the end, one does not count dollars or awards but rather the love of family and friends. This may well be. But who was right in the end – the Bros, or Kroc? Who lived a better life afterwards – the ones left with bitterness, or the one bereft of moral depth? And who died leaving the greatest benefits for the rest of the world? Such difficult questions give us the reason that we are told to let God be the ultimate judge. I think we all find what that judgement is towards the end, but it must always be as a secret between lovers – that between ourselves and God. For many of us, this might be the only time in which we truly know our calling.
Trouble is, this only solves one of our problems – that is, having unrealistic expectations. I have read that among the things most asked about with psychics, one’s “calling” is near the top of the list. Few know for sure what their calling is, because few can distinguish the voice of Spirit.
It is not for lack of trying. It has dawned on me recently that we often only learn of our calling long after it has been answered, or not. When we look back on our choices in life, we are then able to spot those times when we were in the groove, and those other times when we were miserable and off-kilter.
But there is another way we find what our calling is, and, as it comes from the spirit, it is not always about material things.
This weekend we also watched the movie “The Founder,” starring Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the founder of the McDonald’s franchise. In the beginning, we see Kroc as something of a Willy Lohman, a 50-something salesman who is only marginally successful but who desperately longs to hit the bigtime. He sells for a company that makes gadgets for American businesses in the 1950’s. In the beginning of the movie, the item he is pushing with embarrassing failure is a milkshake maker that can do six milkshakes at a time. “Make them faster and the customers will come faster. It’s a chicken-or-egg thing,” he repeats over and over again as his cold calls turn him away or slam the door in his face. He takes a drink from his whiskey bottle here, and then there. What we see here is an unhappy loser.
Then he makes a call to the home office and finds a certain “McDonald Bothers” in California want 6 – that’s right, six – milkshake makers ASAP. He tells the secretary that this must be a mistake, and then calls the brothers. Says one, almost too busy to talk, “you’re right, that is a mistake. Make that eight machines.” 8 machines, when he could barely sell a few the week before – this he has to see!
So he drives out from Illinois to California to find out exactly what’s going on, and there discovers the McDonald’s drive-in restaurant, crammed with people. He gets the tour, and the story from the brothers. Over the course of years, they had discovered that 85% of people only ordered shakes, fries and burgers at the drive-ins, so they decided to only serve those items. To speed the process further – for people go to drive-ins for speed – they treat the restaurant like a factory, burger-flipping and French-frying and milkshake making all parred down to minimal movements that allow them to give the customers what they want in 80 seconds or less. Along with maintaining rigid quality control and a clean, family environment, this puts them on the map. They are outrageously successful.
Except for one thing. They tried to franchise, but found that it was impossible to maintain quality control, and so had largely given up the idea. This is where Kroc gets his genius lightbulb moment: the speed, the cleanliness, the quality, the simplicity, the gentle name and the golden arches (drawn in a design by one of the brothers) all equal gold to Kroc. He solves the franchise quality problem by selecting the right people and goes on to conquer the world. As the movie states at the ending credits, every day, McDonald’s feeds 1% of the world’s population.
That was all the fun part. The drama, and the lesson, come from the hassles between the brothers and Kroc. The brothers want to keep things exactly as they thought it should be. This includes the milkshakes, which Kroc sees as sucking down all of his marginal profits. A married woman, who later divorces to marry Kroc (as does Kroc to marry her), discovers an instant shake that is much cheaper and does not require expensive refrigeration. He pushes it on the brothers. The brothers are aghast – by God (and it really is about God for them), their customers are going to get the real thing or nothing at all! Kroc is stymied, because even with the dozens of franchises he has opened, he is still nearly broke.
Enter a brilliant financial advisor who tells Kroc: “You’re in the wrong business. You think restaurant, but you’re really in real estate.” From this, Kroc starts to buy the land on which the restaurants are built, giving the buildings themselves leases. This allows him to control his franchisees better, and also to cut out much of the McDonald bros control, for, although they own the restaurant name and concept, they now no longer own the land that the restaurants are on.
Kroc has them by the potatoes. He eventually forces the brothers to sell him all the rights, including their very name, and on he goes to become a billionaire with a new and improved wife.
Here is where it comes in on our life expectations. For the McDonald bros, business is one thing, but it must never supersede a sense of obligation and morality. If they cannot deliver quality to their customers, they simply do not deliver, regardless of the money. For them, they want financial success, but it is their sense of morality that is more important. As they are family, it is easy to understand how this came to be: they were raised this way. If they had been taught that they could be anything that they put their minds to be, they were also taught that they must be informed first by a moral code. In the movie, anyway, this code came above success. We can say that, in a way, they were not sacrificing anything in the end, because what they sought most – what was the greater part of their calling – was responding to the temptations with that thick moral code. In adversity – in life – they found their true calling. It was not success or love or fame, but a sense of self-righteousness that, in spite of bitterness over the Kroc deal, they would never regret. That was their true way.
Ray Kroc had another way. He was not an evil man. He did not feed his customers horse or cat meat. But he valued success over all other considerations. Although the movie paints Kroc as a slime ball, this wasn’t so cut and dry; the McDonald bros, through their conservative orthodoxy, were truly holding back the success of the franchise. So Kroc found a way, which was a bit slimy, but still gave the Bros 2.7 million dollars, equal to at least 30 million today. Not small potatoes.
In a way, everyone went out a winner: Kroc got his empire, and the Bros got some big bucks and a snoot full of moral righteousness. But in a way, neither got what they wanted. According to social norms and expectations, the Bros should have been a part of the great financial empire, and Kroc should have repented and become a good guy. But that would not have worked. According to the movie, it was going to go one way or the other: either the Bros were going to let the franchise – and Kroc – slide, or they were going to be forced out, allowing Kroc to go on big time.
The movie, as I see it, is about expectations, built in, as they are with each of us, over time through family and society and that magic we call natural inclination. It shows us that there is destiny, but that destiny is only part of each story, because each destiny is placed against another. Should a natural musician leave his sick mother and go to New York to make Carnegie Hall? Should a natural homemaker go on to become an accountant because of social expectations? Should a natural historian resign himself to work at a menial job so that his natural doctor sister can go through med school?
In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the hero is thwarted again and again from his natural path, to do the “right thing.” In the end, we find that it was the best path for him to take. The movie, I have read, was a bomb when it premiered in 1946, because people were sick of the sacrifice of poverty in the Depression, and of the sacrifice of WWII. They wanted material fulfillment – and they got it, and we baby boomers got many of those benefits. Was that for the better?
It is for personal history to decide, I think, what course of action was correct. Again, it seems that our true nature, what we really should be or do, is often not revealed until the end of our lives, or when there is great conflict in our lives, or both. They say that at the end, one does not count dollars or awards but rather the love of family and friends. This may well be. But who was right in the end – the Bros, or Kroc? Who lived a better life afterwards – the ones left with bitterness, or the one bereft of moral depth? And who died leaving the greatest benefits for the rest of the world? Such difficult questions give us the reason that we are told to let God be the ultimate judge. I think we all find what that judgement is towards the end, but it must always be as a secret between lovers – that between ourselves and God. For many of us, this might be the only time in which we truly know our calling.
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