Mitch’s Blog

Last night I had a pretty good honor bestowed upon me without anyone really noticing it other than me.

I went to a political fundraiser, which doesn’t happen all that often, and it was at someone’s house, which would be even rarer. The only other political fundraiser I’d ever been to was held in the ballroom of some hotel, and someone else paid for me to go. Actually, the same thing happened this time around, only it cost my benefactor a lot more money.

To preface this, I’ll say that I don’t belong to any political party. I’m totally independent, but when you’re independent, you don’t usually get invited to things like this, or even know about them. However, the guy who wanted me to go, Sean Branagan, said he’d pony up my contribution; he wanted me to be there.

So I went, and let me say that, as I was driving across town, knowing it was at someone’s house, I was speculating on just how large this house had to be. I’ll say that I wasn’t disappointed; it was beautiful. I don’t have a tiny house, but this lady’s kitchen was larger that my living room, and my living room is more than 250 square feet.

I was introduced to the hostess, and guided into the area where “food” was, and I say it that way because initially there wasn’t anything I would eat. I’m known to be fussy in general, but I’m not a big hoidy-toidy eater; I like my food fairly basic most of the time. However, as I stood there next to four big name local and state politicians, I said out loud to them “I feel like I’m at home watching the news.” They enjoyed that.

I spent a lot of time talking to one of our state legislators, a lady I’ve met before but who didn’t remember me; I’m betting she’ll remember me from now on. We agreed on a lot of topics, and that was really cool; with the mess New York state politics is in right now, it was good to see some sort of agreement.

Then it was time for our federal representative to speak, and he did about 10 minutes of a presentation that wasn’t bad, as all politicians learn this way of speaking, then he took a few questions. After that, he said he’d be around for awhile to answer any other questions or talk about things we might wish to talk about.

I decided to fill my glass with more diet soda first, which I did, then I went to seek him out. He was talking with one person before me, and I figured I would stand there and wait my turn. They were talking about energy, as our representative, Dan Maffei, is on the energy committee, but suddenly the guy started to ask a question about health care. That was my topic, so my ears perked up.

He asked about getting coverage for health care for people because of this statistic that came out saying that around 60% of those who declare bankruptcy usually had a major health care expense that helped put them over the edge. He expressed his worry about this and said he hoped Congress would eventually do something for these people.

That’s when I jumped into the conversation. I mentioned that I was a health care revenue cycle consultant, and how this was a topic I had a lot of interest in. I then kind of pitched my own health plan, and as I was going step by step, he was agreeing with me on most of the points; after all, there are some things one just can’t refute. I said that, with my plan, it wouldn’t cost more than $100 billion dollars, and probably would cost half that, based on the habits of people, and that my problem was trying to figure out what the President wanted to do with this $600 billion dollars, which the Republicans say will end up costing $1 trillion, that made it cost so much. I also said that this country couldn’t afford to have the federal government taking money away from Medicare and Medicaid, the two groups that needed the federal money the most (and, for Medicare folks, a plan they’ve paid into) He pretty much said he didn’t know; he actually said they’d have to look at the full plan more closely.

But I wasn’t done, now that I had his attention. I mentioned that the federal government had to find a way to work with states to cap the amount of malpractice awards, because physicians were getting killed with some of these judgments. That’s why they request so many lab tests, which we probably don’t need, and why President Obama got a very muted, non-positive response when he spoke to the AMA and said that he knew physicians worried about malpractice lawsuits, but that the government couldn’t continue to support physicians requesting more tests, while not agreeing with limiting malpractice.

He said he didn’t like limits on malpractice either because some people get hurt pretty seriously, and might need further healthcare. I then said why not have a cap, say maybe $2 million, with the caveat that the physician, or their insurance company, must pay full health insurance benefits for the victor in any of these cases for as long as they need coverage. It costs way less over the course of time to pay for someone to have health care coverage than it does to award someone $10 million at the whim of a jury.

He looked at me, said he’d never heard that idea before, and thought it was a great idea. The other guy standing there said that the representative was probably going to take it back to Washington, get it passed, and take the credit for it; we all laughed. At that point he asked me for my card and asked if he could talk to me again about it, I said yes, and that was that.

Look at that; I got to talk one on one with a federally elected politician, I got to present something to him that might help save health care for some physicians in this state (as a sidebar, New York is losing OB/GYN physicians with some of the highest malpractice insurance rates in the country), and hopefully got him thinking about health care for all in a different light. I’m not against universal health care by any means; I just want to know what they’re hoping to cover, and I want it done right, otherwise leave it alone.

Hanging with the big boys; yeah, I’m shaking and moving a lot lately. I like it.

It’s been an interesting week, for sure.

We had the passing of Michael Jackson, my favorite musician of all time, and someone who was able to break down the barriers of race and potentially bring people closer together around the world.

But the week began with a poll conducted by CNN which indicated that blacks in America (they’re running that theme again this month) overall don’t think much has changed for them since President Obama was elected president. As a matter of fact, some of them think things have gotten a little bit worse.

It’s an interesting thing to look at, this thing on race, and as you know, I even wrote about what is a racist myself a little over two weeks ago (and actually got a few responses; surprised there). There are strange dynamics afoot that many people who aren’t minorities just don’t fully get, which is why, when surveys end up with results like this, there are a number of highly confused individuals.

First, no one is saying it’s President Obama’s fault that things got worse. What’s happened is that non-black people say to them all the time “What do you mean racism still exists? We elected a black president after all.” I’ve heard that one myself. How the heck did electing one person change the course of history in America? Jackie Robinson also broke the color barrier in baseball, but that didn’t immediately turn things around. Did everyone forget the uprising when the NY Times cartoonist drew a cartoon equating President Obama with a shot monkey?

Here’s some reality for folks to think about, and it’s not just about black people as minorities. One, racism didn’t change for anyone once President Obama was elected president. Two, not all Hispanics or Latinos believe in the same thing; for that matter, the fastest growing “minority” group in America isn’t a monolith; it’s its own melting pot of diversity, people from different countries, so they don’t quite have their own voting block as the media would like you to believe. Three, Asians aren’t smarter than the rest of the world just because many of them get high test scores. Four, blacks aren’t dumber than the rest of the world because they often get lower test scores.

From the Hal Turners to the Rush Limbaughs to the Pat Buchanan’s to the Newt Gingrich’s to the,… no, I’d best stop there. Racism is alive and well in America, President Obama, heck, me, notwithstanding. You can’t judge the whole on one person, no matter which direction it goes.

And thus, so goes the world.

I’m going to be doing a webinar on the topic of Social Media, SEO & Your Business In 90 Minutes on June 30th, which is this Tuesday, starting at 11AM. It’s happening because of the second of two interviews I gave, which was on social media. As some of you know, I have a second company called SEO Xcellence, which does search engine optimization and things related to it. Well, one of my friends listened to the second interview on social media and wanted me to do a webinar with her.

Okay, I’m actually doing the webinar, but it’s her software. Her name is Renee Scherer of Presentations Plus, who still has open her MS Word webinar for July, which you can still register for. Actually, it’s on the same page as the advertisement for my webinar, and hers is three weeks of seminars for one price, so you’ll be getting plenty of good information, for sure.

Anyway, back to me for a minute. I couldn’t be happier to see some of what’s been going on for me lately, what with the interviews I gave above, and now this new interview that I gave to Murray Newlands for his blog of the same name, and another interview I gave that’s been posted on a site called Clickkt Dot Com, written by a young man named Toan Nguyen Minh. Add that to my being in the local newspaper, and someone else writing a very nice blog post about me after the second interview, and I’ve had quite the last five or six weeks.

It’s odd talking about social media when it hasn’t been a core of my business, and yet, as I’m going through a slight transition in my business, it seems apropos to where I’m heading. Hey, none of us can afford to stand still anymore, as I wrote when I was talking about reinventing yourself. I guess I really am a jack of many trades; I hope I end up being a master of one of them.

Anyway, I hope you check out the link to my webinar, and I hope you sign in; it should be fun, and it’s my first so it should also prove to be interesting.

I am an independent consultant. I also have a business license and a federal tax ID number. This means I’m actually a corporation, a legitimate business, and not just a temporary employee for anyone.

I state this because in the last week I’ve talked to two companies, one that contacted me first, and one that was really keen on my working with them, which came crashing down because they didn’t want to work with me unless I became their employee. The one guy, who was actually a very nice guy, said that if I weren’t an employee, it meant they couldn’t control me.

Control me? For that comment itself I’m going to name the company, which is Nearterm. Control me? What’s this concept of controlling employees anyway? Control me? What’s this thing about wanting to control people?

When I was an employee, no one “controlled” me. I knew the job I had to do, and I got the results that were wished for, surpassing what was requested more often than not. And it wasn’t because anyone “controlled” me; I control myself. Always have, always will.

Still, this shows the corporate mentality, the total disregard for employees, the non-realization that employees are NOT property, ARE people, and thus deserved to be treated with the respect that these corporations supposedly want themselves.

As I wrote in my post on convictions, I will always stand by mine. One thing I’ve always stood by was that any employee who reported to me was responsible for themselves, but I was responsible for making sure they had the tools to be successful. I was also responsible for the performance of my employees, but control them? That wasn’t happening. Control the department overall, yes; control people, no.

Any employee under me was allowed to use the phone to talk to their family members; what kind of stupid policy is that, not allowing employees to take personal calls from their family during working hours? What gives corporations the right to determine that people have to make the choice between their families and the job for something that’s so superficial anyway? Who do they think they are?

Oh yeah; they think they’re the controllers of people. It sickens me, but I know the score. That’s why, if I have any control over my life, which I do now, I don’t ever want to have to deal with that type of thing again. Folks, we should talk. If you feel controlled by your organization, we should talk. Executive coaching can help you take control of your life; that’s the only control you should ever have.

We’re all supposed to work with each other, not control each other. No wonder, when it comes to business, we don’t like each other. What a shame.

Back in 1969, my dad was getting ready to go to Vietnam. We’d had to move from the military base we were living at in North Syracuse, NY, to live with my grandmother in Kansas City, MO. We had moved before, of course, but this was going to be something different. My dad was going away for at least a year, or so we thought at the time, to a legitimate war, and none of us knew what was coming next.

Not even a week after my dad had left, it was a Sunday night, and, of all things, my grandmother had turned on the Ed Sullivan Show. I say it that way because we weren’t regular watchers of Ed Sullivan. However, what we were at the time were watchers of TV whenever we heard that black people were going to be on TV. It seems odd to think about in 2009, but back then, it was still a relatively rare occurrence. People in the community would hear something, and the phone calls would start. By this time we’d had I Spy with Bill Cosby and Julia with Diahann Carroll, but it wasn’t enough.

So the TV was on, and the special musical guests were the Jackson Five. And out come these five brothers, the music starts playing, and I jumped off the couch in disbelief of what I was hearing. And then I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, which was this kid about my age as the lead singer. And the dancing; wow! I started dancing myself at that point, and I certainly wasn’t a dancer. My grandmother said I looked like Michael; I’m betting every black grandmother in the country who was with their grandson probably said the same thing.

My mindset changed. I had been depressed, couldn’t think of anything else, and now I was happy, joyous, feeling really good about things. I hadn’t stop missing my dad; I had just been able to change my mind and see that there were some positive things in the world, and felt that everything would work out just fine.

And it did. My dad came back home, we moved a few more times, and it seemed that every time there was going to be some kind of turmoil in my life, a Michael Jackson song of some kind was being released, and it always gave me pleasure and helped my thinking. You see, it’s hard to think, hard to produce when you’re depressed. When you feel good, good things have a better chance of happening.

I feel a great loss now. It’s not quite as bad as when my dad passed, but it’s close. Dad was someone I could always talk to; Michael Jackson was someone who always made me feel good when I needed it. I can still pull out the music, as I’m probably one of many people who has every album or CD he ever put out, and I can glory in that and enjoy my favorite songs. But I know there’s nothing new really to look forward to. Yeah, I know there’s an unreleased album that will probably come out within a month, but it’s not going to be the same. There won’t be any videos, or interviews, or anything like that. It’ll just be music, and if it ends up being successful, we’ll never really know if it was successful because it was truly good or if it’ll be successful because people just can’t get enough of Michael Jackson, no matter what it is.

Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe the point is that so many people have been touched in so many positive ways, that all we need in our lives is just to hear the music, hear the grunts and chirps and whatever else noises that are easily identifiable as him. Maybe that’s all the motivation we need to continue on. Hey, we survived Elvis, right?

The end of an era; Michael Jackson, rest in peace.

I mainly live by three rules; loyalty, trustworthiness, and honesty. In pretty much that order, because I really believe they need to be ranked.

Loyalty is absolute. If I’m loyal to you, I expect loyalty back. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking business or personal life. I have friends who have been my friend for over 30 years, even if we only talk every couple of years or so. I would be there if they needed me, and they’d be here if I needed them; that’s what loyalty is all about.

Trustworthiness is the next in line. I don’t even trust anyone until they’ve shown me trust. However, I always try to trust first, then wait to see if it’s been justified. I do tend to go by my senses, though, so if I’m reading a situation and my body is sending me signals, I listen to them; I trust my feelings because I’ve known them a very long time.

Honesty is my final major conviction, but I know it’s not as absolute as the first two. I won’t be brutally honest with anyone who doesn’t deserve that; honesty doesn’t have to be mean and nasty. I will withhold information if I don’t feel it will benefit anyone. I won’t lie to anyone, though, and I won’t break a promise. I rarely make promises, therefore I don’t have to break any. I also won’t openly lie; who can remember all those lies anyway? But I will stay silent if I need to; in business, sometimes you have to stay silent, such as if you’re in management and you know layoffs are coming, and the directive from above is not to tell anyone anything.

Of course, I have more convictions than that. One in particular which every once in awhile precludes my getting a contract with another company to provide services for, or with, them. I have a conviction of my right to privacy. Not absolute privacy, obviously, as I divulge a lot of information about myself on my blogs and in my newsletters. My right to privacy concerns companies that want me to take drug tests and allow them to review a credit report. Nope, that’s just not happening with me; never has, never will.

Once again, this isn’t as absolute as my first two. For instance, if I were going to be handling money for someone, I can see their wanting to look at a credit report. That makes absolute sense. And, if I was going to be working directly with patients in a medical capacity, I could see taking a drug test. Again, that makes absolute sense.

However, as a businessman, that makes no sense at all. As a subcontractor, that makes no sense. As someone with a business license, incorporated no less, that makes no sense. A conversation I was having with someone on it last week was interesting. I asked him if I contracted with him would he provide me with a drug test and a credit report on him? He said no because he was a representative of his company, not a direct report, to which I replied so was I. Goodness, in these financial times, I’m the one who should be more worried as to whether or not some company has the financial wherewithal to pay me.

Still, when all was said and done, he, and his representative, both had to say that they understood my standing by my convictions. Luckily, my wife and most of my friends do also. I’ve always been a person of my convictions, sometimes to my detriment. My loyalty has probably cost me a couple of careers, but it’s also taught me some lessons about people and business.

The truth is that, unless you’re a one man operation, there isn’t a single company that has any loyalty to anyone. A company will lay you off at a moment’s notice if they’re in trouble. They will keep an employee in a position until Friday afternoon then let them go, when they knew on Monday they weren’t retaining you. They will sign you up for insurance, only to change the terms of that insurance within six months. They will bring you into the company on the promise of training and an increase in salary in 3 or 4 months, then act like they have no idea where you got that from when the time comes. And yet, they wonder why employees don’t trust them, and what keeps unions in the picture; please.

And where there’s no loyalty, there can’t be any trustworthiness, and thus honesty goes out the window as well. You see why I say that my number one conviction is loyalty? Now, how strong are your convictions? What won’t you, what will you do, and for what reason? If you’ve ever thought about it, share if you’d like.

A survey recently came out that was provided by the Niagara Health Quality Coalition. It was on how people perceived their care at local hospitals, as compared to national averages.

It wasn’t pretty locally. Of the Syracuse area hospitals, only one, St. Joseph’s, ended up ahead of the national average of 64% in satisfaction. St. Joseph’s was at 71%, which isn’t great either, but it’s better than the others, which are:

Crouse Hospital - 57%
Community General - 58%
University Hospital - 55%

Other hospitals close to the Syracuse area that ranked above the national average were:

Community Memorial, Hamilton - 74%
Oswego Hospital - 67%

When I was in college, most of the college kids used to say that Oswego Hospital was one of the worst hospitals they’d ever seen. I learned later on that most college kids think the hospital in their area is the worst they’ve ever seen, even if they’ve never been in that hospital. Perceptions spread like wildfire; all it takes is one person to say it to someone they like even just a little bit and it spreads like the gospel after that.

So, we know that perception isn’t always the reality; or is it? How bad is the economy? With unemployment reaching 10%, we could say it’s not that bad because at least 90% of the people are working. Yet, our perception is different. The housing market has suffered some major hits, and we hear some pretty bad numbers. Yet, at least 80% of the people in the country have been unaffected personally by the housing crisis. We hear about bank closings, and the stock market crashing, all this really bad news, yet every single person’s money was protected if it was in a bank, closing or not.

Perception is reality to the person with the perception, which is why we, as leaders for now, need to always strive to change negative perceptions and input positive perceptions. When it comes to health care especially, as President Obama has health care in his sights, and his associates are finding ways to blame hospitals for “wasteful practices.” I’m tired of reading that one because it’s not true for the majority of hospitals in this country, yet it’s once again the perception, one that hospitals and physicians are constantly fighting. Yes, there are some of each who are intentionally sneaky and deceptive, and some others who have been doing some things wrong that they didn’t know were wrong. But it’s not endemic of the industry to automatically believe they’re all this bad.

That the national average for satisfaction in hospitals is only 64% has to be troubling to the industry. Anyone who can find a silver lining in a figure like that doesn’t care about their facility. Even if it’s not true, the leaders will need to find ways to turn the perception around. It may have to start with their own employees, of course, but it can’t continue in this fashion.

Maybe they need some leadership training; someone pass my number along to them.

On June 16th, 2002, Father’s Day, my dad passed away at 4:45 PM. I think about it every year around this time, and it’s funny that I’ve never written on this blog about it, though I’ve written in other places.

One of the biggest lessons my dad gave me was also one of the last. Early in 2002, when Dad was still able to communicate lucidly most of the time, we talked about my new website, which is the one this blog is attached to. I was telling him how, with all my marketing materials, including my website, how I wasn’t sure whether or not I should put my picture on it. There aren’t a lot of black people in management positions in health care to begin with, and the percentages of black health care consultants is even more infinitesimal.

I also worried because, in the field of management, there are once again very few black people; that goes for most of the other areas I address in business as well. The only one where black people were more prominent than in other areas was on the conversation of diversity. Some people actually only know me by that, which, in my mind, says more to me about their mindset than anything else, since I never lead with it as a topic.

I felt I had legitimate business reasons as to why I shouldn’t put my image on anything. I wanted to at least be able to have the conversation, and if it had to change once someone met me in person then at least I’d have had the legitimate opportunity to present myself in front of them. This isn’t something that most anyone else would ever have to even think about when it pertained to their business, except to wonder how attractive their image might be.

My dad, the master sargeant, the man who’d won countless awards at Xerox over his 23 years of employment, who had been in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War and had traveled to at least 10 different countries in his military career, had this to say. That if anyone was going to deny me the opportunity to help them get to where they needed to be just because of the image they saw of me, a professional image where the only difference was the color of my skin, that they didn’t deserve the right to work with me, and that it was an indication of just how much they needed me more than I’d need them.

Sometimes in business, we find things to devalue ourselves in the eyes of others. Sometimes, it takes someone else’s words to help us define just how valuable we might be. That was the beauty of my dad, the master sargeant. That’s why I miss him each and every day. And that’s why I write this tribute to him today, the first time on this blog, and wish I’d done it much earlier.

The word “racist” has been thrown around a lot lately. Yesterday it was being used all day when a deranged 88 year old man decided to go into the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and start shooting, killing one of the guards there. Supposedly, once they looked into the man, he was a self described race-hating neo-nazi who had a website spouting all sorts of hate, something he’d been doing since the 70’s.

Last week the brouhaha was centered around President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, and a comment she made back in 2001, where she was quoted as saying “I would hope that a wise Latina Woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

This led to a bunch of people, okay, all Republicans, deciding to call her a racist. Two noted media personalities, who I decline to name because they don’t need any more publicity from me, were happy to toss that appellation around, though one retracted it a couple of days later, and the other actually decided, after his initial knee jerk reaction, that he might actually like her on the Supreme Court after all.

The biggest problem with the term “racist” is that most people have absolutely no idea what it means, otherwise, unless they were minority, they wouldn’t be using it. One problem in the United States is that people start blending terminology together so that they believe it means the same thing, and it doesn’t. They also try to equate their own experience with that of someone else, and that doesn’t work either.

Let’s start with the term “racist.” Actually, you have to start with the term “racism”, which gets you back to “racist.” Every legitimate dictionary you find will have some sort of description like this for “racism”:

“Any program or practice of racial discrimination, segregation, etc, specifically such as a program or practice that upholds the political or economic domination of one race over another or others”

Let’s look at this more directly as it applies to the U.S. How many races in this country have had the power to set programs and practices against other races? Only one. How many races in this country have had the power to uphold political or economic domination over other races? Only one. So, based on the definition of the word “racism”, which I typed above, how many races in this country are capable of actually being racist?

So, that one is done and over. Argue it all you want to, but you lose. Now, what you might want to argue instead is that it’s possible that Sotomayor, and many other minority and, for that matter, the majority in America, is bigoted. Ah, now there’s a word one can sink their teeth into if they want to go more universal. The dictionary definition of “bigot” is:

“a narrow minded prejudiced person.”

No, that doesn’t quite fit either, mainly because it throws another word in there that we now have to consider, that being “prejudice.” Lucky for us, it’s also in the dictionary:

“suspicion, intolerance, or irrational hatred of other races, creeds, regions, occupations, etc.”

Unfortunately, that’s not complete enough, so we need to add:

“a judgment or opinion formed before the facts are known; preconceived idea, usually unfavorable”

Now we’re getting somewhere substantive; we have something to work with at this point. Everyone prejudices something in their lives, probably every day. If we go to a new place we usually form an opinion before we go inside. If we’re supposed to be meeting someone for the first time we prejudge them based on the conversation either with them or about them beforehand. This doesn’t mean we go in with negative feelings, just that we go in with an impression that often turns out not to be what we were expecting; remember, the main word above describing prejudice, at least in this instance, is “usually”. I know I’ve shocked many people I’ve talked with on the phone who weren’t expecting a black man to show up if they didn’t check the bio page on my website.

Let’s face a major fact here, one I used to say more often on this blog in the early days. There are white people in this country who have never seen a black individual in person. Or, maybe they’ve seen one or two. There isn’t a single black person in this country, or Latino, or Asian, or any other minority group, that hasn’t seen a white person. It just can’t happen, and doesn’t happen. Minorities have to work with whites; whites never have to interact with a single black person if they don’t want to.

What’s my point here? It’s that, when it comes to the unknown, minorities are at a major advantage because whites aren’t unknown to them at all. Sure, there are levels of mistrust, sometimes based on what someone else has said, but more often based on what has happened to that person in their own lives at some point while growing up in America. The experiences are much different for sure.

I’ve had white people say to me on occasion “I know what you feel like as the only black person in a room because it happened to me once.” Once? You have absolutely no idea what it feels like if you only went through it once. I’m glad it’s not something that hold me back in any way, thank goodness, but trust me, it’s not close to the same thing. If I prejudge something, am I basing it on an experience I’ve never had, or do the experiences I have give me more qualification for expectations that, more often that not, come true?

If, at nearly 50, I’m walking on a particular side of the street on my own and someone is coming towards me and suddenly decides to cross the street before they get to me, and it happens over and over again, am I the one making prejudiced judgments, or am I basing my belief in the history I keep experiencing over and over? Does the fact that this country finally has a minority president really mean that everyone else now gets a free pass on racism, bigotry, or prejudice?

Nope; not in my world. But it does give us a reason to define our terms so we can move forward. Everyone can be prejudiced, but obviously, the degrees change as more is known about the other party. This also means everyone can be bigoted, though, based on the word “narrow”, it seems this one may also be a degrees type of thing. But racist? Not everyone can be racist. Just can’t happen. Power can’t be perceived; it is what it is. Political and economic control can’t be perceived; it is what it is. You can’t throw Oprah and Bill Cosby and athletes at us, saying their rich, and therefore have power; they’re less than .0001% of minorities in this country with any real money.

Deal with it; not every group can be racist. This doesn’t make one group better or worse than the other; it’s just a definition. Isn’t the dictionary a wonderful thing?

I first mentioned the Opus Movie in March of 2008 when I posted a clip from it on this blog. I was really looking forward to it then, but it was still a long time coming. Then came October, and I wrote about it again as I’d just learned that the movie had become available, and on that post I gave a link as to where it could be purchased, and said I’d be getting mine soon.

Well, I actually had gotten it pretty quickly. I’ve had the movie since November, and I did watch it back then. And I’ve watched it a couple more times after that, just to be sure that I was giving it a fair chance.

So, here we go. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s certainly not “The Secret” by any means. I’ve tried to figure out what my issue with Opus is, and what I come to is that it’s somewhat disjointed. In other words, it doesn’t really build upon itself, and the music doesn’t just grab you and help to immerse you in the story.

Ah yes, the story. It’s a tale that begins with the passing of a great violinist whose only words, to a reporter who’s come to try to interview him just as he’s passing away, is “the opus.” That begins a flashback through history of this man as he first discovers his passion for playing the violin, and all the trials and tribulations he goes through to eventually end up being a great violinist. But we don’t really learn what the Opus means until we see the man passing along inspiration to another young man once he’s older, just as an older man passed along the inspiration to him.

Thus, the Opus is really not about you, the person, as much as it is about you, the motivator of others. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, as it’s an admirable goal for anyone to have. The thing is that it’s not necessarily motivational to the viewer as you’re watching it. As a story, the movie kind of stops and starts, and you start to wonder why we’re following this character in the first place since we rarely see him.

We do have a few of the same people that were in the first movie, but there’s a host of new people also, including the maker of the film, Douglas Vermeeren, who seems like a very engaging guy, but in a way it’s almost a reminder of why Rhonda Byrnes movie was so powerful. She was in it only at the beginning and at the end, and she didn’t speak. She didn’t put herself out there as one of the experts, and I think that was part of the appeal of the movie. You see her in the beginning of the movie looking sad, and you see her at the end of the movie feeling glad.

In conclusion, if you’re like me and go into watching this movie with The Secret on your mind, you’re going to be sadly disappointed. If you can just watch it for what it is, you’ll hear some inspiring stories from people who’ve had to overcome some pretty drastic things in their lives, and that part I enjoyed. But for what I paid, which was twice what I paid for The Secret, I was expecting something that would juice me up. Instead, after watching this movie, I had to go back to The Secret to start feeling good again.