INNOVATORS

THANK YOU FATHER.

There is a trait that I have grown to admire in people more than I could admire them for anything else, and that is originality.
Oh my goodness I love an original idea or quote, it is a simple thing of beauty and music to my ears.
I just recently watched a documentary about the life of Vidal Sassoon and I fell in complete love with him, he's 82 years old and an original.

I love to listen to people who have their own ideas, people that haven't stolen every thought or sentence from someone else and tried to pawn it off as their own thought, that's what actors do and they do it well, but when the camera is off and you have walked off stage or laid the mike down, what are you?
When the camera's are off and the makeup is off I like to know what is original about this person outside of what they trained to do or their talent?

It is an absolute joy watching people who collaborate with someone else and they work back and forth to make a particular project better where everyone shares equal responsibility and equal rebuke and equal praise.

What I find more fraudulent than anything is someone who word for word takes the thoughts and talents of someone else and tries to pass it off as their own, especially without giving reference to the person whose idea it was to begin with.
This may be the reason I love famous quotes so much, because then the one being quoted can be named.
Who said that? is what I like to know because it lets me know if this is someone that I may have something in common with, I can learn from you and we can enhance each other when there is common ground.
But when you believe that you are above and everyone else is beneath we have lost all common ground.

These thoughts just surfaced in me with the passing of Steve Jobs.
Don't ask me why, I didn't know much about him or follow him, I simply heard him speak and the things that he said were so from his heart and not someone elses rehearsed marketing speech and problem solving plan that he drew me in to who he was.
Mr.Jobs Stanford commencement speech was so authentic and genuine that it made an imprint in my spirit.

Please all of the phoney's don't go and try and reproduce Steve's speech for your own like you are him, you can't be him.
God don't let copies of it turn up in these political campaign script's.
I never watched Mr. Jobs much as a man, mogul, or the mind that he was.
His products are in my home of course so I was aware of him but I was never fascinated with the technology to any extreme.
I'm not a tech convention person but I did recognize the far reaching impact that technology would have on our society.
My children still have to work things for me, they download pictures and help me load things to  drives and show me how to get things off the TV screen that I don't want there.
I have figured our how to operate my Ipad enough to say what I need and want to say.

When I think about innovative men like Steve Jobs, a man who changed the era that I live in I don't look to him as someone who followed a strict cookie cutter code or adhered to listening to people tell him that he had to be hooked up to any certain cause.
What Steve Jobs carved in my ears was to be different.
And when you are already different all you have to do is be true to who you are.
It's hard to find someone who isn't marketing them selves as the new improved them based in what the experts say is the way to be liked.
Yet only the people who stick with what is singing in their own spirit get to do and be what they were really called to do and be.
Happy and Satisfied.

Another one of the innovators that I recognize is Henry Ford.
The man who brought the automobile and the assembly line to the stage and introduced real
"Job Creation".

I also admire men like Walter Reuther who had to come to Mr. Ford for fair working conditions and wages.

I've heard talk about how hospitals are also a part of some sort of corporate clan of greed and I don't know what other hospitals in the country do but what I do know about the institution that I work for today in 2011 is that they were birthed out of a need and continue to be a pillar of innovation today.
Henry Ford Health System is one of the real job creators in Michigan.
Henry Ford Health System is one of the largest employers that we have in the Metropolitan area and they work together with Health Alliance Plan to not only keep as many people working as possible, but they also work to educate people who are going into the field of medicine,  our patients and the community that we serve with how to live longer, healthier, wiser and stronger lives.

Our system is philanthropic at it's core and works hard and encourages it's employee's by example to extend itself to the community through giving, volunteering, and multiple fundraising campaigns all year around.

Henry Ford Health System hired me straight out of technical school were I trained for one skill and they believed that it was possible that I could be trained by them to do another one, and for going on 11 years I have been privileged to be a part of this group.
I don't work at Henry Ford because I believe that health care is the safest place to be or I don't have any other options, or I'm just waiting for something better to come along and I'm out.
I enjoy it and it has afforded me the ability to support more than my family but to support my community.

Our hospital doesn't simply care for and treat illness that people can afford to cover.
We perform multiple surgeries, provide intensive and emergency care, we take big finncial losses every day and we do what we can so that we can cover losses and keep folks employed and a community serviced.
When the system profits, it's employees profit for their service.
I'm proud to work in a place were compassion, values and innovation is not squashed but encouraged.
The hospital knows what my personal views and beliefs are because they are documented. I would be blind to think that they don't know about my blog, but what they haven't done is told me that I don't have a right to an opinion.
That is innovative and I respect that.
So while folks may want to throw hospitals on the heap of twisted and corporate crazy, the institution that I work for will not be thrown there if I have a voice.
If the Lord ever sees fit that it is time for me to leave Henry Ford Hospital this would have already been said.

When you think about innovation don't simply think of one man or one woman but look at what these men and women have left our society.
Have they left something that not only touched and still benefits their own family and interests or have they left a legacy that extends to a betterment of other people all around the country and world?
Creating things that make life better and not so tough for us all.
Are they humble and have the opinion that if you are down it's your fault and step right over yo or do they give you a hand up?
Revolutionary folks.

Finally, I urge you to be original because anything less than that is not lasting, it's forgotten before it even hits the stage.
It can be hyped up like sham wow today and in the dollar store tomorrow.

Be You
it's easier and far more satisfying.
My perspective.

Thank You Father.
LOVE Y'ALL :)