I get a momentary rush of power each time I make an executive decision. Kay and I will sometimes come to each other and announce, “I have made an executive decision,” which means that we have not gone through the normal democratic process of seeking the opinion of the other before an action is taken. It doesn’t happen too often, and whatever executive decision one of us has made, the other usually will go along with it.
When wear my executive hat, I quote the line spoken by Yul Brynner as Ramses II in The Ten Commandments. The great Egyptian Pharoah makes his pronouncement and follows it with, “So let it be written. So let it be done.” And, like old Ramses in the film, I walk away. The drama of my exit adds to the power of the words.
Recently our oldest daughter sent me a short video snippet of a documentary showing a group of people around a conference table. A vote had been taken by the group, a decision was made, and the leader said something that my daughter wanted me to hear. The volume on the video was very low, and I had to crank up the sound level as high as it would go. I played it repeatedly but was just not sure what the guy said. So, I responded to my daughter in an e-mail what I thought I heard him say, which was, “So let’s get rid of the celebrity dog.”
Must be a panel for the Westminster Kennel tossing out an unruly contestant, I concluded. As clever as this was, I scratched my head as to why my daughter would want me to hear it. She responded with multiple “laugh” emojis and told me what the guy had actually said, which was, “So let it be written. So let it be done.” And the people around the conference table were astronomers discussing black holes in our universe.
Time to schedule an appointment with the audiologist. It just proves that at times we are all hard of hearing or suffer from selective hearing. We want to take what we hear and objectify it so that we can use what we think we heard to support what we believe. Hearing the truth can sometimes be an unpleasant experience when it does not “tickle” the inner ears of our personal beliefs and biases. So let the truth be spoken. So let the truth be heard. So let the truth be written, and let the truth be done.
