Connections

My name is Trevor
I am good at making connections. 

A couple of years ago, I went on a course that Games Workshop ran called Life Long Learning.
It was not what I was expecting.

To attend this course, there were a few criteria that we had to meet. These were mainly based around how long we had been with the company and that we had to have been meeting our targets for a certain period of time. I was expecting this to be a course that would help me to be better at my job. In a way, I was right.

It was a two day course that was run in Sydney. It was tagged on after another event which made for four days that I was out of my store at the company’s expense. I thought that it would have to be an important course.

It was the most important and effective course that I went on in my entire employ with Games Workshop.

This course was about learning who we were.

I was one of twelve people on this course, most of us were managers of our respective stores. We all had different backgrounds and stories and we all knew each other in some form or another. By the end of the weekend, we knew each other a lot better. There were a number of different exercises that we participated in. I am going to mention one.

We built a Lego bridge.

This was the first hands on activity that we did. The task was not simply to build a bridge. We had a time limit to plan out how we were going to do it, how much specifically of the materials we were going to use, how far the bridge would span and how long it was going to take us. It also needed to support a small weight at the middle of it.

We truly learned the meaning of the saying ‘too many chiefs, not enough Indians’. We were all used to doing things our own ways in a professional capacity and with the pressure of a time limit, more than half of my group were had jumped on the task, getting it done in the ‘most efficient’ and ‘best’ ways that we knew. A couple of people began concerning themselves with who was the team leader to keep us to time and to keep us on track.

We completed our task and began a debriefing. It was during this that we each got to explain what we did and why. The fact that I’m only going to mention my own is no indication of what other people did or said. Everyone had their own opinions and points to raise and many of these were of high value. I only know me in this though.

When it was my turn to speak, I spoke to the group about my major piece of input that I had. I was watching the people trying to build the span. Due to the nature of the pieces (they were like a train track), they were coming apart when we made the span too big. I watched this, had a look at the sheet that posed the problem to us and, finding no objections to my idea, posed it to the group. I suggested that we flip the entire bridge upside down. I demonstrated my idea. That instead of collapsing, the way the pieces connected would help enforce their join with gravity (to a point of course). The group took this on board and we completed the task with this change of thinking.

I, quite literally, got our group to turn its project upside down.

I was asked a question by the facilitator. He asked “Did you realise that when the task started, some people took a step in to look at the pieces, you took a step away?” I didn’t realise it at the time, but it makes sense. I took a step back to look at everything together and see how it all pieced together. I wanted to see the connections.

This is a talent that I often possess. I can see the connections. This gift manifests itself in a number of ways.

Firstly, as with the story I have mentioned, I can step back from something and look at how the pieces fit. My mother has told me of the hours that I would stand at Expo 88 watching the Ball Machines. I think that, even as young as I was then, I was doing making connections or learning how they worked. I’ve a reasonable gift for solving puzzles as a result. The flip side of this skill is that when I can’t see or understand something, I can get incredibly frustrated. When the connections don’t make sense, I can sometimes fixate on them.

Secondly, I have a knack for finding even the most tenuous threads from the infinite web of the universe to fit a situation. A recent example was at a writers meeting for the YouTube channel that I am a part of, Cheeky Moon. They were discussing how a future sketch would work and I put forward an idea that was so far from what they were discussing, but still connected to the original idea that the whole sketch just fell into place.

Finally, I have a disgustingly good track record for predicting endings. Now I’m not going to say that I knew what the twist for The Sixth Sense was (I was told before I saw the movie anyway), but I can see the patterns that infect most forms of entertainment. This doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy those stories, or that I spoil them for the people around me (often), but when a something truly surprises me and makes me go “Oh yeah, cause that thing… with the... and the… Oh yeah” I am genuinely impressed.

It’s a part of who I am. I see connections and I learn quickly. This can make me come across as arrogant at times. I’ve learned to ask the right questions to get a better understanding of tasks and situations.

I’ve had people who have tried to teach me and found this aspect either positive or negative. Those that have found it a nuisance and a challenge found that I became either distant or disruptive. They would try to find fault in my work, and become even more frustrated when few or none existed. My grade nine maths program meant that I spent three lessons a week in the library doing large amounts of work that was left for us in order to rote learn the subject. When I couldn’t produce any of this work to my teacher when it was requested after the first semester, he became unhappy with my work and me in general. The blessing of grade nine maths is that it really could only be marked right or wrong and with my understanding of the connections and as a result the ‘why’ of the math, there was little he could mark as wrong.

Those blessings of teachers that I have had (including as recently as last year) that have embraced this within me have received someone who is willing to learn, go the extra mile and offers no excuse to rest from the pursuit of excellence. To these, I am grateful beyond words.  

From Dune: “the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn.” I have truly been blessed with my ability to perceive the connections in the world. I can learn. Even through this last year when my body, my very blood, was rebelling against me; this ability has survived. I have learned a lot. I will learn more.

My name is Trevor
I believe in Life Long Learning.