Tivo Backtrack

In the middle of my Aha! moment with Charlie the other evening (see Life post from November 22), my instincts told me that Charlie wasn't pontificating; he was quoting--or at least attempting to quote--someone else. This, of course, led to yet another Aha! moment (with thanks to Oprah for the phrase). If today's under 20 (or even under 30) crowd were to observe the cumbersome research methods required of students and professionals even two decades ago, they would no doubt cover their faces and walk away appalled.

During this age of instant gratification in many areas, including but not limited to research, this is what I did to find out if my instincts about Charlie and his message were correct. First, I got out my trusty Tivo and rescued Life from the "recently deleted" category. With a single push of a button, I instructed my machine not to put it in the trash again until I so directed.

I then wrote down verbatim Charlie's words (yikes! I used a pen), knowing the sentence so praised in yesterday's post almost surely did not belong to Charlie at all. I took the verbatim sentence to yet another machine, called up the Yahoo search engine, and in 0.13 seconds flat found that nothing in the Yahoo universe matched. Ditto the process with Google; same results.

I did find, after adjusting my quotation marks, a multitude of concepts similar to Charlie's utterance, beautifully and poetically written. I wanted to press "select all" and in yet another fraction of a second post all of them to this blog. Thank heavens for copyright laws with which I have just enough familiarity to render me simultaneously dangerous and very, very cautious. My cautious side stopped all of that foolishness in its tracks.

What I did find was a comment attributed to Edward Gardner, described as an "American business leader." The precise quotation, supposedly, follows: "It's not what you take but what you leave behind that defines greatness."

Who is Edward Gardner? I have no idea. And which of my informants, Charlie or Chuck (see link below) came closest to quoting verbatim the concept that had affected me enough to write about it yesterday? Can't answer that. But thank heavens for Tivo and the Internet because I'll find the answers in five minutes or less, discover more questions as a result of that search, and then spend all day long digging for an avalanche of answers, each arriving at the speed of light.

Maybe I'll take a quick break here and go chat on my cell phone. I take it back; Skype is calling!

P.S. The link for the Edward Gardner info, with thanks to Chuck, is http://www.personal-development.com/chuck/great2.htm. See? I told you I'm careful.