Kissing A Stingray

Would you like to swing on a star,
Carry moonbeams home in a jar,
And be better off than you are,
Or would you rather be a fish?

Swinging on a Star, Johnny Burke & James Van Heusen

Have you ever kissed a stingray? I did recently while on a Grand Cayman Island tour during a Caribbean cruise. It was an amazing experience—we jumped into the waters with 4-foot stingrays swimming around us. My nine-year old daughter, Charlotte, was the first to jump in. All I could think about was the story of the Crocodile Hunter who died after accidentally being stabbed by one of these graceful animals. My daughter is too young to remember that.

After getting over my initial anxiety, it turned out to be a very enjoyable and exciting encounter. We could hold and feed these animals (you could hold a piece of squid under them and they would suck it from your grasp). In fact, they almost knocked you over once they found out that you had food. As part of the experience, when you held them they would pucker (curl front side up) so that you could kiss them. The kids enjoyed this immensely.

Opportunities like this remind me of how vast this world is, of how many opportunities there are to do things that you’ve never done, and of how much fun and adventurous kids are when given the chance.  As adults, we have so much history to overcome before we try something new. For me and the stingrays, it was the memory of the Crocodile Hunter.

Many of us bring this same baggage to work and it keeps us from moving ahead with new technology or changes in our job, like System i operations automation. We hear phrases like, “Why do we have to change now?,” or “We tried this before and it didn’t work.” Our personal history often gets in the way of moving ahead and experiencing new opportunities and events (like kissing a stingray!). I talk to customers who are apprehensive about staffing, technology, and regulatory issues, but automated operations software can really help them streamline common System i processes, such as job scheduling and reporting.

PS. Our cruise line is an IBM i customer: Carnival Cruise Line.