Glorifying "Closers": Nature's Fermata & the Lost Art of Savoring

Great "Closers" are known for their ability to bring a deal to fruition, converting leads into paying customers and potential buyers' leaden inertia into golden, expedient results. They enjoy premier sales celebrity, and they're highly coveted in contexts that value expediency at all costs. Closers often construct a platform on "building relationships of trust" by overcoming potential clients' objections, and convincing them to buy now rather than remain neutral and wait. In other words, they excel at deliberative rhetoric, juxtaposing potential future outcomes to convince others to support or reject a particular option over another. This is not the same as "building relationships of trust."

Relationship-building actually takes time to nurture and sustain, with excellent communication, mutuality, and transparency, and little to no attachment to outcome. The emphasis is on the well-being of the other and the stability and generativity of the relationship itself. Relationship is not on the clock, tick-tock. Some closers respect clients' own reasons and rhythms. They let the process unfold. They know how to savor progress, little steps, and wait. Some do not. When closers are "overcoming objections" to expedite a process, it doesn't always reflect the organic process required, listening carefully, and allowing the process to unfold rather than overpower, to "dominate" rather than collaborate. Great closers know that building relationships takes time, and they savor each step along the way.

In baseball, a successful closer, like the one who was just traded from my home town team, is so valuable because his performance often means his ability to hold a lead late into a game with well-executed pitching. Today, a prominent baseball closer's repertoire is often dominated by an overpowering fastball and being able to overwhelm fatigued batsmen, closing down the opponent's ability for a late-inning comeback. Closers know how to "git 'er done," and they are well compensated in a culture saturated with productivity and winning by domination as the supreme deities, and expediency the sacrificial weapon on the altar of ROI.

"Let it be." If we learn to "just sit," as in Za Zen, we learn to let go of the endless demands of our over-exerted executive functioning, left-brain dominance, and anxious restlessness that pervades our culture. As productivity "experts," late-stage "Closers" in a functional but tepid transactional life, we tend to be addicts of productivity and wealth accumulation, excess, and waste. It seems humanity as a species has lost - or abandoned - the Art of Savoring. Loyola Chicago Emeritus Professor and Social Psychologist Fred Bryant has focused his research on the practice of Savoring for this reason. We are quite good as a culture at coping with negative experiences, but enjoying and sustaining positive experiences eludes us. Why? Perhaps we are neglecting something foundational to human happiness.

When something good happens or we experience something wonderful, we neglect to let an experience of Awe enter the fray, as psychologist Dacher Keltner might say. We neglect something so basic to human happiness and replace the ability to savor the good that we continuously focus - and become addicted to - acquiring the goods, the remedial enterprise for lower realms of human need on Maslow's Hierarchy. I would go so far as to say we are relatively expert at problem-solving and acquisitions, somewhat shaky in the practice of anticipation and delayed gratification, and utterly atrophied in the art of Savoring, which requires the practice of gratitude, repetition for discovering depth and nuance, full-sensory and memory imprinting, and sharing experiences of delight with friends and confidants. We simply don't know how to rest in the moment and go deeper. We've lost the Art of Savoring.

Fortunately for us, Nature can help that. Nature's "Closers" present themselves daily and seasonally. And they take their sweet time. They teach us the Art of Savoring.

The natural fermata at the end of each day is Sunset and Moonrise, of course. Sunset is a glorious, sustained, silent "Amen" to the complexity, nuances, heartaches, enigmas, and exuberances of the unfolding day. Day's end gives us a breather we need to process, yes, but also enjoy each moment. We can sustain our rest. With each sunset, we hone the capacity to wait and watch, notice every tinge of color and shade, and listen for the encroaching hush of avian- and insect-kin while the rise of the nocturnal chorus washes over us. When the sun is sinking low on the horizon, it is an opportune moment to be still, go deeper, and savor the moment.

As the Moon rises, we calibrate our vision, auditory perception, taste, touch, and olfactory to darkness. Ours is a Light-saturated, Light-polluted existence, and we are losing the capacity to allow our circadian rhythms to be shaped and moderated by enveloping darkness, to immerse ourselves in nightly darkness with our full sensorium awakened. Artificial light stimuli keep our reptilian brains on high alert for most of our natural resting period, and the results are well-known: cumulative stress, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, immuno-compromised defense systems, and online addictions, among other ailments. We fear Nighttime and make it noisy, t.v. and internet-laden, rather than savor its healing elixir of comfort and quietude.

Seasonally, Nature unwinds with characteristic slowness, the ripening in Autumn, sunlight waning from Summer's lush greenery to produce stunning reds, oranges, yellows, and purples. Memory, imagination, and our full-sensory awareness are kindled and ignited. We know when the leaves are most resplendent, and we locate and luxuriate with breathless wonder. We breathe in the elixir of falling leaves and blankets of pine needles, covering our porches and garden stoops with pumpkins, mums, and sunflowers. Winter is especially adept at teaching us the art of Savoring. Quietude and stillness blanket the Earth. Long shadows and chilly or frozen mornings seem to touch the fringes of precious afternoon sunlight. "Day-ish" is the prelude to darkening hush and endless nights. It seems to persist beyond our capacity to hold its depths. Slowly, Winter melts into glistening Springtime when Earth's fragrances, colors, and symphony push upward and outward from frozen depths to reveal life so awesome, so fragile and magnificent, we might topple from the sensory overload. If we didn't have Summer to recover with her sensual array, hours and hours of sun-drenched delights in the garden, by the beach, in the mountains or on the lake, we might never unwind from constant motion, and endless pursuits of acquisition. The unhealed "Closer" in us might completely overtake the Dreamer, the Caregiver, the Friend, the Confidant, the Healer, the Lover.

To learn the Art of Savoring, pay attention to Nature. It's a daily lesson, a seasonal lesson that persists because we are notoriously slow learners. Nature reminds us to go back to school every day, and practice, practice, practice. If we want to learn to be great Closers, pay attention. Here's how it's done: