IOTMT
My favorite Robert Frost poem is “The Road Not Taken”. I have it committed to memory, and I think that the theme and the morals in the poem are important lessons for life. One of my favorite parts of the poem is in the very first stanza, when the narrator says, “…long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.”
The Pride Problem – Part 2
It occurred to me today that some simple math can help to keep our pride in check.
There are approximately 7,800,000,000 people alive today. I am only one of those. You are only one of those. That means, besides you and I, that there are 7,799,999,998 other people on the planet.
But, maybe you think of yourself as a big deal; my pride makes me think of myself as a big deal. So, let’s say there are a thousand people (if you or I are lucky) that agree with me (or with you) that I’m pretty hot stuff (or that you are).
7,799,999,000 aren’t even aware of your existence, or of mine.
Additionally, global estimates on the number of people who have ever lived, depending on how you might go about trying to estimate that number, put the number just slightly above, or slightly below, one hundred billion. So, assuming that there are a number of people –whatever that number might be– who were once alive who knew you/thought highly of you/were touched by your existence, let’s add that number to the number of people that you have in your ‘living entourage’.
Then, subtract that new number from 100,000,000,000.
In short, there are more than one hundred billion people, who have lived or are currently living, that know nothing about you. How important can you really be?
If you’re starting to get lost in the numbers a little bit, let me paint a picture for you.
Imagine a cube-shaped container, one hundred feet tall, and one hundred feet wide, and one hundred feet long. Or, if that’s hard to imagine, imagine instead a container that is about the same size and dimensions as a ten-story building in a city.
The container, no matter how you’ve imagined it, is filled with sand.
Then, imagine removing from that massive container of sand, a single teaspoon of sand.
That teaspoon, if you used a standard teaspoon, would have about 40,000 grains of sand in it.
Imagine all of the sand that would remain in that container (one hundred feet tall and one hundred feet wide and one hundred feet long, approximately the size of a ten-story building) if you only took out a teaspoon of sand. All of that sand in that massive cube, and quite honestly, most of the sand in the teaspoon that you’re holding (since you probably don’t have 40,000 people who are aware of your existence) represents the people who have no idea that you exist.
If that doesn’t humble you, then think of the famous people, the names that are constantly topping the news.
There probably isn’t a person in America who hasn’t heard the names Donald Trump or Joe Biden lately. There are currently about 328,000,000 people in America. Or, take Cristiano Ronaldo, a Portuguese soccer player, who has 237,000,000 followers on Instagram (more than anyone else on Instagram). And, of course, there are other famous people all over the world, of whom hundreds of millions of people are aware of their existence.
There are two million grains of sand in a cup of sand.
So, if the world’s most famous Portuguese soccer player removed one and a half five-gallon buckets of sand from the structure that we were describing a moment ago, what a much more significant removal of sand that would be, compared to my fraction of a teaspoon of sand.
Would it even make a dent in the structure?
None of us –not even one– ever really amounts to much of anything, mathematically speaking.
* * *
If you object to this approach to attempting to calculate how insignificant each of us is –> and who wouldn’t — it’s humiliating to think of how out of proportion my pride really is –> then maybe something more complex could do a better job of giving us a good reason to be proud of ourselves.
I’m thinking of a formula that incorporates 1) the number of people who know us, and 2) the significant impact that we’ve made on the lives of the people who would fall into the first category.
For example, Cristiano Ronaldo and I happen to fall in completely different categories when it comes to ‘fame’. So, when you think about the number of people who know of him, and the number of people who know of me, of course the proportions are way off. But, a more intricate measure of my impact, and of his impact, might change things.
For example, let me ask the question, “Who counts on Cristiano Ronaldo?” Maybe his teammates and coaches do, on the team that he plays soccer for. He’s not married, as of the moment that I’m writing this, so he is somewhat detached in that sense.
Did you ever wonder why the government calls them ‘dependents’? Because they depend on us.
We’ll call it a reliance factor. It’s a measure of the extent to which someone relies on you.
Maybe it’s the case the Cristiano Ronaldo has more followers on Instagram than there are grains of sand in a five-gallon bucket, it is probably not the case that he has a significantly higher number of people relying on him than the number of people who are relying on me, is there?
When it comes down to it, those are the people that really matter, aren’t they?
Does it matter that there are multiple continents of the world where all of the inhabitants of that continent are unaware that I exist? Not to me, it doesn’t. The people that matter the most are the closest to me.
But, since this is a post about pride, and how ridiculous it is, let me make a final point.
The world existed before me, and it will exist after I’m gone; the same is true for you. Things seemed to have been going pretty well leading up to my birth, and the planet will continue to spin on its axis after I’ve shuffled off this mortal coil.
Humility seems to make a lot more sense, when you really stop and think about it. Pride is probably the most common form of foolishness.
Feel free to call me a fool the next time to you see me.
The Pride Problem – Part 1
It occurred to me today that we’ve lost our perspective… on ourselves.
NOTE: THIS WILL BE A TWO-PART POST (live on 9/28 & 9/30)
I have a pride problem; it’s my greatest sin. I’ve known for some time that it’s my greatest sin, but I can’t seem to stop involving myself in things that feed my pride. I want to be praised, so I do the things that will get me the praise. Sometimes, I will even neglect –somewhat subconsciously– what will not get me praise, in favor of choosing to do something else instead, something more praiseworthy.
I especially enjoy doing things that I’ve discovered that other people think I’m good at, because then they will praise me for doing so.
Take this blog, for example. For one hundred and fifty some blog posts now (aren’t you proud of me?), I’ve been sharing my thoughts with the world. Sometimes those thoughts are humble and unassuming, but other times, they are not. I’ve bragged about regaining my physical fitness, I’ve bragged about how good I am at sudoku, I’ve bragged about other things, as well.
While blogging might be slightly different, it’s really just a social media outlet. The trouble with social media and pride is that it doesn’t feel that bad for me to be writing blog posts where I talk about the great things I’m doing, despite the fact that there would normally be something in my head that would keep me from being a braggart if I were talking to someone in the real world.
As I’ve sat at my laptop, alone in some room, bragging in the past about how awesome I think I am, I wouldn’t normally be comfortable about being so ostentatious in speaking with other people.
At least, I didn’t used to be.
But I’m not speaking to other people; that’s the thing. When I’m on social media
–whether it’s me on this blog or you on Facebook or that other guy on Twitter– we are all imagining ourselves as alone, at least that’s my theory.
The person who wouldn’t say boo to a goose in the real world, but has plenty of hatred on Facebook, is stuck in the same conundrum that I feel like I’m stuck in.
There’s just something different about social media. You and I do things on social media that we wouldn’t normally do out in public, because we feel like we’re alone when we’re on social media…
But, we’re not. It’s as public as a conversation at the grocery store in the salad dressing aisle. Maybe even more so.
* * *
The worst part of my pride problem is that, when I think I am doing something good, for the right reasons, when I think I am being of service –and then someone recognizes me for my service– all I can think to myself is about how awesome I am and how right people are when they praise me for what I’m doing.
And then, the service is tainted. Whatever I did, whatever I was able to accomplish to try to move my family forward, or my workplace forward, or my church forward, or my community forward, those accomplishments are stained by this smear of pride on them.
I almost think that I would be better off if I could hide all of the things that I am able to accomplish from the eyes of people. Then, the accomplishments would stand on their own, and people would be happy for what was accomplished. The people around me would be better off, for the contributions that my actions could provide, but they wouldn’t be able to attribute them to me.
Sometimes, it is easy enough to avoid the eyes of others as we do good things in the world around us. You have no idea how much I tip when I’m at a restaurant. You have no idea what percentage of my income I donate to charitable organizations. Easy enough to hide.
I never could figure out, though, how to keep my left hand from knowing about the activities of my right hand.
I was discussing with my psychology students this week the importance of anonymity when someone is a test subject in a psych experiment. I don’t necessarily want the whole world to know what my IQ score is, especially if it’s low, so I want the psychological researcher to promise me anonymity. But, what if I IQ-tested really high?
Wouldn’t you want those results published, right next to your name?
One of the downsides that I’ve discovered from pride is pressure. When people find out that you’re good at something, and they praise you for it, then comes the pressure. Pressure to do it again, just as well as you did it before (whether or not the previous performance was a fluke). Pressure to do what you did before whenever someone asks you to do so. Pressure to do whatever thing you’re good at for the purposes of someone else.
Anonymity sure would help, sometimes.
* * *
I suspect, deep down inside, I’m not alone on this one. I think pride was in the Garden. I think pride was at the Cross. I think pride is polluting our politics, and our churches, and our families, and our workplaces. It’s everywhere, and we’ve become addicted to it –many of us– in a way that we don’t even recognize our addiction.
Additionally, humanism, which gained in popularity in the late twentieth century, with its focus on the self, has had certain negative effects, IMO, on our society, which now promotes –much more than it used to– an arrogance and a hubris which, while it might be beneficial in certain, moderate amounts, has gotten completely out of control.
People who think more of themselves than what they ought are working everywhere in our society, from lowly blog writers to national leaders. The fact that pride and conceit are so common in the world today are indications that this is the default of man. Without working very hard at it at all, I’ve fallen into these sinful patterns when I should be actively pursuing a mindset that is more modest.
On Wednesday, in Part 2, I’ll explore an alternative to haughty arrogance.
Heard
It occurred to me today that I need to be a better listener.
Because I am in the business of helping people, you would think that I would understand how important it is to listen. And, to a certain extent, I do a decent job at listening, but I think I probably listen more for my purposes than I do with the intention of hearing someone.
When I listen for my purposes –and my purposes are to fix problems, to accomplish the goal, to alleviate the issue– I am paying attention to the details of the matter, the symptoms that could indicate a possible cause or causes that can then be addressed in a standard problem-solving approach.
As far as that kind of listening goes, I’m pretty good at that kind of listening.
But, beyond the importance of listening for the gathering of information in order to offer someone some assistance, many times, the problem is something else.
People just want to know that they’ve been heard.
For me, listening to hear is a little bit harder.
The better I get at understanding people and the problems that they have as they use technology to accomplish their goals, the more I have come to understand that many people are just operating from a position of insecurity and weakness. While I can say pretty certainly that I have only met a few people –ever– who are technologically incapable, I know of a much larger number of people who think that they are tech-challenged.
When someone has a lack of confidence or a perceived ineptitude, that doubt causes more problems –much of the time– than any missteps or errors that they make. They are operating from a belief of inferiority that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In situations where people feel insecure, it is even more important for them to feel heard.
* * *
One of the reasons that this is hard for me is that I am just too darn busy. It is what it is, and I’m not looking for pity or anything like that, but I only have so much time to stop and really spend some time listening to hear. In fact, I think the whole twenty-first century world in general is too busy to be able to take the time to slow down and to listen to people, so that we can really understand each other, so that each of us can feel like we are really being heard. I just don’t have the time.
I’ll bet you don’t either.
Another thing that happens that keeps me from really hearing people is that I make assumptions. When you’ve heard seventeen people this week, telling you that they’ve jammed up the copy machine in the teacher’s lounge, and you know that each of those seventeen people have jammed the machine by putting their originals in askew, and then that eighteenth person comes to you and says that they’ve jammed the copy machine in the teacher’s lounge, what are you going to think? So you turn to them and you say, “Did you put the originals in askew?” and you do this without even listening to that eighteenth person. Assumptions are coping mechanisms, and they speed us up to be able to handle more tasks faster, but they are often very wrong, as well.
I had a perfect example of this happen to me today. A student came to me with a problem that dozens of students have come to me with before, and I shut him down. I told him the same thing that I told all of those other students because I was running under the ASSUMPTION that he was having the same problem as all of them. And, while he was desperately trying to explain to me today that his problem was different, I even more desperately told him that all he needed to do to fix his problem was to do the same thing that I told all of those other students to do.
Then, later this afternoon, his dad emailed me. With screenshots. And a detailed explanation. And I discovered that the way that I handled the situation was all wrong.
I think I’ll take the chance to find the kid and apologize tomorrow. In working with his father this afternoon, I was able to solve a problem –again, with the father’s assistance– that was likely causing problems for a number of my students.
After ditching my assumptions.
Finally, somewhere down the line –I’m not sure when it started– I started thinking of myself as a bit of a misanthrope. The people with whom I tend to get along really well often tell me that they don’t think of me like that at all, but I look at myself in this way, and I’m afraid that it gets in the way of me being the best listener that I can be, sometimes.
* * *
At the end of the day, so much of our regular daily experiences with other people is about relationship. The better your relationship is with other people, the better you tend to get along with them and are able to sympathize with them. The better your relationship is with other people, the more likely you are to understand what is going on in their minds, and the more likely you are to be able to trust them.
The better your relationship is with other people, the more likely you are to be able to listen to them, in an effort to truly hear.
When you’re in a relationship with someone, you do things for reasons that are more likely to be selfless, more likely to be other-centered. In a relationship, I don’t listen so that I can gather information; in a relationship, I listen because I know that the other person sometimes just needs to be heard.
In a relationship, when I listen to help someone else feel like they’ve been heard, it fosters the relationship.
Let each of us find someone who needs to feel heard, and truly listen to them.
Interpreting Circumstances
It occurred to me today that perspective is a conscious decision to stay accurate in your interpretation of your circumstances.
I think it’s safe to say that I have been depressed before; I know myself well enough to understand how I’m feeling, and I know that there have been times when my level of sadness has been deep enough and prolonged enough to fit the definition of depression. During these times, I’ve reached out, to seek assistance from the people that are closest to me, who can help to keep me from falling all of the way into that darkness, when it comes. I’ve talked to my physician, and he and I have discussed the triggers that exist for me, in my life, that tend to spill me into the darkness, when I’m not being careful. We’ve talked about medication, and other treatments that might be available, if I ever felt like I needed such things.
All told, I think it’s probably happened three or four times, if I’m only counting the times when it has been serious enough for me to be a little worried about the symptoms.
After the most serious bout of depression I think I’ve ever had, my wife bought me a ring that was etched with a single word on the band of the ring; the word was ‘perspective’. The inside of the band of the ring was also etched, with words of love and affection from my family. I’ve been wearing the ring for years now, and the etching on the outside is gone, has been worn off by the passage of time, by countless small scratches that have eroded the surface of the ring.
Nevertheless, I still always see the word ‘perspective’ on the ring when I look at it; I suspect I always will.
And, of course, the inner etching has been resting against my skin, all of these years. Those words are still clearly visible on the ring. My family loves me and I love them.
It’s funny how life just wears away at us. Like so many tiny scratches and little dings and dents, until we are only a weathered version of our previous selves, just like the surface of the ring I wear. We know what used to be, before the erosion of life happened, even though it might not be apparent to anyone else who would happen to look and see.
* * *
My wife had the word ‘perspective’ etched on the ring that I wear because, as we’ve discussed on multiple occasions –she and I– the hardest thing for me to keep in mind, when the darkness comes, is that keeping things in perspective helps me to understand that some things are more important than others, and that some things really aren’t that important at all, despite the tendency that I have to get confused about my priorities.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it?
We don’t always do a great job of thinking about what’s going on in our lives and interpreting the degree to which we should be giving a significant amount of emotional weight to things that aren’t really significant. That’s how we lose perspective; we forget that the small things are just small things, or we mistake the small things for being larger than they are, and then we make mountains out of molehills.
And, this can go both ways, as well. We might naturally assume that a loss of perspective would lead a person to think of some small negative things as being huge negative things, but it’s also the case that a loss of perspective can lead people to think that small positive things are huge positive things.
Take, for example, this blog. For 150 posts, I have been excited to be growing into becoming the writer that I’ve always wanted to be. For the last fifty of those posts, I have been sharing my writing with a wider audience and it’s been great having people reading my writing and letting me know that it’s making a difference in their lives, and I’m really excited about that.
But, keeping it all in perspective, it’s really not that big a deal, especially when compared to what it is that I want to accomplish.
If making a mountain out of a molehill is a bad thing, then I would think that’s got to go both ways. If a big change in elevation is to be avoided, then a molehill isn’t a mountain, so we ought not get upset about something that isn’t as bad as we would make it out to be in our minds. Along the same lines, if I am wanting a huge change in elevation, a molehill is not a mountain and I ought not get excited about something that is less than the goal that I have for myself.
* * *
If I am wanting to become a published author, having a blog that people are reading, while somewhat fun and exciting, isn’t the mountain that I’m wanting it to be.
This post is Post #150, as nearly as I can tell by counting. It will also be my last consecutive daily post.
I was having a conversation last night with a couple of friends of mine, about my writing –on this post and the novel writing that I am ‘working on’– and about whether or not I can get to where I want to be from where I am now. The two of these friends suggested that I wouldn’t have to abandon all of the work that I’ve done in establishing this blog for the people who read it diligently. Rather, for me to be able to get the time that I need to move my novels closer to their finished states, I should just scale back my output on this blog.
So, as you are most likely reading this blog on the Monday that it goes live (if you’ve been keeping up with me), I will let you know that I am reevaluating the emotional weight that I’ve been assigning to this blog, in the hopes that I will be able to spend more time finishing the novels that I am working on. My intent is to move forward with this blog on a publishing schedule of Mondays-Wednesdays-Fridays, leaving me four days a week to work on my novel writing.
Thanks for being on this ride with me, especially those of you who’ve been there all along the way. My next blog post on this blog will go live on Wednesday, and then again on Friday.
I want to close by saying that I feel like I am responsible to all of you that have been reading my writing, and I hope that I will have a novel for you to read in the near future.
In the words of the immortal Robert Frost, I have “miles to go before I sleep.”
See you again on Wednesday.
The Squeaky Wheel
It occurred to me today that I’m certainly glad that not every wheel is squeaky.
I had one of my co-workers today send me an email –WITH OUR BOSS CC’ED– describing all of the tech issues that this coworker is having and that I need to address.
I hate it when they do this.
The idea behind an attempt like this (it happens to me often enough that I’ve come to understand it) is that I am magically going to become less busy –> less busy to the point that I will become available to address a particular issue for a particular user, if only that person includes the appropriate individual, in the appropriate position of power, as part of the conversation.
I think they call it pulling rank.
The problem with pulling rank is that it runs on the assumption that I’m not working myself to the bone every single day, during the first few weeks of a school year, trying to address everyone’s problems. It runs on the assumption that I’m sitting in my office, not doing much of anything at all, and the one thing that is going to get me off of my over-used butt, to respond to XYZ issue from ABC user, is that my boss should be made aware of the fact that I’m not quite getting to everyone in the manner that they’d prefer.
The approach backfires when your boss thinks that you’re overworked and sympathizes with you, thankfully.
I got so angry, in the moments after reading that email, that I shot an email reply back to the both of them –my coworker and my boss– and I said that I’m doing the best that I can.
And then I thought about squeaky wheels.
* * *
If only the squeaky wheel gets greased, then what happens to the other wheels, that don’t squeak and just quietly do their job? The answer is, they never get any lubrication, and then eventually what happens to them? That can’t last. The wheels that don’t squeak need lubrication, as much as the wheel that does squeak. Perhaps, when we grease that squeaky wheel, we should address all of the wheels.
Have we become a society that only addresses symptoms and not underlying diseases? You certainly see this in the medical field, to mix the metaphors a little bit.
The individual who avoids the annual physical, or any medical appointment, for that matter, until the point in time when they have a continuous pain in their bowel and get diagnosed with Stage 4 intestinal cancer. Maybe an occasional medical checkup would have caught that somewhat earlier. Benjamin Franklin famously said that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’, but we just don’t think like that much anymore.
The fact that there is a squeaky wheel is certainly a sign of a problem, but if you don’t get to the place where you address prevention, as opposed to just fixing problems, then you’re always going to end up just fixing problems, because they’ll keep coming, as a result of the fact that you never addressed what’s causing the problems in the first place. Unfortunately, I think we end up getting stuck in this mode, where all we do is address the problems that keep coming up; and then, we can’t ever get past such a place, to be able to ask ourselves why these problems keep happening.
* * *
I’ll bet someone out there, reading this right now, has a reflexive desire to stand up in defense of the ‘squeaky wheel’ approach. Maybe, at some point, you’ve been the ‘squeaky wheel’. I can’t say that I blame you for using that approach. I’ve known plenty of people who’ve used the approach and been successful in doing so.
In fact, for as many times as I’ve gotten irritated when people try to pull that selfish garbage with me, I’ve probably –just as many times– given way to the power that such an approach uses.
And it’s a disservice to the people who do what they do, without being obnoxious about getting their needs met.
But, I also have to confess that I am so darn busy, with all that lies before me at work, that I sometimes just plum forget to answer the help desk request that comes in only once, and then gets buried under a mountain of other requests. The squeaky wheel in my help desk system is the request that comes in on three or four different tickets.
* * *
So, for most of the day today at work, I was thinking about writing this post on squeaky wheels, after that email from my coworker. Then, at the very end of the day today, my boss told me about a plan that she was working on to try to get me some help with all that I have to do. She told me about the plan moving forward and gaining ground, and she told me that she’d been very vocal about trying to get me some help; she even identified herself as a ‘squeaky wheel’ on the subject.
When she said to me that she’d been a ‘squeaky wheel’, and that it had worked, I chuckled; since I’d been thinking about this post all day long in my head, it was funny that she was admitting to me that she was using this approach.
If you are going to go about the practice of being a squeaky wheel, of raising your voice to draw attention to something that needs to be addressed, it’s one thing to do so as you seek after your own needs. It’s another thing entirely, IMO, if you go about doing the squeaky wheel thing to try to get assistance for other people.
What do you speak up for? Is it primarily for yourself, or are you speaking up for people who need your voice, drawing attention to their circumstances?
Quitting
It occurred to me today that no one quits when it’s easy to keep going.
I was thinking about quitting this blog. I am coming up on my 150th consecutive daily blog post, and it’s sometimes hard to come up with additional things to say. If I stopped at 150, and just shut things down, I could get a bit of a break. I feel like a lot of what I write is pointless drivel, and it’s honestly keeping me from making much progress at all on the novel(s) that I’m trying to write.
And then, as I was contemplating quitting, you’ll never guess what happened. As I was sitting there, I came up with three or four ideas that would make great posts, including remembering an excellent idea that I’d forgotten earlier today, when I didn’t have the opportunity to capture the idea as it was in my head. Hate it when that happens.
So, at the end of the day, the question of quitting or not quitting is the question at hand.
* * *
I think that quitting is primarily a response to difficult times, to desperation, and to fatigue. No one quits when things are easy, because it wouldn’t make any sense.
But, what if I told you that it makes EVEN LESS SENSE to quit when things are hard? What if I told you that quitting only makes the slightest bit of sense when things are easy?
Let me explain.
What gives a person the power to be able to make their way through something hard is having been through something hard before. If that sounds a little bit like ‘the chicken or the egg’, let me continue.
You have faced difficult things all of your life. Every time you have, you have either had the option to quit, or you haven’t. And, because there have been certain times in your life when you’ve had to face hard things without getting the option of quitting, you persevere through those challenges. The strength that we receive when we persevere makes it possible for us to do the hard things in the future.
So, the trick is to never quit, if there exists no other reason for quitting, other than how hard things have become. The only strength that any of us have ever been able to establish in our lives is a tenacity that came during a time when quitting wasn’t an option. If you’re going to quit, quit when things are easy –> if you quit during the easy times, at least you aren’t cheating yourself out of an opportunity to become stronger, to increase your stamina, via one of life’s difficulties.
I have a motivational poster, pinned on one of my Pinterest boards, that says, “Sometimes, it doesn’t get easier, you get stronger. Sometimes, life doesn’t work out, you work through it. Sometimes, things don’t get better, you get better.”
The growth mindset.
* * *
When I am out on a run, sometimes, I quit. I get to the place where I don’t want to run anymore, and then I stop. I pull out of my stride and I walk instead. I do this for a few dozen steps, or maybe many dozens of steps, and then I get back to the running.
I don’t know why I do this as often as I do. In fact, I’ll do it many times without it even having crossed my conscious mind that I need to, or want to, quit. I just stop, and then I think to myself, “Why did you even do that? Get back up to pace, you lazy slacker!”
Because I have the option to do so, I choose so. If there were no options for quitting during my workouts, then I’d persevere.
It reminds me of a story that I read, years back, from Stephen King. The story is called The Long Walk, and it’s a good one, if you are looking for a story to read. It’s most definitely about runners who don’t have the option to quit.
The bottom line is, when I persevere, I get stronger. That strength makes it less likely that I will find it necessary to quit in the future. Quitting begets quitting.
If I stopped quitting, then I could stop quitting. Wrap your head around that one.
* * *
My life verse is James 1:2-4 (I guess it’s my life ‘three verses’). These verses discuss how important it is for people to celebrate difficulties, because it’s the tribulations in life that lead to the strengthening of our character.
The way that these verses actually talk about the tribulations of life, we should be happy about the bad times. Talk about the opposite of how we usually look at things! How many people do you know that look forward to things being hard?
I have a friend who is practiced in saying really smart things that make me scratch my head until I come to understand them. He often rephrases “I have to…” into “I get to…” For example, where other people might say, “I have to take out the garbage”, this friend of mine might say, “I get to take out the garbage.” As many times as I’ve heard him say this, I’ve thought that I understood what he was getting at.
However, I don’t know if I’ve ever fully understood the implication of those words until they coincided with the writing of this post.
The way that we look at things –easy things, difficult things, what have you– is part of the equation that determines, in our minds, their level of difficulty. More specifically, our choice in doing certain things can help us to look at those things as opportunities, rather than as tortures to be endured.
The individual who is thinking, “I have to take out the garbage” is probably not very likely to think of the event as an opportunity for getting one’s heartrate up or for stretching one’s legs. But, the person who is thinking, “I get to take out the garbage” at least hasn’t closed their mind to thinking of the event and its possibilities.
Perhaps, the next time I am thinking about quitting during my run, I won’t think to myself, “I have to go another mile.” Maybe, instead, I’ll think, “I get to go another mile!”
And, the next time I think about quitting during my writing adventures, I’ll remember the great opportunity that is mine for the taking.
The Circle Of Life
It occurred to me today that I am noticing a pattern.
At my house, whenever someone asks a question or makes an observation about the way that life works, or the way that things tend to come around in succession, something like that, I will always deeply inhale and then sing, at the top of my lungs, the chorus from the theme to The Lion King…
THE CIRCLE OF LIFE. AND IT MOVES US ALL. THROUGH DESPAIR AND HOPE. THROUGH FAITH AND LOVE.
You get the idea.
My kids always roll their eyes when I do this. Jennie gets that ‘your dad’s a goofball’ look on her face.
Life has a bit of a pattern to it, if you are paying attention. As a matter of fact, there are probably many different series of patterns that exist, just waiting for us to discover them, and I think that I have been blessed by God with the ability to see some of these, from time to time.
The next time you watch the movie (The Lion King), pay close attention to the opening scene and the closing scene. If you’ve done this already, then you know what I’m talking about –> at the beginning of the movie, Simba is being raised high into the air by his father, Mufasa. Then, the final scene involves Simba, similarly raising his son high into the air.
We are born. We grow up. We are raised by parents, and then we become parents, and then our children become parents. We see our parents as ‘parents’ when we are children, then we grow up and get to the point where we can see our parents as ‘fellows’, as we parent our own children and we realize that we get a chance at doing with our children what our parents did as they raised us.
* * *
I am at the beginning of my nineteenth year of being a public school teacher, and this has been, as the years have gone by, another opportunity for me to marvel at the patterns that exist. Especially recently, I’ve had some of my favorite coworkers move on to their retirement, and I’ve been left with fewer and fewer coworkers that I can look to and say, “They were working here when I first started.” In fact, I guess I am starting to be the guy that people are looking at and thinking, “Man, that guy’s been here a long time.”
As sad as it has been for me to have these friends, near and dear to my heart, moving on to their retirement, I am happy for them, happy that they’ve been able to make it to the goal.
As a matter of fact, I am now starting to get to that place, as an educator, where I am teaching the children of students that I taught at the very beginning of my career. If that doesn’t make you feel old, I don’t know what will.
For as many years as my workplace –my school district– existed in advance of me showing up for my first day of work, and for as many years as I hope that it will continue on after I’ve said my fond farewells, I guess that’s the way that it goes. We all have those places where we show our faces for a period of time, and afterward we move on.
Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. Hee hee.
* * *
We became a three-car family last month, with the addition of Eleanor to our ‘garage’. Eleanor is a Buick SUV that we bought for my wife, so I could get her hand-me-down vehicle, and the kids could get mine. In the weeks and days leading up to the decision to get a third vehicle, my wife and I both tried to think back to our younger days, when we were starting to drive, and what our parents did about securing a vehicle for their kids (us). Then, having that example from our past, we were free to follow the example, or discard it, to pursue some other course.
We’ve taken this approach many times, as we’ve been navigating as a family for the past sixteen-plus years. Looking back to how it used to be done is often a great starting point for trying to get a look at some of our options, as we make decisions about charting a course for our family. As often as we’ve decided to try to do things in a similar fashion to how our parents did things when we were young, we’ve probably just as often decided to do things differently, since we’re different people with different circumstances.
Without fail, and regardless of which way we’ve decided to go in different situations, I’ve always felt impressed by the circular nature of the human experience.
Kids, raised by parents, grow up to be parents, raising kids, and then become grandparents, watching their kids raising kids.
* * *
In the opening section, I referenced the theme from The Lion King. And, as often as I’ve thought of the patterns as circular, I’m thinking at this particular moment of a very, very long line. My part of this line starts at the point on the line right around AD1975. My dad’s part of the line starts right around AD1949. For twenty-six plus years, my dad’s line didn’t have my line running next to it, but for the last almost forty-five years, those lines have been concurrent.
My wife’s part of the line starts a few years after mine starts, on AD1978, but significant portions of those two lines –hers and mine– are right next to each other.
My son’s line starts at AD2004, and my twin daughters got their start a few years after that, give or take.
I’ve got friends whose lines, next to mine, may have started before mine, or after mine.
My point in closing this post with this illustration is this: we are on a journey, each of us, and during that journey, we come in contact with others who are also on journeys of their own. We journey together with other people, sometimes for large parts of our (or their) journey, and sometimes we only journey with these others for a short while.
The length of time that we get to spend with our fellows on these journeys seems to be governed by circumstances beyond our control, and we are usually poorly prepared to give up on the time that we got to spend with these others.
Spend some time reflecting on the people that you’ve been blessed to share the journey with. Think about how they’ve been able to offer instruction and information to you. Hopefully, you’ve also been able to help people on their path by being an example for them to follow.
Finally, stop taking for granted those moments that you get to spend with them. We are sojourners, each of us.
The Equation of Assistance
It occurred to me today that asking for help, and getting it, is complicated.
I am a problem-solver for my school district. On most days, I solve the problems of the people who are using the technology of the school district, whether those people are students or staff. Today, I handled three situations, almost back-to-back-to-back, that are pretty representative of the kinds of problems that I handle most of the time. These three problems, and the sequence in which they came to me, got me to thinking about assistance.
Let me explain.
These three problems came in, and I was able to deal with each of them, in turn. None of them were particularly challenging; if anything, I was more frustrated by the idea of having to spend my time answering questions that were so simple as to boggle the mind. Literally, one of these issues wasn’t an issue at all; the user just thought there was an issue because they’d not done a basic level of investigating.
I’ve been noticing, more and more lately, that when people ask for help, they do so after a number of different variables have come into play in an equation that is different for every person. That equation, when it reaches a certain point, causes a person to ask for assistance on any particular problem.
What’s even more interesting about this equation for assistance is this: the longer that I’ve been working with some of the staff members in my school district, the better I get to know them and the more I understand that they ask for assistance –from me and presumably from others– once they’ve reached a certain point. For the people that I’ve been working with the longest, I know where that point is and how much work they’ve done (or not done) to try to address their own issues.
As I’ve been thinking more and more about this, I’ve started to think about our society, and the extent to which people seek assistance from others, either very early because they are unaccustomed with wrestling with a problem until a solution can be reached, or rather late because there are certain variables in play that keep the individual from asking for assistance until after the optimum point for doing so.
For example, guys never ask for directions, right?
That equation, and the way that all of the variables determine at which point a guy is going to stop and ask for directions, if he’s lost, is a complicated thing that varies as much as each guy is different from each other guy.
When you are in the business of answering people’s questions, of offering assistance, of helping people, understanding what brings them to you and the process through which they’ve made their way is important in helping you to be able to assist them in the manner that is most appropriate.
As I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve been wondering about the variables in the equation.
For certain, one of these variables is the pride/humility factor.
Individuals who tend to be proud are less likely to ask for assistance until later in their struggle. For proud people, asking for assistance is tantamount to admitting defeat. For people who tend to be more humble, their readiness to seek assistance results in them getting assistance more quickly, obviously. What might not be as obvious is the fact that humble people, having asked for assistance and having received it, are more likely to proceed through the challenges they face at a decent rate of speed, having received the assistance that they weren’t too proud to ask for.
The balance that is at play in this scenario is interesting, inasmuch as there is a gender gap in humility, I think; women are much more likely to be humble people. Since this is true, they are probably much more likely to ask for assistance in a timely fashion.
Another part of the equation that determines when we ask for help, I think, is our own feeling of competence. I notice this a lot, when it comes to technology; people who feel like they are incompetent don’t have as many reservations about asking for help as do people who are operating under a belief that they have some skill in a particular area.
Additionally, I think hope is a factor, whether or not there is a lot of data to support the suggestion. People who tend to be less hopeful –hopeless, in general– are more likely to ask for help more quickly because they don’t tend to believe that there is a chance that they might figure things out on their own.
Confidence is a thing, by the way, and I’ve proved it as a person who works with individuals who seem to have trouble doing things. If you’ve ever seen the movie, Dumbo, then you know what I’m talking about. The idea, that Dumbo believed in his head that he could fly because of the feather that he held in his trunk, seems silly, when you think about it. But, as silly as it might be, imagine this scenario:
I’ve taken a device from someone, to replace it with a different device, because the person is convinced that the device is the problem. Sometimes, when you are in that situation, replacing the device is the only thing you can do to help the person to be able to succeed. But, I’ve taken a device from someone, gone into a different room to “replace it with a different device”, and then I give them the exact same device back. And, you’d be surprised how often a person is able to do what they couldn’t do before, when they just believe that the obstacles have been removed. Same device and everything.
Now, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like there is point that we ought to try to make it to before we ask for help. I probably believe this because of the interactions that I’ve had with people, seeking my assistance, only to come to find out that they really didn’t try very hard at all at trying to fix their own problems, before they decide to come and pester me. Conversely, I feel like people often don’t give themselves enough credit; there’s no telling what might happen in situations where people are willing to just try for a few seconds longer at solving their own issues.
So, the next time you are in a position to seek assistance, ask yourself if you’ve tried hard enough to come up with your own solutions. You could surprise yourself. On the other side of the coin, try not to struggle unnecessarily, because of your own pride, before seeking that assistance that could put you further down the road.
It Occurred To Me Today 