Timeless Friends

Some friends are truer than others. They come into your lives and they stick around, while others are the ones who are great to have around for awhile but fade because of circumstance.

The friends that are permanently affixed to you are special. They are friends with you and you are friends with them. They are not friends with your intellect or your kindness or your success. And you are not friends with them because of their car, ability to listen or good-looking sister. They speak and listen and are honest. They may not be a part of your daily life, but they are part of your life, period.

Friends like that are special. They are timeless. Not everyone is a timeless friend, but those that are never go out of style.

Leadership and Solitude: A response

Joey kindly sent me this link from the American Scholar and I've thought about it a bit in the past few days after circulating it with some friends. Some dissected it argumentatively (nicely done, Eden) or offered practical wisdom of uninterrupted time (thanks Bouchard, I think that's actually something I'd like to incorporate into my daily life - see this also: Why Work Doesn't Happen at Work.)

I can't disagree with Eden that the author does put up strawmen and mow them down because it's popular to undermine bureaucracy and social media. And I don't disagree with those who find it to be a refreshing call to reflection which is hardly ever voiced with a full-throated bellow. I will however, explore a bit the most insightful part of the talk to me: the dissection of leadership and achievement.

Let's look for a moment at the progression of leadership in organizations and the incentives surrounding leadership.

By and large, leaders are brought up through organizations. Let's create a basic hypothetical situation. Imagine Pete. Pete joins the sales organization of Standard Widgets Corp. (SW). He does well and gets promoted. He increases his capability to sell and recieves a larger sales territory. Eventually, he manages other sales people. Along the way, he hones his "leadership" skills on-the-job and through some sort of corporate program. This is a pretty standard model for advancement - you do well and you move up. But, does this really mean Pete is good at leading? Not necessarily. Of course, it's very likely, even probable that Pete is a good leader. But that's precisely the point, Pete doesn't rise through the organization because of his ability to lead. He rises because he's a high achiever.

Incentive structures match this notion of high achievement = skill -> leadership = excellence. The pay difference between "leadership" or "executive" positions compared to senior technical people is large and in some cases exorbitant. The top of the pyramid is a CEO position or other leadership/management type position. We hold "leaders" in esteem, publicly.

This is all fine, I guess I just take issue with the process. With the exception of end-to-end leadership development programs which start from early career levels we're using achievement as a proxy for leadership selection. Which is fine, it just seems like a whiff because we ought to be selecting leaders based on their potential, desire or aptitude for leadership. Or, if leadership is a universally needed quality, we should be making leadership at the core of an organization's DNA and not separating people based on their leadership potential.

In any case, I'm circling the point. This is what I want to suggest. In the US (perhaps elsewhere, I haven't really thought about international implications) we use achievement as a pre-requisite and sometimes as a proxy for leadership. This is incorrect and dangerous.

First the obvious, it's incorrect. I suppose it's not supremely obvious but I don't really want to spend time defending this assumption. I'll leave it at this, posing it as a question. How can leadership and achievement be synonymous unless achievement in leadership is what one is looking at? Why would achievement in something like sales or research (basically anything other than leadership) translate to leadership success?

[As I've attempted to show above, we select leaders from the pool of high achievers, not directly from the pool of capable leaders...achievement is a proxy it seems].

It's dangerous, in my opinion, because there are two axioms which doesn't necessarily vibe with eachother:

1. Leadership is for doing the right thing (i.e. we value leaders because they are necessary to guide groups to do the right thing)
2. Incentives for achievement don't always align with incentives for doing the right thing.
Therefore - incentives for achievement don't always align with leadership.

Simple, yes. But, can you imagine if leaders don't understand the distinction between leadership and achievement. We're risking that ethics, morality and principle be superceded by achievement. Achievement need not be benign (e.g. credit default swaps and increased profits at the cost of emissions. The social sector isn't immune...it's not impossible for not-for-profits to go after grant money even though it doesn't make the most impact in the community, etc.).

In any case, I have to run to hang out with friends (woot, slows bbq!). But the two sentence summary is:

The distinction between leadership and achievement is an important one because if we, and leaders, don't understand the difference we're setting ourselves us to risk sacrificing doing the right thing for doing what's "highest achieving". This isn't always a bad thing but when doing the right thing contradicts with achievement and we don't do the right thing, we have messy, costly situations.

ME first vs. me FIRST

Even though I have a notable distaste for elections, I watch election night coverage enthusiastically. What of it? It's fun.

Anyway, I remember watching John Boehner on MSNBC the next morning and something he said stuck with me. I paraphrase:

The American People have spoken and they reject Washington. They don't want to pay more taxes...

And that's where I stopped listening. I'm actually not frustrated by what Mr. Boehner said (as some of my small-government critics, might've guessed. I actually agree with Mr. Boehner that 1) The people reject Washington, 2) They don't want to pay more taxes.

What I find troublesome is that Mr. Boehener, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Obama, Mr. Reid, etc. all let the American people get away with believe that they're the bosses. [I deliberately exclude Mr. Bush from this list because I think he actually acted very much on principle, which I deeply respect, even though I still disagreed with him a lot of the time]. And, of course, the American people are in fact, "the bosses", but that doesn't mean that they're right.

The problem is, as I see it, is that Americans have a "me first" mentality, in the bad sense of the word. In fact, I'd say in the phrase "me first" Americans emphasize the ME first.

What do I mean by this? That we (collectively) are selfish - individually too. We burn the candle at both ends, in a way. We want government to do all this stuff and cry wolf when it doesn't do what we expect it to do. We don't want to pay for it, either. We don't vote in high amounts (again, collectively) and still expect legislators to be responsive. We want to shop without saving (at least we did in the past 5 years, not sure about now) and keep oil prices down. We WANT all this stuff without giving. It's an arrogance to think that we as individuals and our nation can get away with being selfish and narcissistic because we're American. That's what I mean by ME first.

I'd counter that with the idea of me FIRST, this time emphasizing "first". This to me, is the inverse of selfishness: sacrifice. This idea is that "me" should be the first to sacrifice. The first to want to help. The first to roll up my sleeves, the first to pay taxes. It's personified in the NYPD and NYFD who ran into the center of a hell storm to sacrifice themselves for others and because it was their duty - because it was the right thing to do. And not only did they do it, they did it FIRST. They're incredibly deserving of the honors that they've recieved, in my humble opinion. Those men and women are some of the best people we've got in this country, not only because of their heroism on a tragic day, because they put YOU first.

Anyway, in whatever way I can, I'm going to remind people that YOU come first and I go FIRST. I think we all could live by that mentality a bit more...before we tear ourselves apart. It's a long road ahead, we've gotta make sacrifice.

And, why do I write about this stuff so much? Because I see my youthfulness and ability to take risks challenged by the institutions which I operate in. I see the "ME first" mentality creeping into my life. I want to fight it back at every opportunity I can. Not because I want to inflate my ego by being positioning myself as some civic martyr or charitable kingmaker, but because I know it's the only way out of our problems. Something's gotta give, if we don't give of ourselves the balance in the universe will do it for us.

I wrote this in a cab, haha.

Let's go Rick Snyder, I'm your corner sir. Help us make sacrifices so that our state can be more vibrant.

Michigan Men, Morality, and Mentorship

I've been sitting on this post for awhile.

I constantly aspire to be a Michigan Man. Note, that I don't think I've gotten there nor am I vaulting myself atop some moral pedestal. It's just a good way of manifesting virtue in an idea, I think. That means nothing. Let me explain. As always though, a bit of back story.

I took a moral philosophy class in college, and one of the things I remember most was our discussion of different moral philosophies and frameworks. Basically, we talked about different ways people approach morality. Basically, there were three biggies we discussed:

Consequentialism - the moral rightness or wrongness of our actions depends on the consequences we create in the world.

Deontology - the moral rightness or wrongness of our actions depends on whether the actions adhere to some set of moral rules.

Virtue Ethics - would a virtuous person do the action(s)? If so, you're being morally good.

Now, I don't want to get into a discussion about the merits or difficulties with any of the moral theories above. Mostly because I'm only an amateur moral philosopher and can hardly go toe-to-toe defending one theory over another. But, I also wish to push these questions aside, because for one I want to discuss the practical matters of morality.

On that note, I'm a big virtue ethicist. And the way I kind of figure out what "character" is appropriate or what is virtuous, I think of what it means to Michigan Man. I think it means telling the truth and keeping your word. I think it means supporting the people and institutions you care about. I think it means giving back to the world that raised you. I think it means public service and service to one's family. I think it means having pride and confidence without being boastful. I think it means wearing Maize and Blue on Fridays at the office, during football season. I think it means leading for the sake of the team and not for the sake of leading.

I think being a Michigan Man means a lot of things, as you could probably guess.

But it's difficult to figure all this out. Learning what's virtuous is not a straight-forward sort of activity. It takes struggling and making mistakes. It's really friggen hard and time-consuming. For dramatic effect, though, I'm purposefully avoiding the key component of learning what's virtuous...

Mentorship.

Man oh man. How can anyone get through life, let alone discover what's right and wrong without mentors? Parents, teachers, neighbors, relatives, siblings, friends...all these people teach us about virtues and push us to discover these meanings on our own. A young child (or older adult) who has never seen mentorship cannot imagine the big picture or even how to function as a normal human being. I don't think we can expect kids to learn right from wrong without mentorship. How could we?

Mentorship is a sacred passing of tacit knowledge from one generation to the next. For that reason, it's not just a relationship between a mentor and a mentee...it's a relationship between a mentee and all the mentors that have come before him, since the beginning of time. A good mentor, from atop the shoulders of giants, raises you upon his own shoulders. A child - or adult for that matter - without a mentor is not only at a small disadvantage, they are missing out on the support of people across the millenia. That's a big gap.

I also think about how one might learn or set themselves up to learn consequentialism or deontological moral frameworks. With consequentialism, you have to analyze your own action and with deontology you have to understand moral rules. All that shit is complicated. I feel like you could study that stuff your whole life and not understand or apply it in life. You'd get caught up in the minutiae.

Which is why I think mentorship is the only "practical morality" we have. It's our best chance of impressing moral values to those around us. We actually transmit ideas this way, and it fits with our need for human interaction and affirmation. Mentorship is the only way to inflect morality across the masses of people on the earth. And even though it's problematic, I think virtue ethics is the most practical way to interpret morality. Afterall, what's easier to answer, "what are the immediate and long-term consequences of my actions?", or, "am I being a Michigan Man?". Both are hard, but I think we have a fighting chance of answering the second question, because of mentorship.

1 Corinthians 13:11

So, it's kind of unexpected...I draw on the Bible for small snippets of wisdom sometimes. Nearly all of the passages that I think of often come from fraternity lore. I'm reminded of 1 Corinthians 13:11 today. It reads (King James Version):

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

And I think of this passage tonight.

Whether you know this or not, I often feel like I didn't have a childhood. At least, I don't really remember the feeling of my consciousness as a child. Maybe it's because I'm dumb and can't remember. Maybe I just led a boring life as a kid, I'm not sure why. But nonetheless, I don't remember the irreverence and gleefulness of being a kid. I feel the same today as I always have.

But today, I remember what that unintentional apathy - borne from ignorance - feels like, or, I want to. I remember wool covering my eyes. I can't decide if it's a good feeling.

You see, even though I didn't have a childhood filled with particularly tumultuous events...somewhere along the line I grew up a little bit fast, I think. Even in the past year. Sometimes I feel like a dad, like a man of the house. In college and high school, at times, I felt like an elder statesman. Lately, I just feel un-relatedly old.

And sometimes I want to reject it. I want to willfully disregard responsibility. I crave the intellectual, emotional and social freedom that comes with being young. But, I'm not sure that I can now. And to my brothers who have become men - either voluntarily or those who've had it thrust upon them - I don't think you can go back either.

[This is where the ominous voice in your head says, "sorry."]

I know I sound like self-righteous (duh, I always sound self-righteous) when I say this, by the way. But I really feel this way. I seriously feel pressure to stay in the saddle. Because the world needs boys to become men.

If I am able to, then why not me? Or you? Or us? Isn't it a moral obligation? And not necessarily an obligation, but almost a sacred duty? Isn't growing up a timeless way to honor the sacrifice of one's parents and mentors?

I think that it is, because that's the way to a better world...standing up tall and figuring it out. That's what our parents raised us to do. To be strong. To do the right thing. To work together with others for the benefit of others. To make sacrifices and take risks. The whole lot.

Shoot, I sound like a conservative.

Also, if you're thinking that I'm some sort of jerk for making this post gendered and that I'm neglecting the important role women have in being stewards of society, etc...save it. Read between the effing lines.

Having it all

I had a provocative conversation with a family-friend today. She's a medical resident in Flint right now and was telling me about what being a new resident is like and the sorts of challenges she's been facing. They are hard. Really hard.

Over the course of our conversation, she got to something I have been thinking about a lot lately: can we have it all. Can we live a life with a fulfiling career and a strong commitment to family. Can we do good in the world and still make enough money to live a secure, comfortably, plentiful and fun life? Can we make a difference in the world without compromising our integrity?

I've realized over the past year that this isn't an easy task, at all. The complexities of human interaction, especially when security of self and well-being is not guaranteed, are enough to topple empires if not handled well. Other people aside, too, it takes so much energy on the individuals' behalf. The prospects of being able to conquer the dualities I mentioned are slim. Having it all is ambitious, if not foolish. It might even be an indicator of insanity.

But as we chatted, I started to reject this. If we do, that is, if we have agency, there is no doubt that we can have it all. We can have what really matters. But it takes an incessant willingness to work, I think, and work smartly. It takes tenacity, a warm touch and self-awareness. Sometimes I don't know if I'll be able to manage it. But then I think, one must just think that they can. That they can claw their way to the great light. You've gotta. No matter how bad things seem.

If you want it all, there's no out that's required...there's not "option". It's a "you're in or you're out kind of deal.

Time to saddle up.

-PS, not sure how coherent this is...hopefully so.

"Real" life

On my way home from work today, I read this article in GQ, titled Boom. It was one of the more moving things I had read in awhile. I swear, the article wasn't shmaltzy, though it had pretty "heart-tuggy" passages. It was just raw, real and honest...and that's what was moving about it.

This passage in particular (the last bit of the piece):

"Shane always told me, 'If anything ever happens to me out there, you better fight till you're blue in the face,'" she says. Because if something ever happened to Shane, that meant something went wrong—something that shouldn't have gone wrong and shouldn't go wrong again—and usually it takes a judge and a jury to get that point across with any authority. "I want to be able to sit down with Blaine twenty years from now and tell him something really bad happened one night," she says, "but here are all the good things that came out of it. Here are the safety rules that changed, here are the regulations that changed."

But what does she tell him now? What does she tell a 3-year-old boy who'd just figured out that Daddy was gone when his truck was gone and Daddy was home when his truck was home, but now Daddy's truck is home and Daddy's not? What does she tell him when Blaine is playing with a toy John Deere and slips and bumps his arm and he's not really hurt but he's crying and he wants his Daddy? What does she tell him then?

She tells him the only thing she can think of. "Just raise your arm up toward the sky," she says, "and let Daddy kiss it."

And because Blaine is only 3, he believes her. So he raises his arm and says, "Thank you, Daddy," and sniffes away the last of his tears.

And, I was just sitting in my seat and I was just moved. Slightly teary, but most just jolted...like the way you perk up in your office chair just as your body loses its grogginess for the day.

And walking out of the terminal, I just wondered why. And this is what I thought.

It was just so real. It was honest. It wasn't manufactured, it was just a moment that really caught its own essence. It was like reality TV, except not on TV and actually reality.

And then I realized how sometimes we just want moments to be special, because we want them to mean something. Or mean something more...something that trancends the very moment that we're experiencing. There are times that we're deliberate about moments, we either make them happen or really focus on the fact that they happened.

But that moment, described in that article, was different. It was precisely real. Precisely real. Not just, "in the moment". It was REAL life.

As much as I like powerful, meaningful moments, it doesn't have to be like that. There's something about moments just as they are, that can be wonderful. They can be amusing, charming, emotional, funny or uncomfortable...just as they're supposed to be. And that they deliver exactly that breed of emotion - the real moment they're supposed to - makes them amazing in retrospect.

Those moments, though, are elusive...because it takes everything about the moment to be real, from the people to the context. It's like being silent with someone you love, in an elevator. The time that passes - all of 15 seconds - is almost naked and so binding...because those 15 seconds are exactly what they are supposed to be.

That begets the question, in my mind, what does it take to be real?

"The Lucky Ones"

Just fooling around with some words, a little bit...


And in their youth they hung off the precipice of what the world could be. Lining their dreams with magic and the begginings of things. Everything was dabbed with marinara sauce in those days. Optimism and iPods are how they made it through difficult evenings as they toiled away at building the world up again. The easy days were glorious.

It was uncertain what would happen as they aged. They did come of age in remarkably unstable times, afterall. Many of them had unfounded expectations, even though they practiced persistence. But their lives were good, as far as lives go. Others were lost - not necessarily in a physical way - and were the collateral damage of their generation. Unfortunately, nobody knows if it was necessary for it to be that way or if it could've been avoided.

The last of them did what they had set out to do...fixing the mistakes of their mothers and fathers. They had to make sacrifices and take unreasonable risks. They rebelled for the right reasons and were always tired, caffienated or both.

They were the lucky ones.

"Almost" stories

There's a day, coming in the indefinite future, where things will start to coalesce. It's a day where random occurences will contribute to a larger narrative, and won't be so random any more. "Almost" stories will complete themselves and become stories in their own right. Everything will fall into place, so to speak.


I imagine all this happening in a flurry, but I suppose I don't really know what it'll look and feel like. Maybe that day was yesterday. Maybe it'll be in 6-8 months.

Either way, I'm throwing a party shortly thereafter.

Thinking of camp.

On this 4th of July. I think of character. And character which is not shakeable, is not character at all. As a nation, as a tribe and as individuals. I've found it difficult lately to stay "centered" in this way. But at the same time, if we are not true to our character, all we have in this world is not true. So we must, whether it is painful to discover and exercise - or if is not.

This is what I learned at camp.

We felt pathetic.

Trading stories, a roommate and I, commiserating about a topic that's irrelevant to this story. But we felt that way, nonetheless.

The stories were wrenching, for us, emotionally. And, we feel that way about other things too - I think we find ourselves in this predicament of feeling pathetic, precisely because we're willing to take risks in social and emotional matters. In essence, we feel pathetic, because we take on tough cookies and struggle.

I don't write this to garner some sort of pity party, by the way.

Rather, the point of me writing this is to say that I don't think it's pathetic at all. Even though I feel that way, often. We shouldn't feel pathetic because we live life in a way that gets us into tough spots beause we put it all out there. We put our hats into the ring and leave all our cards on the table, so to speak. That's not lame. It's the stuff that underwrites dream-chasing.

Indeed, non-bearers of social risk aren't pathetic either. However, if we lack people willing to take social and emotional risks, we as a society are surely lost. We should not feel pathetic for doing things which are hard. We cannot.

Satyam Vada, Dharman Chara

I've been thinking for many weeks now about why I believe in honesty. I've run into walls for two reasons. First, I find myself valuing honesty because if one is not honest, bad things happen. Second, I find myself valuing honesty because good thing happen if one is honest. These are fine, but their valuing honesty on the basis of utility.

I don't want to do that.

I want to find the intrinsic value of honesty. I believe in it because of it's very essence and I want to define that. I think I may have found an angle:

Honesty is sacred.

I believe in honesty because it is sacred. It is the glue that holds human bonds together. It is the basis of trust and one of the ultimate affirmations a person can bestoy to somebody else.

Honesty is a choice. When one is honest they are respecting life and reality for what it is. They are recognizing their existence. They are absorbing life purely. When acting honestly it builds trust among people. In fact, I'd say honesty is an absolutely essential to relationships - it's an infrastructure for human interaction.

It's an ultimate nod of respect. If you tell someone the truth, you are basically telling them that they matter enough to hear the truth. That they are capable of handling it's power.

And, there's a certain raw energy in stark, unadulterated honesty. Honesty and the truth are fixed, they are absolute. The truth is the truth, if you get down to it. This is supremely powerful because it is fundamental. For that reason I think honesty has energy - there are no ifs ands or butts about it, it's just there and cannot be trumped.

Satyam Vada, dharmam chara. This is a phrase describing the ultimate axiom of hindu morality - tell the truth, do your duty. It's funny, I remember learning about this in Sunday school when I was very, very little. Now, it finally means more than words. They are so powerful. Honesty often in.

This I Believe, again.

I have spent much of this year reflecting upon what matters in life. Friends, family, persistence, freedom, etc. In other words, I've cataloged the core group of things that I value.

But I want to revisit an old exercise that I struggled with the first time around.

Backstory: one of my favorite things is the radio segment This I Believe. Basically in the 1950's - during the era of McCarthyism - when the nation was it one of its most fearful times, Edward R. Murrow invited citizens to espouse their deepest convictions on the radio. Recently, the program was revived because it was a time, again, where the reflection and sharing of peoples' strongest convictions was needed most.

I want to do this again, because the first time was a miserable failure.

I've parsed out what drives me, the heuristics I live my life by, and what matters to me most in the world. Those things are clear. Now it's time for conviction. It's time to cull out my deepest, innermost belief. (Note: that noun is singular, it has to be).

So, I will start off by completing this sentence. I thought it was going to be hard, but it hit me about 70 words ago.

If I was to tell you one thing about me, one thing that if you understood that you would understand me it would be that...

I believe in the power of Honesty.

Now, for a post in the future...what does it mean to believe in honesty?

-nt

The World is Messy

The world is messy, just as our lives are messy. The way we live, the way we love, the way we hurt and the way we act...all these things cause pain and frustration side by side with the joy and wonder they inspire. To modify an old adage...sometimes the world is gray, but more often it is black and white mixed all the way together into a chunky stew of morality. Right and wrong is not blended, but complexly interwoven.

So the dillema of living it right isn't borne from a difficultly making sense of what to do - that's clear more often than not, I think - but rather it's difficult figuring out how to deal with the consequences of our actions in a world where incentives, payoffs, emotions, loyalty, passion and about 100 other things are all tied together, their links are obfuscated and their effects cannot be analyzed. Living it right is hard because the world is messy. It's really hard.

And it's so easy to maintain the status quo. Things get really bad and really complicated. Conflict happens. Things get risky and people get hurt. You just want to quit and forget about the whole thing, sometimes. It can get to the point where it's just too messy to deal with and it can't be cleaned up. At those points, you think all you can do is push the proverbial "reset button".

But beautiful things come from the mess. Some of the best solutions, moments, loves, relationships and ideas come from messy circumstances and a lot of hard work. Beauty emerges from the nooks and crannies of chaos.

The process of making beauty from the mess is beautiful, in itself. It's worth it to stay at the table and talk things out. It's amazing to stick by someone you love. The simple sacrifice of "not walking away" is powerful, special and the slightest bit divine. It is love in one of it's simplest, purest and most potent forms.

We must have an untameable persistence for cleaning up the mess in our own lives and in the lives of others. It is one of the places where the best things in life reside. I'll always have hope for it. I'll always believe that it's virtuous and just, even when it's painful and impossibly difficult. I can't give up on it. I just can't.

"I'm done being nervous."

Segel said an interesting thing to me today: "I'm done being nervous". It was an epiphany.

Why be nervous - in the anxious, performancing-undermining way. It doesn't make sense. All it demonstrates is a lack of confidence and a lack of preparation. And, any man whould be both perpared and confident at at all times. There's no other way to live.

That doesn't mean to disregarind the stakes and impacts of actions. It does mean that irrational fears should be subsided. Once irrational fears are swept away, one can focus on the rational fears in his life and address those, which is tremendously more practical and helpful than trying to squelch irrational fears.

Now, the question becomes...how does one neutralize irrational fear? Like most things, I think it comes down to honesty. By being honest, one can see straight to the heart of an emotion or situation. And if you see straight to the heart of a problem you can fully understand the problem and it's no longer nerve-tingling...it is whatever it is...hard, easy, stressful, joyous, sexy or nominal. By being honest, one can remove the uncertainty of a situation, see something for what it really is and then address it head-on.

I want to try this...subsiding my irrational nervousness, by being more honest with myself...for better or worse. I think I could stand to live fearlessly more often than I do.

30 Day Challenge

I was checking out Coatney's Google Buzz feed and he was attempting a 30 day challenge. I'm on board...I just have to figure out something to do. Can you help me think of something to challenge myself with for 30 days?

Here are some things I'm thinking about picking from:

1. Read a poem every day for a month.
2. Take a picture every day for a month.
3. Medidate for 10 minutes every day for a month.
4. Watch 7 classic movies.
5. Run 75 miles
6. Try 12 cheeses and 4 wines

Joyous things

I'm sitting in Eastern Market, DC with Leslie and her roommates. Because of my last post, Leslie said that I should write a post about something happier. So, I will.

Here's the exercise:

1. Get around some cool people that you care about.
2. Ask them to tell you something which makes them very, very happy.
3. Write it down in your blog.
4. Of course, respect people's privacy.

Person 1 - A day in the sun.

Person 2 - Friendship.

Person 3 - Finally realizing something that's been in front of you for a very long time...in a word, epiphany.

Person 4 - Crying (out of happiness) during movies.

Person 5 - Small, cute, trendy girls.

Person 6 - Providence.

Honesty and Optimism

Am I a cynic? And, if I am...is it silly to be?

Here's the scoop.

I'm pretty blunt, and once I decide I believe something or feel something, I'm pretty deliberate and straight forward about it. I consider myself to be honest about the world and about myself and who I am. But, that honesty is abrasive and certainly borders on skepticism and cynicism.

But that honesty has costs. I am so hard on myself - though admittedly, not hard on others - because of it. Maybe it makes me push myself too hard or to fester about things unnecessarily. It's...hard to be so honest about things...why not be optimistic...or err on the side of optimism?

What's the balance between honesty and optimism? I know that there has to be something better than cagy honesty or irreverent optimism.

But how?

Privilege

Last week, I took a few days off work. I was on the be(a/n)ch, so I wanted to advance some personal projects. I did. I laid down a draft presentation of a potential project - developing open source life skills curriculum.

[note: still deciding on whether to pursue this, I don't know if I have the passion, time, resources, or team to do it successfully. I don't want to waste time on something that's not a winning idea. Thank you for teaching me that Keary and Lalendran]

Anyway, the motivation for developing this open source life-skills curriculum was because I've been given so much opportunity in my life. My parents did math with me and read books with me when I was little. They sent me to different classes and to play on sports teams. They talked to me and parented me. They had me explore and expose myself to things that they couldn't teach me. They cooked. They did all these things, and I was one of the lucky ones.

This enrichment, I think, was really important for my development and my ability to function as a normal human being, more or less. There are lots of people that probably didn't get the chance to develop the "life-skills" that I was able to, or they might not have ever had anyone to teach them.

So, I thought, why not develop a way for current, prospective adults to develop life-skills that they have never had the privilege to learn?

And that's precisely the point, I considered my upbrining privilege. And it was, of course. But as I was talking with some friends about privilege, upbringing and agent guilt...the privilege is precisely not the point.

Those things I had...a stable home life, the opportunity for enrichment and good parents, should not be considered privilege. Those things are the bare minimum that a kid needs to adjust reasonably well to adult life. Being blessed enough to have sound mind and body, going to a REALLY good school, living in a neighborhood that's really friendly and clean...maybe that's privilege.

Having someone to teach me math, reading and some of those other things...it's ludicrous to think that any kid should not have them. To think of them as privilege is an excuse to not provide them to others.

So, I am lucky, yes. Privileged? No. Those things are essentials. I find it mildly insulting to think of them as a privilege, because that implies that special people get those things. Everyone should get those things and needs to get those things. Really, it's an act of wrongdoing to allow anyone to go through life without some or all of those things that others would call privilege.

Giving

My parents sacrificed a lot in their lives. That's a story for another evening, but the act of sacrifice is a very important act outside of marriage, too. I'll discuss it here in the context of relationships in general. It is Valentines Day, after all.

A very simple interpretation of relationships is that they are a give and take, a push and pull where the currency is not newtonian forces, nor cash...but energy, time and emotion. In relationships we give and receive.

Sometimes, however, relationships aren't in balance. Sometimes one party in the arrangement gives much more than their "fair-share" and the other free-rides. Some treat relationships with a tit-for-tat strategy...I'll do to you as you do to me.

But sometimes, others can't give for awhile, or even for an exceptionally long time. Maybe they can't admit they're wrong. Maybe they can't express how they feel. Maybe they just don't have the time or the money.

At the same time, once you commit to someone, you give and give and give and give, for as long as you can....you give even as your world is tumbling and you're bitter. If you have nothing else to give, you keep giving.

And, on this Valentines Day I'm not going to complain about not "receiving" Valentinesy affections or sentiments from anyone. I'll advocate that people keep giving their hearts away and try to live by my own words.

Because that's just what one should do.

Mental Gymnastics - which mental muscles do you train?

I was driving with some colleagues to our client’s office in New Jersey on Monday. On this 45-or-so minute long car ride, I came to find out that one of my colleagues – Kevin – teaches young kids how to play chess. Needless to say, I thought this was pretty cool (I like chess) and have always admired the game. It’s strategic and spatial. Moreover, I know that chess develops the mind, even though I had never thought about why or how.

Kevin mentioned some of his training practices and outcomes. As it turns out, some of his advanced students can learn to think 12-13 moves in advance. Of course, they develop an ability to do this over time, but it’s a cognitive behavior they learn. Very impressive.

I began thinking, what an important behavior to have. How might the world be different if people or organizations thought about the consequences of their actions before they happened and, get this, altered their behavior and made sacrifices to maximize their utility down the road?

So I began thinking this week. What are other cognitive processes that would be really valuable to learn as a child? Or, even as an adult for that matter. I started compiling a list. It’s a list of cognitive processes that people do with their brains (please do let me know if you think of more, yea?).

• Recreating an experience – This is an ability to think of an experience and live it all over again. Being able to recreate a memory in your head as a fresh mental experience.
• Self-awareness – Being able to understand yourself and see yourself how other people see you.
• Imagination – This is an ability to think of something you’ve never experienced before.
• Analysis - Seeing something and understanding its component parts.
• Construction - Seeing something’s component parts and understanding its broader function.
• Empathy – Understanding what someone else is feeling.
• Strategy - Thinking a few steps ahead and envisioning how things will happen over time.
• Systems/Root-cause analysis – Looking into the past to understand the root causes of the present and why things played out over time.
• Memory – storing and having command over the recollection of information.
• Network analysis – Combining bits of knowledge while understanding and gleaning meaning from the connections.
• Logic – having a command of logical reasoning.
• Discipline – Having the control of the mind to not jump to conclusions or cloud thinking with emotional or physical urges.

Notice, though, that these are not skills nor knowledge areas. These are cognitive processes that someone could apply to any situation or mental task…from art to academia. Think of it this way, dancers need to be strategic just like military commanders…they have to be able to think 7-10 steps into the future. Financiers need to be as imaginative as sculptors or computer programmers. All these cognitive processes are important to develop.

Of course, a give person probably requires some more than others in their day-to-day lives, but they are all processes that enhance “thinking”. In fact, I’d consider “thinking” to be a symphony of the cognitive processes I’ve listed here.

I almost think K-B.A. education doesn’t really require measurement of achievement in a subject area. Truly, reading, math and science are all really important because they make the cognitive processes I’ve listed really robust. If I were a teacher I’d try to do things that developed my kids’ imaginations and strategic abilities rather than having them know the properties of ionic bonds or the tenets of the Articles of Confederation. In other words, I’d aim to develop cognitive abilities and build the best multi-disciplinary curriculum I could to accomplish that goal, rather than focus on achievement in a set of disciplines and let cognitive processes develop incidentally.

How, as a teacher, does one do that?

Providence

I really like the movie Akeelah and the Bee, for many reasons. A good script, a heart-warming story and some solid onscreen performances.

One of the lines in the movie, a Maryanne Williamson quote (not that I have any idea who Maryanne Williamson is), often has echoes in day to day life, too. Today, I was thinking about providence. Do we often allow ourselves to have providence? Do we open ourselves to providence? Moreover, do we even allow beauty to seep into our lives? Why wouldn't we want beautiful things to happen to us...why wouldn't we deserve them?

And I remember:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. It is our light more than our darkness which scares us. We ask ourselves – who are we to be brilliant, beautiful, talented, and fabulous. But honestly, who are you to not be so?

You are a child of God, small games do not work in this world. For those around us to feel peace, it is not example to make ourselves small. We were born to express the glory of god that lives in us. It is not in some of us, it is in all of us. While we allow our light to shine, we unconsciously give permission for others to do the same. When we liberate ourselves from our own fears, simply our presence may liberate others.

We are powerful beyond belief. Certainly not all-powerful. But within each person lies the opportunity to be wicked or to have grace. But one man is the one who destroyed peoples and one man who freed them from chain.

Why do we turn away from beauty and providence? Why do we not think "it's the right time" for it, or that "we are not ready" for something beautiful to happen to us. Why are we afraid of the good that walks upon the earth?

But alas, not all is lost if we are not willing to accept and allow beauty to permeate us from head to toe. Men and women, if they are showered with enough love, will unlearn the human behaviors of shirking beauty. No, what would be tragic is if we forgot how or refused to create beautiful things. Because to forget how to make things beautiful or to forget how to make beautiful things would be to forget what it is to be human.