Choices

I just can't do it.

Looking back at choices I've made, I go back and wonder whether I'm foolish or whether my hope and optimism in others will lead to being eaten up by the sharks in the world. There are many instances, I think, which shake out into the following decision framework:

Choice 1: Hold steadfastly to principle

Choice 2: Be aggressive and take what you want

And those are often in conflict - and it's hard. It's incredibly hard to say no to power and pleasure. It takes an incredibly high amount of

Eff this. I'm not beating around the bush with this.

I'm so torn between adhering to the values and princples that I was taught about how a gentleman treats a woman and what it sort of takes to "make progress" so to speak. If you're aggressive you win. If you do what you think is right, i.e. show respect, you end up sleeping on the couch. It's effing terrible.

I don't want to live in a world where one has to out-aggress others to win. I don't want to be the type of person which uses tactics and strategies to get someone to like you. I want to live in a world where people are honest, genuine and can be themselves in social situations and be accepted for it.

I'm out of air in my lungs for game. I'm so disillusioned by meeting opportunistic people in public. I can't be like this forever - what does it say for our species' future if we live out a scenario where the more you take, the more you get. Why doesn't sacrifice happen?

And as pissed as I am for not being taller, for being "old school", for being disgusted with the twenty-something "scene". I just want to understand why. Why is selfishness a pre-requisite for getting what you want?

It takes someone special to change the rules of the game or play by the spirit of the rules and "win" whatever the game is, I think.

At the same time, i'll never acquiesce to compromised principle. I'll never be a jack-ass. It's not the world that I would want to live in and change starts at home. I need to stop pretending I'm something that I'm not. It's time to really choose the man I want to be.

It's time to get back to basics, suck it up for the consequences and live the life I've dreamed of anyway. I'm gonna find my wife. I'm gonna do everything else I talked about doing. I'm gonna do it the right way, even if it takes more work and I'm freaking dog-tired every day for the rest of my life. That's how my family and friends raised me. But, this is going to be so hard.

The evolution of human interaction

Pretentious title aside, I was working on some cool brainstorming the other day. Basically, I'm on this quest to understand what it takes to form effective teams. And by that I mean real teams not collections of individuals in a group setting.

So, I tried to chart out the evolution of how humans have socialized in the history of the world...in hopes that it sheds light on how we might continue to evolve and what holds us back from really "teaming".

Here are the steps:

Conquering the state of nature - first, we had to establish ourselves as a species...this is like the pre-evolution

Then, the sanctity of the individual was solidified - think Magna Carta, etc. Individual rights were born.

Then there was a flourishing of individual rights on grounds of race, religion, etc. At the same time we began to form partnerships and really cement the institution of marriage. Which brings us to today.

There's going to be a Big Shift in how we interact, it's already started, really. We have to form teams to figure out the difficult problems we are faced with. We're fooling ourselves if we think we can do it without teams of everyone pulling together. We can't.

But, it's also not good enough if the team-mentality doesn't captivate our species. We have too many problems to play in small arenas. We have to scale our teams. But how will we do it?

Will we create networks? Will we create really, really big teams? Will we create an army of small teams and get the individual teams to form teams? I haven't quite gotten to a good level of analysis yet. But, I'm thinking about it.

We have to crack the code on teams. We have to figure it out. Otherwise, I fear our most pressing problems will become irreversibly complex and damning. That would be awful.

Hubris / Speedometers

One of the most difficult decisions I make on a daily basis is a simple one.

I'm in my car, a Red 2001 Chevrolet Cavalier (with 162k miles, no less). I'm driving...somewhere...it doesn't matter where. The weather doesn't matter, nor does the freeway I am driving on. I am not late.

Do I speed? If so, do I travel 4 over? 5 over? 15 over? Does the degree of the law-breaking even matter?

Now, I could probably think about the morality of the speeding itself (which raises interesting legal and moral questions - there was an Org Studies student this year who actually wrote a thesis about the spirit and letter of the law...pretty cool).

But whether speeding is "right" or "wrong" is not what I find to be gripping about this particular instance. I care about what it means, and what the decision is emblematic of. It's a subtle, but telling meter of hubris.

Hubris is pretty destructive, in teams, organizations institutions and societies, I think. It leads to crazy behavior with devastating results. (Jim Collins gives an apt description of this in his book: How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In. It's a good read).

If I'm speeding, it suggests that I think I'm above the law, because I know speeding is illegal, I know I'm doing it, but I do it anyway. It's like...eff you traffic laws, Ima do what I want because I don't answer to you, Elmo. If you believe that hubris is fungible to other aspects of life - i.e. if you have hubris when driving you'll have hubris when making other, more consequential decisions - that's really scary. It means you're greedy, arrogant and probably selfish. Maybe it means you're addicted to power.

It's terrifying because as power corrupts it means your hubris condemns you to moral insufficiency. In turn, that moral insufficiency causes you to harm others...potentially in terrible ways.

Because of all this, I've been paying closer attention to my speedometer lately. And I'm still speeding, albeit less. I hope I can control it. If I can't, it might mean hubris will consume me one day. I don't want that. I don't want that at all.

It's like in Spiderman: with great power comes great responsibility.

-nt

PS: this probably applies to texting, too.

First born.

You will be my greatest project,
Our lives' seminal work.

From tears into uncertainty, continuing to apprehension and exploration.  Next courage, honesty then humility until you have a project of your own.

The toybox is empty.  No bottles are at the ready.  But a lifetime of protection, love and wonderment are already in plentiful supply.

All potential energy, though.

When your birthday comes, you'll be ready, and so will I.

I think I'm ready to be a man, now. I don't know if others men have these coalescing moments where they realize that they have to grow up, or that they want to. I don't even know what these moments have been or what they can be.

I was coming to terms with my own mortality. I was thinking about the mark that I want to leave on the world and what I want to accomplish professionally. I was thinking about how much I love the wife and kids I haven't met yet.

There are all these things which brew in a guy's head and all of a sudden you realize your mindset has changed. Mine did mindset finished it's turn around, this week. I gotta get after it.

Memories

The way a memory feels is miraculous. All it takes is remembering something which reminds you of what makes you whole. Family, places or experiences before...triggered by something big (like...an anniversary, or an elephant) or something small (like a smell, a letter or a song) is sufficient.

It is freeing; the epitome of hope, one might say.

Struggle

I spoke with a colleague today about my father - he's as tough as nails...my father that is. (Though my colleague may very well be too.

Am I?

But that's not the point, can I be without struggling like hell? And I don't mean with bobo problems.

I wonder.

Apollo

Naming our dog was a very deliberate exercise. It was very much a product of my parents and me and my upbringing. We generated a list of 30 or 40 names and we methodically narrowed the list down over the course of a few rounds. Finally, we decided to choose one of two names, Rocket or Apollo.

If you know my family, you know we decided on Apollo – named after NASA’s Apollo program, which was named after the Greek sun god. Probably because my father liked it more than Rocket.

There are many days from my youth I don’t remember, but I certainly remember the day I met Apollo. He was only a few weeks old at the time and was just too big to fit into my open palms. He was supposed to be a “trial” dog that we were “babysitting” for a short time. But we kept him, much to my father’s chagrin (at the time, now he loves Apollo dearly).

I was laying, partially upright, on our family room floor with outstretched legs. He climbed up on my belly and put his head on my chest. In that moment, we became friends instantly. It’s my fondest memory of Apollo and it probably will be for the rest of my life.

In some ways, I suppose Apollo owes my family a lot. We did house him, feed him, take him to the bathroom and other typical doggy-dog things. In addition to that, my pup eats better than most dogs I know and is given a spot to sleep under the covers, in my parents’ bed, every night. All in all, he lives a pretty good life.

Truth be told, though, I owe Apollo much more. He was a rock which kept my family intact, in some ways. He kept my mother company while I was away at school and when my father was away working. He took my dad on walks and gave him things to do when he was unemployed and noticeably frustrated. By letting my parents care for him, Apollo was really giving my parents unconditional love and was providing happiness in their lives when I couldn’t take care of them. For that I am eternally grateful.

Apollo also raised me in some ways. I used to become really frustrated when I would have to take him to the bathroom, stealing precious minutes from doing my homework, hanging out, or watching TV. How rude of him!

I realized later that I was so very wrong. Apollo depended on me for his well being and I was really the one being selfish. I had to put his needs above mine. I had to be less selfish. This humbled me and taught me a dangerously important lesson: a successful life is not “making it” or being powerful, but rather a life in which you fulfill your duty and serve others. It’s not about lifting yourself up, but about lifting others up. Apollo is the unlikeliest of mentors.

At the same time, he taught me to stick up for myself…if he hadn’t, I’d still be waiting on Apollo hand and foot, err…paw and paw, and letting him walk all over me. I’ve had this thought hundreds of times, “No Apollo. We are not going outside, because you don’t have to go to the bathroom, you just want to play. Stop being a baby.”

We share little in common, except for our family, and an affinity for laying in the grass on sunny, breezy days. I suppose for Apollo and me, though, that’s all we really need. The bond between a man and his dog really is a special one.

Why worry?

There are some days, more than others, that I think about how unlikely it is for anyone to live very long, or even to live at all. Everyday we wake up in the morning, it's like a miracle all over again. So few things in the universe ever live. An even smaller subset on Earth. A microscopic subset of that are humans. Of humans, our clock is ticking from the time we're born...every second we have is borrowed.

All that makes me think at how nonsensical it is to worry about things like work, or the little instances where people annoy you. It even doesn't make sense sometimes to worry about politics or money or whatever. It's all so petty.

Then there's stuff like family or poverty - and other really compelling, human issues - and it starts to make sense why people worry about those things...they're life and death sorts of things. But even then, we are not entitled to living, it's all a gift anyway. So why worry?

It's like a small act of selfishness when we place importance on such small things. By putting so much attention on those things - that only matter in my immediate vicinity - I almost feel like it diminishes the sanctity of life itself...like it ignores the contract with our creator and the beautiful things in life - family, friends, freedom, the ability to learn, our senses, our health. All these are things we aren't entitled to. We're so lucky.

It's a freeing feeling to realize that in the schema of the universe, no individual matters. Not even the greatest human that does the most good in history for the world matters. I feel like I'm starting to get there. I'm starting to feel like once I do realize that it's not about me, it frees up so much energy to be spent towards those beautiful things - I'd even venture to say that those things are touched by God.

And those other things (career, money, self-indulgence) can and will happen to if you place priority on things that are virtuous, but they're not the endgame, they're incidental and on top of that, they're ephemeral.

I don't know where this is coming from. I feel like the yogi in me has finally been set free. It's weird.

Above Average

I had a good conversation with the roomzies at dinner on Saturday night. (We were at Grange's upstairs bar...that itself is something to note).

Anyway, we were talking about whether we've met a lot of extraordinary people at Michigan, or just a few. W and I think we haven't. J didn't exactly say she has, but she certainly had a differing opinion.

I've never really appreciate just being "above average" before Saturday night, now I really do.

I can't do anything but admit that I'm only an above average person, at best. There really are some extraordinary people in the world that do extraordinary things. I'm probably not one of them. If I do something extraordinary, it will be because I'm in the right place at the right time and I've put in enough to hang with the big dogs.

And, I'm okay with that. Because, just as it's important to be a super star (like Michael Jordan, for example, or even Scottie Pippen), being a role player on an extraordinary team isn't something to shake a stick at. It's pretty impressive (think: Tony Kukoc was a really important part of the Bulls' championships).

But, not being a superstar doesn't let me or anyone else off the hook. The fact is, any of us can be called upon for extraordinary duties at any time. We have to be ready for that.

I'm certainly not fishing for compliments, simply acknowledging the way of the world. But who knows what the future holds. Teams may be the next big thing. All I know, is that it's okay to only be "above average", not everyone can be superstars and not everyone should be. We should probably "stay hungry" and assume that we're only above average. But above average in a world like ours, ain't bad.

No stamina to edit, falling asleep.