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.