Rhett

Education

I wonder if we’re teaching our children what matters most.

Knowledge is important, of course, but in a world where data and information are at our fingertips – literally, given the proliferation of smartphones and other powerful devices that can educate us on any subject in seconds – perhaps we should be teaching them skills that help them interact with others. And not just in workplace settings either. Cooperation and collaboration in social groups and communities will be essential if we’re to achieve our greatest ambitions.

I believe that education should be the single highest priority for our societies. We owe all the members of our communities every chance to learn the things that they can leverage to build the kind of lives they want. It’s good for them, and it’s good for everyone else too, because if I’m doing what I enjoy, then I’m enthusiastically contributing to our society. And that’s the outcome we should be striving for. In jobs, in families, in communities.

We should be schooling everyone in the mechanics of healthy relationships, helping them to understand what a good relationship looks like and how to create one. And how to recognize and then navigate a relationship that’s not so good.

It’s probably a good idea to educate everyone in the principles of budgeting, estimating income and expenses, using credit appropriately. Basic financial skills can go a long way to alleviating stress in adult life, and that has so many benefits, especially with intimate relationships.

We might want to teach everyone the basics of transportation and home maintenance: how furnaces and home appliances work, how cars work, and how to keep them all in good working order.

And about nutrition – the kinds of nutrients we need, how to shop for groceries and how to prepare basic dishes.

In short, the kinds of things we need to know to live in balance with ourselves, with our neighbors, with our colleagues. It isn’t especially complicated – all of these topics and more can be taught in one high-school class period over a year.

Life skills.

Not more important than math or history or English or science. But still important enough to teach to a common level of understanding. I could have used something like it, and I believe most of my older teenage friends could have benefited just as much too.

Empathy

I’m pretty sure our current malaise is self-inflicted.

After all, we choose what we think and what we do, and we’re choosing to think bad things of other people and to do things to punish them for their transgressions. Or at least to stop them from doing whatever we’re sure they’re going to do to us.

We seem to have lost empathy for our fellow people.

Giving whoever we meet the benefit of the doubt.

Assuming other people are just doing their best every day, the same as we are.

Instead we choose to believe that other people want to harm us, take advantage of us to further their own ends, force us to do things we don’t want to do. We’ve vilified great swaths of professions – politicians, journalists, scientists, business people – under the assumption that their members have a common agenda that trumps their professionalism and the many years of training and experience.

The saying – its author is in dispute, or I’d attribute it here – that we don’t see things as they are, we them as we are, resonates strongly with me.

If I want to impose my view of the world on others, I am going to believe that others want to do the same to me. And if I’m not open to compromise, to experimenting to see what might be the most effective solution to the matter at hand – in other words, if I think I have the one true answer – then I’ll believe that anyone else who doesn’t already agree with me won’t be swayed by my words either. And that they’re completely wrong.

We all know that relationships take work. You have to tend to them. Trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship, and open, honest and frequent communication is the vehicle to build trust. (Well, along with doing what you say you will, but that’s a topic for another day.) And as we know from our personal experience, communication isn’t just talking. It’s also listening. And it’s also thinking, evaluating what we’re hearing and being willing to modify our decisions if there are good reasons to do so. Because we hadn’t considered a different experience. Because we want others to be happy too. And even because we want to reduce tension in our environment.

Living in a community is a relationship. If we want to have a healthy relationship with the people in our community, we need to communicate with them. Talk, and listen, and think. I’m not suggesting that we abandon our principles or values, subordinate our experiences, or ignore our truths. Just that we try to understand what other people are saying. Listen. And think how we can merge our two truths into one we can both embrace instead of how we can never bridge the divide.

That’s the relationship work we need to do if we want to heal our communities. If we decide we don’t want to make the effort, then we’ll have more of the same acrimony we’ve got today.

And that doesn’t seem to be working for anyone.

Validation

We need to be the center of our universe.

Or, said better, we need to be centered in our universe. We need to know ourselves, what matters to us, what our priorities are. We need to know these things to make decisions, both important and not, that allow us to live the life we want to live. If we want to live consistently with our values we need to know what they are.

Without that center, we are likely to be buffeted about. We can never know someone else as well as we know ourselves, and so if we look to others to validate our decisions, we will be constantly shifting, never quite sure which choice brings us closer to expectations. And we will be at a greater risk of making a choice that brings tremendous regret.

It embarrasses me to admit that I have developed a center much later in life than I wish I had. And I am fortunate (perhaps!) that my major regrets are nearly all on the side of missed opportunities rather than life-altering mistakes. I didn’t compromise most of my latent principles or contradict significant inherent values while I was unconscious of them. My worst blemish came when I deceived my parents into believing that I was continuing with graduate school after I had dropped out. It ate me up, but I made a complete confession a few years later, and they forgave me, as parents do. My worst was done to family, who give way more leeway and consider way more positive interactions to balance our sins than people who know us less well. And eventually I accepted that one major lie doesn’t invalidate me completely.

What I have learned from my better-late-than-never experience of finding what’s important to me is that no job, no money, no friendship is worth compromising my values. I can find other work, I can get by on less money (for a short time at least), and I don’t need friends who encourage me to do things I really don’t want to do. I have other friends I can impose on in a pinch. But I will have to face myself every day. I can make peace with honest mistakes. But mistakes that I made because I outsourced decisions will haunt me. They have a long tail of recrimination and disappointment.

So know what matters to you. Think about the person you want to be. Ask yourself if you’ll be proud to tell your partner or your parents about the decision you make. Polonius has had it right all along: to thine own self be true.

We’ll have many fewer regrets if we follow his advice.

Judgment, cont.

Everyone is right.

Or said better, everyone is partially right. And maybe if we acknowledge that fact we can start to mend the rips in our social fabric.

Let’s take welfare, to pick one explosively illustrative topic.

Are there welfare cheats, people who could earn a living but refuse to? Yes.

Are there people who need temporary help to make ends meet? Yes.

Are there people who will be permanently dependent on our largess because they lack all capabilities to support themselves? Yes.

But in our current debate you don’t hear anyone who agrees with all three statements. We can’t seem to grant even a small concession to an opposing point of view. And why not? Fear that others will use that concession to invalidate our perspective?

Everyone is partially right. The real question is to what degree? Is our belief consistent with the bulk of data? Or is it on the tails of the distribution with the outliers?

I think we do more damage to our causes by refusing to acknowledge facts. The anecdote is a powerful persuasive tool that often resonates more than data – a subject for another time – but an anecdote probably shouldn’t be the basis for an opinion and assuredly not for policy. But it is one data point, and since I believe that we can find an occurrence of just about anything any of us can think of, it means everyone is right at least once on an issue.

It doesn’t hurt to acknowledge it. And I think it even helps, because (1) it gives us credibility, and (2) it might soften the rancor felt by those who might otherwise feel at best unheard and at worse attacked.

I’m conflict averse. I believe we are far more effective when we work in concert instead of fighting each other. And I believe there are many paths to a destination. So I feel very strongly that we should give each other our just due.

I worry about us. The polarization, the tribalization, the demonization. It’s all so poisonous. Hateful. Destructive. Surely we’re better than this.

Maybe it starts with acknowledging that each of us is partially right. I’m not evil or stupid because I believe something that has happened. So give me that credit before we start to discuss where our respective ideas fall on the issue’s true distribution.

By denying this truth, we alienate ourselves from our fellow citizens. Which makes it easier to judge them. And we rarely judge mildly.

Does any good come from judging? Only if we judge ourselves. Otherwise we run afoul of what Daniel Kahneman calls WYSIATI – What you see is all there is. And since we aren’t omniscient, we miss important factors, things that would change our conclusions or make us more sympathetic to those with different views. But once we judge, we rarely backpedal, so if we learn those factors post-judgment we tend to discount them, or rationalize them away, or twist them into something that supports our rendered judgment.

Instead, perhaps we should simply acknowledge to each other that we are all partially right.

Death, cont.

If Greg Russell wasn’t the happiest man on earth, he was in the top two.

He died last night.

The news devastated our neighborhood. We all appreciated Greg’s smiling face on his daily walks with his wife Anne. Greg adored Anne. It was evident whenever you saw them together. Anne teaches piano, and one or the other of our girls (and usually both) were part of her studio for 14 years. They spent time with her every week, and we all love her for her sweetness and joy. We can imagine her grief.

We saw Greg a few times each year, reliably at the December and June recitals, and then occasionally as his walks with Anne around the neighborhood intersected with our lives. But you only needed to meet him once to know him. His face was open, a smile ever present, and his whole being exuded welcome. He was curious, and he had many interests, but his primary interest was whoever he was speaking with.

I will miss him, probably more than I realize. People like Greg are rare. They may not be recognized for great accomplishment, but they are the people who do the precious weaving of outwardly-focused busy people living in separate houses into a community of neighbors. Our neighborhood needs a new weaver. I hope there is someone to step into that role.

I want to be more like Greg. I am happy (generally). But I am not welcoming (generally). I spend so much time between my own ears that I often ignore others. Not out of spite or boredom but out of obliviousness. So that dye is cast – I am what I am, and what I am is not what Greg was.

At times like this I wonder about my legacy.

When the life of a man I both liked and admired is over and I reflect on his impact, I suppose it’s natural to wonder how I compare. I suspect the famous quote about legacy – that no one remembers what you said or what you did, but they do remember how you made them feel – doesn’t work to my advantage. I am a man of the mind not of the heart (generally) so I’m afraid that I don’t touch people in the same way Greg Russell did.

Then again not many do. I can make peace with that.

As long as I have enough time.

Judgment

Finding truth seems much harder now than ever before. And I have sympathy – and no small amount of respect – for those among us who reserve their judgment because they don’t know what to believe. I believe in not judging any situation until you know enough to understand the essence of the issue and the conflict.

But I also believe in two other things: first, data and statistics; and second, that people are the same. Or rather that groups of people are the same in all ways that matter. And that it doesn’t take a whole lot of individuals to build a representative sample of humankind.

So what?

So if a group of people is getting dramatically different outcomes from the outcomes of other groups of people, then there is certainly something fundamentally different in their specific experience, and that difference lies outside themselves.

Take African-American men, for example.

I believe if you randomly assemble a group of African-American men, you will have a normal distribution of smart and dumb ones, tall and short ones, ones with glasses and braces and speech impediments, calm ones and hot-headed ones, rule-breakers and rule-followers, loyal and disloyal ones, and on and on for almost every other trait you can think of. What you won’t have is a normal distribution of age, of incarceration, of life expectancy. And since I believe that any group of people is essentially the same as any other group of people, those statistical deviations from the norm are not inherent in the group of African-American men, but rather result from external forces acting on that group. So something out of the ordinary is happening to African-American men. And it’s having a significant negative impact on them.

So do I need to understand the details of every shooting of an African-American man to judge that something is very much amiss in how that particular group is experiencing life in our great nation? I don’t think so. And that mortality, the worst outcome imaginable, should inspire those of us who believe in both data and essential human equality to move off the I-can’t-judge sideline and into action.

Motivation

Whoever unlocks the secret to motivation will be incredibly rewarded for those insights.

I like to work out. I like to have worked out. But I often struggle to begin a workout. And I don’t have the slightest clue as to why that is. I’ve completed several marathons and half-marathons, Ironman and 70.3 triathlons, century and multi-day bike rides, and I’ve been training – save when I’ve been injured – for nearly 15 years.

And I still choose my bed or my sofa over my workout more often than prudence would dictate.

Meeting someone for a run or a ride is perhaps the best way to get me to the start of my workout. The terror that comes with committing to something I’ve not done before is another effective method. Absent either of those prods I’m just as likely to turn off the alarm or find a seems-like-compelling-at-the-time reason to do something else.

Perhaps it is as simple as genetic coding. We rest because we’re programmed to do so, to conserve our energies. Or maybe I’m just afraid or anxious or worried about falling short. Which is why, you’d think, that I’d be more determined to practice. If we ever needed evidence to show that we’re not a rational species I think our collective behavior around exercise would settle the argument: we know physical activity is critical to our health, and yet we seem to actively avoid it.

No, not always. But consistently.

And I feel tremendously disappointed with my choice when I bail on a workout. If the positive vibe post-workout isn’t enough motivation, you’d think the post-workout-shirking shame would do the trick. But no.

So what can get me to the gym day in and day out?

That is the more-than-one-million-dollar question.

Intelligence

It’s better to be smart than not smart, I suppose. But intelligence is still way overrated.

“He’s so smart.” “She’s very intelligent.”

Observations, perhaps, but meant to explain outperformance and convey expectations. Being smart is supposed to be the ticket to success. In a binary world, a world that demands the simplicity of an A or B choice, being smart is held up as the determinant of success. We all want our children to be smart, even more than we want them to be attractive or funny, kind or curious, even more than we want them to be happy. Not because we’re jerks. Because we think that if they are smart, they will be successful, and that their success will lead to their happiness.

Putting aside that there are many paths to happiness, and putting aside that assessing both intelligence and success are largely subjective exercises, being smart is nothing but one of several factors that affect outcomes. Even if we say success is excellence in a chosen area, intelligence alone is no guarantee that someone can achieve it.

Take me, for example. I am smart. Even very smart.

But I am not excellent in any field. In 30 years spent in the employ of different companies large and small I ascended to middle management. And I wasn’t held in high esteem in my later years, when I reached an age where my future potential was no longer as significant as the possible trajectories of others in my firm. I am an endurance athlete, but I’m not an elite performer. I have thrown pots for a dozen years or more, and I still have yet to create a single work that would be considered sublime. I don’t suck at any of those things. I’m just not excellent.

Being smart is almost certainly better than not being smart. But you need many other attributes to be excellent. Awareness. Determination. Curiosity. Organization. Focus. Commitment. Discipline. Prioritization. There aren’t many people who live at the intersection of all of those characteristics, so there aren’t many people who can be truly excellent. And as Malcolm Gladwell helpfully pointed out in his book Outliers, you also need luck.

Excellence is a complex brew, and we don’t do complexity very well. We want things to be simple. And obvious. And we’ve settled on intelligence as our proxy.

But we’re wrong. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last time either. But we are wrong.

Regrets

Parenting is many things. I just wish I knew how to make all of them easier.

I have found, however, that it’s easier on my children when I temper the regrets I feel about my own life and the choices I’ve made in it. I have many regrets. And I have finally learned that they color many of my interactions with my daughters, and rarely in a positive way.

I was a timid kid. By nature as well as circumstance. I tended to sit back and observe when faced with a new situation, and moving as my family did every three years in my formative years meant I was often in a new situation. I was also self-conscious about entering late into an activity, so even after I felt like I understood what was going on I was reluctant to engage. So I regularly sat apart and wished I could be a part of the action.

My daughters are reserved as well. Which was evident from their births. They are decidedly different in many respects, but in this area they are the same. They are shy on first meeting, like me. They are slow to jump in. We’ve moved just once though, when they were both very young, so I think perhaps their comfort with familiar friends and familiar places is higher than mine was at their ages..

Knowing how excluded I felt as a child, and knowing how sad that felt to me, I encouraged my daughters to throw themselves into new situations, to embrace change, to step forward at every opportunity. I did so with the best of intentions, trying to help them avoid the isolation I felt when I was their ages. But I fear all I did was add stress to their lives, which is, of course, just what kids these days need more of. I forgot the first – and really only – rule of successful parenting: love the child you have, not the child you want. Or, said specifically to me, love the child you have, not the child you were.

I did the same with sports and with musical instruments, insisting not just on their participation, but their dedication. We did let them choose their activities, but we also insisted that they have activities, their mother for her reasons, me in the hope they would engage more fully than I did with the world I so desperately wanted to be more a part of. But rather than let that be the end of it, rather than let them decide how much of each activity they’d bite off, I tried to force engagement. Which runs counter to my daughters’ natures. And mine too.

As adults, they both feel anxious at times, and I wonder how much of that is just their nature and how much I contributed to it with my prodding. They are also more accomplished than I was then, so how much of that is their nature and how much the result of my hectoring? I tend to give them credit for their achievements and take blame for their stress. If happiness is the goal of life – and I believe it is – both stress and accomplishment are important parts of the happiness equation. I hope I’ve balanced some of the stress I induced with some of the striving they’ve experienced. But I don’t really know, and I suspect they’ll never know either.

Kindness

The world is a stressful place these days.

Both our agreements and our disagreements feel heightened, packed with more emotion. It doesn’t seem to me that we differentiate or prioritize our feelings now. We expect – or at least demand – complete fealty to all of our values or we sever ties, usually with some choice words to hasten the split. We even approach discussions on significant issues expecting confrontations, so it’s no small wonder that they turn belligerent and end unsatisfyingly. You’re either with me or against me, and not just on one or two important issues but on everything that matters to me. And if you’re against me, then pound sand, because I’m not just the aggrieved party, I’m completely right. Which means not only are you wrong, you’re an a-hole for not recognizing it.

But we’re not happy about it either. Confrontations fester in our minds, we plot to be better prepared the next time the topic comes up, we scheme to create another “discussion” so we can use our newly-minted insights and comebacks. Our minds are being consumed with conflict. And it’s wearing me out.

There is a remedy though. And it’s simple. Though, admittedly, not easy.

Kindness.

Just like your parents taught you once upon a time. Kindness begins with offering others – especially those who don’t see things the same way we do – the benefit of the doubt. We seem to be rather short on doubt any more, but work with me.

I believe two things about people: 1) they are consumed with their own lives and thoughts and feelings – just as I am self-absorbed, no one else is really thinking about me much at all; and 2) they don’t want to hurt me any more than I want to hurt them (which is not at all). As I consider other people and their actions, it would be best if I didn’t judge them at all. That’s unlikely at best though, so remembering these 2 things help me find kindness. (When I remember, that is.)

The ones who vex me are consumed with their own lives, and their experiences and knowledge and assumptions have led them to believe what I find anathematic. I should reach out to understand that perspective. And they didn’t choose their stand to oppose me. They weren’t thinking about me at all, so our disagreements aren’t personal rejections. Emotions don’t need to be part of the discussion if we’re aiming for understanding rather than consensus.

I don’t know if we can disentangle ourselves enough to make these interactions less stressful. But I think we’d all feel better if we did. And so I must try.