kindness

Reunion

I don’t understand racism.

I mean, I do understand it. Unconscious bias is unavoidable. Fears and resentments are part of the human feature set too. Acting cautiously when faced with something unfamiliar has helped humanity survive for thousands of years. So I understand a little distance when getting a first look at someone who seems a lot different than we are.

But to then judge someone on that difference makes me more than a little uncomfortable, and to condemn them as inferior or unworthy because of it seems cruel. Plus just morally wrong. Content of character and all that. I haven’t met anyone new who didn’t have more and more in common with me the longer we talked. I believe we all have the same right to walk this earth in our own ways (provided, of course, that our own ways don’t hurt someone else). And it’s incredibly arrogant to think that we alone see the truth of the universe. Talk about hubris.

What I don’t understand is why we don’t treat the world in general and the United States in particular as a big family reunion. Think of a potluck with barbecue and mole and pumpkin curry and flatbread and honey walnut prawns and seviche and falafel and pelmeni and injera and kugel and raclette. Plus baked ziti. Lots of baked ziti.

We could have massive soccer and softball games and the world’s largest three-legged race. We will need a few billion neon t-shirts though.

I’m an introvert, but I’d go to that.

I say reunion because we all split up thousands of years ago. As we left behind our great-grandparents to the nth power back in Africa, some of us went north and some went east. Some didn’t go anywhere and stayed put. And eventually we populated the world. And as we did so, we discovered how to survive in different places. We adapted to our environments. But at our core we remained largely as we had been. Including skeptical of new people.

So whether our particular ancestors walked across the land bridge or came by boat – forcibly or not – or migrated here after settling down somewhere else for a while, we all ended up back together here in this land where we are all immigrants. We aren’t really new people, just people long separated.

So let’s have the serious discussion about how many new people our community can successfully integrate each year. I am an includer by nature, but the resource limits that constrain us are real. So we will have to prioritize among the people who want to join us. And some of those need to be people fleeing dangerous places, because we don’t want to be complete assholes.

Let’s also not lose sight of the selfish need to bring in immigrants to make up the shortfall of new people we aren’t producing ourselves.

I really hope I get to be a grandfather. I remember my father’s reaction when my elder daughter, his first grandchild, was born. The joy. The affirmation. The complete, total satisfaction. He said as he reflected that he needed nothing else from this life.

I’d like to feel that way.

But whereas my parents have nine grandchildren I will likely have two. At best. If you’re a boomer like me (or even a Gen Xer like my brother), our kids aren’t having kids. And if you’re younger, you’re not having enough kids to sustain our community. Which is fine – I believe first in maximum agency, so you do you and I’ll do me, and together we’ll adjust. And part of that adjustment, at least for all of us concerned about having a healthy community, is to find ways to provide work and care and goods and services to all of our members,. And if we don’t make our own people to help with all that, then we need to import them.

But let’s not pollute the important discussion about who can join us and when they can come with xenophobic thoughts of worth. We are all worthy. And anyone who hints that we aren’t is either bigoted, ignorant, or cynically serving themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

And in the meantime, who wants to organize this amazing and wonderful family reunion?

Grace

Like many other things, grace is much harder in real life than in the abstract. I was reminded again during my recent flight from San Francisco to Denver.

I noticed the large young man in the gate area waiting to board. He was tall, wide, and he wore a hockey jersey, but what really distinguished him was his flouting of social norms. He listened to hip-hop music on his phone without earphones – he wasn’t blaring it, but I could still hear it clearly. He used the phone to speak to his mother, answering her questions in the annoyed, impatient tone that all young people use with their parents. He told her in great detail about his trip to the airport and his struggles getting through TSA. His voice was loud, penetrating, impossible to tune out.

As I lined up to board the flight he passed completely from my attention. I settled into my window seat near the back of the plane, then closed my eyes and enjoyed the respite between my rush to the airport and the flight to come. I would have forgotten him had that insistent voice not trashed my calm as he stood in the aisle, asking someone which seat was his, window or aisle.

It was the window seat. And it was directly behind mine.

My seat felt like a buoy on the ocean as he pushed, pulled, and jostled while squeezing himself into his seat. Oblivious to the people around him, he began talking loudly to the unfortunate man sitting next to him, detailing his trip to the airport and all the things he had to manage in preparation for the flight. Bad enough the middle seat, but what is worth this extra penance?

Our man spoke about his preference for window seats. He asked his seatmate to hold his coffee while he rummaged through his backpack for food. And when the seatmate, realizing his very bad luck, feigned sleep, our oblivious traveler got on his phone and called a friend.

The conversation – or at least the half of it that I overheard (truthfully, it was more like 80 percent, because our guy dominated it) – could not have been more banal. It covered his TSA experience again, his travel plans for the day including flight times and layovers down to the minute, his recipe for carnitas, and his delight in getting frozen shrimp for less than $8 per pound thanks to the buy-one-get-one-free promotion at the grocery store. The conversation, all at volume, lasted at least 20 minutes. All the while he fidgeted, bouncing me around in my seat. In short, I could not ignore him, and I couldn’t concentrate enough to do anything but stew in my own aggravation.

When he finally ended his phone call, he still could not sit still. So I continued to fume, piqued that my calm had been disrupted, that the bubble I cast around myself when I venture into the world had been pierced.

And then I heard it. A soft grunt. Almost a hum. Then another. And another. Every twenty seconds or so. Like clockwork.

The guy I consigned to inconsiderate jerkhood has a compulsion. I don’t know the condition – autism, Tourette Syndrome, some other neurological issue – but I realized that he couldn’t control the internal energy he generated. He was disrupting me, not out of malice, not out of apathy, but out of need. It’s just how he’s wired.

Which reminded me that whenever we enter the public sphere we will encounter people different from us. People with different behaviors, different backgrounds, different perspectives. Usually those differences are minute, hardly noticeable, but sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes, like on my flight, they are large and prominent. They can’t be ignored. And that’s when we feel uncomfortable.

We won’t always be comfortable in the public sphere. But, aside from personal safety, we don’t have a right to demand that others conform to our expectations when we’re sharing public spaces. We all have a right to be ourselves, and while we owe each other safety we don’t owe each other comfort.

Sometimes we must endure discomfort, so that we can all live in freedom. Freedom to share what’s communally ours, even if we’re not wired to notice other people’s cues. And so while my incredibly disruptive travel companion banged my seat all the way to Denver, I tried to move past my annoyance and find grace.

I wish I’d been able to do it without the reminder, but perhaps I’ve become complacent. I am, after all, an older, affluent white dude, which puts me atop most social orders. I am the norm, or at least the model around which we’ve organized our social norms. So forgive my short-sightedness when I’m inconvenienced.

I don’t begrudge the test. I just wish I had passed without the help.

Divorce

My wife and I are divorcing.

We’ve been married more than 32 years. There’s no precipitating event. No outburst. No affair. No abuse. No addictions.

So why are we divorcing?

I don’t think we’ve ever been well-suited for each other. She wears her heart on her sleeve, sharing her thoughts and feelings broadly. I am very private. She tests ideas out loud, working through her thought processes verbally. When I speak, I’ve already decided. She seeks validation, and I am parsimonious with feedback. She lives spontaneously, changing her mind frequently. I make a plan and stick to it.

Early in our marriage we invested the time to resolve our conflicts and differences. And then, as time passed, we stopped trying. Cracks developed. And, unresolved, the cracks widened into fissures, the fissures into gaps, the gaps into chasms. Dawn made more of an effort than I did to fix what was happening in our marriage, but I didn’t have the emotional awareness to deal with our problems. Or the will to find it.

And so we find ourselves after 32 years not strangers but friends.

But not more than friends either. We are divorcing amicably, as you’d expect of friends, even friends who share children.

We have wounds. We don’t trust each other with our emotional well-being. I have hurt her by rejecting her (her version); she has hurt me by not following through on commitments (my version). Both have merit. Neither is the full story. As with most things between married couples.

In spite of our wounds, we don’t harbor ill will. Or at least not enough of it to complicate our dissolution. In fact, because of lower expectations with the transition from spouses to friends our relationship has been smoother. I hope it continues. I expect that we will remain friends, though it will likely be at a distance, at least until grandchildren pull us back into the same orbit. Among our differences are weather and social preferences: she likes active social scenes and cooler weather, while my ideals are warmer temperatures and few but meaningful interactions with others. Funnily enough, I’m likely to head to colder climes while she makes a go of it in the hot valleys of northern California.

Our daughters are taking the split well. We don’t blame each other, so they don’t either. And they do love us both after all. Damaging our relationships with our daughters is a worst-case scenario, and we are thankful that at least we made a very effective parenting team.

We’ve set intentions to treat each other both kindly and fairly, and we are walking that path. We have a long distance yet to go, and there are potential stressors related to our financial situations that could still roil the waters. We have engaged professionals to help us untangle our emotional wounds, handle the legal process, and counsel us on finances, so I hope that they can help us navigate those potential pitfalls (to mix a lot of metaphors!).

In our latest session, our divorce therapist asked us how we were feeling about our divorce and to what we were saying goodbye as we split. Dawn feels the loss keenly, though she fully believes it’s the preferrable outcome. I am not sad or grief-stricken but rather optimistic that we can have a more emotionally satisfying relationship once we say goodbye to the stress and tension that marked a lot of our married interactions.

Time will, of course, tell the tale. As it always does.

But I am hopeful.

Judging, cont.

We are not finished products until we draw our last breath. Perhaps not even then, but certainly up until then.

I think we often forget that.

As a younger person, I believed things I now find abhorrent. I advocated gay bashing to my teenage friends. I used slurs to refer to gays, Hispanics, and Asians. I repeated horribly insensitive jokes, and I was a central player in any number of misogynist pranks. Instead of asking directly for what I wanted, I tried to manipulate other people to achieve my ends indirectly.

In sum, I have behaved very badly in the past, and truth be told I sometimes take shortcuts even now.

So I have a hard time condemning anyone for expressing thoughts that I disagree with.

I don’t condone those thoughts. I don’t sanction them. But I know from my own experience that people, especially young people, have many miles to go in their lives’ journeys, and they can change their views.

Not only are we quick to judge people these days, we are unforgiving in those judgments, leaving no room for growth. We’re writing people off. Which seems super counterproductive to me. It’s wasteful – and I detest waste. And it doesn’t change hearts and minds, which is what we’ll need to do if we are to move the needle on important issues.

It’s your basic strong-arm approach, an I’m-going-to-force-you-to-do-what-I-want play. It’s easier than engaging in earnest discussion, dealing with the emotion of talking to people with fundamentally different perspectives and values – at least as they stand today. But I think we can do better.

And it starts with assuming the best of our fellow people. That common ground exists. That discussion can expose the assumptions we hold that explain our differences. That once those differences are exposed we can compare and assess them. And that when we do compare and assess them, that we can reasonably agree on a path forward.

We short-circuit that process by condemning people, refusing to engage with them, and we do even more damage by locking people into the mental and/or emotional space they occupy today, by not providing room to change their minds. It cements preconceptions, eliminates the opportunity for discussion, which destroys the chance to make even a little progress together.

Judging others helps exactly no situation. And I think that’s especially true now.

My Mother

I’m not a particularly good son to my mother, I think.

I do love her. Very much. More than I can articulate actually. I tell it to her on occasion. If you asked my mother I suspect she would say that I am haphazardly attentive. And she would say that she feels loved. Because she is a mother she gives her son the benefit of the doubt.

And I have probably left doubt.

I could do more. I should do more. But I am very self-absorbed. Not selfish. Not punitive. Not spiteful. But self-absorbed. It never occurs to me to do more until well after the fact.

I do live most of my life between my ears. I am marginally more present now than I was when I was younger. The benefits of exercising. It turns out that using your body is a very good way to get out of your head. But you can only make so many purses from a sow’s ear, which is to say I still think a lot. And most of that thinking is not about my mother. Or any other individual really.

And I feel guilty about that.

I believe relationships are a critical part of life. Connecting with others. Sharing experiences. Developing ideas informed by other people. Settling on a philosophy, on a world view, that includes other people’s perspectives. I do spend time thinking about how life works. For me. For others. Individually and collectively. But I don’t spend much time thinking about the people I know. What they may be doing. What they may be experiencing. And, most importantly, what they may be feeling.

Mild transgressions perhaps, at least when it comes to most other people.

But my mother?

Outwardly I am my father. I have his face and his voice and his mannerisms. We share many interests (except opera – he loves it. Really.). I am even-keeled like him. But inside, where my emotions meet my mind, I am my mother’s son. Smart. Maybe even very smart. Perceptive. Attentive to both context and details. We anticipate well, and we connect dots faster than most. And emotions terrify us, because we feel them so intensely we think they will unhinge us. Because emotional control is vitally important to us. I can’t explain why. It’s just very uncomfortable to feel like we aren’t in control of ourselves.

And yet I struggle to find mental and emotional space to consider this woman who is most like me. Who birthed me, fed me, nurtured me, taught me. To whom I owe more than I owe any other individual. I can’t seem to be bothered to repay that debt. Which probably makes me like every child ever, but still doesn’t assuage that guilt I feel.

At least when I think about it.

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.

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.

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.

Sharing

Sharing feels good. Really good.

So why do we resist it so much? Especially when we have so much.

I get that conserving energy is a biological motivation deeply enbedded in our DNA. Our ancestors didn’t know when they would eat next, or find water, or need shelter, so hoarding resources was critical to their survival.

And yet they were also social animals. They lived in family groups and in communities. Working with other people was critical to their survival.

We are still social animals. We still live in communities, and I know not only that I derive most of my own satisfaction and pleasure from interacting with other people but also that I could not survive without a community to support me. I am a hobbyist potter who knows zero about acquiring food on my own, zero about building even modestly effective shelter, zero about machines or carpentry or any other necessary skill for truly independent off-the-grid living.

But do we still need to hoard resources?

Because we seem to believe we do. People in my broader family, good friends and neighbors, other people I know and respect seem to want to acquire and retain more than what it appears to me that they need. I don’t judge them for their decisions – I don’t know the details of their circumstances, and I believe strongly in self-determination – but I wonder if they’re not making decisions based on fear rather than a realistic reading of their circumstances.

I retired last year from my corporate career. I was very worried about whether or not I had enough money to transition to my new career, which is still undetermined 15 months later. I did. It seems we prepare for the worst – how else to ensure that we’ll make it through. But the worst only happens to a small fraction of us, so the rest of us have over-prepared. And there’s a cost to each of us for that and to our community at large. Because in acquiring and keeping something we don’t really need, we deprive someone else of its use, someone who might need it more than we do.

My experience is that our community helps those who draw the short straws, who see disaster upend their lives. If we trusted that we wouldn’t be left out in the cold, that our families would have something to eat, that our basic needs would be met while we rebuilt our lives, then I wonder if we could curtail some of the selfishness we see around us, the selfishness that inhibits us, that undermines community and wastes resources that could be better used by someone who needs them more.