In this election, no touchdown dances from me

I want to say this now, to my friends, before election day. This is what you can expect from me:

• I am voting on election day.

• I will not be voting for the incumbent President, President Trump.

• If the incumbent President is reelected in a free and fair election, I will not complain or bellyache or make excuses. I will not act like a sore loser.

• If the incumbent President is not reelected in a free and fair election, I will not rub anyone’s nose in it. No “I told you so”, no taunting, no finger wagging, no touchdown dances. I will not act like a sore winner.

Why? Because I don’t think that’s what it’s about.

For me, the real victory is holding a free and fair election, with a peaceful transition of power. And, the whole point of a free and fair election is for all of us to vote freely and fairly. The tactic of potentially casting you as a shameful outsider because you don’t vote the same way as I do is a tactic, I think, that’s inconsistent with the spirit of a free and fair election. I won’t do it.

Moreover, an election is not the end of a journey to celebrate (save for the people who worked hard on the campaign, in private, perhaps). The election is the beginning of a new season, where someone has earned privilege and responsibility to govern for four years. I don’t celebrate at the beginning of a long hike up a mountain, I rejoice after our crew has safely returned home. I can’t think of a reason why elections would be any different.

Which brings me to a final point in conclusion. I’m not the sort of person who relishes competition, or is motivated by winning. So, this attitude of no touchdown dances is not something that’s unique to this election. It’s how I operate in all aspects of my life. So why bother writing this post?

Because I’m not really writing this with my Republican friends in mind. I’m intending to speak most directly to my friends who are also not planning to reelect the incumbent President.

And to you, my Democratic friends - no matter how you act during this election, I’m not going to judge you (and the same goes for friends who are not Democratic supporters).

But I ask that you don’t act like a sore winner or a sore loser. And it will be easy for us to fall into doing both.

Because at the end of the day, I think we all have to think of ourselves as being on the same team. We’re trying to create a country where we can live free lives. A country where people don’t die senseless deaths. And perhaps even a country that contributes to an international community that cooperates to defend our species and planet against existential threats. None of these are guarantees, as we’ve seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The universe is a dangerous and lonely place, as far as we know. Our republic, our planet, and our species are fragile. We have to work hard to have a chance of any of the three surviving in perpetuity.

The challenges ahead of us are really quite difficult. We have to play as one team to increase the long-run chances that our still nascent, free republic and we as a species, survive. No team I’ve ever been on plays its best when there’s infighting about the starting lineup.

I don’t want to start the next four years with infighting.

Of course, I know that I can’t control anybody’s actions but my own, nor do I want to. My hope here is that by laying out my intentions in advance and explaining my rationale it may lead others to carefully set intentions for their own conduct.

A high five and bat signal to my working dad brethren

I was furloughed from my job on Monday, March 30.

As a result my wife upped her hours and I luckily fell into some part-time contract work. In normal circumstances this would be a monumental life change. But alas, in these times it’s only a contextual footnote.

We hit day 100 of staying at home with the kids, all day, this past Tuesday. It has been an awakening, particularly in how I think about being a father. The highlights of this awakening are probably not terribly different for you, if you’re also a young father.

First and foremost, it’s really damn hard to be lead parent, especially because we’re both working. I realized during this quarantine exactly how my wife puts our family on her back and carries us, day after day. It’s nothing short of astounding, and that’s not even emphasizing the economic value of that unpaid care-giving work.

But every day, I find myself thinking of this bizarre situation as a blessing. I get to be a stay-at-home dad. This was the paternity leave I never had the chance to have.

Being a working dad is frustratingly hard, and most days someone in our house has a meltdown, despite my best efforts. But being a full-time dad is the best “job” ever, most of the time. It has far exceeded my already high expectations. I would have never been able to understand what I was losing had this pandemic never happened. To boot, consistently getting the really hard reps of solo-parenting has made me a much better father. It’s embarrassing how clueless I was three months ago. What a blessing this has been.

It’s remarkable that so many dads are experiencing this role-reversal at the exact same time. I think it’s an inflection point because a curious thing seems to be happening culturally.

If you’re a parent to young children, I wonder if you’ve noticed this too: being a “working dad” feels a lot more normal. It’s like being a “working mom” was a thing before and being a working dad is finally a thing now too. By that I mean working dads seem to have become a real constituency with a common set of experiences, preferences, and at least some awareness of its existence as a group.

Before the pandemic that mold we were forced into as working dads - and men generally, to some degree - was much more rigid. To be a working dad was to grind at work, not talk about your kids much unless asked or unless you were complaining a bit. You talked about sports, business, alcohol, or politics with your buddies. You help out your partner but you’re still the primary breadwinner and they’re the primary caregiver, and those roles have specific expectations. And maybe you have one relatively masculine and socially expected hobby like working out, brewing beer, playing fantasy football, trying new restaurants, woodworking, a side hustle, or something like that.

And I could go on describing this persona, and I admit that I’m painting in broad strokes - but if you’re a parent of young children you hopefully intrinsically understand the motif I’m outlining. And candidly, the mold of what I feel like I am supposed to be as a young father is frustrating on a good day and sometimes becomes suffocating.

But something feels different now.

Most nice days over the past three months the boys (Bo, Myles, and our pup Riley) and I would go for a walk in our neighborhood before lunch time. Along the way we met a lot of neighbors. That was fun and expected.

I did not expect to meet a lot of other young fathers who were walking with their kids just like I was. Some were also furloughed, and everyone I met actually talked about it openly. Others were still working but were also splitting parenting duties with their partners. I even saw one of my neighbors outside this past week with his baby daughter on his lap, taking a conference call.

And, these neighborhood dads and I, we actually had conversations about what we’re thinking and feeling about as fathers right now, even if briefly. And these conversations with my neighbors about fatherhood had the same kind of easy, open feel as the conversations I hear my wife having with other moms. These were conversations that rebelled against the rigid, masculine, mold I’ve felt restrained by.

This is the first time I ever felt a culture of working dad-hood growing into my day-to-day life. Prior to this pandemic, I only ever talked openly about being a working dad quietly and with my closest friends. Now it’s something that feels more acceptable, probably because this pandemic has given young fathers a shared and significant life experience.

And now that many of us working dads are starting to go back to work and more “normal” activity is happening, I see this change more clearly. And I think it’s for the better. But my call to you, my working dad brethren, is that we cannot put up with some of this BS around being a parent any longer. We have to be done with this foolishness.

When we go back to work, we can’t put up with:

• Feeling awkward about taking our kids to the doctor or cutting out of work early to care for our families

• Hiding the stresses of being a working dad

• Ridiculous policies that don’t provide men (or women) enough paid leave after birth or adoption

• Poorly managed teams that have meetings that always run over or go back to back. Our time is too valuable to waste on nonsense

• Workforces that don’t have gender diversity, and therefore skew toward a culture of being an old-school boys club

• Working all the time and being expected to work during family and leisure time

• Work cultures that emphasize useless face time at an office. I’m not even convinced that most companies are managed well enough to see a measurable difference between co-located teams and remote teams

There’s so much more we shouldn’t put up with; these are only a handful. Especially now that we understand being working fathers so much more intimately than we did three months ago, we should hold ourselves and our companies to a higher standard.

And the best part is, refusing to tolerate this foolishness is not just the right thing to do or a timely topic, I think it’s very possible that if we hold ourselves and our teams to a higher standard it’ll lead to higher profits, happier customers, and thriving teams.

Working moms have been pushing this agenda for some time, and I think it’s time for us join them in a big way.

Imagining a world with less shouting

Robyn forwarded me a three-day “no-shout challenge” that she heard about through a speaker at conference she attended. I made it two and a half days, and every hour was hard. I didn’t realize how much I shouted at my son until I tried to stop.

The challenge helped me to understand why I shouted and think of an alternative pattern of behavior.

Upon reflection, I realized that I shout because my most foundational belief about parenting is that what I owe my sons - above all else - is to help them become good people. So when my son deliberately screams to wake up his big brother, or bites me, or doesn’t follow what I believe to be a high-standard of conduct, that moves me from zero to ten in a second. That’s my baggage, not his.

I decided that my replacement behavior would be to say, “neither of us are perfect, but we are going to figure this out” when my temper was rising, instead of shouting.

But the point here is not that I am cured of shouting (I’m not even close). The point is to share what happened after I started shouting less.

We have been struggling a lot as a family during this pandemic. In many ways, this period of our lives has been a blessing, but it has been a trying time. Our elder son, now, is very aware of the virus and he misses our family, his friends, and his teachers at school. He’s confused about why he has to give far-away hugs and why he can do certain things but not others.

He’s also a toddler, so we have had power struggles over really small things as is the case with most families.

But when Robyn and I started this challenge and began shouting less, something changed for the better in our house. In a word, everything deescalated.

We still all have tantrums, but they are less intense. We still have power struggles, but we’re able to take a breath more quickly that before. Bo says “excuse me” to get our attention more, instead of screaming indiscriminately. Sometimes, instead of shouting we find a way to talk about his sadness and confusion, even though he barely has grasp of the words and concepts needed to express what he’s feeling.

Again, there is still shouting in our house, and I’m not proud of how I act on many days. But even just shouting less has created more space to listen, love, and resolve the very real problems we have. We have not reached the promised-land of a fully peaceful house, but we are on a different trajectory than we were.

While this was all happening, Robyn and I have been observing, listening, and talking intensely every night about the problems of race in our country. It its something that we are deeply stirred by, personally and professionally.

Because we saw a reduction in shouting bring about real and almost immediate change in our own household, I can’t help but wonder what might happen if we shouted less when trying to resolve community issues.

Say if we all just decided we would stop shouting for a week or a month, what would happen? In my wildest dreams, I wonder if that could be the very humble beginning of a transformation that eventually got us to a moment where we could live in a community where shouting was no longer needed.

The skeptic in me feels that this type of scaling is difficult and perhaps impossible. After all, Robyn happened to attend a conference, where she heard a speaker, who shared a no-shout challenge, and we happened to try it out. Getting to the point of trying to intentionally shout less resulted from a lucky mix of circumstance, humbling work, and serendipity.

In our household - whether it is us as parents or our children - someone had to take the first step. And luckily, it is clear that the first step to a no-shout home was our responsibility as parents.

But with complex disagreements that are compounded by hundreds of years of pain and violence - like race, poverty, and others - it’s less clear whose responsibility it is to take the first step. Moreover, that first step of not shouting takes incredible courage, humility, and grace.

I pray that I can summon that courage, humility, and grace whenever I need to take that first step. Being ready to take that first step is something worth preparing for, even if my number never is called to lead in that way. It is for all of us.

Racism, Reform, and the Second Commandment

In these very dark times, I am struggling to make sense of what is happening in the aftermath of George Floyd’s unfathomably cruel murder by a Minneapolis Police Officer. For a lot of reasons.

We live in a predominately black city. I have worked as a Manger in our Police Department for the better part of the last five years, so I’ve seen law enforcement from the inside. I am, technically speaking, a person of color with mixed-race children. We live in a mixed-race neighborhood.

And of course, there’s the 400+ years of institutionalized racism in the United States that I have begun to understand (at least a little) by reading about it and hearing first-hand accounts from friends who have felt the harms of it personally.

And as I’ve stewed with this, I keep asking myself - what are we hoping happens here? What do we want our communities to be like on the other end of this?

Because something is palpably different this time. George Floyd’s murder feels like it will be the injustice that (finally) sparks a transformation.

What I keep coming back to in contemplation, reflection, and prayer is the second greatest commandment - “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self.”

What I hope for is to live in a place where I can have good neighbors and be a good neighbor. The second greatest commandment is the most elegant representation of what I hope for in communities that I have ever found.

I interpret this commandment as a call to love. We must give others love and respect, even our adversaries. If loving our neighbor requires us to do the deep work of growing out of the fear, disrespect, and hate in our hearts then we must do it. Rather, we are commanded by God to do it.

But in the world we live in today, we can avoid the deep work of personal transformation if we choose to. If we don’t love our neighbors, we can just move somewhere with neighbors we already like. More insidiously, we can also put up barriers so that the people we fear, disrespect, or hate, can’t live in our neighborhood even if they wanted to.

This seems exactly to be what institutionalized racism was and is intended to do. I don’t have to learn to love someone if I keep them out of my neighborhood through, redlining, allowing crummy schools elsewhere, practicing hiring discrimination, racial covenants, brutal policing, and on and on.

If we choose neighbors we already love as ourselves, we’re off the hook for removing the hate from our hearts and replacing it with love for them.

In this, I am complicit. Part of why we live in a city is because I didn’t want to raise mixed-race children in a white, affluent suburb. I didn’t want to deal with it, straight up.

I say this even though I acknowledge that places like where I grew up are probably much more welcoming than they were 15 years ago. Similarly, there are times that I’ve chosen to ignore, block, and unfollow people who I fear, disrespect, or disagree with. I have been an accomplice creating my own bubble to live in.

Adhereing to the idea presented in the second greatest commandment is really quite hard.

The problem is, I and any others who want to live in a truly cohesive, peaceful community probably don’t have a choice but to do the deep work that the second greatest commandment asks of us.

My intuition is that even if we dismantled institutionalized racism completely, that wouldn’t necessarily lead to love thy neighbor communities. They’d be more fair and just, perhaps, but maybe not loving.

And, I’m not even convinced we can completely dismantle racist institutions without more and more people individually choosing to do the deep work of replacing the fear, disrespect, and hate in their hearts with love.

Which leaves me in such a quandary - I truly do believe there are pervasively racist institutions in our society, still. And those institutions need to be reformed - specifically to alleviate the particularly brutal circumstances Black Americans have to live with.

But at the same time, I know I am a hypocrite by saying all this because I too have to do the deep work of personal transformation.

I did the Hate Vaccine exercise last week and realized how fearful and disrespectful I can be toward people from rural and suburban communities because of my race, job, and where I went to college. When I really took a moment to reflect, what I saw in myself was uglier than I thought it would be.

In community policing circles a common adage is that “we can’t arrest our way out of [high crime rates].” I have been wondering if something similar could be said for where we are today - can we reform our way out of racism?

Maybe we can. I honestly don’t have the data to share any firm conclusion. But my lived experience says no: the only way out of this - if we want to live in a love thy neighbor society - is a mix of transforming institutions and transforming all our own hearts.

Thank you to my friend Nick for pointing out the difference between the second commandment and second greatest commandment. It is updated now..

Part of me doesn't want this to end so fast

Part of me doesn’t want this to end so fast.

Okay, now that I’ve said that I can say how ridiculous that is, and selfish.

I want people to stop needing ventilators. I want first responders to be able to sleep in their own beds and eat dinners with their families. I want doctors and nurses to come home. I want grocery store workers and every other essential worker to not have to wear masks and fear for their lives.

I want us to stop losing or almost losing friends, family, and neighbors. I want to stop washing bananas. I want everyone to have their jobs back. I really do.

It makes me feel so guilty to say this, but this might be the happiest time of my life. Despite being in isolation. Despite being furloughed from my job and picking up part-time work. Despite slashing our family’s budgets. Despite not seeing our family and friends for weeks. Despite Robyn and I trying to work remotely with two little boys at home. Despite this all being such a cluster and a nightmare. It’s still happy.

When will I ever get so much time with Robyn and our boys? When will things be so slow and quiet, ever again? When again will the air ever be so clean? When will instagram and facebook ever have less people flaunting their wealth and status? When will Riley ever get so many walks in the neighborhood? When will I ever talk to my college and high school friends so regularly? When will Bo be 2 again, and when will Myles be a newborn again, and I actually get to be here for it?

I know that all things considered, this month has been very easy for us, relative to what other people are going through. I sure get that we’re lucky that we’re all healthy (so far) and we can ride this out at home.

But even though I feel guilty saying this, part of me doesn’t want this to end so fast. And again, I can’t believe i’m saying this, but outside the very real and significant strain, stress, and sacrifice of this global, deadly pandemic, this has been a happy time for us.

I do want this pandemic to end. But I hope we can keep some of the happy parts when this is over.

What I do vs. how I do it

What do I want to be known for? What I do, or how I do it?

Put another way, will I do anything to achieve what I want? Or, will I act in accordance with a set of standards no matter what?

Put another way, what am I uncompromising about, results or integrity?

Put another way, what do I want my sons to learn from, what I accomplish or how I act?

Put another way, what’s my deathbed prize, knowing I was successful or knowing I was consistently a good person?

What we do and how we do it aren’t always in tension. But it happens often enough. And when they are in tension, the choice defines me, defines us.

Power and Responsibility

All these degrees, all these internships, all these flights and travels, all this preparation and learning - to work. To work earning a living. To work as a husband and father. Hopefully to serve others. What am I trying to do here?

Am I in it for the power, or the responsibility? The distinction is a big one.

Why? I’ve found that there often comes a time when our loyalties to power and responsibility are at odds. Here’s an example.

Let’s consider the act of taking credit for success. I can take credit, and boost my chances of a promotion. Or, I can credit my team, and boost the chances that my team will continue doing good work even without me.

In the example above, I can’t have it both ways. I can’t be loyal to power and responsibility at the same time.

The choice is revealing, and ours alone.

You are explorers.

Both of your grandfathers are sailors. It is important for you to know this. This is where you come from, being an explorer is who you are.

It is important for you to know this because you have an itch and you may believe it is there by accident. It is not. To know more, to reach further, to venture into the distance. You explore. You are an explorer, I already see it in you. You will explore, it is in your nature. Your mother and I honestly didn’t put it there, it was there when you were born.

It is not there by accident.

Both your grandfathers, as I said, are sailors. Your Granddad has been sailing since he was a boy. He loves the water. As far as I know, he always has. Everything he does is to learn, to grow, to try the new. His is an exploration of zeal and adventure.

Your Dada was also a sailor. He was an engineer on a ship. He sailed all across the world, fixing the boat’s engine. As a young man, he flew from India to Tehran and took a bus to the coast. From there he traveled the world, port by port. Your Dada was not an explorer because of a sense of adventure. Your Dada was a dreamer. He dreamed of a better life, in a place where the corruption did not cause common people to suffer. He loved the water, no doubt, but his exploration was one of tenacity and sacrifice.

And I, boys, am not a sailor. I have always been partial to mountains. And my appetite for exploration is one service. I need to know the truth, not just because the truth is divine, but in the knowledge is the key to leaving the world better than I found it. Which is what I must do, it is involuntary. My exploration is one of curiosity and vision.

And your stories, my sons, are yet to be written. But that voice inside, it is not a false prophet. You are the grandsons of sailors, and you are explorers.

So when that voice inside whispers to you, listen carefully. To be sure, it will be scary. Exploring is not comfortable. But your father before you, and my fathers before me…we were all explorers. And we, all the men in your ancestry, whether we are on Earth or gone ahead - look to the night sky and you will find us there, watching over you.

You are explorers. I hope this has helped you understand why.

99% of the time, I am grateful to be a happier person

I am a happier person than I was a year ago. That’s a good thing. But my writing has suffered.

For brief, rather very brief, moments, I miss my intense feelings of anxiety and sadness. It was much easier to draw something meaningful into my words - my art - when my feelings were intense. I never liked being overwhelmed by my emotions. But damn, did they make for good copy.

99% of the time, I am grateful to be a happier person. But it presents a challenge. I have to dig much deeper to write. When I am not emotional, I must open my heart wider to bring words from it.

It’s not a dilemma, per se, because being healthier and with more peace is not worth sacrificing for my writing. It just means I must work harder as an artist. It’s a worthy, albeit bizarre, challenge.

—

On September 30, I will stop posting blog updates on Facebook. If you’d like email updates from me once a week with new posts, please leave me your address, pick up the RSS feed, or catch me on twitter @neil_tambe.

Breaking the cycle of this foolishness

I am finally understanding why I felt the way I have (anxiety and sometimes debilitating stress) as an adult. There’s finally data (check out this Knowledge Project Podcast with moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt for a flavor) which is showing that that social media, isolation, helicopter parenting, etc. are having an effect on us (millennials and zillenials).

I’ve grieved my history and am trying to move on - I don’t want to feel like a victim anymore.

But how?

There is meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, journaling and reflection, exercise and perhaps more strategies.

But how do you undo decades of acculturation and mental programming?

We know the causes and the effects of the stress, anxiety, or depression many of us feel - or are at least starting to know enough. But what to do? What does it mean? What comes next?

I think we heal in the best ways we know how. I think we resist the causes of our collective demons. I think we look out for each other, because I honestly don’t think older generations care, or if they do, they don’t know how to help. I think we meditate, pray, exercise, seek therapy, journal, quit toxic environments, or do whatever works for us.

But Robyn also brought up how we can raise our son and future children differently. We don’t have to obsess over what they’ll “be” when they grow up. We don’t have to let them have a Facebook account when they’re in middle school. We don’t have to shield them from every damn situation where they might struggle. We don’t.

We can break the cycle of this foolishness, and that may be a greatest gift we could give our kids. And as Robyn pointed out to me today, that may also be the best way for us to learn how to heal too.

—

On September 30, I will stop posting blog updates on Facebook. If you’d like email updates from me once a week with new posts, please leave me your address or pick up the RSS feed. 

Everyone has real struggle

Struggle is a part of life. The question is how will I deal with it?

One path is a transfer. This is when I take my pain and suffering and put it into someone else’s shoulders.

Another path is self-transformation. This is when I improve my own ability to deal with pain and suffering.

A third path is denial. This is when I delude and distract myself so I can pretend the pain and suffering doesn’t exist or isn’t that bad.

The fourth path is collaborative. This is when I work to alleviate or better handle my own pain and suffering in a way that helps or teaches others do the same.

I don’t know if there is an always “right” path. There are probably times and places where each path is the most right (or most possible).

What I’ve realized to be true is that every person, no matter what phase of life they are in, is struggling in some way that is significant. Whether rich or poor, young or old, healthy or sick - everyone has some real struggle.

If that is true, however, some of the four paths seem less reasonable than others. If I know with certainty that the person in front of me is struggling, how do I dump more on them or deny the struggle in the first place?

—

On September 30, I will stop posting blog updates on Facebook. If you’d like email updates from me once a week with new posts, please leave me your address or pick up the RSS feed. 

Thinking about my life backward from the very end I'm speeding toward

When I envision it in my head, I hope my final moments alive on this Earth are surrounded by my family. As many of them as possible, and I hope that means I don’t outlive my kids and maybe not my wife either. I hope that it’s peaceful and not too painful. I hope it’s at least a few decades from now, too. At the same time, I hope that moment isn’t one whose arrival I’ve cheated and delayed at great personal cost.

And amidst that scene, when my life is waning, I think about the last few minutes - the last few breaths, even - and how I want them to feel. The regrets that I hope I don’t have and what my life looks like from a vantage point at the very end.

This is a concept Robyn and I have talked about, in a general sense. And our conclusions are pretty simple.

At the end of our life, we don’t imagine wishing we would’ve spent more time working or wishing we had made more money. Or wishing we would’ve spent less time with our kids and our family. We won’t wish we would’ve drank more alcohol, or wish we had spent less time together. We won’t wish that we had been more popular or powerful, or conclude that we had wasted too much time praying. At the end of life, we won’t ever wish that we had put less effort toward being kind and loving toward other living things.

When my Papa went ahead, the part of me that wanted to be a king died with him. King of a company, king of my neighborhood, king of my peers, or even just king of my own backyard. For my whole life, I had wanted to be the king of something, but once he passed, I just didn’t care anymore.

Being the last person by my father’s side, in his final moments, changed everything. I stopped thinking of my life from beginning to the end, and I instead started thinking about it from the end - the very end - to the beginning. And when I did that, being a king didn’t matter much anymore.

And I feel such tension now with parts of American culture. I don’t care about being the big fish in the pond like I used to (and I used to). But I feel like the culture around me signals that competition, fame, talent, status, and wealth is the point. That I should care about those things.

I don’t want to be that person anymore because to be honest, that final moment doesn’t feel far away anymore. My father was older than 60, but he was a young man. And the final moment doesn’t just feel closer than it used to, it feels like it’s coming faster. Like I’m speeding toward it. Like we’re all speeding toward it, faster and faster.

And I don’t know what my conclusion is here. Maybe I don’t have one yet. I guess I hope writing and sharing this, reveals that I can’t be the only one feeling this tearing between the way I want to anchor my life, versus the way I see the brazen and competitive parts of American culture telling me to. Because at the end, the very very end, I want to leave this Earth without wondering whether I had missed the point, wishing I had changed something sooner.

Reframing How I View My Job, Career

I've begun thinking about my job and career differently; my perspective has evolved throughout and because of business school. I used to think about the job that I would like, even a job that I would be good at. A job that gave me the lifestyle, purpose, happiness, and pay I wanted. My "dream" job.

In retrospect, I consider that a self-centered view of my job and career.

But, I've learned in the past few years that true happiness comes from serving others, not yourself (the data is incontrovertible). That's helped me rethink how I make decisions about my job and career.

I figure, if happiness comes from being other-focused and how I view my career is self-focused, I probably won't be happy. As a result, I've decided to view my career in an other-focused way.

Now, instead of asking myself questions like, "What kind of job will I like?", I ask myself a different question that's more other-focused. I ask myself: "In my life, who am I excited to serve? Who's the customer I care about?" This reframing has changed how I've viewed my job after business school, a lot.

I think there are a lot of legitimate ways to answer this question, and what I've found is that it's most important is to be honest with yourself.

For example, I've chosen a job where I get to serve people in the City I live in. My customers are the current and future residents of the City of Detroit. But my "customer" is also my family. I chose a job that affords me a good (not lavish) lifestyle but allows me not to travel every week. It's a job that I'll likely have stress from, but it will be one that energizes me with optimism - I won't take negative emotion back to my family.

Maybe the customers you care about are other people in your company. Maybe it's the hungry or sick. Maybe it's CEOs. Maybe it's small businesses. I don't know, only you do. But what I'm saying, is that it's worth figuring out who you care about serving rather than figuring out what you like. If you're not excited to serve your "customer", you probably won't be happy.

Like most decisions, reframing the question I asked when considering a job / career change made a huge difference.

Like Catching Fireflies

There is god in art, I think. In images, in movement, in sound in color and words. Which is why we like it so much or so desperately want it. What's not to desire of something with beauty or grace? The rest can be taught, but beauty and grace can only be gifted and maybe discovered. Why else would the things that are essentially majestic usually be natural, spontaneous or dreamed in a rage of creativity?

It's as if the artist--of whichever medium--is catching fireflies. We catch them one by one and put them in shiny mason jars when the weather is just right. And like fireflies, it's wonderful and reasonable and uplifting to have those fireflies held in those jars, even though we know that's not where they belong. They belong in nature, where god created them. I think art is meant to be free.

If it isn't, it makes me feel much better about not being able to catch a poem and cage it in a notebook, in years. It's gotta be okay to borrow creativity for awhile, though.

And, I don't know how I feel about god (though I use the idea freely here) whether or not a god exists or has relevance in our day-to-day lives outside of faith--or if any of it even matters. But if that god was responsible for making things like art, friendship, freedom or souls and their mates...that god has to be a gracious one.
-----------------------------------------------
We'll make scribbles in the morning soil,
And a put a canvas on the afternoon squall.
In the evening shaking like the first tree we see,
Before recording the whistling of the stars,
Oh...what a masterpiece we'll make.

Stories in sacrifice

How can we possibly learn to do something that has the appearance of being against individual interest?

Well, here's a place to start. Why make a sacrifice? Of course, these are interrelated, but in my mind they are distinguishable cases.

-For someone else: an individual or group sacrifices for the benefit for another individual or group. (A parent commutes a longer distance so that their children can attend a better public school)

-For themselves: an individual sacrifices so they can ultimately benefit. (I sacrifice an extra helping of cake so that my health gains)

-For the future: An individual or group sacrifices so that there will be utility in the future. (A company invests in a pension fund)

Now, another assumption: this behavior is learned. Even if it's not, we make an effort to teach it, and those interventions seem like they might have a chance at forcing someone to sacrifice in an involuntary manner--which causes sacrifice to happen even if it's not dictated by the conscience of the sacrificer.

So, there are ways of sacrificing, and that behavior is [at least partially] learned or directed. There are other ways of influencing behavior, like coercion or incentives. And there are times when people sacrifice when they don't HAVE to...like giving change in your pocket to someone on the street. So why do people sacrifice when they don't have to?

Perhaps it's a question of assigning value. Maybe people see the option of sacrifice as providing more value to another person or in the long-run. This is plausible, because I'm skeptical of this suggestion because individuals as consumers have so much difficulty placing value on the choices they make or the resources they have. If value is at the core of this myster, we'd have to tepidly assume that people are extremely rational--to the point of controlling their primary urges--right?

Persuasion is another problematic explanation. Simply put, if people make sacrifices because of persuasion, they can also be persuaded out of making sacrifices or be persuaded into making bad sacrifices. Which, seems to stand up to reality I concede.

Some sacrifices seem to just happen, whcih means it's in the nature of some people in some circumstances to sacrifice or that sacrificing can be learned/cultivated.

I don't know exactly how that teaching/learning happens. I think it's by example. I just know it's important...many of our public policies will need sacrifice to be successful. When people don't sacrifice, it seems like non-optimal outcomes happens...if all that happens is take-take-take, there eventually won't be enough left to give, right?

Sheesh, what a random thought-experiment. So much for the vignettes.

Our Traces

@ The Ruins of Macchu Picchu in the Guardhouse, 814pm

The Ruins at Macchu Picchu are surprisingly simple. There´s farmland, an enormous main square, many temples, a guardhouse, an observatory, urban residential area and it´s hidden deep in the Andes Mountains to be insulated from intruders. That´s presumably all the stuff that REALLY mattered to them. There are no shops nor hospitals nor athletic stadiums. I consider it a window into the Incan mindset and value system.

It makes me wonder, what do our cities say about us? Our homes? Our website history? Even the stuff we generally carry on our persons.

These things tell a lot about who we are: what we spend our time on, the things we leave behind and the stories we tell. I hope they reveal good things.

Now to consider, what matters to me given my time, my possessions and/or legacy and stories?

---Just got back to Cusco. Our hostel is like a freshman dorm full of people who have cabin fever, and there´s a bar upstairs called the Crazy Llama. Uh oh.

Nobody must remain alone

I believe it's important for people to have time by themselves, but a person should never have to be alone.

I was sitting in a friend's kitchen the other day. We were chatting, as we always do, about lots of different things--U-M, the future, gender in leadership, food, etc. We also talked about our families, which was the hardest topic to discuss because both of us have a few difficult circumstances when it comes to our immediate familial relations. It was clear that family stuff had been bothering both of us quite a lot for an extended period of time.

But we sat, hand in hand, and it was better. We didn't talk a tremendous amount, more than anything we were just there. Not alone about it anymore. Indeed, we choose not to let eachother be alone over it anymore. And that didn't make the problems go away, not by a longshot, but it did make it seemingly more possible to move forward...to reconcile our fears and frustrations a little bit...which is exactly what we needed.

Being by yourself and struggling a little bit is important to "grow", I think. It builds character, resourcefulness and obviously independence. But being alone is totally unnecessary. At our most vulnerable state, nobody should have to fly solo. It's too cruel to damn someone to that fate. Circumventing alone-liness should at least be offered. Our civilization is too sophisticated to leave people out.

There are many that are alone and thus forgotten. Leaving those folks alone is something we cannot allow. We should be ashamed if we do. It's not humane and I don't think it's something human either. Strangers or not, awkwardness or not, frustration or not sticking together is something too important to gaffe.

I have to get to sleep pretty quickly, but this is just a quick thought. It's something I've believed for a long time but never really verbalized, only have tried to do. It's hard to do, alone-liness is hard to discover, expose, understand and then act upon.

Purpose: Accept or Create?

"Purpose...It's that little flame that lights a fire under your ass." - Avenue Q

I had the privilege of chatting with my very great friend, Nick, yesterday afternoon at Michigan State University. Over the course of conversation we covered several topics, per usual. He's a wise friend, so I threw him a question I've been gnawing on. I don't remember the question exactly, but it was about purpose.

In asking this question, I identified two ways of finding purpose, I think both are legitimate framings of the task. I suppose even this frame was a valuable use of the conversation, even if no conclusions were drawn. Basically, I asked him "how did you find your purpose?". He's found his calling. he's currently working for the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, in Indianapolis, even though he's still in school. He'll continue after graduation.

Here's a breakdown of the ways to find purpose, as I see them. Obviously elements of both are at play, but the "both factors matter" analysis doesn't really satiate because it doesn't examine the underpinnings of the ideas. Time to explore.

1) Accept your purpose
An individual has a duty to do what they are good at/serves the public good. You do what you will be most useful at in life. Of course, enjoyment in work matters, but only because people who aren't happy in their work can't excel. You do what you can excel at and benefit the public good in this way. Circumstances choose you and its up to you to accept or reject them.

2) Create your purpose
You blaze your own trail--and hopefully leave a path for others--in the best way you can. You figure out what you are good at and what you want, and thrust yourself into those areas. You make an assertion, about the world perhaps, and make it happen. The individual is the primary agent in determining his/her future, rather than the public good. Circumstances don't choose the individual the individual chooses the circumstance. The individual's decision is not to accept or reject the opportunities they are presented...the individual's decision is to create and ensure the opportunities they want most.

What Nick suggested is roughly the following. You cast yourself in a general direction, the direction in which you want to catch opportunities, and then make the most of the opportunities you have on the table. It's a bit of a combination of the two ideas above. First, the individual has agency (e.g. YOU decide if you want to be a science major or an arts major). Then, the individual has a bit of freedom in accepting or rejecting opportunities.

I don't think everyone operates like this. Some I know, desperately want to work in New York City--so much for letting circumstances totally choose you. But also, there are some that go whichever way the wind blows.

And, I'm not so sure it's that simple as being open to opportunities while also training in a certain area. What I really am asking then is: which comes first...accepting purpose or creating purpose? Surely both matter, as they ought. But, which leads and which follows?

This is why it matters. Think of the Lois Lowry's book, The Giver. In the novel, children are assigned a job, for the good of the collective. The main character is chosen to be the "receiver of memory", whereas his sister is chosen to be a nurturer or something. This epitomizes the idea of accepting a purpose.

Imagine another scenario where all create their own purpose. In my high school it would've meant that roughly 5% of all the people I graduated with would've become art or music majors...because that was the path they wanted to create. Which is cute, but the world probably would be a little bit more better off if less than 5% of all high school graduates were artists or musicians...substitute your own percentage.

(And yes, for the record I do think scientists, engineers, mathematicians, social workers, teachers, civil servants, lawyers, entrepreneurs, business managers, social sector employees etc. probably are a more primary need than musicians...though I think its great the people who pursue the arts, do so. But my point is...to have 20 million of the people currently studying other disciplines switching to arts probably isn't the best allocation of talent).

These two scenarios are gravely different, and would ultimately lead to societies being constructed radically differently. Both these approaches would put people in different places in different proportions. Personally, I think our country is a little bit more like the Giver scenario. Incentives/pay and education systems tend to shuffle people to areas with the most public need. I think its really hard to blaze a trail as I've described...but I digress.

Both these have problems. The first approach allows for the wasting of talent. What if that "golden opportunity" never comes or its not identifiable...then what does one do. If you "miss the boat" on your calling...then do you live a life of mediocrity? What if circumstances never call? The first approach doesn't really allow burning ambition--a really powerful force--to drive people, i think. If you're just doing what your duty is, it seems tricky to stay motivated, doesn't it?

The second is problematic, because...as a human how do you know you choose a path for the right reasons? What if you choose a path but it leads away from the public good or it's totally not suited to you? Isn't it possible that some streak of selfishness can take hold of a person's choice of profession?

I really don't know which approach leads which, but what I do know is that effort is required. Either way, the individual or community needs to seek out a purpose for himself or his neighbor, respectively. What's most useless is someone who wastes their potenial or whose community allows them to waste or never activate their potential.

Of course, this presumes everyone does have a purpose, or that its even possible for everyone to have a purpose. So, regardless of whether purpose is accepted or created perhaps another issue is more important at the moment. Allowing everyone to have a purpose, that's reasonably actionable and meaningful. If that does happen, the question of "accepting" or "creating" a purpose might not matter so much.

A company's truck drivers have just as much purpose as company's CEOs, I think. I wonder if both parties realize that.

Befriending Strangers - Why do we inflict hurt?

I had a few bad experiences with strangers in the past 36 hours. Once trying to get a table at the bar, once at the hockey game, once walking back from the hockey game. For a moment, I started to lose faith in strangers. To say that is a big deal. Most people in this world are strangers to us.

I wonder, what dictates the way people conduct themselves to those they have little obligations to--people like strangers. What makes people act rudely, harmfully or childishly towards people they have no shared experiences with? Conversely, why do people act as such towards people they DO have shared experiences with? It seems silly. If you DON'T know them, why be a jerk? If you do you know them why be a jerk to jeopardize the relationship? Perhaps a reason to be a jerk is retribution to the way someone has treated you in the past? But if that's the case, that still doesn't explain why to be ill towards somebody else in the first place.

Briefly, there are times when I lose faith in strangers...which is to say losing faith in humanity collectively, I guess. But then, someone will be laughing. Or, a baby walks down the street, toddling along with his parents. There are times when the human spirit triumphs and goodwill towards humanity and the earth triumph over greed. Beauty happens. And then, I remember my faith again.

A young man again

What dreams may come?
As golden fields of corn
turn to ranches, then mountains, then desert.

My father and I
He a young man again
Traveling for a new life
out of circumstance, not choice.
He needs a life.

Like a younger man, again.

I see myself in the windshield.

[pause]

I am a younger man, too.