Rise up like a hive of angry bees bent on destroying us

Churchill, the legendary politician and writer, once said that if you have enemies, good, because that mean you’ve stood up for something sometime in your life.

Anderson, the great muckraking journalist, said that nothing produces such exhilaration, zest for daily life as a protracted, ugly, vendetta that rages for years and exhausts both sides, often bringing one to ruin.

Plutarch, the famous essayist, said that the existence of enemies is an incentive for good governance, and they spur us to be more coordinated and efficient.

These ideas make for clever quotations, pithy bumper stickers and useful justifications for receiving hate mail.

But is that really our best metric of human worthiness? Have we become so obsessed with achieving and winning and comparing and acquiring social proof of our own virtue, that we don’t feel whole unless somebody hates us?

People who brag about how many enemies they have are not impressive to me. They’re not heroic, they’re paranoid, contentious, unforgiving, resentful assholes whose only real enemy is their own reflection.

People don’t hate them, they hate them.

People aren’t out to get them, they’re out to get themselves.

In fact, they only reason they categorize other human beings as their enemy is so that they can justify doing or saying anything they want to them.

Nepo addresses this concern beautifully his book about the spirit of community:

Let’s put down our arrogance and admit that we’re all on the same journey. We’re at a basic crossroads between deepening the decency that comes from caring for each other and spreading the contagion of making anyone who is different into an enemy. And, as history has shown through crusades, genocides, and world wars, if we don’t recognize ourselves in each other, we will consume each other.

On a global scale, this is not likely to happen. Calling down wrath and lightning bolts upon our enemies has become the modus operandi of modern humans. It’s become far too profitable for too many institutions to stop.

But in our own lives on a one to one basis, softening our sense of the other as an enemy still feels like a meaningful practice.

What if you gave up being the kind of person who had enemies?

What if you became someone who excelled at letting go and forgiving and not allowing people to take up bitter residency in your heart?

What if you viewed people not as enemies to be conquered but simply part of the rhythm of life to be integrated?

Remember, little things only become as big as we magnify them. Fighting things and making them into enemies only makes them look worse than they really are.

Many have said that you can judge a person by the enemies they make, but if that’s our metric for success, then perhaps our gauge needs to be recalibrated. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Who would you be without all the people who hated you?

Why isn’t this as important to you as it is to me?

Having been both a member and a leader of various professional associations, masterminds and support groups over the years, there’s one source of tension that always seems to bubble up.

The dissimilarity of member commitment.

And it’s funny how it plays out.

First, we get frustrated and even offended when other people’s priorities aren’t the same as ours. It feels like an affront to our value system.

Second, questions run through our heads like. Why isn’t their attendance more consistent? Why aren’t they showing up on time? Why are they checking their phone during the meeting instead of connecting and contributing? These folks desperately need some upside down ankle shaking.

These questions and the feelings behind them are perfectly valid. It’s natural to feel upset at their behavior.

But before blowing our conch shell and calling for the group tribunal to cast judgment on the offending party, we should explore the question behind the question. Because what we’re really wondering is:

Why isn’t this as important to you as it is to me?

That’s what this is about. We’re pissed because they’re not just like us. And that’s a failure of empathy. Because as important as accountability is, and as helpful as it can be to challenge people to be better, ultimately, it’s not our job to figure out why someone is not as devoted as we are.

Our only job to love them.

Particularly with extracurricular and volunteer organizations. Nobody has to be there. And shaming them for being inconsistent isn’t going persuade them to change the behavior.

Truth is, this gap in mattering isn’t a problem for us to solve, it’s a reality for us to accept. Sometimes people simply have a different level of commitment than we do. And that’s okay. Despite our best efforts to motivate and encourage others, despite our desire to remake them in our own image, and despite our compulsion to project our own autobiography onto them, people are going to do what they’re going to do.

Reminds me of a member of my local trade association during my year as president. Jerry was brilliant, friendly, experienced and brought massive value to our chapter. He even invited me over for dinner one night to meet his lovely family and talk about how we could improve our organization.

Naturally, the narration inside my head was, wow, what a catch, this dude is gonna be our savior, he’s exactly what this group needs.

But unfortunately, to quote the popular dating mantra, he just wasn’t that into us. Jerry had other commitments and priorities that took precedent over our organization.

Ultimately, the best we could do for him was love him when he showed up, share our appreciation for his presence, and tell him that if ever he wants to come back, we’ll be here with open arms.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How do you react when you see something isn’t as important to them as it is to you?

The strength of weak ties

My friend jokingly calls me the nametag priest, since my sticker is a sort of mini confessional that’s with me all the time.

It’s the funniest thing. Not the fact that strangers will just start talking to me, but that they will just start sharing with me.

People offer all these intimate, personal details about their lives that were never asked for.

Like that one guy on the airport shuttle that used my nametag to strike up a conversation, and then managed to tell me his entire life story, half of which took place in prison, in the seven minute journey between the terminal and the rental car station.

That man is now my roommate.

Just kidding. Spike moved out years ago. My wife said he wasn’t pulling his weight around the house.

But this whole mini confessional thing isn’t as bizarre as you might think. Let’s explore it from a psychosocial perspective.

First, the disclosure of the nametag creates a false sense of intimacy. Sociologists call this a norm of reciprocity, whereby creates the permission slip for sharing personal information, and in some cases, oversharing.

Jourard pioneered this concept with his famous scale of openness. He would call someone like myself a high opener, as my nametag elicits more disclosure because of my greater receptiveness and attentiveness.

Second, the solace of a stranger is an experience we can all relate to. Whether it’s sitting next to someone on a plane, or waiting in a long line, humans tend to reveal more about their lives.

Think about it. Time is constrained, context is nonexistent, attachment is impossible, and judgment is removed. The interaction becomes a safe container. We simply release the tension and still keep our personal world away from it. We’re never going to see them again anyway. Plus, it’s cheaper than therapy. God bless the strength of weak ties.

The last reason people use my nametag as an invitation to overshare is, people are lonely and want to be heard. Myself included. Why else would someone wear a nametag all the time?

But because we live in a highly fragmented and isolated society, turning in desperation to whoever will listen is a quick and easy remedy for this very acute form of human suffering.

Harvard actually ran a fascinating social capital study on this topic. They analyzed data from an online survey of two thousand adults. Half the respondents were asked to identify their core discussion partners, but the other half were asked to recall the last time they discussed a matter that was important to them.

According to the researchers, half of the confidants were people whom the you would not consider personally important. They were often not the family and close friends that social scientists thought them to be, rather, barbers, bartenders, fitness, trainers, doctors, and financial advisers.

Ultimately, my two by three inch confessional makes perfect sense. It’s not really a big surprise that complete strangers use my nametag as permission to share intimate details of their lives.

Most of the time, it’s a gift. To me and them. And yes, there were moments when it became a burden.

Like that mechanic who stalked me for three months and then showed up at my workplace with a copy of one of my newspaper articles, looking for a photo opp. He did not become my roommate.

But thankfully, inner work on setting, maintaining and communicating my boundaries can kept me and others safe. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How are you benefiting from the strength of weak ties?

Rising like a promise at the back of your throat

Since we can’t change people, the best thing we can do is change how we think about them, and how we think about ourselves in relation to them.

Let’s say during a holiday or family trip, one of your relatives starts pushing your buttons. This shouldn’t surprise you, as they are the ones who installed them.

But instead of picking another pointless fight or locking yourself in your room until they finally apologize, think about some ways you might be able to relate to that person in a more compassionate way.

One mantra that helps calm my nerves when this happens to me is reminding myself, they are being perfectly themselves.

Whatever they’re doing to trigger us, it’s probably not as personal or conscious as we’re making it out to be. Because just like us, they’re simply behaving on brand, to invoke the old business buzzword, and we can’t expect them to be someone they’re not just so we’re less annoyed.

Isn’t that what we would want other people to do for us? To acknowledge all of our quirks and faults and secrets and say that they love us anyway?

They are being perfectly themselves.

Another mantra from a friend of mine goes like this:

Everyone deserves another chance. Not a second chance or a third chance or a fourth chance, but another chance. Relating to each other isn’t about numbers, it’s about nuance.

Human beings are complex and imperfect and disappointing and most of us are doing the best that we can with what we’ve been given. April writes in her beautiful book of poetry:

The taste of another chance, rising like a promise at the back of your throat, should give you the courage to look more closely at all the things that are causing any pain. We should all be so lucky.

And who knows? Maybe if we give people another chance, they’ll return the favor and give us a chance to love them for being who they are. Sounds like one hell of a gift exchange to me. One that’s worth participating in.

Hell, imagine how many people in this world have never had the chance to be what they’re like. Makes me think of an old coworker. This woman is the queen of not giving people a chance, particularly in the world of dating. Based on updates about her courting adventures, it seems that there was always some reason to write the next dude off.

Whether he was too laid back, too nice, too competitive or too practical and normal, she simply couldn’t give her dates another chance. No wonder she was lonely and bitter.

And the question in the back of my throat was always, what are you, a mob boss? Who are these people with so little patience that their standing order with others is, you only get one chance with me?

Try a little tenderness. Defrost your heart and fill those little trays with love. Learn to relate to people’s imperfections with some compassion. And maybe they’ll do the same to you. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you driving people away, but then bitching and moaning that you’re alone?

Too crude and erroneous to merit an influence

Age of candidacy is a fascinating concept.

It’s the minimum age at which a person can legally qualify to hold certain elected government offices. Every country has their own electoral standards, each with a variance of age levels.

France, for example, has a minimum age for president of eighteen years old.
Italy requires presidents to be at least fifty years old.

The overarching theme, however, is the same. Before a certain age, most people don’t have the wisdom, judgment and stability of character to fulfill their responsibilities.

Hell, our brains aren’t even fully developed until well into our twenties, at the earliest. Only when we reach adulthood do we first start thinking with our prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational center, which responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of the long term consequences.

When we’re young, we still process everything through the amygdala, the reptilian part of our brain. It screams at us every moment of the day to either fight, flee, feed and fuck. It’s pure anger, fear, hunger and lust.

Does that sound like the mentality of a statesman who should be making executive decisions for a nation?

And you could argue both sides. Age is no guarantee of efficiency, and youth is no guarantee of innovation.

But think of it this way. Do you remember some of the horrible decisions you made when you were ten, twenty, even thirty years old? That didn’t make you stupid, only human. Your immature brain simply didn’t know any better.

It wasn’t your fault, it was just biology.

Personally, I sometimes feel the need to apologize to everyone who met me prior before I was thirty. Blech.

Mason, the constitutional dissenter who refused to sign the constitution, first contested that all members of congress needed to be at least twenty one years of age before taking office. He said if someone was interrogated, he would be obliged to declare that his political opinions at the age of twenty one were too crude and erroneous to merit an influence on public measures.

Some would say that’s a lucid political strategy, others would call it age discrimination.

My opinion is, it’s both. Because what makes discrimination wrong anyway? What’s so bad about waiting until people actually have some real wisdom and judgment before handing over significant responsibility to them?

The reality is, we all discriminate, every moment of every day. From the people we meet to the foods we eat to the things we buy to the streets we cross. Discrimination is a useful survival tool.

And so, let’s not put on our social justice hats and assume that discriminating is the moral evil it’s made out to be.

Rohr, the inspiring ecumenical teacher, wrote a daily devotional about mythological traditions and rites of passage of young people. The priest said that early in life, a person is still building their own tower, and surely not ready to help anybody build theirs. Before anyone can reach enlightenment, they must sustain some wounds, experience disappointments, and confront life’s baffling paradoxes.

And in fact, if someone sets out on the journey too early, he has probably not loved enough, not failed enough, and not suffered enough to know the terrain in even rudimentary ways.

This issue is not about politics, it’s about personhood.

If we hope to hold some kind of position, it’s better for the world if we have at least some biological and emotional maturity.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are your opinions too crude and erroneous to merit an influence on public measures?

Every day just doing that thing you do

Emerson had this idea that everyone should make their own bible.

He said, select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.

As someone who has literally written my own bible, I can attest to this exercise’s profound spiritual implications. It was almost like starting my own religion, but without all the goofy hats.

But the project of making your own bible is also useful in the professional world. After all, a bible is simply a book of texts and writings that are sacred to the person who wrote it. Doesn’t have to be religious, it just has to be yours.

Emerson, if he were alive today, would agree that everyone should develop their own theory of learning, thinking and working. Everyone should build their personal framework for acquiring and encoding and exploiting knowledge.

First of all, the metacognition of learning how you learn not only accelerates your progress, but it also educates the people around you on the one thing nobody else has, which is your unique way of approaching problems.

Secondly, having a working vocabulary around the numerous ways you create value makes it easier for you to continue creating it. By uncovering the architecture around how you think about things, deconstructing what you do rather intuitively and abstractly, you will be able to replicate it more exactly and practically.

This metacognitive ability comes in handy when you’re on the job search. Because whether you’re a freelancer, or hoping to join a company full time, you have to be as convincing as you are talented. People who engage with you should walk out of that meeting thinking to themselves, wow, we need to get you in here to start doing that thing you do.

Back when my tech startup employer fired our entire department and gave us all three months paid vacation, I took that as the perfect opportunity to deepen this capacity. Reflecting back on my various projects from the previous year, I was able to drill down on several of my unique philosophies and approaches to working on a marketing team.

All of which became part of my professional lexicon, got added to my resume, and ultimately helped me secure a better job the following year. 

Perhaps it’s time for you to create your own language to capture the nuance you’re seeing that makes you good at what you do.

You don’t have to write an entire bible if you don’t want to, but if you don’t learn to blast that trumpet, nobody is going to do it for you. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Have you developed your own unique theory of working?

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