The Coming Train

Near Clio, South Carolina
It's a clear fall day, 1960
and I'm eight and I've never
been so far from home.

I'm outside my uncle's house
that badly needs paint
in the hot dry country
that's desolate and remote.

And in his front yard,
if you can call it a yard
since it's all dirty white sand
and tall scattered weeds

There's an old railroad track
crossing the yard too close
to the porch and you can stand
on it and gaze for miles each way.

And then I see a distant train
coming toward me with its light
dim in the distance but I know
it's really bright and it scares me

And I want to cross the track
if I have time to get back again
on the side by the house before
the dark awesome force arrives.

It's an urge to run across that
no-boy's land if I dare, but why
should I care about it at all? And
as the train approaches closer

I feel the pressure inside me
to cross or not to cross.
Will I do it or try it, as the
opportunity rushes on by?

Can I catch it—the chance, not
the train—or will I wait a second
too long and dash just to be dashed
and end my world in that strange place?

And now I know I can cross tracks,
but it’s not always good, and not
ever healthy to wait too long to make
the choice if you might want to return.

Our Actions Matter

Our actions matter. All of them do. And that’s a lesson most often learned from the more unfortunate of our choices, rather than through the better things we produce. 

In the novel, A Place on Earth, by Wendell Berry, a father has long taught his son to farm, and the time has come to turn over a patch of land to the young man to let him plow and plant it on his own. The father is later reminiscing on the event, and ruminating on how much topsoil has been lost over the years to bad decisions—from mistakes he saw his own father make, as well as from his own misjudgments. He then tells what happened with his son:

“Anyhow, Virgil broke his ground farther over the brow of the hill than he should have. Like a boy, you know. Didn’t stop in time. But he got his rows laid off about right, and got his crop out—and I didn’t say anything, hoping he’d have luck and get that mistake free. Thought I’d show him later what he’d done wrong, soon as I could do it without hurting his feelings.

"But there was an awful rain one night after his crop had been out, I guess, two weeks. I heard it begin and lay listening to it, knowing what was bound to be happening. And the next morning I said, ‘Let’s go look at your crop.’ So we went, and walked all the way around it. It was hurt. Bound to have been. There’s no way to plow sideline ground so it’ll hold in a rain like that. ‘Virgil,’ I said, ‘this is your fault. This is one of your contributions to the world.’ That was hard for me to say. And he took it hard. I saw he was about to cry. And bad as I hated to do it, I let it work in him while we stood there and looked. I knew he was hating the day he ever thought of raising a crop, ready to give up. Finally I put my arm around him and I said, ‘Be sorry, but don’t quit. What’s asked of you now is to see what you’ve done, and learn better.’ And I told him that a man’s life is always dealing with permanence—that the most dangerous kind of irresponsibility is to think of your doings as temporary. That, anyhow, is what I’ve tried to keep before myself. What you do on the earth, the earth makes permanent.”

I love the words: Be sorry, but don’t quit. What’s asked of you now is to see what you’ve done and learn better.

We can recover from most mistakes. But the world somehow records them all. And that’s a serious thought. Equally important is the idea that we’ll all make mistakes, and our job then is to keep going, learn, and improve. We’re not here with the expectation of perfection, only with the hope of improvement. Our actions do matter. One way or another, they're all permanent. And we have to live with that fact.

Eating a Fry Off The Floor in Public

There was a lone french fry lying on the carpeted floor almost under a table in the busy Sports Center Cafe. I pointed it out to my exercise partner. And I said, "There are people who would offer you money to pick that up off the floor and eat it, but I'm not one of them."

"Five dollars."

"What?"

"I'd do it for five dollars," he told me and sipped his coffee.

Of course, he surfs in the shark infested waters of North Carolina every day, for hours, and for fun.

Later that day I recounted the situation to my wife. "A million dollars," she said.

"Wow," I replied. "I was thinking more like a thousand."

That's a big gap, I thought, between five dollars and a million, or even a thousand.

Disgust and desire. We're all different in how we react to each. But we all do react. We find certain things disgusting, and others desirable. Disgust is usually associated with an underlying perception of risk, and desire with a lure of reward. A fry on the floor, I'd prefer to avoid. Money, I can always use to good effect.

Now, let's take a big step back from disgust. There's another, lesser, and much more common negative category - dislike. There are many things we dislike that don't in any way disgust us. We just find them unpleasant. They hold no intrinsic attraction at all. In fact, to the contrary, we'd rather not do them. But the problem is that we often have to, for the sake of some related need, or a greater good.

Suppose, for example, that you don't like to travel. But a job that could pay very well demands it. Is there a number, a salary, a financial scenario, that will make you take that job, despite its involving what you dislike? Or consider another possibility: You have an idea for a new business. But starting up a new company will demand almost all your time. You'll hardly see your spouse or your children, for at least the first two or three years. Is there a number that would motivate you to do it? Do you think there's a number that would motivate them to want you to do it? Your answers will tell you something about your values, and also how you think of theirs.

We make choices all the time. Life is just a string of choices. How do you make yours? What are you willing to do to get what you want? What would you give up? What would you take on? Do you decide and choose wisely? Do you consider the costs? The risks? The downsides? Or are you more typically just fixated on the positive possibilities? Too many of us get so mesmerized by what we desire that we take on far too much of what we dislike. And some people who make a life of doing that end up with a situation the eventually evokes their own disgust. Let's try hard not to be among them.

My friend sees a french fry on the floor and sees an easy five bucks. I just see grossness and germs. My wife apparently sees the Bubonic Plague. How you view the challenges and opportunities of the world says a lot about you. And considering such scenarios can be a path of new self knowledge.

I'd like to recommend that path. But I just have one question: Would you like fries with it?

Life While-You-Wait

Today I just want to share a powerful and profound short poem by Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012). It comes from her book Map: Collected and Last Poems. I came across it on www.brainpickings.org, one of my favorite websites. Read it twice if you can. The last two lines are particularly striking, in the context of the poem, and of our lives. I do grieve for some of what I will forever have done. Perhaps you do, too. But there is an alchemy that can redeem and reweave even our worst into a different and never expected best.

LIFE WHILE-YOU-WAIT

Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.

Life Purpose

Arthur C. Brooks recently wrote in the New York Times:

In a 2009 study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, researchers interviewed 806 adolescents, emerging adults. and adults about their purpose in life. A key finding of the study was that being able to articulate a life purpose was strongly associated with much greater life satisfaction than failing to do so. In contrast, purposelessness — no matter how closely tied to worldly prosperity — generally defines a hamster-wheel life, alarmingly bereft of satisfaction.

What struck me from this statement, first of all, is that, on this particular study, it didn't even matter what you had articulated as your life purpose - some purpose was better than none. Imagine, then, the level of satisfaction that can result from a truly meaningful life purpose, and one that's deeply right for you.

What is your purpose? Can you put it into words? According to the study cited, that in itself can make a difference in a positive way. And the clearer you are about your sense of purpose, the easier it is to assess potential goals, business opportunities, and even social activities. If you're vague about your sense of life direction, meaning, and purpose, it becomes difficult to know what to say yes to and when to say no, apart from momentary feelings. But temporary feelings aren't always our best guides to long term good. A sense of purpose is a great guide forward.

What's yours?

A Better Model For Decisions

How we think about choices can help us or hinder us in making them. I suspect that most of us carry around, in the backs of our minds, an inappropriate model for decision making that actually gets in our way and trips us up.

Many of us approach decisions as we would a True-False Test - there's a right answer and a wrong one. Take the new job, or stay in the old job. Move across the country, or remain where we are. True, or False. The difference is that we haven't previously learned in any sort of class which is which, and so we're in the old dreaded situation of guessing.

Sometimes, the Multiple Choice exam question might seem to be a more accurate rendering of how we think: There are many options for how I could approach my work or my life right now, and only one of them is best. Depending on the circumstances and the options, this can seem to capture a decision situation better than the True-False. But normally, it still puts on us a pressure that's totally unnecessary.

Philosopher Ruth Chang has an interesting Op Ed in the New York Times relevant to this. She says we often approach life decisions as a maximizing gain, minimizing loss scenario, and assume that if we could just get at the right facts out there in the world, the decision would be made for us. And she suggests that this isn't so. She counsels instead that when the options are at least "on a par" - there's no obvious best path forward, and we could live with either - we ought to ask what we could best commit ourselves to. It isn't a matter of guessing, but of commitment.

My suggestion is this. Decision making is less like an exam and more like an art. Every choice we make is a stroke on the canvas, a chip in the marble, a move in the dance. It's not necessarily a matter of True-False, or of picking The One Right Answer. It's a matter of "What's the next move we can feel really good about making?" And that aligns with Ruth Chang's consideration of commitment. What do you want? What can you commit to best?

When you think like that, you don't worry so much about "getting it wrong" and making a big mistake. Your thinking is more positive than protective, more about wants than about wariness. And that can liberate you to be the artist that you, deep down, are capable of being.

Values and Goals

This week, I'm reflecting a bit on goals, and I'll try to say some new things. Typically, we select new goals as a result of our desires and our values. Most of us have more desires than we ought to pursue. Our values help select which should be transformed into goals.

A goal is a guide to action. A value is a guide to action. So, then, what's the difference?

I've written that a goal is a commitment of the will. But then so is a value. A value is a commitment of the will. So, then, what's the difference?

On the simplest level, a goal is a specific commitment and a value is a general one.

But we can say more. A goal is a specific commitment to bring something about - to create or contribute to a certain result in the realm of fact. A value is a general commitment to honor, respect, protect, embody, or enact a quality or concern.

Some people confuse goals and values. They say, "Our goal this year is outstanding customer service." But that's too vague to be a goal. It isn't specific enough as to what fact will be created and how it will be measured or recognized. Outstanding Customer Service isn't a good or proper goal. But it's a great value. It's a fantastic general commitment that can suggest specific goals that are easily measurable and recognizable.

Values generate goals. But here's the equally important news. Values generate other values. For any value that suggests a new goal, there are often other values that lie behind it. And it's just as important to have the right values behind your choices and actions as it is to have the right goals.

Let me explain. If your commitment in the new year is outstanding customer service, if that's a driving value for you, then you should ask yourself why. Why do I value outstanding customer service?

Maybe, on reflection, you will come to realize that you want to be well known, or even famous for pleasing your customers. You want the praise and the reputation that will result. You also may value the financial benefits that often accrue to people who deliver great customer service. These are all common answers. And there's nothing wrong with wanting these things. People can properly value praise, reputation, and wealth. But they aren't the best ultimate values to drive the more immediate value of outstanding customer service.

Here's the contrast. There are other individuals who ask "Why?" about the value of outstanding customer service, and end up with the answer, "Because I really care about other people, and they always deserve the best I can give." That answer expresses the values of altruism and personal excellence. Those are the greatest drivers of more immediate values. Those are the answers that will help you to set, pursue, and stay consistent with the best and most worthy goals. Ironically, they'll also give you a better reputation, and often more wealth, than the guy just chasing reputation and wealth.

The commitments behind our commitments matter. They are where we get our ultimate strength. If you can get your inner house in order, at the deepest levels, you can fly the highest and do the best over the longest time frame. And that's the power of values.