samng.me

Posts posted in 2023

Keystone moments

My sons,

It has been said that life is a series of moments. These moments can vary across many dimensions. They may vary in duration, in intensity, in importance, and in their impact on the overall trajectory of our lives. But it is these moments, strung together with some invisible string, that guide us, that give us meaning and purpose, and that ultimately define who we are and who we will become.

When we take the time to look back and be introspective about the strings of moments in our lives, we often discover that there were some moments that seemed more important than others, more prominent in our memory. They may not have seemed important at the time, or may even in retrospect be small or unremarkable, yet they nonetheless are critical moments that we remember as having some strong impact on us.

In the 2015 Pixar movie Inside Out, the writers propose the concept of core memories. These memories hold higher importance, and are memories that strongly shape our personalities and our character traits as we grow. But they don’t explore why these memories are important, why they become core memories for us.

I believe the reason is that these memories are memories of keystone moments in our lives, moments that hold strong value and have an overall greater importance than the rest. But what are these keystone moments and why do they have such a strong impact? I’ll define the following:

Keystone moments are moments that bring clarity to all the little moments along the way, causing us to introspect and compelling us to decision and action.

If it is true that our lives are indeed a string of events, a series of moments, then keystone moments are the ones that bring clarity, understanding, and unifying themes to some series of seemingly insignificant and disconnected moments along the way. They are moments that light up individual moments and allow us to see patterns and derive meaning from the otherwise endless and continuous stream of moments along our path. And they are moments that bring sharp attention and focus, compelling us to consciously examine ourselves and actively decide what path to choose next.

Very often, a keystone moment may not be immediately obvious. We may fail to notice their significance at the time of the event itself, only recognizing their significance later on. Often it is when our minds are quiet, when our hearts are at peace, and when we’ve got the head space to reflect that we then notice a significant moment has occurred.

At first glance, these moments may not seem significant - a note from a friend, a feeling of peace after a storm, opening your first piece of mail at your own home - but in context, they become incredibly important. They allow us to elevate our thinking, to see our lives in perspective, and to step back and look at the big picture. Perhaps the note came at the end of a long series of struggles and conflicts, the peace was hard fought through a long stormy period, the mail symbolized your first touch of freedom. Regardless of the context, these moments are the culmination of a set of experiences that have deeply impacted us.

Keystone moments cause us to introspect and evaluate

A trademark of a keystone moment in the making is that when it happens, we are compelled to introspect and evaluate. Maybe you’re like me and like the dramatic and romantic thought of looking out the window at the evening city lights with a glass of scotch in your hand as you reflect, or maybe you prefer sitting in your PJs wearing your favorite robe with a warm cup of coffee on a quiet Saturday morning to think. Regardless of your choice of dramatic underscoring, keystone moments nudge us towards rumination.

These moments strike a chord with us. They are moments that reach through the veneer of everyday life and touch some deeper vein of consciousness within us, begging us to turn off the autopilot of our lives and to strongly consider the implications of what we’ve just experienced. They resonate with our core values, perhaps contradicting, perhaps amplifying, but always causing us to pause and evaluate.

keystone moments allow us to strongly pivot and change course

Some years ago, I was at yet another work conference in Vegas, staying at my favorite Vegas hotel, the Wynn. One night after some conference events, I found myself at a bar next to the casino floor with two friends, drinking and chatting way into the night. This itself is a fairly common event for me - working in Big Tech, I must have been to two or three dozen conferences in Vegas by then. This night was like many others - a couple of friends, a thinning crowd at the bar as the hours wore on, and of course, several rounds of drinks which led to deeper and more meaningful conversation. Again, nothing new.

Eventually, 5am rolled around and we all decided that we should head back to the rooms in order to make it to our 8am meeting the next morning (unsurprisingly, two of us didn’t make it), so we left the casino to escort our one friend to the hotel next door where she was staying. Walking out the front door we immediately felt tired, and attributed it to the myth that Vegas hotels pump oxygen into the casinos to keep people awake (they don’t). We all had a good laugh at that, and that was that.

Some years later as I prepared for my transition out of that company, it dawned on me - that night in Vegas was more than just our typical after-conference evening. Something about that evening that to this day I’m not perfectly clear about impacted me. For some reason, that night solidified my understanding that the thing which mattered most to me was not the work. It wasn’t the brain stretching problems, the perplexing people management puzzles, the exciting new product ideas, or even the inspiring visions for how the world ought to be, how it could be. No, the thing that mattered most to me was the people. It was the relationships. It was the friendships.

From that day onward, I changed the way I thought about my career, about the roles I was willing to take, about the team environments that I sought out. That keystone moment brought about a clarity that allowed me to pivot, to change the way I behaved and the paths that I pursued.

One of the realities of an increasingly connected world is that the strength of the current of the path expected of us gets ever stronger. With an almost nonstop scrutinization of our lives in the form of friends, social media, professional networks, and public personas, the force required for us to adjust course is almost insurmountable for most.

It often requires some large event, some crisis moment that shakes us loose and forces us to move and to pivot. Those moments are one class of keystone moments that cause us to action and give us the leverage we need to pivot.

In 2019, we had a global event that caused crisis moments for virtually every person on the planet. This global pandemic had many, many negative impacts, but for some, for the thoughtful, the intentional, and the mentally strong, it also created a flurry of keystone moments that allowed for a strong pivoting of their lives.

In the comically light hearted movie Deadpool, Colossus is trying to convince Deadpool that being a hero doesn’t mean living a life with a perfect track record. He shares:

“Four or five moments. That’s all it takes to be a hero.” - Colossus

Four or five moments. Four or five keystone moments where we pivot hard and make the hard choice to be better. That’s all it takes. I love that.

Playing to win, not to not lose

My sons,

A good friend recently recommended I read The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd, a book that describes the author’s journey in finding meaning and fulfilling purpose in his life. In the book, Millerd lays out a concept that he calls the Default Path, a blueprint for life that outlines purpose, value, and success. It is a one size fits all path that we are all expected to adhere to. He asserts that for most people, the notion that a second path exists is almost entirely unbelievable.

The Default Path, Millerd argues, is the one that our upbringing, background, social, and economic systems work together to daily reinforce. It is the model for our lives that has been imprinted and reinforced in every interaction and every experience. It is so deeply engrained, so fundamentally expected that we never stop to ask if life must in fact be led this way. And when we eventually (and, arguably, inevitably) question the path at an inflection that many have taken to calling the midlife crisis, there is such an overwhelming amount of peer pressure and societal structure to overcome that we often end up concluding that rather than being an issue with the path there is instead something wrong with us.

For North Americans, that default path often resembles what’s globally known as “The American Dream” - the belief that anyone can achieve financial and social success through hard work and dedication to that work. Images of single family homes with white picket fences, a pair of cars, a pair of kids running around with a happy spouse, and financial independence - all attained through hard (and recently updated to include meaningful) work.

Everything in our upbringing reinforces that message so strongly that most of us never stop to consider if there is another path. Legendary economist John Maynard Keynes (aka “Our Hero, Lord Keynes” to anyone who has ever had the great privilege to have taken Larry Smith’s Econ classes at Waterloo) famously said that “worldly wisdom teaches us that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally”.

And so we play to not lose.

We play the game of life in a way that doesn’t seek to win, doesn’t seek to conquer new horizons and be filled with awe-inspiring experiences and journeys. No, we play in a manner filled with fear of losing, fear of failing. We fear missing out on what everyone else is doing, fear being left behind by the masses moving in the direction of the inevitable path.

We feel so strongly that not only is this the right path, but it is the only path. And so, on we go, putting all our energies and resources into working harder, making more money, having more social influence, and raising children who do the same.

We play this fear-driven and defensive game with the hope of not losing for so long that we inevitably wake up one day sometime in our 30s and 40s and wonder what it was all for. We have spent the entirety of our youth and the majority of our most productive years on a path that we didn’t even set for ourselves! No wonder we come to a moment of crisis. Coined in 1965 (coincidentally a short decade or two after the beginning and wide-adoption of the 9 to 5), the midlife crisis is a recognition that we have been passive players in the direction of our lives, and this terrifies us.

A rude awakening

We wake up one day realizing that we don’t have any earthly clue what our life’s purpose should be, and that our goals to this point were not in fact our own. Worse, we are thoroughly unequipped to set meaningful goals for ourselves and define what a rich and fruitful life looks like, so we revolt. We buy sports cars. We get plastic surgery and update our wardrobes. We do any number of nonsensical things in an attempt to silence that inner voice telling us that we’re playing this game wrong. What many of us never realize until much too late in life is that there is another way to play this game, another path that we can be on.

We can play to win.

We can learn to play the game differently. We can endeavor to gain much more clarity on the rules of the game, the terms of engagement, and, most importantly, the conditions for victory.

Most people spend the majority of their lives sitting in the passenger seat, having fully assumed the role of spectator in the unfolding narrative of their life and having fully accepted that the majority of decisions are made for them. We were never told that there is another way to play, another path to victory, and another role that we can assume.

Think back to the first big decision you made in your life; the one where you felt the true gravitas of the situation. For a fair amount of us, this was the act of deciding which college to apply for, and hopefully to attend upon acceptance. Think of how that decision was made, of the inputs, the factors taken into consideration. How small a role did one’s passions play in that significant decision? How much more did we consider things like future earning potential, prestige of the school, respectability of the profession, desires of our parents, or just plain ol’ common wisdom?

Discover yourself

From that early age we were taught to make decisions by someone else’s standards. Playing to win means that we need to throw out those standards and to come up with our own. We need to first discover ourselves, to do the hard work of uncovering the things that bring us joy, that excite us and ignite the passion within us.

We need to let go of the need for external validation, the compulsion to measure against what our peers are doing. We need to remove the mental pollutants in our lives - the likes, the retweets, the perpetual feed of an abundantly glamorized default path - and instead look within for validation, for meaning. We need to learn to trust our internal compass.

Own it

And then we need to own it. Once we’ve discovered what makes us tick, what things bring us joy, what types of people we desire to become, we need to unapologetically own it.

One of my great mentors told me once long ago that as a society we have become so focused on the next big thing - the next promotion, the next million users of our product, the next milestone in our children’s lives - that we forget to think about the people that we are becoming. We get so wrapped up in impressing someone else that we forget about what it does to our character, our morals, and our decision making framework. If left unchecked, we become like the environment we place ourselves in.

So we need to own it. We need to own how we show up at work, what we’re willing to do based on our boss’ orders or company expectations, and how we determine what a successful time in our place of employment looks like. We need to own what we work out with our children to actually be the best for them, and not what all their peers happen to be enrolled in. We need to own what traits in a partner make us happy, whole, healthy, and growing human beings, regardless of their social standing or their pedigree.

Playing to win means playing by your own standards, and not conforming to the expectations of the world. It means being okay with walking off the beaten path. It means spending the time and effort to discover your unique personal path that will bring you much lasting joy. And that is an incredible thing.

Including the excluded

My sons,

Everything about our natural world tells us to stay in the safety of those that are like us. In the wild, while certain species may be willing to coexist in the same environment as one another, by and large everything in our natural world sticks close with those of its kind. We never see birds of different species flying in graceful formation together, or packs of deer mixed with buffalo running together. In fact, it is far more common to have a pecking order, to have predator and prey.

Growing up as a Chinese immigrant in Canada, that natural order was made immediately clear in every possible social realm. If you were athletic, you hung out with the other athletic kids. If you were a music nerd, you hung out with other music nerds. If you were an Asian kid in a predominantly white class, you naturally gravitated towards the other two Asian kids.

This is natural, but suboptimal.

It is true that birds of a feather flock together, and there is much benefit in that. Shared context, a common background and upbringing, even similar value systems all lower the barrier to connection and understanding. Not having to explain cultural norms and traditions certainly makes it easier to bring people together.

Easier isn’t always better though.

In fact, I’ve found that in many, if not most cases, easier is generally not better. Quite the contrary. When we have to work for it, when it takes effort, when it requires diligence and perseverance, it (whatever it happens to be) is generally much better. It therefore behooves us to understand this dynamic as it applies to the most important element of human society: relationships.

Natural outsiders

In every society there are outsiders. Because of the bountiful diversity that exists across the human race, there are infinitely many criteria which we can use to create groups, and thereby create a dynamic of those inside the group, and those outside. Add to that our strong beliefs, biases, and experiences, and any group can become not just an outsider, but an adversarial outsider. Jews. Christians. Women. Immigrants. Poor. Sick.

I believe that people naturally fall into three categories:

1. People who create outsiders
2. People who are excluded
3. People who stand by and watch

Evolutionary forces create a strong desire for us to be included, accepted, and welcomed into the clan, and social history has shown that there are few easier ways to be included than to create a group to exclude. Just look at any average schoolyard. Not only are all three categories always clearly present, but children will move from one category to another seamlessly depending on the day, the activities being done, and the children in attendance.

I certainly experienced all of those categories over the years. One of my early memories included some of my friends deciding to “betray” a particular person in our group for some (real or imagined) slight. This involved a bunch of us sneaking back into the classroom at recess and moving the person’s desk into some remote corner of the class, separate from our cluster. While I don’t remember being the one to initiate the “betrayal” (fully admitting that this may be my unconscious mind trying to forget), I certainly stood by and watched as we actively and intentionally excluded others.

No longer an adolescent, I’ve begun to see that there is a fourth potential category. This category is unnatural, and requires intention, dedication, and persistence to create. This is the category of people who bring outsiders inside.

Including the excluded

When people are pushed to the margins, when they are excluded, that is when trouble happens. Practically every large scale conflict in history has been rooted in some sort of exclusion of some group. History is replete with warnings and examples of what happens when we exclude, of the many crises that unfold as a result. Our current day geo-political situation is chalk full of this type of conflict.

The first step in many crises is to include the excluded.

This is counterintuitive for humanity because we are evolutionarily predisposed to avoid things not like us. Our fight or flight instincts have been honed over hundreds of millennia such that our bodies instinctively detect same-ness and not-same-ness, and instinctively prefer same-ness. This makes it very natural for us to exclude those that are in the not-same camp.

If we struggle well against that nature, however, and intentionally learn to include the excluded, a great many things happen.

1. We lift people up. When we include those on the fringes, we lift them out of a feeling of isolation, adversity, and survival and into one of belonging, collaboration, and flourishing.
2. We make our world better. It is well studied and documented that diversity brings about a better world, that listening to one another, learning with and from one another, and partnering with one another brings about longer and lasting change. When we include the excluded and learn from each other, we are able to release our focus on the not-same-ness and focus on the things that we have in common, and in doing so make our world better.
3. We elevate our thoughts and adopt a posture of learning. This posture allows us to take in, to broaden our perspectives, and to see the world clearly. It is from this posture that we may experience the abundance the Psalmist felt as he penned those beautiful words, “my cup runneth over”. When we include the excluded, we reorient ourselves and our world to the way that things ought to be.

So how do we do this? How do we integrate the practice of including the excluded in our lives? My studies and experiences have caused me to make a few changes that I thought I’d share.

1. Be critical of your inputs. There are many divisive sources out there, from books to blogs to articles and reviews, with some more blatant than others. Be incredibly critical of your inputs, as they have the power to slowly but surely change your mindset.
2. Regularly learn about/from someone not like you. If you look around and discover that most of your social circle is very much like you, be intentional about changing that. We all need to have people in our close circles that are not like us, that think differently than us, and that see the world from a very different perspective. Make sure you have regular mechanisms that allow you to interact closely with people not like you.
3. Practice empathy. Empathy is a skill and muscle like every other, and therefore needs to be practiced, honed, trained, and intentionally exercised. Just as you make time to work out, to learn new skills, and to advance your career, make time to practice empathy, to develop it, to learn from others who are masters of it, and to find situations to apply it.
4. Be balanced. Provide opposing viewpoints. When you make a decision about someone, play out the opposing viewpoint to see how the other side might see things. For example, when you’re interviewing someone and want to hire them, spend more time providing the best reason you shouldn’t hire them than you do on your reason to hire (or vice versa if you’re rejecting a candidate).

My prayer for you boys is that you are characterized as people who include others, who invite others, and who build community instead of tearing it down. I know this is hard - this is something I struggle with often as well. But I believe firmly that not only will we make our world better by including those that are excluded, but we will make ourselves better, and in doing so will enjoy a much richer and fuller life.

Think big

My sons,

When you get to a certain age, it becomes quite common for most people to have fairly well-formed (and often strong) opinions on the passage of time. Some hate it, perpetually longing for a return to the glory days, a time long past where things were undoubtedly better. People in this camp tend to live for and live in the past, often keeping trophies of a time gone by, memories of a time when they were at their prime. They run around romanticizing the past, of simpler times, of more prosperous times. You’ll recognize them by their speech, their rhetoric - “I can’t believe I’m another year older!”, “where has the time gone?”, “things were so much better back then”, or even, “we need to make things great again”.

And then there’s the other camp. The camp that believes that the best is yet to come, that tomorrow will be better than today, that values all the phases and experiences that life has to offer. These people are marked by their forward-facing demeanor. They are characterized by their unwavering focus on the future, their can-do attitude, their creativity, and their desire for progress. These people run around painting grand and lofty pictures of what the future ought to look like, and in fact could look like if we worked together to reach for it.

Incidentally, there is in fact a third camp; a doomsday camp that believes the past was terrible, but that the future will be worse, so you should only live for the present. This camp is much less interesting, so we won’t bother with them.

The thing with our two groups of interest is that they both desire for the future to be great. However, their focus and approach is entirely different.

Romantic reminiscers

Those who find solace in the embrace of the past tend to resonate strongly with the concept of romantic reminiscing, and often have a strong sense of nostalgia. This cognitive bias embellishes their memories, leading them to think that the past was objectively great, when really what they’re actually tapping into is the feeling of novelty and of greatness in their own past experiences.

One of my favorite shows as a kid was Saved by the Bell. I was absolutely in love with Tiffany Thiessen, and I spent many a daydream wishing that my adolescent experience was more like Bayside, and that someone so perfect as Kelly would wander into my life. Years later after I had graduated from College and the show had been long since done, my brother and I saw the DVD collection on sale at Fry’s, so we picked it up and brought it home.

It. Was. Terrible.

Like, really bad. The acting was quite rough, the lines were cheesy, the costumes were comical at best… Really, the only thing that still held up was Tiffany Thiessen. (Incidentally, I also loved her performance as Elle in White Collar). Needless to say, after watching one or two episodes, we promptly put the DVDs away and never pulled them out again.

We all do this though, don’t we? We reminisce about the past - and rightly so! Those of us that were fortunate enough to grow up in safe, loving, and supportive homes that allowed us to blossom into the beautiful humans that we are now are truly blessed to have had those experiences, and it is a good thing to look back on them fondly. But that’s where it should stop - at beautiful reminiscing.

Unfortunately, maybe people stay in the past and have a hard time embracing the present as it is. They have an even harder time seeing the unknowns and uncertainty of the future. This fear of change - or as psychologists call it, “loss aversion” - is a fear that must be conquered, not a philosophy for enacting a return to bygone days.

Life moves on, and so must we.

Having faith for the future

Those who steadfastly look towards the future with unwavering optimism on the other hand, tend to possess a strong sense of self-efficacy and self-confidence. They expect positive outcomes and believe that the future holds greater promise, which in turn fuels their proactive approach to life. This in turn fosters the belief in their ability to shape their own destinies, and to overcome obstacles along the way.

This resilience, this ability to look to the long term, this faith that we have not crested the peak of human experience brings us several strong benefits.

1. We don’t sweat the small stuff. When we have the mindset that tomorrow will be better than today, the small stuff that happens today is taken in context of a greater tomorrow and is able to more readily roll off our backs without doing much damage.
2. We inspire and are inspired by others. When we focus on the promise of tomorrow, believing full well that we can make tomorrow better, we start to apply our not insignificant energies and resources toward that end. There is an innate desire in human nature to look upwards, to think big, to be inspired by grand and lofty visions. Since the dawn of the age mankind has looked to the heavens for inspiration, and has looked to individuals who seem to have a vision of what that heaven could be like.
3. We are healthier. Believing in a better future means believing that future can come for us, and as a result we are much more likely to engage in health-promoting activities. We exercise more. We eat better. We prioritize our well-being, physically, emotionally, and mentally. We live longer because we believe we have more to live for!

Bringing others along

When we think of inspiring people, people who can rally a crowd, can move a city, can change a nation, people who can truly think big, we notice a few things about them.

First, they recognize that one camp is better than another. In fact, they don’t even see the camps as being at odds with one another. They understand that we are all different, and that’s okay! Their goal isn’t to find like minded people and isolate themselves from other-minded ones; rather, their goal is to understand one another, to see each other’s perspectives, and to have open and honest dialogue together.

Second, they know that in the deepest recesses of our hearts we all long for this world to be better. Whether our circumstances have caused us to be jaded or not is another matter altogether. Thinking big means that regardless of whether one is blessed with circumstances and experiences that have led them to see that the world can and will be better or if one has suffered much and can no longer see tomorrow as more than another opportunity for more pain, we unite, we inspire, and we bring each other along.

Lastly, they know that thinking big isn’t just about having vision. It isn’t just about having a grand and lofty idea that can change the world. It’s about taking the vision, sharing it with others, and letting it spread to others so that united we are better, and we can make our world better. Together.

A life of temperance, not of chaos

My sons,

I’ve been reading a lot about temperance and moderation, and its impact on our culture, and by extension, our leaders and role models.

The Big One and I recently got back from our annual father-son trip to DC. It was a great trip for a number of reasons - lots of sights to see, museums to learn from, and experiences to be had. One of my highlights was the chance to learn more about our founding fathers. I learned about their quirks, their thought processes, their goals, and their values. Humility, tolerance, and patience are oft respected, demonstrated, and spoken of as praiseworthy.

In modern times, many of our prominent leaders seem to have a lack of these traits and often demonstrate quite the opposite. This is unfortunate, but not altogether unexpected. This is because each of these traits are difficult in themselves:

Humility

Our world values confidence. In leaders, in friends, in lovers, even in children that are selected for advancement. We are drawn to those that can stand against the waves and stay steadfast in their choices.

This is a good thing.

But balance. Temperance. Being able to have all things in moderation. Confidence without humility becomes arrogance. We miss teaching that part, and miss evaluating the balance there.

In our work-dominated American culture it is important for people to be right a lot. When people are right a lot they tend to build self confidence and begin to trust more in their thoughts, opinions, and processes. This is a great thing. But left unchecked and without temperance, without balance, this quickly turns into arrogance.

The counterbalance for this is supposed to be the principle to learn and be curious. However that tends to translate into a future focused learning and less a retrospective humility. True humility requires time, requires introspection, requires patience.

George Washington highlights this in his farewell address to the nation after declining to run for a third presidential term:

“Though in reviewing the incidents of my administration I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.”

Confidence is a great and valuable trait, but it must be accompanied by a reflective humility.

Tolerance

We live in an intolerant world. We’re constantly up in arms about anything and everything. This is likely because we’ve lost the ability to separate ideas from identity. When someone has a different perspective, we treat that as an affront to our identity.

And so we get defensive. Self preservation dictates that we defend ourselves and stands up for our strongly held beliefs. And so the cycle of intolerance continues.

Instead, we ought to refocus not on our differences, but on our similarities. Regardless of our deeply rooted beliefs, our concerns and cares may have much more overlap than we may think, if we only looked past those differences. In looking to these similarities and in bringing them into focus, we allow our differences to lose their intensity, their prominent place in our minds. As we become more tolerant not of the behaviors themselves but of the people behind those behaviors and as we begin to separate action from identity, we will presently find ourselves in the company not of hostile adversaries that we are forced to endure but rather the company of like-minded individuals that have a shared common goal.

If the vision is big enough, the details don’t matter as much.

If our focus and gaze on our similarities is strong enough, the differences, the details, the nuanced deviations don’t matter as much.

Patience

We have lost the ability to wait. We spend an exorbitant amount of money on these little boxes that we carry with us everywhere that allow us to never have to wait for anything. When we’re waiting in line for our coffee we have to distract ourselves by scrolling. When we wait for our dinner partner to use the rest room we immediately pull out these boxes and scroll.

We have lost the ability to be at rest, to let our minds wander, to wait for the next thing.

At the surface, this seems fine. Why wait when we can fill our idle time with productivity? And if not productivity, at least entertainment? If time truly is the only resource in life we never get back then why waste it? Why shouldn’t we fill it with anything and everything? In some sense, noise is better than silence… isn’t it?

In what’s possibly the most impactful class I’ve ever taken in my life, my wonderful senior year English class (thank you Ms Corey!) had as a reading assignment an essay that has stayed with me throughout the years and is one that has slowly but silently shaped the course of my life: /“The eloquent sounds of silence”/. In it, the author compels us consider for a moment the role that silence plays in our world.

As true today (if not more so) as it was back in 2001 when it was written, the essay urges us to consider what a noisy world we live in, and to consider that silence is not a failing to be remedied, not a bug to be fixed, but rather a goal, a valued treasure that we need to work for, to earn. “In love”, he says, “we are speechless; in awe, words fail us.”

Beautiful.

Silence. Patience. The ability to wait, to be comfortable with one’s own thoughts. These practices allow us to meditate, to deeply consider, to unlock the wisdom and understanding that comes from patiently considering all that the unconscious mind has learned, has gleaned, and has ruminated on.

Many of us regret the next day our immediate responses and reactions from the day before. Our impatience causes us to act rashly; our focus on immediate results causes us to take suboptimal paths that often are altogether counterproductive.

How we can develop these traits

Our world often praises the opposites of these traits. Instead of humility we praise confidence. Instead of tolerance we praise sticking to one’s guns. Instead of patience we praise a bias for action.

How do we not only develop these traits but apply them successfully in our world? As with all change, we need two things: a change of mindset and a change of habits. First, we need a mindset shift.

1. Play the long game. Know that in the end, character will always win. We may be tempted in the short term with shiny distractions that seem like quick fixes, but over the course of a lifetime, character always wins. Play to win.
2. Value relationships. In our increasingly connected world, it is becoming virtually impossible to accomplish anything of value on your own. We need others. Whether for professional endeavors or personal ones, our world is powered by relationships.
3. It will more before it gets better. As with any meaningful changes we make, things will initially seem to get worse as we seek to develop and apply these traits. This is normal. We need to scrub off the old paint before we can apply a fresh coat!

Next, we need to start building a few small habits.

1. Give twice as much praise as criticism. It will feel like you’re constantly giving (or thinking about how to give) praise at first, and it will seem disproportionate. If you need to, keep a tally - I guarantee you’ll have given less praise than you thought.
2. Don’t think of a response while someone is talking. Most of us aren’t fully listening; we’re formulating our rebuttal. Don’t. Spend time fully engaged on every word the other person is saying. In doing so, you stop trying to highlight the differences to counter and instead highlight the similarities to agree on.
3. Set aside time dedicated for silent thought. It may be as little as five minutes a day, but be disciplined in this. Set aside that time and stick to it. Use a timer if you must. It is an important step in cultivating a stronger internal life.
4. Find others who want to be on this journey with you. Life is too short to be lived alone. Find others that are like-minded and intentionally journey together.

Be warned: cultivating a spirit of humility, tolerance, and patience isn’t easy, nor is it popular. There will be much pressure to give into short term wins, to take short cuts, to grab immediate satisfaction, but a life of temperance, of moderation, and of balance will always win in the end!

And so my boys, my hope for you is not that you be secluded from the world and run away from it while developing these seemingly counter-cultural traits; quite the contrary. My hope is that you have balance. While the world will naturally urge you to develop confidence, resolve, and a bias for action, I hope you will temper those with humility, tolerance, and patience to become well-rounded men. I love you boys!

Showing up for life

My sons,

We were created for relationship and were wired to need one another. This is why there are so many tragic stories of the rich, famous, and powerful but lonely feeling entirely unfulfilled in life. We crave connection. From the moment we enter this world we reach out for it; without it we feel lost, abandoned, alone.

As such, one of the most important things we can do for another human being is to show up. Whether it is a time of need, of pensive thought and reflection, of joy, or of immense sorrow, the most important thing we can do is to consistently be there for one another. I recently read Bill Gates Sr.’s book with the same title as this post, and it prompted me to think hard about how I show up, for my community and for my world.

So how do we do that? How do we create relationships where we show up for others and can rely on others to show up for us?

We need the right priorities

First and foremost we need to have our priorities straight. To me, the three most important things that any citizen of our world should hold highest in priority order are:

1. Family. If one of the primary drivers of meaning in life is relationships and if the strength and value of a relationship is proportional to the time invested in it, then family comes easily to the top of the list. While there are some that disagree on the grounds that we don’t get to choose our family, my view is that this is a good thing - they don’t get to choose you either!

   An important note though is that while there are many that believe that simply being family covers a myriad of sins, I wholeheartedly disagree. Just because they are family does not mean we hold the bar lower. Too often what started out as great family relationships get ruined because a family member is not held to the same standard which causes unspoken strain on the family relationship. This is broken.

   Family does not get a pass simply because they are family. The bar must be kept high (if not held higher!). Family should, however, get more grace and be given more chances. Because we live in the messiness of the day to day with our families we ought to give more grace knowing that they may not be at their best on any given day.

2. Friends. Great friends are a blessing that we ought to cherish. It has been said that if one requires all the fingers on one hand to count the number of great friends one has that they are incredibly blessed. I believe it.

   Great friends show up for you. They laugh with you, cry with you, push you to be your best and then keep pushing. They mourn with you. They rejoice with you. They take joy in your victories and feel sorrow for your misfortunes. They are the whetstones that sharpen us and help refine us.

   As such it is incredibly important to cultivate great friends, and to choose wisely whom those friends are! Remember that our great friends don’t have to share all our beliefs, but they will tend to share many of our values.

3. Public service. This is simply the act of endeavoring to enrich our communities and our world. Much of our lives are characterized by a desire for advancement and growth - these are good things, and not in conflict with public service (for if one has no abilities, what can one hope to give back to one’s community?). We should, however, always have some thoughts and actions taken towards serving those around us.

   We need to teach our children this at an early age so that as they grow in capability so too will they grow in their service of their communities. It is in service to one another that we enrich our own lives, build great relationships, and make our world better.

   We also need to remember that we can serve with others despite differences in our beliefs and values. If we focus on our differences before working for our community we will never get anything done. We should instead recognize that while we may have different beliefs that are deeply rooted, those different roots can produce many branches that have areas of overlap. Areas like a desire to raise our children in safe environments. A desire for equality and justice for our world. A desire to see women empowered, to see our poorest countries lifted out of poverty. These are the common ground that we can serve side by side with our neighbors, regardless of their deeply rooted beliefs.

We should build traditions

Traditions give us the extra push to do something that we may have been on the border of not doing but always enjoy when we do. When done right they can be incredibly beautiful and freeing. They remind us of who we are, where we’ve come, and what we value.

But they must evolve with us.

Too often people hold traditions to be sacred. This is a mistake. Traditions when placed in their rightful place are held in service of the people, not the other way ‘round. Traditions should free us to fully experience our relationships and communities. They should not bind us.

As such they should evolve as we evolve. They ought to have a natural end of their usefulness, and when they do ought to be replaced by other traditions that uplift the underlying values of the community. Growing and evolving traditions to suit the new needs of the moment are signs of growth and health in a community!

We need to deliberately nurture cherished friendships

Cherished friendships are ones that have stood the test of time. They are friendships that have grown along with us. Life is not a one-act play. Cherished friendships have been with us through each of these acts and have shown up and stuck with us through it all.

In our world filled with noise and time wasters like social media and the like, it becomes all too easy to forget to nurture these friendships. Simply “liking” a post of a cherished friend doesn’t count, nor does retweeting or whatever the latest social amplification of the day happens to be. Real friendships take time and effort.

As such, I urge you to regularly set aside time to nurture those who have shown up for you, and for you to continue to show up for them.

We ought to show more gratitude

Above all else we need to regularly express gratitude in ways that are intentional and meaningful. Expressing gratitude allows us to posture ourselves for someone. We focus on them, on the great value that they add to our lives, and in doing so uplift them and strengthen them.

And so my sons, I will end this note with an expression of gratitude towards the two of you. I have learned so much from the both of you, from being your dad, from watching you grow, from learning to take care of you well, and from interacting, playing, traveling, and talking with the both of you. I am both a better father and a better man because of you. I love you boys!

Having high standards yet loving people through them

My sons,

We live in a world of deteriorating standards. Across the board, our world’s standards seem to be slowly but surely dropping. Whether we’re talking about personal standards (ie standards of excellence, of learned behavior, of understanding and tolerance of others) or corporate ones (ie corporate responsibility, loyalty towards employees and customers alike) it is easy to see things degrading.

Gone are the days when people sought excellence purely for excellence’s sake. Excellence is now a means to an end, and its pursuit is one for which people are always trying to find shortcuts and hacks. Excellence sought for excellence itself is passé. This is because there is an ever shrinking set of circumstances in which one seeks those that are excellent. Instead, we now seek the popular, the trendy, the viral. The leap to a hyper-connected world that technology is shrinking everyday has had the unintended negative side effect of overloading us with so many choices and alternatives that our pursuit of excellence has been replaced.

We now seek to be just “good enough”.

Because excellence isn’t rewarded. Because who cares if someone else is better, so long as you’re more popular and are good enough. Because our shrinking attention spans have an increasingly difficult time telling the difference.

And yet it’s there.

In the recesses of our minds, in the quiet place that still occasionally gets a small amount of attention, in that faintest of voices that is getting harder to hear as each year goes by, we know that there is a difference. We know that excellence matters. We know that humans are capable of much more. We know that we are capable of much more.

Why having high standards is hard

Our world has become increasingly more complex. There are more things to do in a given day than ever before. More requirements, more demands, more complexity to each of those demands. More inputs that we need to stay on top of, more trendy waves that come and go that we need to ride. And yet we still have the same 24 hours in a day that our ancestors had.

As such, things get missed. We try to cut corners. We don’t have the time to look deeply into things, so we find substitutes. We find believable people and trust their recommendations. We look at facades and veneers and try to judge books by their covers. We find ways to make progress and make decisions despite not having the time to fully consider all the options. And slowly but surely, we move towards a space where popularity and perceived excellence matters more than actual excellence.

And slowly our standards drop. Not maliciously but unconsciously. Not intentionally but unobtrusively and unnoticed.

Our attention spans have lowered so much that headliners pass as news, twitter passes as a worthy news source, and reading the top 5 customer reviews passes as doing our own product research. We are no longer concerned with excellence. We have replaced that with a concern for “good enough” performance. Who cares if one has an excellent product so long as the one we do have is good enough and performs well enough to fool the average observer?

Surely there is a better way.

It turns out that despite the slow and steady dampening of our senses, our world on a whole is still able to recognize excellence in those rare moments that it appears. While it unfortunately will take a crisis moment for this awareness to surface, we by and large are still universally able to recognize these rare moments of excellence when they appear. Because of the increasing rarity of these events, their impact becomes disproportionally large; a fact which the keen observer internalizes as an incentive to demonstrate excellence, which in turn drives the desire to actually be excellent.

Why it’s hard to hold others to a high standard

Keeping standards high is hard. It is unnatural (nothing sinister here, just simply not-natural) and difficult, and over time can become taxing and seemingly not worth it. Anyone practiced in discipline knows that keeping standards high comes at a price. Often that price is a hard trade off that our natural selves don’t want to accept. Sometimes that price is a difficult trade off that not only impacts ourselves, but others around us as well.

As such, we don’t want to inflict those trade offs on others. We are often very eager to give people passes, to lower the expectations, to extend grace - this is especially true for those that we love! This is natural, but is also harmful for a number of reasons that immediately surface once we apply any amount of critical thinking to our actions.

The dangers of relaxing our standards

In not holding our loved ones to high standards we do them a disservice as they will presently come to believe that the lower standard is sufficient, which will end up hindering their personal growth and progress. Often this is done with the best intentions! When someone we care about performs below their capacity we are brought to a crossroads that we perceive to have two possible outcomes:

1. We give feedback and hold the bar high and as a result cause hurt, force an uncomfortable conversation, and potentially damage/ruin the relationship.
2. We let this instance slide and opt instead to offer less direct feedback, hinting at or implying a performance issue while protecting the relationship.

When faced with these decisions, we will often pick the latter option both because we want to maintain the relationship and because we typically aren’t equipped to have a critical conversation in a manner that is clear, direct, and yet kind.

It is also worth noting that both of these outcome descriptions only consider short term consequences. Yes, it is true that providing hard feedback will cause someone hurt in the short term. However, when done correctly, clear and constructive feedback will benefit the individual much more in the long run! We have to be long game players!

It behooves us therefore to learn how to give great feedback in a way that is clear, specific, and most importantly, kind. Because we care for people, we ought to want the best for them, and holding the line for them when it counts will help us toward that end.

Loving people through high standards

High standards are critical for people to grow. This is true in both our personal and our work lives. We must be tough on people. We must keep our standards high. Especially for those we care most about and are most invested in their progress and growth, we must keep pushing them and raising them up.

But we must love people through it.

Sometimes those that we’re tough on aren’t used to it. Sometimes they hate it. Sometimes they lash back out at us. Sometimes they choose to ignore us and move on with their lives. Sometimes they cut us out completely, unable to see past their own hurt.

But we must love them through it.

Remember that being tough gives us the opportunity to demonstrate love and care for people, and that loving and caring for people allows us to be tougher on them. This is a virtuous cycle that is hard to start but incredibly valuable when done right.

As I write this, my eldest boy is 9. He is in little league. It’s been hard for him, as there are some kids who have been throwing a ball daily since they were 3. He hasn’t. But he has potential, he has drive, he has the desire to play well. At one of the early practices he made a bunch of overthrows past the first baseman’s head.

I could have pat him on the back and told him, “good try!”, but that wouldn’t be enough. As our famous little green friend says, “do or do not; there is no try”. So I hold the standard. I tell him the reason he is overthrowing when others on his team are hitting the mark is because he hasn’t practiced as much as they have. I hold the line.

But then I love him through it. We start a new ritual together where everyday after school we go outside and throw the ball for 30 minutes. We watch videos on how to throw more accurately and with more power together. We practice wrist motions to snap the ball on release. We do this everyday for a month, and his throwing drastically improves. He makes some clutch throws during games and throws out a bunch of runners from long distances. He has found a new pride in his craft, and loves baseball even more now. We’re going to work on hitting next.

In everything, be it parenting, coaching, mentoring, managing teams, or simply being a friend, we need to hold our standards high, but we need to love people through it. And we need to surround ourselves with people who will hold us to those same high standards, and will love us through them too.

My sons, I have so much love for you both. And yet I want to hold standards high for you. My prayer is that by the time you read this, that you’ll be able to look back on your childhood and see that daddy had high standards for you but he also loved you strongly and walked with you through it all.

That's interesting... tell me more!

My sons,

We live in a world filled with noise. Everywhere we go we are bombarded by the constant steady stream of noise that never really seems to shut itself off. So much so that many people feel the need to take retreats to get away from it all.

Each time I’ve done this the first thing I notice, always, is how quiet it is. When I finally force myself to turn off my devices, to disconnect, and to be fully present in my surroundings, the first thing I experience is a quiet that has become all too foreign in our lives. The quiet that allows you to hear your own thoughts, that allows you to really see what’s going on around you, and that allows you to direct your musings and contemplations.

This is unfortunately an uncomfortable exercise for many of us. We have grown so accustomed to the constant pace and buzz of our world, to the little gadget in our pockets that keeps us constantly connected, and to the distractions, direction, and influence that our strongly connected world has on us that quiet contemplation about topics of our own choosing is foreign at best and can be uncomfortable and down right scary.

We are so uncomfortable with this quiet that we in fact default to generating our own noise to combat this. We post, tweet, text, and perform a myriad other noise-generating activities to help fill the silence. We identify the like-worthy and retweetable sound bytes of our lives and spew them out. We comment on others’ sound bytes and create a world filled with much conversation but little communication.

There are many unfortunate realities of this situation, but the one I want to focus on today is this: with all the talking we’re doing to fill our own silences, we’re unable to truly listen to others.

We listen in order to speak

Maybe you can relate to this: you’re in a group conversation with two or more people, and one person is speaking. And honestly, they’re speaking a little more than you’d like, and you feel that they’re somewhat long winded. You know that they’ll eventually take a breath, and you need to make sure you capitalize on that, so you’re running through what you want to say, making sure you’ve got the right counterpoints to what they’re proposing.

You’re listening, but are you internalizing what they’re saying? Are you giving what they’re saying its due regard? Or are you trying to formulate your response, your rebuttal, or your clever anecdote in retort?

Let’s face it, we’ve all done that. We’ve all laid out logically our counter argument, and have even had the pleasure of everyone else in the group nodding their heads as we counter the original argument point by point. Feels great right?

Sure. But in those conversations, while we may be speaking, and while we may even be speaking eloquently, we’re not communicating. And chances are, the person(s) we’re conversing with are doing the same, which means that none of us are really listening to one another.

While you may develop a reputation for being a wonderful orator, you won’t be receiving any accolades for being effective.

Are you actually interested?

Perhaps the first and foremost problem is that most of the time we’re not actually interested in the other person’s views or opinions.

Now don’t get me wrong - I’m not talking about the blatant, flagrant, and offensive “dude I don’t care about what you think” type of thing that usually comes along with a “and in fact I don’t really care about you” approach to the relationship. No, this is a much more refined, polite, and often unexpressed and only faintly detected lack of care and concern about what the other is saying despite genuinely having care for the relationship and for the other person.

If we’re truly honest with ourselves, we’ll discover that for most of us, we converse with others more because we want to be heard rather than because we want to hear.

The benefits of listening

There are a lot of really great reasons we ought to listen to others. And since we live in a capitalist, self-centered world, I’ll only focus on the benefits to ourselves that we get from truly listening to others.

1. We become more empathetic. In a world full of strongly held opinions that are weakly founded and strongly adversarial, empathy is a quality that is increasingly rare but also increasingly coveted. When we truly are able to listen to others and care more about what they’re saying than what we want to say in return, we begin to tune into their needs, their wants, their desires; a process which makes us more empathetic.
2. We move in to a posture of humility and learning. By listening to others and focusing our attention simply on what they’re saying, we more readily move ourselves into a position where we can learn something. This humility, this curiosity, this willingness to accept that we in fact don’t know it all is perhaps one of the most important realizations one can make in one’s lifetime,.
3. We may learn something new. Remember that learning doesn’t always mean new knowledge. In fact, it’s probably arguable that the majority of learning we need has to do more with perspective and mindset than it does new information we were unaware of.
4. We can build deeper connection. When we take the time to really listen to people, we may in fact discover that we have more in common than we might have originally thought. These commonalities light a path towards greater connection, greater understanding, and greater shared experience.

Practice paying attention

Attention is the beginning of connection and devotion. We can’t love something, be devoted to it, desire it, and move it forward if we can’t focus your attention on it. We can’t have a deep connection with something, be it a person, cause, idea, or effort if we are constantly distracted, constantly thinking about ourselves and our situation. As such we need to have mastery over our focus and our distractability - if we are too easily distracted, we will discover presently that the things we profess to love, we love in name only.

So how do we do this? How do we move our focus from self to other? How do we get better both at the desire to understand others as well as the practice of conversing in a way that allows for that understanding?

A great friend of mine has a wonderful technique that I’ve stolen and am starting to implement in my own life. It’s a simple phrase, and when asked with the right motivation yields great results.

That’s interesting… tell me more!

Simple right? Such a simple phrase, such a simple concept. Asking someone for more. But I assure you, it’s a magical concept. A few reasons:

1. It shows a genuine interest in the other person(s). This simple phrase expresses to the other that you are interested in them, that you find something in them and in their story desirable, and who doesn’t want that? Who among us doesn’t take joy in the feeling of someone else desiring to know more about us?
2. It allows others to shine. By expressing our desire for the other person to expand on their thoughts, we allow them to have their moment, to feel like they are expressing mastery over something. We are all built with an innate desire for mastery, for attaining mastery and for being recognized for it. What a great gift it is when someone allows us the opportunity to demonstrate that!
3. It breaks barriers to connection. When we show interest in someone else, it allows them to let down their defenses and show interest in us, thereby creating a much deeper connection than we would have had otherwise! We walk around this earth constantly on the defensive. We are constantly bombarded with messages about how unsafe the world is, how much we need to protect ourselves. What a breath of fresh air it is to be able to break down those barriers by showing genuine interest in someone else! These broken down barriers eventually lead to a reciprocal interest, which as we know is the basis for connection!

And so my sons, my hope for you is that you too can incorporate this simple technique into your relationships, that you too can ask someone to tell you more about themselves, about their journey, and about their story. Ultimately life is about connection, about relationships, about fulfillment in the time, endeavors, and relations that we have, and above all things I want you both to have a rich and full life. I love you boys!

Time makes things valuable

My sons,

Time is the only resource in life that you can never get back. This fact makes it one of the most valuable resources in the world. It is also one of the most controversial and complex resources in the world.

For example, when one is young, time seems to be the thing we have an abundance of. Aside from the required daily school and occasional parent-inflicted extra curricular activity, one has very few demands on one’s time at an early age such that we’re often left with an abundance of it. “I’m bored” is probably the most common complaint among children, and is one that spans all ages, races, genders, ethnicities, and every other imaginable distinction.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have people in their 50s and 60s who spend all their life’s savings and energies on trying to get back more time. Whether that’s by offloading things from their lives that demand too much time, or by attempting to prolong their life and add more time to it, there are many in their sunset of life that seem to never have enough time.

Why is that? What’s the catch here?

What is valuable?

One very unfortunate reality of our current social norms is that in our developing years we are taught (often implicitly) that our primary purpose in life is progress along a fairly well-trodden path.

From our first breath we are put on this neverending conveyor belt of progress and expected to spend our lives entirely on it. We were taught to walk so that we could run. We were taught to run so that we could play. We were taught to play so that we could interact with other children at school. We were put in high school so that we can get into a good college. We strove to get into great colleges so that we can get good jobs. We strive for good jobs so that we can make money to start a family and support them. We have children so that we can teach them and help them speed up their process along the same conveyor belt.

Every step along the way, we were told that our accomplishments and achievements are the things that we should be striving towards, and yet no one ever explained to us why these things hold value. Nowhere on that belt are we taught to take the time to discover what is valuable to us. Instead we’re taught that the next step, the next thing, those are what’s important.

Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t plan for tomorrow, that we shouldn’t have goals and progression paths that we want to be on. Quite the contrary. Plans and goals are great. However, the problem of too much planning for too far in advance is that we don’t focus on the here and now. Living constantly for tomorrow means that you will never enjoy today, will never actually “get there”. There will always be another “there” to go!

When we were children we assumed our parents’ values. But because we were never taught to discover our own values in our developmental years, many reach adulthood still on the conveyor belt their parents set them on. As children we’re told that the future has value so we should work towards that.

That unfortunately causes us to miss the reality that childhood is not a training ground for adulthood! We rob our children of half of their lives when we treat it as such, and we set them up to perpetuate the same cycle with their own children in future generations. When we treat everything we’re doing - life itself, in other words - as valuable only insofar as it lays the groundwork for something else, we miss out entirely on the beauty of the present.

Instead, we need a range of inputs, learnings, and experiences. We need to balance the time we push to the future with the time that we enjoy the present.

Our society is structured such that we rarely think about the present. Our immediate choices don’t create meaning in the here and now, but rather create the possibility for meaning later. Many live as though the present moment is an obstacle which they need to overcome to get to the “right” moment in the future. The present is never quite right, never quite good enough.

We must learn that the present is not only a gateway to the future - It is an end unto itself!

Crisis

At some point along the journey we realize the hidden wisdom in the old riddle, that the thing that is always coming but never comes is tomorrow. Enter the midlife crisis.

This is a time where many realize that the incessant striving towards tomorrow is not the mark of a life well lived, that the pursuits of wealth, fame, fortune, and success do not satisfy as we had hoped. We therefore seek to find ourselves, to find the things that we believe we should pursue for the remaining half that will give us meaning.

It is typically not until the sunset of life that we realize the truth behind the matter - that regardless of our choices, our experiences, our relationships, and our chosen career paths, things have value because in choosing them we could not choose any alternative. They have value because in pursuing those things we had to explicitly choose not to pursue everything else.

When we accept this, and accept that life is finite, then things become meaningful. If we had infinite time, choices don’t matter, as there is no sacrifice for them. But because time is finite, each choice we make explicitly is at the expense of another choice, and therefore makes the choice itself valuable. The fact that we have a limited amount of time when our children are young, that we have but 4 years in our college experience, that we have only two weeks for our upcoming vacation - these are why our choices matter, and what gives them meaning.

Managing your time

It therefore behooves us to consider the question of time management. How does one do it? How should one prioritize the finite time that one has on this earth?

There are many time management philosophies out there, and I will neither pretend to be aware of them all nor will I provide any prescription on what I think is best. Rather, I will suggest that if your time management philosophy doesn’t help you neglect the right things then something is wrong! In this life there will be infinitely more things that you don’t have time for than those that you do. Any effective philosophy you adopt must therefore help you choose what not to do as much as it helps you choose what to do.

Effective time management is about more than just slotting in the right things into convenient time slots and playing calendar Tetris. It is about prioritizing, and about realizing that you will never have enough time in a day to accomplish all that needs to be done for the given day, so you need to prioritize. It ought to allow us to face our limitations, our time constraints, the finite nature of our lives, and our inability to control it.

When we don’t thoughtfully and intentionally apply an effective system we find ourselves giving up control. This is natural - having some other external force take control and make a choice for us which precludes us from making some other choice is much easier than owning the responsibility of that choice ourselves.

Sadly, many of us choose to escape the fact that we in fact are responsible despite our desire not to be, so we relinquish control and allow ourselves to be swept away by the currents of the day. This allows us blame something else for our misfortunes and allows us to save our pride.

For if we never try, we can never fail, right?

Unfortunately the reality is that this relinquishing of responsibility often ends up with us being bored. Boredom ought to lead to a realization that we are in control of how our experience is unfolding, and thereby bring about a visceral understanding of the reality that this is it, this life, these choices, these experiences - these make up the sum of human experience.

This is why we must train children to figure out what to do with their own boredom. We must teach them to self-motivate, because without that ability, they will inevitably turn to something else - social media - to fill their time instead of taking control of it and wrestling with their own finitude. We must teach them to better manage this valuable resource that each of us gets a finite amount of in our lifetimes.

Time is a networked resource

Time is a valuable resource, no doubt. And it is absolutely better the more we command it (ie similar to money). However, it is also a networked resource, which means that it has more value the more people have control of it as well (ie telephones, internet etc).

This means that despite our desire to have absolute control over our time, it actually benefits us for others to have some control over it as well. When we have friends and family that feel like they can impose on our time and help direct what we do with it, our lives become much richer. When we have shared experiences, they have the potential to have much more depth than our individual ones.

This, like many things, requires balance and good boundaries. We cannot exert complete control, but we also cannot relinquish complete control to others. We must have balance for how we manage our time, whom we allow to make demands, and what our criteria are for granting those demands.

Regardless of how we label the axis - patriarchal vs individual, eastern vs western etc - we must find the balance along the axis that allows us to have healthy boundaries with our relations. It is not a surprise then that in her book “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”, author Bronnie Ware finds many on death’s doorstep regretting living the life others expected of them instead of having the right boundaries to live the one they desired for themselves.

And so my boys, my hope for you is that you learn the value of time, that you learn of its role in determining value and meaning in your life, and that you establish early on a great set of boundaries that will keep you on a balanced filled with great relationships along with great freedoms to forge your own way. I love you boys!

The joy of missing out

My sons,

Popular culture today is centered around, and even driven by the catch phrase “fomo” (fear of missing out). It is engrained in the way we think, the way we act, and the way we process and apply our values. Whole companies are built around creating more fomo and then capitalizing on that fomo to drive our behaviors. Our capitalist society is indeed founded on the basic engine of fomo -> consumer behaviors.

Take advertising. The goal of advertisers is to convince you as their target customer to believe that you’re missing out on whatever glamorous and glorious thing the more-beautiful-than-average model on your screen is doing. Always put together, fashionable, and incredibly happy, the models tell you that whatever they’re selling has just changed their lives. And not just that, it’ll change yours too! So call/click now and get your life upgrade!

Or consider social media. Whether you’re on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or whatever the latest craze is of your day, the basic premise is the same. Give people the tools to glam up their public persona (ie Insta filters etc), give them a targeted platform to share that persona (ie your social network paired with an AI-based recommendation engine), and then create a virtuous cycle of likes, re-tweets, and dopamine hits. All of that to keep you coming back for more, and to make you feel like you’re missing out and need a change.

And so we click.

We click through ads that promise us that same happiness that we see our friends enjoying. We buy things that help us glam up our own personas by adding filters, buying light rings, and learning the right selfie angle to make our pictures really pop. We engage with content that tells us our kids need to be in more camps, need to learn more skills, need to have a long list of extra-curriculars.

Annnnnd cue the fear!

Bombarded by these messages daily, even hourly, we are left defenseless to the onslaught of subtle messaging telling us that we’re missing out, that our children are missing out. Over time, we begin to live that life - you know, the one that is so busy with scheduled stuff that there is no room for rest and relaxation. We begin to internalize the rat race as the correct way to live life. We begin to let fomo ruin (ahem, run) our lives.

The down side of fomo

There are many, many down sides of fomo, and this post is not not a fomo post after all, so I won’t even attempt to cover them all. I will however share a few that I believe are particularly problematic.

1. Fomo causes us to lose control of our lives. We move to a space where the driving force is social media, or what our friends share with us, or what we see on TV. Regardless of the source, fomo causes us to relinquish control over where we spend our time and how we spend our thought energies.
2. Fomo doesn’t allow us to enjoy life. Le joie de vivre is not experienced by running around following our fears; rather, it is experienced by ignoring everything else and focusing on the current moment.
3. Fomo does not elevate life. It is focused on the surface, on the veneer. It causes us to spend our time replicating the actions of others instead of introspecting and expanding on the grand and elevated life.

So what’s the alternative?

The joy of missing out

To figure out an alternative mindset, let’s first dive into why fomo exists in the first place.

Popular culture tells us that missing out on something is bad, and as such is something that we should be fearful of. It tells us that when we miss out on something, our life is less than it would have been if we hadn’t missed out, and as a result we ought to aim to never miss out on things.

That fundamental line of thinking has driven so much of our industry, our products, and our cultural norms. It is deemed socially acceptable for one to be out with friends but also having a full asynchronous texting conversation that requires concentrating on one’s phone for 30 seconds every several minutes. It is normal for one to receive a notification and pull out one’s phone, handle the event, and return to the conversation without any apology because there’s nothing culturally wrong with the behavior!

Not only is this rude, but it also misses out on a basic premise of human life: one cannot fully appreciate that which one is not fully immersed or present in.

This means that by having fomo, by multi-tasking, being never fully present, and by attempting to keep abreast of all the social media posts and topics that are constantly bombarding our phones, we miss the life that is being lived in front of our eyes. In other words, fomo is causing us to have a worse life.

Instead, we should realize that missing out is a good thing. In economics, we’re taught that the opportunity cost of investing in option A is the ability to invest in every other option out there. But if we invest in a way such that we want to not pay any opportunity costs, then we don’t make any investments at all and therefore remain stagnant. If we choose to hedge our bets and invest a little in everything, we completely fail to capture exceptional growth events in a particular option.

This is exactly true in our personal lives as well. To have a rich and full life, we must choose things to invest in, and by definition pay the opportunity cost of not being able to invest in everything else. In other words, missing out on one thing means that we’ve invested fully in something else. It means we’ve explicitly chosen something else to spend our time on, and in so choosing have committed ourselves to something rather than sitting around waiting for the possibility of something.

This is why we should live with the joy of missing out.

Ruthlessly prioritize

In order to fully embrace the richness of each experience, we need to ruthlessly prioritize what we spend our time on. A few notes on ruthless prioritization, as it’s slightly different than your standard prioritization.

1. Ruthless prioritization requires a stack rank, with no ties. For you logic/math people out there, this means that for two goals A and B, it must be true that A > B or B > A. This also means there is no “P1 bucket”. Each discrete goal has its own priority, and it is explicitly not equal to any other.
2. You cannot accomplish all your goals. There exists some maximum number of goals that are accomplishable in a given timespan, and that is almost always a smaller number than the things that you might want to have on your priorities list. This means explicitly that there are things on your list that you will not be able to accomplish. This is hard for many people to accept, and as a result many try (and fail) to do a little bit of everything. This is foolish, and will always end in either failure or in burning yourself out.
3. Goal N+1 will always be the worst! This is because it was just under the line, which means that it’s something you value. As a result, it will be tempting to spend just a little bit of time on it. Don’t. You need to actively decide not to do it, as it didn’t make the list.

By actively prioritizing the things that you do, you intentionally set aside things that you would have liked to do but aren’t going to, which in turn allows you to focus on the things that are the most important! Welcome to the joy of missing out!

And so my boys, my hope for you is that you’re able to experience the deep joy that comes from a life well lived, filled with rich experiences and strong connections with loved ones. My prayer is that you never fear missing out on things but instead take joy in the knowledge that you’ve intentionally decided on the experiences you want in your life, as well as those that you don’t.

Are your memories bigger than your dreams?

My sons,

We are a species that is obsessed with memories. We spend so much time and money on inventing, creating, buying, and consuming technology centered around memories. Since the earliest times we can recall, humankind has spent countless hours and energy on memories. If we travel far back enough, we give memories the fancy term of “history”. Our modern day PR for the term is “social media”, or “news feed”, but whatever way we spin it, it is all centered around memories. Documenting what has happened, solidifying it for all eternity.

These recorded memories take different forms. History books attempt to record factual memories. Memories capture thoughts, feelings, and remembrances of the rich and famous. Period pieces attempt to paint (typically with rose colored glasses) a picture of a time long past in its prime, filled with life, mystery, and drama. Memories are rooted in the finite, of time that has been concretely shaped, of the road that has already been travelled.

The problem with spending so much of our time and mental energies on memories is that they are all in the past. We remain forever rooted to what has already come, and as a result are always looking backwards. Many of us romanticize the past (in fact, our brains do this on purpose so that we can forget the pain and bad memories of the past and instead can move forward).

Now don’t get me wrong; I enjoy a good nostalgic trip down memory lane as much as the next person. But we cannot allow our focus to remain there, cannot allow our time to be entirely consumed by our reminiscing.

Dreams on the other hand, focus on the future. They focus on things which have not yet come to pass, and keep our eyes looking forward. They paint a very different picture - one of possibility, of potential, of the expansive and the infinite. They ignore the details of what is and allow us to focus on what could be. They too vie for our time and our mental capacity. They too seek regular visitation from our consciousness, but they have a very different focus and motive.

Why it matters where we spend our time

Why does any of this matter? Can’t we simply allow our minds to wander where they will and call it a day? Why is it important for us to think through whether we’re spending our time snapping photos to edit and post on social media or thinking through how to make our dreams a reality?

The obvious one is that time is finite. This is obvious, but is also misleading.

It is true that we all have the same 24 hours in a day, and that we all go through periods of life where we feel like we’ve got all the time in the world. For arguments’ sake, let’s assume we all live standard long-ish lives (in the US as of writing, the average life span is 79 years old).

But even then, not all time is created equal, because despite wall clock time being a finite and universally equal thing, the way we experience it is not equal. For some experiences, 5 minutes may feel like an hour. A year may feel like a decade. A season may feel like an instant.

For instance, I had the privilege of taking an auto cross class, and the 73 seconds it took for me to do a lap with 4 laps had the experience feeling like it was a 15-20 one. This past year of my life has been richly filled with experiences and relationships that it has felt more like a decade than a year. For some, the past three years since the COVID pandemic hit has felt like months, and they remember 2019 like it was yesterday.

Our experience of time depends on what we do and how we do it.

This means that what we do with our time is more important than how much time we have. Explicitly, this means that instead of attempting to prolong our measurable time by tacking on additional time at the end, we should aim for prolonged experiences where time seems to stand still and stretches, and our experience of it lengthens. Instead of being an exercise nut, eating large quantities of kale, quinoa, and whatever other “superfood” is currently trendy, and focusing on extending life we should focus on adding more substantial experiences to our lives.

How do we elongate our experienced time?

I believe that time feels longer because of novelty. When experiences are new, when we experience inputs that we’ve never encountered before, and when we view the world with a different perspective than we had in the past, time seems to slow down. This is additionally magnified by our attitude towards these novel experiences - do we embrace trying new things and learning? Or are we closed off to them?

Clearly my belief is that openness is best (more on that some other post).

This is backed up by our own personal experiences. For instance, our childhood is a complete cauldron of novelty, and therefore ends up often feeling like a much longer period of our lives than it actually is. Everything is new, every feeling, every experience, every situation - all new. First loves, first breakups, first championship goal, first failure. All of these firsts are imprinted in our minds, and our experience of those feel elongated.

It is not an accident that we call those years our formative years; our childhood and early adulthood are periods filled with core memories and events that shape us and last throughout our lives. The reason? Novelty.

This does not mean we should go out seeking novel experiences all the time! While some of those experiences are perfectly justifiable, we should also be seeking novel ways to look at existing experiences. This may mean asking a friend a question you never dreamed of asking. It may mean a conversation or a new attitude towards something that has been in your life for decades.

Dream big

In order to put ourselves in these novel situations, we need to dream. This is explicitly different than daydreaming. Daydreaming is for all practical purposes equivalent to wistful and wishful thinking without any action or impact on ones life. Dreaming big however is an explicit and intentional action that we take to think about our world not as it is but as it ought to be. It is a future-focused activity that prepares our mind for the possibility that something new will happen to us and in us.

A few thoughts on dreaming big.

1. The wider our range of inputs in our lives the bigger the canvas we have on which to dream. By being open to a wide range of experiences, by putting ourselves in circumstances that we have never encountered, and by reading and conversing with people that have different perspectives than we do, we stretch our mind’s ability to dream and in doing so create a virtuous cycle of growth.
2. Some of your dreams should scare you. Not because they’re nightmares, but because they’re so big that imagining them take hold of your life is breathtaking and borderline terrifying. This is a good thing. If you’re never scared of the possibilities of realizing your dreams, you’re not dreaming big enough.
3. Dreams are best shared. Sharing our dreams with our close loved ones allows us not only to inspire others, but be inspired by others and to refine our dreams so that they can start taking shape in reality. By creating a culture of love and trust where we can share our dreams without fear of ridicule or persecution we enable ourselves to freely express, to push our boundaries, and to safely explore the vast world of possibilities out there for us.

The important question then, is what you’re doing with your time. Do you spend your time living in the past, reliving old memories, and longing for days gone by? Or do you have an adequate reverence for the past while focusing on your dreams for the future?

My sons, my hope for you is that you find that right balance that allows you to reminisce and to nostalgically relive the past appropriately, dream big about the future, and live passionately in the here and now.

We are not mind readers

My sons,

I am not a mind reader. I can’t read your minds, can’t predict what you’re going to do next, and can’t know how you’re feeling or what you’re actively concerned about. ‘But of course,’ you say, ‘no one can do that.’

And yet that’s often the unspoken expectation in many of our relationships.

Take a minute to process that. While I’m sure everyone would agree that they themselves cannot read minds, but we often expect others to read our minds. Sure, we may disguise that desire in cliches. “If she really knew me, she would know what I think about this thing”. “I’ve raised him and lived with him for his 25 years. He should know what I want”. “We’ve been married for 10 years. He should know what makes me happy”. “We grew up together. She knows me like the back of her own hand”.

Bullshit.

This type of thinking is not the mark of a mature adult. It is unrealistic and impractical. It typically indicates that the individual has not spent the time to learn and understand the depth of relationships and the work required to attain them, and by extension that they do not and cannot experience the richest depth relationships have to offer. More on that later.

Why we expect people to read our minds

At a young age, we were taught that when we cry, mommy and daddy know what we want and give it to us. While they may not be right on the first time, they generally get it within a few tries. This is easy when you’re a newborn - all you do is eat, sleep, and poop.

However, many of us have not progressed past that. Once we mastered language, we were never taught to rewire our actions and our expectations to incorporate advanced communication. The Good Book provides some instruction here:

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” - 1 Corinthians 13:11

To certain degrees, we have all done this. We’ve grown, we’ve developed the necessary communication skills to get by in professional and many social settings. We’ve learned to give presentations, to send and respond to party invitations, and to communicate with kids’ teachers and counselors.

And yet when it comes to communicating about our feelings, our desires, or our fears, most of us still follow the ways of childhood. We expect others to extrapolate from a small statement about putting a plate in the sink that we feel uneasy without a spotless kitchen at the end of the night. We demand perfect recall from our partner of every comment we’ve made in passing about our desires. How dare they not forget? Do they not love us or care for us?

We are not mind readers.

We desire to be known

Some of this stems from our desire to be known. As people, we need connection. We were built for relationship. We thrive in community. We need diversity. We need novelty, new inputs, and different perspectives in our lives.

This need to be known is natural, and is a great thing. Human connection is strongest and the most uplifting when we are wholly known. Collaboration is at its maximum, motivation and inspiration soar, and sparks of new ideas fly when we deeply and completely connect with someone, know, and are known by them.

But we’re also lazy.

We desire to be known without wanting to do the work required to build the type of relationships that allow us to be fully known. We have some notion that the level of connection we’re looking for should happen without our need to learn about it or to apply any effort to get it. We believe that time should be sufficient. That the simple fact of being childhood friends, of being married for a decade, or of having grown up sharing a room (and some hand-me-down clothes) should be sufficient and should automatically make us known.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way relationships in reality work. That level of connection requires one very important thing that most of us are quite poor at: being vulnerable.

Being vulnerable is a skill

When we were young, vulnerability came easily. We had few desires (eat, sleep, poop) and were quite ready to communicate (cry, wail, tantrum) them to anyone that would listen. So far so good.

But then as we grew, we developed more awareness of ourselves. We began to understand and feel embarrassment. We were taught about propriety and civility. We began to see the complex social systems around us. And we began to feel fear.

So much so that by the time we grew into our teenage years, most of us retreated into the recesses of our being, determined to avoid the embarrassment that comes from having the spotlight shone on us. Our bodies were changing - our hormones and thought processes were continually evolving, adapting to the new situations we found ourselves in. Our physical discomfort was made worse by our mental and emotional discomfort, and so we employed self preservation mechanisms.

Unfortunately, most of these mechanisms created separation and isolation. We expressed apathy towards things. We retreated to our rooms behind closed doors. We resorted to hiding behind the facade of a well-curated social media persona that we carefully crafted for ourselves.

As we reached adulthood, we came horribly unequipped and ill prepared for the type of vulnerability required to build the deep relationships that we crave. To add insult to injury we even began believing that this is simply the way things are, and that this level of arms length relationship is all that is possible and feasible as adults.

Thankfully we are wrong. It is possible to enjoy a deeper closeness than many of us grew up believing. It is possible to be in an environment and relationship where one can express themselves wholly and not be judged, and in fact be accepted, celebrated, and valued. But we must work on it. We must learn, we must experiment, we must take risks. To get the attainable amount of closeness we desire, we must develop the skill of vulnerability.

Learning to communicate

Arguably the most important skill a human being can ever develop, communication is the very core of any society, modern or ancient, and is the key to creating the environment of trust and vulnerability that we need to flourish. We must learn to skillfully communicate our needs, desires, and fears in a way that invites positive reciprocation and deepens relationship. To do that, we need to realize a few things.

1. Being vulnerable is a risk. By definition, it is taking the risk to put oneself out there without defenses, with nothing but the hope that we will not be attacked while our guard is down. But there is great reward as well. If we put ourselves out there, and the other party reciprocates and instead of slamming us nurtures and loves us, our lack of defenses actually multiplies and intensifies the closeness experienced, and by extension the strength of the relationship built. As such, it is important to be judicious about who you are vulnerable with, and who you bring into your inner circle to share yourself with.
2. You will most likely have to take the first step. Bridges are built from both ends, but getting to mutual agreement on the bridge often requires one side to start building first to demonstrate commitment to the investment. Which side starts is of no importance; it therefore might as well be you.
3. In any communication, how you communicate matters as much (if not more) than what you communicate. This means things like tone, body language, choice of words, facial expressions - all of these matter as much as the message itself.

So how do we improve here? A couple of quick thoughts.

1. Read. There are tons of books that provide great perspectives on communicating and how we can learn to be more effective at it. Books like Nonviolent Communication, The Charisma Myth, and the classic How to win friends and influence people to name a few are great resources that expand our understanding of communication.
2. Take a small, calculated risk. Small victories where we can expose some vulnerability, can communicate some small facet of ourselves unknown to the other will lead to larger risks and larger victories. Going big to start is a surefire way for you to go home immediately after.
3. Be persistent. Know that just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, a deep and vulnerable relationship takes time to build. Because they are rare, your relation may not be immediately receptive. Stay the course.

In learning to communicate, in learning to create spaces of trust that promotes vulnerability, we remove the need for our partners, friends, and colleagues to read our minds. And so my boys, my hope for you is that you will develop the skills necessary to have relationships and partnership where not only do they not need to read your mind, but you also do not have to read theirs.