The Good Stuff in the Nooks and Crannies

One of my favorite scenes happens about halfway through the third Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In a rare quiet moment in the film, Indiana is complaining about his lonely childhood and how preoccupied his father was. His father, the late Sean Connery, says, “Okay, I’m here now. So what do you want to talk about?” and stares intently at Indiana, waiting for his son to spontaneously initiate the scintillating conversation he said he always wanted with his father.

Indiana finds himself at a loss for words, of course.

What the scene hints at but never spells out is that some of the best conversations and interpersonal connections we have in our lives are not planned—they’re not even intentional. They just … happen.

This is yet another thing we’ve all lost this year. There are no unplanned hallway conversations with coworkers, no spontaneous questions across a cube wall, no unintentional connections with people you didn’t mean to run into and may never see again. I haven’t met anyone new—not really—in over a year.

Diverse colleagues met in modern office hallway having informal positive conversation, asian girl laughing enjoy break at workday with european guys multi racial friendship good work relations concept

This year has reduced our social interactions to the bare minimum, stripped of happy accidents and cleansed of the “unnecessary.”

What we’re left with is pointed answers to direct questions, and no more; birthday wishes that fit inside an instant message or text, designed for brevity; and stilted “what are you doing this weekend?” conversations that exist only to fill the moments before your next meeting.

All this may sound like I’m eager to return to the office. It may sound like I prefer working in the office to my home office. Nope. I knew long before 2020 about the personal and professional advantages of working from home. But I would be lying if I didn’t admit there are advantages to working in the office, too.

When it’s time to return, I hope to be able to enjoy a balance that lets me get the best of both worlds: the quiet, focused productivity of home and an office filled with distractions, indeliberate conversations, and moments I could never have planned.

Discussion Points about Disney’s “Soul”

• Based on the movie, how would you define “spark”?
  • They show several souls getting their “spark,” associating it with a single thing (archery, etc.), yet later deny that “spark” is a single thing.

• In the “before-life,” they assigned personality traits (aloof, insecure, self-absorbed, etc.). Why were so many negative traits?
  • To what extent do you feel our personalities are factory installed vs. created by external factors? (Nature vs. nurture.)

• Joe’s “life in review” seems to be completely without any spark. If every soul must have a spark to go to earth, he must have lost his. Are we shown/told what may have done that?
  • What happens to cause so many people to lose it?

• According to Moonwind (Graham Norton), passion that turns into an obsession makes you a lost soul. Was Joe a lost soul?

• Why did the girl who clearly loved and was good at the trombone want to quit? What made her stay?

• What was the purpose of making achieving his dream of playing with Dorothea Williams anticlimactic?
  • Related: Joe tells himself when getting ready to play with Dorothea that his life is “about to start.”

• Joe says that “Music and life play by very different rules.” 22 clearly saw a lot of parallels. What point was the movie making by showing this contrast?

• The oak tree “helicopter” was prominently featured toward the end. Do you think it symbolizes something or was it merely a “simple pleasure” Joe had taken for granted?

• What was the meaning of the story about the fish looking for the ocean?

• The movie ends without telling you what Joe will do next, only that he will “live every moment.” How do you think Joe will spend his life? Teaching? Jazz musician?

Stuff that didn’t make the question list

• Dez wanted to be a veterinarian, but became a barber. He still loved his job and his life, indicating that no one has one thing they’re born to be or do.
• At the beginning of the movie, 22 seems to take pride in “defeating” so many mentors. At the end we find out that she absorbed every negative comment, which made her want to give up.

“Fake News” and Other Bendy Facts

I promise I’m not here to rehash the events of the past week. But I’ve been hearing a lot of people lamenting the fact that in 1974, Republicans in Congress convinced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency for being obviously guilty of crimes that today seem quaint.

It’s possible politicians were different back then, that people had higher moral standards, but I’m betting the truth is less black-and-white.

In 1974, everyone got their news from the same sources. You could turn on Walter Cronkite, open the New York Times, or turn on your radio and get essentially the same factual news. Reporters, generally, reported the same facts. The truth was inescapable, concrete, and inarguable.

I read a story this morning about a man who finally, finally, finally saw his mother’s iron-clad loyalty for Trump crack in the wake of the riots on Wednesday. She finally saw what Trump had fomented and the actions his words put into motion. She felt shame.

Then she watched someone on Fox News (Tucker Carlson, I believe) give her the free pass she needed: They weren’t Trump supporters, they were Antifa in disguise. Immediately she returned to being defiant, angry, and convinced of Trump’s innocence. The son watched his mother slip away from reality again.

Confirmation bias is everywhere you look. Your news is fake; mine is real. Your experts are wrong; mine are right. Your facts are wrong; only mine are right. If you don’t agree with me, you need to “DO YOUR RESEARCH, SHEEPLE!!!!” There is a website or news channel that will tell you pretty much anything you want to read or hear, and facts are supremely bendy. People watch the news less to educate themselves than to arm themselves with responses to attacks on social media.

This is how we got to “alternative facts.”

The First Amendment is an important and powerful tool and has been grabbed by hands that will use it to make a buck, even if it burns the country to the ground. There is no honor, no bridge too far, no morality in play here.

I implore you to pay attention to where you’re getting your news. Pay attention to who’s making money, who benefits, and why a story seems so different from what other media are reporting.

Frankenstein Republicans and their Monster

Not a single person asked me to weigh in on what’s going on ahead of the normally uninteresting counting of the electoral votes. Not one. So of course I have to say something about it.

If you can convince a handful of people that there is a conspiracy, you control them. If tens of millions become convinced, they are in control.

And here we are.

A significant portion of our country now believes that reputable media outlets have a nefarious agenda and lie regularly and with impunity. They believe a virus that has killed hundreds of thousands is at least being exaggerated and may even be fake. Masks are oppression and a sign of acquiescence to governmental power. Vaccines are poison, mind control devices, or trackers. Political opponents are demonic, pedophilic, undemocratic (small “d”) enemies of America. Every opinion that differs from yours isn’t just different, it’s evil. The democratic process is so broken that the only way to fix it is to break it.

When even Fox News has “sold out” and begins saying things counter to their beliefs, and social media begins to fact-check posts, it creates a void, a vacuum that’s now being filled by Newsmax and Parler, echo chambers where they will be safe from any dissent or any facts that challenge their increasingly radical beliefs, which, in turn, strengthens their resolve.

The Frankenstein Republicans have created a monster that’s now in charge. They are so big, angry, and convinced of the conspiracies they’ve been fed that they cannot be ignored, and they cannot be convinced of anything that doesn’t confirm what they already believe.

After you’ve created a giant and powerful abomination, what then?

This is why congressional Republicans are putting on this show. They must show potential voters that they’re not just Republican; they’re Trump Republicans. They must never contradict this angry mob or imply that anything they believe is wrong, even though much of it is. They can’t admit they were party to force-feeding these lies and complicit in the culture that made this possible. All they can do now is serve it, and keep up the charade.

Tens of millions of “patriots” who love democracy fail to see the irony as they continue their march to damage everything they claim to love. This is sick.

Returning to the Office Strategically

This pandemic will change the way we live and work for years to come. The way we shop, travel, get our food from restaurants, how we greet each other, and how we work are all up in the air right now and what they’ll look like in the years ahead remain a mystery.

People don’t like uncertainty; businesses despise it. Small businesses in particular have been champing at the bit to get back to some semblance of normalcy for a while now and some seem prepared to trade safety for some facetime at the office. 

I get the desire, but the first hurdle you should be working to overcome is why being present in the office is so important. What isn’t happening right now, with people working remotely? What will be better when people are back at work? How will THEY benefit?

One of the things we’ve learned from this pandemic is that many office workers don’t need an office to be effective. If you want your people back in their chairs, can you explain why the risk is worth it? What’s not getting done? What’s not happening?

If you decide it’s time to get back to work, take a more methodical approach that will help everyone feel ready.

1. Establish and share milestones based on infection numbers (not time). – The key is to help people understand that any decision to return to the office (or not) will be based on facts, numbers, and science, and not just “it’s been long enough.” Forget timing, base the return/don’t return decisions on the number of new infections.
2. Watch and publish COVID numbers so people can watch the trends. The decision to return to the office shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone paying attention to the numbers. They should know when you do when the number of cases has reached the predetermined number.

• Establish non-negotiable safety standards. When it’s time to come back to the office—assuming infections are still a medical concern—create safety protocols including in-office traffic flows that ensure people don’t cross paths, mask policies that mandate coverage of mouth AND nose, maximum meeting attendance based on available space, etc., etc., etc. They keys here are monitoring, enforcement, and consequences.
• Be flexible.  The reactions to this pandemic have been as diverse as the people you work with. Some feel the threat has been overblown, some feel concerned but eager for normalcy, and some will only feel safe when a vaccine is widely available. Having a one-size-fits-all policy for returning to the office may not be the best approach. If your business has the ability to determine productivity by employee, consider factoring that into the equation. Employees who have demonstrated an ability to remain productive while working remotely should be rewarded with options.

The key to any back-to-office strategy will be to help your employees understand your reasoning and methodology. Transparency and care for their well-being is critically important. Why is it important that they be there, in the office, where the risk of infection for them and their families is higher? What numbers are you watching that will tell you (and them) it’s time to return? What protocols are you putting in place that will help keep people safe? How will you know those protocols are being followed? The answers to these questions will help everyone.

One Lie is a Tragedy; a Million Lies is a Statistic

In 2009, while talking about the ACA, President Obama told Americans, “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it.  If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too.”

“Obamacare” as it came to be known, was a massive, new, and hastily pieced-together program and was not the ideal solution progressives had been dreaming of for generations. And, it turned out, not every doctor or insurance carrier was on board, so in reality some people had to change plans and/or doctors. Obama later admitted that the promise went too far and that he had been wrong.

If you talk to anyone who intensely dislikes Obama, they’ll usually get around to calling him a liar, and use this as an example. Obama didn’t give them much else to cling to, so this, to them, was a malicious, evil lie, and probably part of some lefty-Muslim-commie plot to boot.

Okay, it wasn’t true, so let’s call it a lie.

On July 16 of this year, President Trump sat down with Fox News’ Chris Wallace for a funhouse of an interview. If you Google it, you’ll see a number of headlines like CNN’s “The 55 most shocking lines from Chris Wallace’s interview with Donald Trump.”[1] But I want to focus on just one:

“We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do.”

You could be forgiven if you missed it or heard it and forgot about it. The reason is that no one—absolutely no one—took it seriously. No one. It was just one more bald-faced lie told by our sitting president. One of thousands he’s racked up in his three-years-and-change presidency.

It is the very fact that this lie wasn’t notable that makes it so notable.

When this presidency began, much was made of not “normalizing” is penchant for making things up. Not being selective with the facts, misrepresenting statistics, or even twisting the truth, but simply making statements that had zero hold on reality. But here we are, pinned under a pile of lies so massive that we don’t even feel them being heaped on the top anymore.

This is the part of the post where I revisit the baseline “lie”—the one that still has the GOP’s collective panties in a wad—with the newer one.

1. You’ll be able to keep your plan and doctor (You may not, actually, but you probably will. Regardless, you’ll have health care.)
2. “We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan.” (No they didn’t, and no such plan existed.)

I’m not sure how the first lie could be held up as a pernicious lie and the second could be ignored without admitting that Trump has won. We have lost count of the lies and misdeeds and have simply become numb to it all. Normalization complete.

-Doug

 

[1] Pick any reputable news source; they were pretty much all aghast.

The Godly Atheist

Much has been made of the fact that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the same God[1]. I happen to believe that most agnostics and atheists do too.

If you start with the notion that religion is a construct for a set of beliefs, and that the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran are societal rulebooks, it makes sense. If you reject that notion and believe that the three holy books were all directly and literally written by God, we can still get there, but it takes bit longer. But I’m going to draw a direct line between “God” and “godly” here, so buckle up.

Thousands of years ago, there was no centralized anything, and people didn’t understand that killing, stealing, and lusting for your neighbor’s wife were bad things. So bad things happened time and time again when people did those things. Clearly, something had to be done, especially if people were going to live together—as was clearly the trend.

The best way to have a society and help people live together was to create rules that everyone would live by. Who has the authority to make such rules? The same guy who make the sun shine and the rain fall, of course. He can be super-nice or a real jerk, depending on how you follow the rules (Commandments), and your crops, spouse, and children will live or die by his will. This is NOT someone you want to piss off. Oh, and just in case you think you got away with that thing—you know what you did—you didn’t, and you’ll pay for it after your dead, forever. So you’d better fess up now.

The result of all this carrot-and-stick stuff, in a rulebook literally viewed as gospel, was that societies worked. People didn’t (generally) kill, didn’t (generally) steal, and didn’t (generally) screw around. Yay God!

But the same human brain that requires answers and boxes to put the unknown in is the same one that begins to question things. it’s perfectly natural that as we learn more and more about the natural world that we begin to question what we once wrote off as the work of a supernatural being. Many of us pull out the notions we’d long put away and re-examine them. If my behavior doesn’t determine whether it rains or not, the brain may ask, then does it really matter if I steal something?

Yeah, it does. It matters because there are consequences. You could get caught and punished, or you could experience the negative effects of that behavior, on yourself or on others. All of us have done things the Holy Books tell us not to, and I dare say that we’ve experienced how that makes others feel and seen firsthand the damage that can do. So we learn why it’s bad to do those things and then we decide to not do them anymore. We learn empathy.

So let’s go back to the idea that religion is a construct for a set of beliefs, and that the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran are societal rulebooks. If we live in families and societies that teach us right from wrong, and if we experience consequences when we break the rules we all live by, and we become rule-abiding people who not only don’t kill, steal, or covet, are we not following the core tenants of the holy books? Are we not being faithful to God? Are we not living as He would want us to?

If we accept that being Christian, Jewish, or Muslim is about more than beliefs, it’s about actions, are those of us who cannot (not will not) participate in the belief part really very different? If “God” teaches us to love one another and do the right things, and agnostics and atheists love their neighbors and live virtuous lives—as most do—are they not “godly” people?

 

[1] Gods have always been a super-popular choice, and every culture came up with its own, grouped by geography. Christians, Jews, and Muslims have the same God because He grew out of the same area and reflected the same cultural beliefs and norms.

 

A Very Good Day

Andy awoke to the sound of rain softly tapping on the window beside his bed. He awoke slowly at first, easing into what he knew more instinctively than intellectually to be a Sunday morning. Then, the memories of last night washed over him like a warm bath. He struggled to remain in that twilight place between sleep and consciousness that let him not just remember but relive the moments that made up the highlight reel of a perfect evening. That first laugh, the first moment of connection, the first touch. Each of these was now engraved in a book of favorite life moments that he knew he would pull down, dust off, and relive time and time again.

Andy and Alexa had been friendly, even having lunch outside the office on occasion, but never just the two of them. He had offered, of course, but she had always taken it as an invitation to form a group, and he never objected.

Standing just over six feet tall and weighing in at just over 150 pounds, Andy was slender, with a mop of blond hair that had an unruly nature when not kept in check with copious amounts of gel. And even then it rebelled regularly and effectively. His friends called it “stoner hair,” and they weren’t wrong. Andy was social and likable, but shy in unfamiliar situations, and often preferred books to parties. The people he felt he knew best and connected with most deeply often lived only in his Kindle, but were as real to him as any he had ever met in the real world.

Andy was kind, and also kind of awkward, kind of funny, and kind of handsome, in his own way. Although he was completely oblivious, a few of the girls at work, and a couple of the guys, had crushes on him. A few had tried hitting him over the head with metaphorical two-by-fours of obvious come-ons, but to no avail.

Throughout his teen years, and the few adult years he had under his belt, Andy had been asked a few times what his “type” was, and  he had never described Alexa’s appearance. She had short, spikey hair, a few tattoos in places that showed with more casual attire, and piercings in her nose and right eyebrow. No, it was her left, just above those sparkling green eyes that smiled every time he and she talked. She was attractive, pretty even, but not in a way that fit inside any of the boxes we’re all given to check. But Alexa, the person, was the kind of girl he always imagined he’d meet but always knew would be out of his league. He loved the way she made him feel and the way others reacted to her. He loved watching her interact with people, and watching as they gave in to her infectious positivity.

Is it possible to be madly and deeply in love with someone you don’t really know?

Andy wasn’t a poet or a musician, but he had a flair for sketching and had drawn Alexa’s face so many times that his hand could do it without him. He stopped, deciding that it was just a little too “stalkery,” but his mind continued to capture snapshots of her being adorable, happy, sad, frustrated, sleepy—he had them all filed away, ready for instant recall whenever he needed them.

A few weeks ago, after watching Braveheart for the hundredth time, and finding courage in the idea that a coward dies a thousand deaths but a brave man just one, Andy decided that it was time. Tired of group lunches and casual over-the-cube conversations in stolen moments at work, he was going to ask Alexa out on a date. He practiced how he would ask, even writing it out and rehearsing in the mirror until it was smooth. Well, as smooth as it would ever be; as smooth as he would ever be. When it came time to deliver his speech at work the next day, the words were nowhere to be found. He verbally fumbled around, unartfully asking if she’d like to have dinner this Saturday. With him. It’s okay if she didn’t. We could go anywhere. Or see a movie. Or not.

“I would love to,” Alexa said with a smile.

It went well.

Andy stayed in bed, remembering everything about last night. He was afraid that if he got up he would find out that it was all a dream and that he hadn’t really had the most amazing date in the history of dates. “She knew,” he said out loud, telling only his room what he wanted to tell everyone he had ever met. “She knew and she was hoping I’d ask her out.” He couldn’t stop smiling.

When he closed his eyes he could still feel the hand she placed in his. He could see her smiling at him the way she had so many times, but it was different now. “You never knew, did you?” she asked last night on the steps outside her apartment. “You adorable, clueless thing.”  He could feel his lips on his, hear the whisper in his ear, “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

Andy lay still in bed, feeling the electricity still coursing through his body and wondering why  the universe had given so much to one person in such a short time. Just then, his phone buzzed. “You up yet, sleepy-head?” read the text. “I feel like waffles and stomping around in some puddles. You?”

This was going to be an amazing day.

Donald Trump is Right (about one thing)

Nearly everyone agrees that Donald Trump is an ass. In fact, he’s an unqualified, self-serving, self aggrandizing ass. But as he has continued to fall up, in spite of all predictions to the contrary, we’re forced to look at what he’s doing right.

There was a time when you had to go out of your way to find out what was going on in the world. You had to buy a paper or make a point to be in front of the TV at a particular time in order to get the news. But now, it’s always there, always on, ready to tell you what’s happening, what you should care about, and what you should be afraid of. You don’t always have to look at it, but it can be hard to avoid.

A byproduct of this is that we are far more aware of what’s going on than ever before. We are exposed to current events and issues constantly, and we’ve begun to notice patterns. We may have agreed with statements about government and politicians in the past, but now we connect with them like never before. We don’t just nod our heads, we passionately and vociferously engage in conversation and debate. And we’re pretty sick of it. We’re sick of the non-answer answers, the lawyerly double-speak, the statements that are technically true and realistically false, and the carefully prepared statements that use hundreds of words to say absolutely nothing of substance.

So is it any surprise that someone who breaks this mold and speaks plainly is getting attention and even, from some, approval? Yes, Donald Trump is appealing to our worst impulses and fears. The foreigners are coming to take our jobs and burden our system. ISIS will kill us all. Iran is crazy and is on the verge of getting nukes. Politicians are all corrupt and incompetent.

Yes, Trump is an ass. Thankfully he’s an unelectable one, and no one should be happier about that than the man who can’t stop making promises he can’t keep and statements he can’t back up.

But a smart politician will see what’s really behind his popularity and begin speaking plainly, answering questions clearly, and speaking his or her mind without filters and careful consideration about how his or her statements might be used against him or her. This is waaaay more about style than substance, and it’s incredibly appealing. Add substance to that equation and it could unstoppable.

Is it possible that Donald Trump, completely by accident, has shown us the way forward? Has he revealed a truth that the American people are now, finally, ready to hear unvarnished truths? Maybe. Maybe the first qualified, smart, well-informed, reasonable person who takes that chance just might be rewarded.

What Matters Most

Dean looked at his nightstand, where the only light in the room told him it was 1:00 in the morning. He knew this was going to be another sleepless night. The silence and stillness in his bedroom somehow attracted all of his most pressing and disturbing thoughts, like so many moths to reacting to the glowing void and rushing to fill it. His mind, apparently, decided that nighttime was the perfect time to think about work, taxes, death, and the reason his wife left him and his daughter to fend for themselves two years ago. 

Emily, Dean’s only child, was the reason he kept going, kept moving forward, and kept worrying about the little stuff. There were times when she was all that mattered, and that was enough. 

He walked down the hall and peeked in on his muse and watched her breathe for a few minutes. He’d never felt so at peace and yet so completely overwhelmed as when he watched her sleep, knowing that it was all up to him. The life she would lead tomorrow and the day after that and the years beyond high school and college and the relationships she would form . . . he carried the weight of all of it, and yet was constantly buoyed by the incredible love he felt for her. 

He moved down the hall, being careful to not break the delicate silence that blanketed the house, and carefully opened the sliding glass door to the back patio. It was a clear night–unusually so–and the air was crisper than he expected for August. He stared up at the stars, trying to imagine what people meant when they said that looking at the night sky made them feel small. He never understood that, but he wanted to. He often wished the world would just stop, just for a few moments, so he could catch his breath and stop thinking, stop caring, stop feeling the weight of every bill, every meeting, every conversation he imbued with imaginary importance. 

A shooting star passed Dean’s field of vision at just the right moment, and he watched it cross the sky. And then it stopped. In fact, everything stopped. The silence was so intense that his ears ached from the absence of sound. The sensations were so odd, the nothingness so complete, that for a moment he wondered if he might not be dead, but quickly dismissed the idea. 

Perhaps more odd than anything was that he wasn’t concerned about this odd development. On the contrary, he–the only living, breathing, thinking, moving thing in the apparent world–sat on a patio chair and let the void wash over him. He allowed the absence of everything to seep into his mind and recede again, taking his worries with it. He felt . . . nothing. At last. 

That night Dean slept outside, waking only when Emily knocked on the glass door and said that she was hungry. She looked so small and so helpless and in that moment his love for her was pure, unfettered by the things that felt so important just hours before.

It was then that he finally understood. We’re all here for a short time, just passing through a never-ending play that cares not if we take a role in our short time on stage. The story has been going on for billions of years and will continue billions more and no one gets more than his allotted time. We come, we go, just like all the rest. Sometimes we change the plot, but most won’t. Most will play their parts and disappear. We are just blips on a cosmic timeline, fractions of a punctuation mark in a massive script. 

Dean didn’t so much think these words as channel them. They weren’t familiar to him as they passed through him, but they struck a chord that gave him an odd sense of peace, and he carried them with him as he built a new life for himself and Emily day by day, week by week, month by month.