Midlife Crisis Intervention

 

It is often said that when you are young you have time and health but fewer resources, when you are middle-aged you have health and resources but less time, and when you are elderly you have time and resources but diminished health. As I am squarely in that second category and have spent a lot of contemplative time looking back at the first category and looking ahead to the third category, this is a reality I grapple with.

Specifically, whereas one's youth perspective is shaped by the fact that you have your whole life ahead of you, middle age is a realization that there is likely less life ahead of you than behind you. Which is not the same thing as feeling you are running out of time, but it can lend some urgency to how you spend your time. Especially if your weekly schedule feels like there isn't much room in it, while juggling a full plate of work responsibilities and family obligations (young kids, aging parents, domestic to-do's), it is easy to be overcome with a sense of anxiety or discontentment or resignation about it all.

Whether your "bucket list" consists of noble things (start a business, raise a family, render public service) or more frivolous things (dream travel destinations, getting better at golf), middle age is a time to consider whether and how to go for those things, and/or recalibrate your expectations about achieving them. It seems to me, or at least I'll say that for myself if for no one else (and with an assist from Gemini which I use for many things including profound life questions and personal therapy), that there are multiple, not mutually exclusive ways forward:

1. Small bites rather than a sumptuous meal. The bigger the ambition, the more intention is required to carve out the time and mental load to go for it. There are only so many of these we realistically have room for in our maxed out lives. Are there ways to micro-dose the itch, like 3 day trips over the summer over a 3-week vacation, or a monthly service project over starting a new non-profit? 

2. Quality enjoyment over clinical efficiency. This is the hardest one for me, as a naturally driven person, is that an impossibly long bucket list whose existence is solely to brute force plow through it from start to end is a formula for inevitable failure. Isn't it better to savor one amazing European jaunt per year over sweating over doing six to just race through?

3. Don't be ashamed to trade money for time. Some of us have childhood upbringings or personal blocks where we feel guilty if we don't cook our own meals and clean our own house rather than outsourcing that function. But if you have enough money and your greatest scarcity is time, and if there is a deep pool of people and organizations eager to do what they do well in exchange for your money, then why not?

4. Health is precious, worth investing in and being grateful for. "Old" is definitely relative; when I was in my 20s, I would've consider someone who is currently my age (53) to be old. But I feel great now, albeit creakier than when I was in my 20s. The fact is that we would (gladly and correctly) trade just about anything for good health. So invest real resources to safeguard it: work out, eat right, make room for sleep, see your doctor, get help where you need it. And be thankful for the health you do have now; if I could go back in time I would tell my 20s version to enjoy his youth, just like my 80s version would tell me the same now.

5. Embrace the limitations of aging. Getting older can be fought, albeit unsuccessfully. We will all experience diminished physical and mental faculties; we will all come to grips with the fact that we have less and less life in front of us. It is natural for this unassailable realities to be met with sadness or rage. We should allow ourselves to feel those feels. We should also take heart that people who do age well report unprecedented happiness, as they make peace with their state and embrace the good parts of it. That gives me hope that, with the right attitude, I too have better days ahead.

I hope these thoughts are helpful in your journey. I welcome other insights from folks who have, directly or vicariously through others, discovered good and bad ways of working through the middle ages and learned the secret to aging well. 

The Power of Reconciliation

 

I have been reading "John Adams" by David McCullough and I came across a powerful exchange between Adams and the King of England, the first time they met after the end of the Revolutionary War. Here is what Adams is recorded to have said, with great emotion:

"Sir, The United States of America have appointed me their Minister Plenipotentiary to your Majesty...It is in obedience to their express commands that I have the honor to assure your Majesty of their unanimous disposition and desire to cultivate the most friendly and liberal intercourse between your Majesty’s subjects and their citizens...The appointment of a Minister from the United States to your Majesty’s Court will form an epocha in the history of England and of America. I think myself more fortunate than all my fellow citizens in having the distinguished honor to be the first to stand in your Majesty’s royal presence in a diplomatic character; and I shall esteem myself the happiest of men if I can be instrumental in recommending my country more and more to your Majesty’s royal benevolence...I beg your Majesty’s permission to add, that although I have sometimes before been entrusted by my country, it was never in my whole life in a manner so agreeable to myself."  

King George III was himself overcome with emotion. His response was: 

"Sir, The circumstances of this audience are so extraordinary, the language you have now held is so extremely proper, and the feelings you have discovered so justly adapted to the occasion, that I must say that I not only receive with pleasure the assurances of the friendly dispositions of the United States, but that I am very thankful to the Almighty that he has spared my life, and support[ed] my health, to see the present day...I wish you, Sir, to believe, and that it may be understood in America, that I have done nothing in the late contest, but what I thought myself indispensably bound to do, by the duty which I owed to my people. I will be very frank with you. I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power. The moment I see such sentiments and language as yours prevail, and a disposition to give this country the preference, that moment I shall say let the circumstances of language, religion and blood have their natural and full effect."  

Recall that the whole point of America's fight for independence was to be free from this very king's tyranny. And yet here is the first representative of the new country making nice with that very king. And so it is that, centuries later, two great nations have such a close and intimate relationship despite the fact that they literally fought a multi-year war when one side decided they wanted to be free from the other side.

Reconciliation is powerful. But it can feel wrong, because it usually involves one or both sides extending forgiveness for wrongs done. To be sure, there can be restitution for those wrongs - repayment or penance or healing, for example. But even then, true reconciliation is not merely transactional, as if I incurred a debt from you and then repaid it, but rather there was harm and breach and now we are moving past it.

Different faith traditions hold different paths to how we humans are able to "move past." However you get there, I hope that wherever you need reconciliation you are able to find it. And, if it is up to you to say gracious words like John Adams and King George did, that you are able to say them with authenticity and emotion.

Course Correction

 

They say that how you do one thing is how you do everything. I'm not sure that's true. But I do know that how you play golf is a pretty good window into who you really are. Which means faithfully representing your most prominent traits, amplifying good and bad characteristics, and/or bring to the surface your true colors which you may try to hide during your more refined moments.

It is becoming a favorite ice breaker discussion of mine, when I am introduced to someone new by a friend on the golf course and then have the opportunity to meet them down the road and off the course. Which is to let them know what favorable first impressions they made on me when I observed them playing, and in turn to ask what they saw in me. 

I've tried this enough to hear a consensus about what about my playing tells me about me. Which I agree with, and if you know me you too would agree, which tends to be three things:

1. I'm methodical and data-oriented, which on the course means measuring a shot before swinging and recording my results after, and which off the course means keeping a detailed schedule and creating spreadsheets for everything I need to keep track of in my life.

2. Self-improvement is important to me, which golf is the kind of activity that I'll be chasing getting better for the rest of my life, and life is like that too in that there's always something to learn and always something we can get better at.

3. I'm hard on myself to a fault, which can be a positive trait for feeding self-improvement (see above) but is decidedly negative in impairing my ability to be in the moment (because I'm dwelling on past mistakes) and celebrate the good things that I've done.

What a wonderful and terrifying thought, that this thing called golf can be such a stark window into your true self. But, let me pivot now and say it is also a platform for practicing the kind of person you want to be, even if that is very different than the person you are by default.

For example, while I don't allow myself much of a temper, I know it's in there because when I first started playing golf I had a pretty bad attitude much of the time, and it still comes out on occasion. Which is to say that activities can be windows into our souls, but they can also be platforms to bend ourselves away from our worst traits and towards a better version of ourselves. Which is why I love golf so much, for my own self-awareness and also as a way to get to know those I care about in a setting that is conducive to going deeper.

Be Pervious

 

In the planning profession, there is something called "pervious" versus "impervious," with the former representing things like gardens that absorb rainwater and the latter representing things like parking lots that run them off. From this perspective, "pervious" is often held in higher regard than "impervious," because the run-off from impervious surfaces can overwhelm public stormwater systems leading to flooding, whereas the absorption function pervious surfaces mitigates against those strains.

But, in our lives, there can be a sense in which what is considered positive and negative is reversed. Being metaphorically impervious means holding your shape when the storms come, while being metaphorically pervious means being washed away when the storms come. Think of the side-by-side imagery of, in a torrent, a resolute marble statue versus a ransacked bed of flowers.

Perhaps to be counter-intuitive, I would like to propose the opposite. That which is impervious may be unaffected by the floods, but it is also unchanged. That which is pervious may seem exposed to ruin by the floods, but in nature we observe that what looks like destruction at first is actually the first act of a process that leads to rebirth. The impervious surface will never be more than what it is now. The pervious surface may rise from the ashes to contribute something new and beautiful.

I will leave to you what are your metaphoric torrential rains, and what possible new thing may grow out of seeming ruin. I just invite you to consider allowing yourself to be a bit pervious, even at risk of being vulnerable to being washed away. Who knows what wonderful new thing blossoms next?

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 549

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Lady Chatterley's Lover," by DH Lawrence.

And however one might sentimentalise it, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connections and subjections. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something better, something higher. And now they knew it more definitely than ever. The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs.

And a woman had to yield. A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant connection. But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really giving herself away. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use this sex thing to have power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis: and then she could prolong the connection and achieve her orgasm and her crisis while he was merely her tool.

He dreaded with a repulsion almost of death, any further close human contact. He wished above all things she would go away, and leave him to his own privacy. He dreaded her will, her female will, and her modern female insistency. And above all he dreaded her cool, upper-class impudence of having her own way. For after all he was only a hired man. He hated her presence there.

She was not even free, for Clifford must have her there. He seemed to have a nervous terror that she should leave him. The curious pulpy part of him, the emotional and humanly-individual part, depended on her with terror, like a child, almost like an idiot. She must be there, there at Wragby, a Lady Chatterley, his wife. Otherwise he would be lost like an idiot on a moor.

"But he wouldn't be your own son, of your own ruling class; or perhaps not," she stammered.

"I don't care who his father may be, so long as he is a healthy man not below normal intelligence. Give me the child of any healthy, normally intelligent man, and I will make a perfectly competent Chatterley of him. It is not who begets us, that matters, but where fate places us. Place any child among the ruling classes, and he will grow up, to his own extent, a ruler. Put kings' and dukes' children among the masses, and they'll be little plebians, mass products. It is the overwhelming pressure of environment."

"Then the common people aren't a race, and the aristocrats aren't blood," she said.

"No, my child! All that is romantic illusion. Aristocracy is a function, a part of fate. And the masses are a functioning of another part of fate. The individual hardly matters. It is a question of which function you are brought up to and adapted to. It is not the individuals that make an aristocracy: it is the functioning of the aristocratic whole. And it is the functioning of the whole mass that makes the common man what he is."

"Then there is no common humanity between us all!"

"Just as you like. We all need to fill our bellies. But when it comes to expressive or executive functioning, I believe there is a gulf and an absolute one, between the ruling and the serving classes. The two functions are opposed. And the function determines the individual."

Connie looked at him with dazed eyes.

The Importance of Seeing Beyond Who You See

 

This study caught my eye, which looks at male manager's decisions right after the birth of a kid, particularly comparing when it's a girl versus when it's a boy. When it's a girl, women's employment and salaries in the firm go up, primarily because those managers, when faced with equally qualified job candidates, are choosing females more often, ostensibly because they are more attuned to wanting women to have more opportunities as they now have one in their own household. The study also notes that firm performance neither goes up nor down, consistent with the fact that while they are substituting female hires for male hires, they are selecting people with similar characteristics.

All well and good, right? Yes, it is good for people to be more attuned to other groups once those "others" are no longer "other" but family. It is my understanding that gay rights advanced quite quickly once our society reached a tipping point of most people having a gay person as a family member or close friend. This is a wonderful way for progress to happen, and we should celebrate it.

But, coming back to the manager's perspective, we must be careful to not limit ourselves in this way. I've heard it said that when men say something like "as a dad of daughters, I condemn violence against women," some people find the sentiment lacking, for while they are glad for the allyship, they wonder why the desire to stand in solidarity with women first requires that a man has daughters. 

Furthermore, this connection between "I have a daughter" and "I will advocate for women in the workforce" can have limits that work against making a workplace more inclusive. If I am Asian, it is natural for me to see my daughter in my Asian female co-workers and more easily seek to advocate for them, and there is nothing wrong with that. But if it causes me to have greater distance in being able to do the same for other, non-Asian female co-workers, that doesn't seem quite right.

I think it's why, in HR circles, the notion of "this person is a great fit" or "this person just wasn't a great fit" is so fraught. "Fit" can speak to an aspect of corporate culture that is important to a firm that isn't for everyone, and that's ok, since not every workplace is appropriate for every job candidate. But, if it becomes code for gravitating to or only hiring people who look like me or who resemble people in my social circle, that is necessarily limiting even for those with vast personal networks. 

It is normal to more naturally empathize with those with whom you have some personal connection, like women after you become a girl dad, or golfers if you like to golf. But, good managers seeking great firm performance and great work culture should be intentional about stretching to hire and support people very different from themselves and from who they normally interact with. 

To return to the study above, in that case firm performance was the same when substituting more female hires for more male hires. In the real world, by definition the broader the labor pool the more likely you will find better candidates. If you artificially or unknowingly limit your labor pool you will miss out on better candidates, and therefore you will miss out on a better team and better results. Easier said than done, but still needs to be done.

Method Man

 

Debates about AI are all the rage now, as we wonder what it is doing to our classrooms, workplaces, and society as a whole. Today I'd like to explore something far more mundane, which is: what do I use it for on a daily basis?

The answer is: a lot, really almost everything. I am, after all, a very methodical person by temperament. So if there is available to me a free, always-on resource for guiding me through life, I will be swift to tap into it. 

A quick review of my chat history yields the following common applications:

* As a companion when I read a book or study the Bible, to clarify something I may have missed or provide historical context or scholarly consensus

* As a source of ideas and information when I make plans on the weekend or conceive a vacation itinerary

* To prep for upcoming meetings by providing me background on attendees and guiding the questions and points I want to bring to the table

* To catch me up on current events by summarizing what's going on, what different people are saying about it, and what relevant history connects up with the topic

* As a search engine for factual information that I used to Google but now use Gemini for because then my queries and the responses I get back can be more conversational

* To seek therapeutic advice, medical reference, or etiquette guidance when I'm too embarrassed to ask a human

* For help with recipes, IT support, gift ideas, and home repairs

* And, because I'm a golf degenerate, for tips on how to navigate the course I'll be playing next

Before anyone gets riled up: yes I know it's not always accurate, yes I know that sometimes you need to seek a professional, and yes I understand you think the whole thing is of the devil. I do know to tread cautiously. But, multiple times a day, I do tread.

Law and Order in Singapore

 

The growing use of and subsequent pushback against Flock cameras is something I'm following with great interest. As technology improves in quality and pervasity, you'll likely see even more invasive and prevalent use for purposes of public safety, so this debate will only increase in intensity.

Hopefully it is readily apparent that there are pros and cons to Flock and other technologies that efficiently and seamlessly capture information out in the public. On the one hand, such devices can greatly aid public safety through deterrence on the front end and investigation on the back end. On the other hand, over-surveillance by the state comes with it the specter of government overreach, inequitable deployment, and loss of privacy.

Although I was only in Singapore for less than two weeks, it was pretty clear that their public sector is even more invested in this sort of approach to keeping everyone safe: cameras everywhere, a prominent police presence, swift enforcement of all laws in the public space. And, at least among those people I spoke to, including my own daughter who spent six months navigating a brand-new big city on her own as a single woman, the trade-off between intrusion on privacy and greater sense of safety was, at least in its current form, more than acceptable. (Off topic, one cab driver even reminded me that physical punishment is still a thing in Singapore, and that as a father of young daughters he wholeheartedly approves of it as a stark deterrent against violent crimes).

My own knee-jerk reaction to amazing new technology is neither to want to give it free rein nor to immediately pronounce it as something evil that must be stuffed back into a sack. My preference is to push towards progress, but with an eye to what controls can be put in place to avoid abuses. Perhaps that is naive. If it is impossible to keep a dangerous thing from getting into the wrong hands and being used for ill, then we should not try to reason with ourselves that we can. But nor do I like intentionally under-using or discarding new technological functions, or dismissing or vilifying those who will benefit from their use. This is a topic worth keeping an eye on for so many reasons.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 548

 

Here are a couple of excerpts from a book I recently read, "Speaking of Atlantic City: Recollections and Memories," by Janet Robinson Bodoff and Leesa Toscano.

At seven years old, the most glamorous thing I ever saw was Miss America contestants riding down the boardwalk dressed in sparkly outfits on the back of shiny new cars. As if that was not exciting enough, the cars were interspersed with floats covered by tons of beautiful flowers, glitter and streamers. I can s till recall the scent of those floats festooned with what seemed like a million blooms. Mingled with the ocean breeze, it was pure perfume. Oh, how I wanted one of those flowers.

My first visit to the parade was magical, and returning to the parade is still as exciting to this grownup. When I was seven, my mom brought my little brother and me to the parade, as her mom had brought her. Like so many other little girls, we dreamed of fancy dresses, tiaras, and unattainable beauty. We were not the first. Generations of little girls had the same dreams.

For those who could not afford a hotel stay, a day trip to the shore was a family treat. To save money, day-trippers brought their lunch to the beach in shoe boxes and forevermore became known as shoobies to the locals.

On the Folly of Rewarding "A" While Hoping for "B"

 

Leaving the comforts of suburban San Jose on the West Coast to attend college at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on the East Coast commenced a phase of life in which the life lessons came fast and furious. I was forced to manage my money and do my own laundry and figure out my weekly schedule. I constantly took in new observations and new lessons about how things work on the streets of West Philadelphia. And I discovered that much of what I learned in high school history class was a sanitized account of a far more earthy and nuanced historical record. When I graduated four years later I was still pretty naive, but I grew so much during that time period because of all the ways I was stretched and challenged during that time.

One of those in-classroom thunderbolts from the sky was the seminal management paper, "On the Folly of Rewarding 'A' While Hoping for 'B.'" Its author, Steven Kerr, cited example after example of claiming to want one thing while actually rewarding a completely different thing. What really blew my mind was that this principle could be found in so many places and was so prevalent. In sports, we all say teamwork and unselfishness is paramount, and yet at the professional level chasing individual accomplishment is what nets the most compensation and attention. In business, we want leaders who think about the long term and about society writ large, but stock prices and executive compensation are based on quarterly performance.

Politics is where this dissonance is most pronounced and problematic. For example, at a federal level, politicians are compelled to invest in fundraising and base-building in order to stay in office, rather than using their office to achieve the greatest public good. 

At a local level, the incentive misalignments are even more pernicious. We wish for our electeds to be public servants, stewarding public resources for the enrichment of a location and its constituents. Almost all who seek office have this positive impulse in them at some level. But staying in office involves securing a sufficient proportion of votes within your jurisdiction. If given a choice of holding your office in a way that allows your constituents to flourish and therefore increase the amount of social mobility they have, including a higher likelihood that they will move to a better neighborhood, and performing in such a way that your constituents stay immobile and loyal, most people would consider the former to be more noble but the system rewards the latter. 

I will leave to you to think about whether and where the folly of rewarding "A" while hoping for "B" occurs in your life. For me, it was a wake-up call that, in just about every facet of life, people respond to incentives, and all too often those incentives are misaligned with how we would actually want people to behave. So what are we to do about this?

Contrarian Viewpoint: The Demise of Higher Education is Greatly Exaggerated (Although Many Institutions Will Fold Along the Way)

 

I see this opinion a lot among my friends and online, which is that universities are archaic and will die out in number and relevance. To be sure, the sector faces some major tumult: demographic bust (i.e. far fewer 18-22 year olds), so many other ways to gain knowledge and forge networks, rising tuitions combined with greater uncertainty as to whether paying those tuitions will guarantee you a job after, and (at least for now) a president and base of supporters that is ambivalent if not antagonistic about the most prestigious among such institutions.

Here's the thing about humanity in a liberal economy and democratic government: tumult plus demand equals innovation, which leads to survival, adaption, and thriving. Many institutions will not make it, nor should they if they fail to add value to their students, stakeholders, communities, and society. But many other institutions will recognize the market opportunity and boldly adjust their offerings, space, and very ethos to seize it.

The thing is, and perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part rather than a prediction of how the future will actually play out, a university campus is the ideal setting for the kind of activity that humans need to flourish and dare I say survive as a species. No matter how digital our interface becomes and how good AI is at replacing much of our doing and thinking, three important things happen when really bright and really different people come together in a setting in which acceptance is the norm and growth is the goal:

1. We come to learn about and more deeply accept those who are different from us, so that we are better people and more informed advocates when our new colleagues are faced with hate

2. Cultural expressions flourish, both that which comes from our home culture and that which is created amongst us as its own new culture reflecting contemporary values and desires

3. Scientific advancement and business innovation occur when people from different disciplines and walks of life explore the edges of their knowledge and emerge with new insights

My hypothesis is that humanity is hungry for all three of these outcomes. If college campuses are where they happen, they will continue to attract producers, consumers, and investors until the end of time. It may look very different than today in physical layout and business model. There may be many seemingly unassailable institutions that totter and then crumble. And so every institution must be vigilant, entrepreneurial, and lucky. I predict that those that make it will continue to be just as if not more culturally impactful as now.