“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.
These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” | Elisabeth Kübler Ross
This note struck multiple chords.
(H/T: James Clear’s newsletter)
“Walking quiets the mind without silencing it completely.” | Eric Weiner, Geography of Genius
This note beautifully articulates why walking manages to be both meditative and productive.
“What is honored in a country is cultivated there.” | Plato
Applies just as nicely to families, groups of friends, communities, and companies.
2 takeaways –
(1) Be intentional about what you choose to honor.
(2) Choose cultures/communities that honor what you want to cultivate.
H/T: The Geography of Genius by Eric Weiner
Every once a while, I find it helpful to remind myself that we are specks in a massive universe. We won’t register in the grand scheme of things. And, our worries of the moment are completely inconsequential.
This reminder is both liberating and powerful.
It reminds me of Carl Sagan’s incredible note describing the “pale blue dot.”
“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Indeed
The word “bankrupt” comes from Italian banca rotta, which means
“broken bench.”
In renaissance Florence, money lenders worked on wooden tables in the marketplace. When a money lender ran out of money, that bench would be broken. Hence, “banca rotta.”
Today, bankrupty often involves abstract legal entities filing a collection of forms.
Five centuries. Literal to abstract. Atoms to bits.
I saw this factoid about sharks at an aquarium we visited recently.
Apologies for the dark photo (underground). It read – Are the sharks dangerous for our divers?
No. They’re actually very cautious around divers – as they should be. Humans kill more than 100 million sharks every year. Sharks kill about 5 humans every year.
The combination of the stats, the image, and the way it all came together made me pause and think about the power of perspective.
It was powerful, humorous, and poignant.
If you charge money for a product and say it is refundable, make it easy for the customer to get a refund.
If you have a customer service number, make sure a customer gets a response within a few minutes. Or offer a call back.
This sounds simple enough.
And, yet, how many businesses can you think of that manage to do this at scale?
Simple is hard.
Trade-off – a balance achieved between two desirable but incompatible features; a compromise.
One of the enduring lessons I took away from graduate school was that defining a strategy inevitably means defining trade-offs.
A good strategy helps us navigate trade-offs by helping us understand what matters and, thus, the sorts of compromises we should make. This works just as well in business and in life. If we decide something is a priority, we should be willing to make compromises in other areas. This exercise is never fun. But, it is important.
If all we’re doing is spreading ourselves too thin in our attempts at doing everything, then we’re not executing on a strategy.
If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.
ALearningaDay turned 13 last week.
13 years and 5,600 posts later, I’m more aware than ever of just how hard it is to learn something.
But, the more challenging the path, the more memorable the journey.
(1) Isabel Wilkerson’s book “Caste” is a recent read that I’ve thought about a lot. It is fascinating to dig into the history of a place. I’ve had some insight into the institution of slavery in the United States. But, there’s nothing like the kind of insight a seasoned reporter brings.
It was particularly powerful for me as she draws parallels to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany and the treatment of Dalits in India. She makes the case that calling this “racism” is a simplification. Caste systems go deeper than that.
Stories about caste in India always sadden me. That’s not just because of the heartbreaking stories. They remind me of our collective stupidity and our unwillingness to learn from experience.
Most Indians – regardless of caste – were treated horribly by the British during the years of the British occupation. And, yet, despite all the shared humanity that helped us get through that experience, we didn’t take those lessons forward.
(2) While Isabel Wilkerson focuses on these 3 caste systems, the truth is that caste exists everywhere. Just like other popular western exports, a caste-like hierarchy based on skin color has become the most popular kind around the world. But, there are other systems too. When I lived in Saudi Arabia for 10 months, the dominant caste was Muslim for example. And, if you’ve traveled around the world without a western passport, the global immigration system will never fail to remind you about the importance of the color of your passport, your accent, and the color of your skin.
(3) At its heart, caste systems are about pecking order. We attempt to establish pecking orders wherever we go. Then, we go to crazy extents to maintain them.
This isn’t just true about nations. It is true about any human group. It is likely such pecking orders exist where we work – some function is the equivalent of the “dominant caste” and does all it can to preserve its status.
(4) It is hard to empathize with groups below the pecking order if you haven’t been there. That’s part of the human condition too. Reading stories in Isabel Wilkerson’s book is one thing. Experiencing it every day is another.
We live in the San Francisco Bay Area. This place likely has more immigrants per square foot than most places on the planet. And, yet, even in a place where we are not the lone outsiders, we experience situations that remind us of our status in the hierarchy.
This week, it was getting honked and told to “get out of the way” in a parking lot as we were unloading our bikes and kids. Last week, it was being told what to do in a car wash. We have a long catalog of these experiences. It is nearly always an older white/caucasian man who assumes he has the authority to tell us what we should do and how we should behave.
If this is our experience in the Bay Area, I can only begin to imagine the daily slights many others who are lower in the hierarchy experience. It is enough to drive you crazy.
And, yes, the frequency and intensity of these daily slights have likely gone down – on average – in the past decades. But, they’re still around.
(5) It takes a lot to see through false narratives of those who seek to use it for their gain. As Seth beautifully described, identity is often used against us.
We can hope for mature responses from time to time (this one warmed my heart).
But, I don’t see any way out of pecking orders and caste system. I think it is a side effect of our fallibility.
(6) While I don’t believe we’ll ever live in a world without arbitrary hierarchies, I do hope for progress toward that ideal. In a few years, the US will have as much of its history without slavery being legal as it spent with that institution.
I hope we’ll cross many more such milestones and move closer to a world where we spend more time thinking about what we have in common vs. what is different. Over time, maybe we’ll extend that to the plants and animals we’re blessed to share this space with. Before it is too late – at any rate.
The only way that will happen though is if we construct the kind of society that doesn’t gloss over our past. Our history is full of bloody wars and cruelty toward each other for arbitrary reasons. We have much to learn from all that bloodshed and suffering.
The more time we spend understanding our past, the more we will be able to understand the imperfections in our culture/community/country in the present.
No culture or country is perfect.
The problem is when we think we are.
A Learning a Day 