Every person has a remarkable story, and something special to contribute

One of my most perplexing parenting moments is when something like this happens:

“I can’t do it! I can’t do it!”

Or:

“It’s not working Papa! Can you help me?!”

Or, the most comedic version:

“I can’t do it! Can you carry me? I forgot HOW TO WALK!”

I originally thought, I don’t know where Bo learned this, it must’ve been at school. I don’t remember pouting and screaming “I can’t do it!”, in front of him at least.

Then, I got real with myself. I accepted that I wasn’t so perfect. I have complained, been wounded, or just been flat out pissed about the world around me before:

“I’m sick of people talking over me at work. I don’t see this happening to my white, male colleagues”

“I can’t believe someone put a brick through the window of my Ma’s shop. Why do we have to keep dealing with this?”

“Everyone keeps telling me I’m too verbose during presentations, and then they turn around and tell me to explain my thinking more when I try to be direct. I can’t win with these guys and I don’t see anyone else getting dressed down in front of the whole team”

“I just have to put in my dues. Once I get a bit stronger, confident, and more respected I can really share my opinion with authority.”

”I’m the most inconvenient kind of minority, I get all the prejudice without any of the political clout and social protection that comes from being part of a larger constituency.”

Sadly, I could go on. Upon reflection, these statements - which are selections of my inner monologue, nearly verbatim - are just adult versions of “I can’t do it! I forgot how to walk!”

For much of my teens and twenties, I dealt with this by maintaining an attitude of hidden arrogance which I fooled myself into calling “swag” Even if I wasn’t outwardly a jerk, “Eff these guys”, is more or less what I would think. The cool part was, that attitude actually worked.

Arrogance did serve me well, which I honestly wish wasn’t true. But arrogance comes with a social cost - it requires putting others down, whether it’s directly or indirectly. Actions borne of arrogance make the water we’re swimming in dirtier for everyone else, our culture worsens because of it. In my personal experience, I’ve found, for example, that the more assholes are around, the less a group trusts each other.

There came a point where I couldn’t justify my so-called “swag” anymore. It was wrong, and I didn’t like who I was becoming on the inside. The problem was, when I cut the act of swag, I didn’t feel confidence, or agency, anymore.

The longer I’m alive, the more I believe that humility is a fundamental virtue that keeps our society and culture healthy - it’s an essential nutrient for benevolence, collective action, and ultimately prosperity and peace.

Humility leads to openness and listening. Listening leads to love and understanding. Understanding and love leads to commitment for a shared vision toward a better future between people. Commitment leads to shared sacrifice. And shared sacrifice leads to a better world.

So how do we be humble and confident at the same time? How do we believe we have worth without veering darkly into arrogance? How do have inner strength without having to exert outward dominance?

This is where I’ve been wandering for my late twenties and early thirties. It’s become a bit of an obsession to figure this out since I became a father. Humility is so important, and I know it in my heart, but I want to be able to explain how to my sons, beyond saying “just be humble.”

Humans of New York is one of my favorite communities. I’ve followed their instagram page and have read it regularly for many years. Humans is one of our coffee table books and is excellent.

Basically, HONY is a photo-journalism project, where the founder, Brandon Stanton, tells the stories of everyday people, with photos, one New Yorker at a time.

Every single story is a powerful example of the human condition’s beauty and strength. No joke, every single story of every single person, is extraordinary. I’ve read hundreds of these stories on HONY. And I began to realize, every single person in the world has incredible capabilities, has unique gifts, and has endured significant personal struggle. It’s there, in everyone. If we don’t see them or can’t find them, that’s on us - because they’re there.

As I’ve moved through life as an adult, I’ve somehow figured out how to connect with people about their core stories, sometimes within minutes - even waiting in line at a store’s checkout counter. Or maybe it’s my neighbors or colleagues. Or the person waiting our table at a restaurant. Everyone has these capabilities, gifts, and triumphs over struggle.

I’ve got glimpses of people’s love for their parents and children. Or, their dedication to their work, their church. Some have overcome addiction, or grief, or the grueling journey of finding their voice. It doesn’t matter their station - it could clearly be a wealthy professional, or a house cleaner. I’ve found that every single person has something special to contribute. Every single person has gifts and a compelling story.

To me, that’s a strong reason to be humble. Every single person has gifts. Every single person has something to contribute. Every single person has something special to contribute that I don’t.

That merits my respect to every person on this earth. It doesn’t have to be earned, nobody has to earn my respect. If I haven’t figured out what that special gift or unique capability is, it’s on me. If some arrogance creeps into my heart, I’d best remember that and humble my ass down.

The real eureka moment in this idea came some years later.

Yup - everyone else clearly has gifts. That’s why I should be humble. It’s to respect the unique light in everyone and the special contribution that’s within them to make.

But, if I see this light, this special atman and soul in everyone - literally everyone else - it also means a version of that light lives in me too. It would be audacious to think otherwise; I have no good reason to think that I don’t have something special to contribute, or some unique capability to share. If everyone else does, I must too.

That’s the secret. The elusive third-option truth I’ve struggled to find for the better part of three decades. It does not have to be a choice between arrogance and humility. I can be humble and confident if I recognize that the light in everyone else lives in me too.

Dreaming new dreams

My inner-critic-turned-coach finally, thank God, got my attention. He’s been probing me about dreams. And I finally stopped to hear him out, and he asked:

Neil, why the hell did you stop dreaming? When did it happen?

A piercing question. Before I could even answer, I started by defensively - and with futility if I’m being honest - rejecting the premise of his question. Of course I haven’t stopped dreaming. “Because I’ve got goals, dude”, I told him.

I may not be proud some of them, especially the ones about career and money, sure. Some of those goals, after all, appeal to the lesser angels of my nature I admit. But if I have goals, I means I haven’t stopped dreaming.

Right?

Okay, Neil, then tell me. What is a goal? What is a dream? Are they the same, are the different?

Goals, at their best, are specific and measurable. You either did them or you didn’t. They are linear and rational. Goals aren’t loosey-goosey, or they shouldn’t be at least. Some are ambitious, others are more attainable. Goals are SMART.

Perhaps goals are boring and drab, but by design. They are targets, and targets are meant to be hit with discipline and banshee-like intensity.

Goals are nouns which makes them tangible and real, even if they are a bit of an abstraction. They are part of our meta-life - the life we live in our heads thinking about and planning our actual lives - but that doesn’t make them any less concrete. Goals are real and strong. They are not fluff.

Dreams, it seems are different. And to call them dreams is to miss the point. The concept should be thought of as a verb: to dream or be in a state of dreaming. “Dreams” is almost a colloquialism like “the feels” that just describes where the paint lands on the blank canvas when we dream. “Dreams” are the souvenirs we get from time spent dreaming.

And when we dream, we’re almost deliberately not defining a concrete output that we want to achieve. It’s like the act of dreaming is a portal to a different world, where we imagine the world as we hope it to be. We are not the agent of the dream, we are merely observers and travelers in the dream-world around us. Dreaming is the creation of hope for a state of being or a feeling.

There’s something pure about dreaming. Unlike a goal, dreaming is not something we hope we accomplish, dreaming is traveling to a moment we hope will exist, for us as part of the larger world.

There’s a certain detachment of self that comes with dreaming, assuming one is not an egomaniac, incapable of imagining a world that goes beyond themselves. Dreaming, by its nature, feels like something that yearns to be bigger than ourselves and the bounds of what’s possible now.

It bothers me that sayings like, “a goal is a dream with a deadline” are things that are, well, sayings. It sullies the idea of what it is to dream. The magic of dreaming is that it need not be bounded by the ego, time, space, rationality, or the validation of being accomplished. Dreaming, I feel, is something that exists on a deeper spiritual plane than “goal setting.” Goals and the act of dreaming are different; we need them to be.

And, my inner-critic-turned-coach was right, I could not reject the premise of his question.

At some point in my twenties or early thirties, I did stop dreaming. Everything became a goal, something I could hold. Something that helped me to maximize the return on the investment of my time and energy and money and talent. I couldn’t just waste my precious life, I have to make sure I have something to show for it at the end.

It’s like my life became infected with the similar afflictions - the dreary desert sand of dead habit, or, narrow domestic walls - that Tagore contemplates in Where The Mind Is Without Fear. And now everything has to have a purpose, and is all about bangs for bucks and juices worth the squeezes and fitting in the plan and checking off Outlook tasks to hit deliverable deadlines and whatnot.

Good God, what the hell happened to me?

Neil, why did it happen?

What’s interesting is, even though most of my dreams are achieved now - Robyn and I have each other, a home, and children which covers the big ones - not all of them are.

I have longstanding dreams of Robyn and I as an old, bespectacled couple and going for slow strolls together, hand in wrinkly hand. I have dreams of our City and neighborhood being a clean, happy, and verdant place, where youngsters can’t believe that we ever had the levels of violence and poverty we have now. I have dreamed of a future where I the government is effective, fair, and compassionate. 

I even have dreams of being an, old, dying man and spending time with my sons, while bedridden - not anything morose, just a natural consequence of a long life full of love; something I pray for because I never was able to say goodbye at my own father’s bedside.

I dreamed dreams, yes. But they are old dreams now. I haven’t dreamed new dreams. And any dreaming that I’ve done is measured and tempered - nothing I’d consider bold and daring, all the dreaming I’ve done lately is nearly within grasp. It’s about my own family, or close friends, or my street, which is great no doubt.

But some of the luster and zeal of my youth has obviously faded. I have not been dreaming of the stars or the broader world outside of my own backyard, quite literally.

There’s a certain arrogance that one must have to dream, perhaps. It takes so much time and stillness to dream. And that time could be spent working, or doing chores, or processing email. That required largesse to dream takes arrogance, or at least ignorance, to expend on something as fleeting as dreaming.

When we dream, we have implicitly acknowledge that we’re not doing something “productive” and assert that we are bold and important enough to have that time and mental energy to spend dreaming. Dreaming is not a practical act, it’s an action undertaken with audacity.

The irony here is that I’m in the most stable, comfortable, and experienced stage of my life so far. I have a steady job, a family that loves me, a roof, no want of food or health. I have made mistakes and learned from them. This is probably the best time to dream arrogantly, because I’m lucky enough to have far more - in terms of material resources and love - than my sanity requires.

Why did I trade all my dreaming and settle for goals instead?

Am I afraid because I’ve lived through some truly terrible days of grief and sadness? Am I just loss-averse and hesitant to “risk” the life I have by daring to dream of something beyond the four walls of our happy home? 

Do I just think I need to be grateful for what we have and not insult the God and the universe by dreaming for something more? Am I afraid of disappointment or of running out of time? Am I just tired after long days of work, raising children, and the daily grind of washing dishes, mowing the lawn, and taking out the trash?

In my twenties, I correctly recognized that arrogance was probably my greatest character flaw. But by trying to purge myself of arrogance, maybe I also purged some of the helpful swag that creates the permission for a man to keep dreaming.

But if we have grown out of our youthful arrogance, we can still dream. We must still be able to dream. We need dream, even if it’s with humility instead of arrogance. It’s a dangerous thing when someone stops dreaming.

Maybe just like the afflictions, the answer of how to dream humbly also rests with Tagore in Where The Mind Is Without Fear where he invokes the mind being led forward - in his case to God - into ever-widening thought and action.

Ever-widening seems to be the challenge and the key. Dreaming humbly is dreaming with an ever-widening heart. It is dreaming with ever-widening love, expanding first beyond ourselves, and then expanding beyond our own backyard. And then expanding beyond our own time and space.

That widened heart, fills with love for what’s beyond just us, leaving no room for fear. When our ever-widening hearts become occupied with love, we have no choice but to dream. Love creates an involuntary reflex to dream again. We feel we must dream for what we love, the fear we have - and that pesky need to be goal-oriented and practical - can’t overcome that yearning to dream. For this greater good that we have come to love, a goal is simply insufficient.

We can push against the pressure and practicality of goals by opening our hearts to ever-widening love: compassion, honesty, and embrace of others. Foe those of us that have lost claim to our youthful arrogance and ignorance, the grace of loving beyond ourselves and our closely-knit ties is the inspiration and invitation we need to dream from a posture of humility.

There is hope for us yet.

Preparing to be married indefinitely

Love songs use words like “always” and “forever” but indefinitely is all we get.

I always want to think that Robyn and I will be married and love each other always and forever. Including in the afterlife, and all through whatever comes next, until there is no more next left to have. I want to believe this, even though we really don’t have any say in the matter.

Living for indefinitely is a bit of a paradox. Because you have to plan for forever, not knowing whether you’ll make it past next week. And so much can happen between now and next week - I could be vaporized by a laser, eaten by a dinosaur, or drowned in a pool of chocolate pudding, or undergo one of many more conventional methods of death. We could do something so cruel to each other that our marriage dissolves. The universe might must...stop. We don’t really know, because nothing is definite.

I always have thought of the phrase, “live like there are 10,000 tomorrows all of which that may never come” as a paradox that fits when contemplating how to live a life.

But how? How do we prepare for a life, marriage, and maybe and afterlife together that lasts indefinitely. How do we prepare for anything that is indefinite?

All I can think of is a two principles: make adjustments and manage exponential growth.

Making adjustments to me, is all about the process of realizing our marriage is imperfect and trying to change the underlying behaviors which lead to fissures. To me there’s certainly a process for managing these fissures (we use temperature check, for example). Certainly things like “communication” and “conflict resolution” are important skills.

But the more important, overlooked factor here I think, is the humility it takes to acknowledge that our marriage needs to be worked on every day. Every interaction we have is a chance to work on our marriage. We cannot take days off. Processes like temperature check don’t work if we don’t humbly believe we actually need to utilize them.

And the principle of managing exponential growth, to me, is the understanding that both good and bad things can snowball quickly and that we should act accordingly.

Of course, it’s obvious that problems in a marriage can spiral out of control quickly. And so, obviously, it’s important to solve problems quickly, before they get big. The old adage of “never go to bed angry” is a good rule of thumb that Robyn and I really believe in.

But exponential growth can also be positive, and we need that reserve of goodwill to carry us through hard times. Just as we can’t let problems spiral out of control, we can’t let opportunities to strengthen our marriage and create joy - even little ones - pass by.. Little things - like writing a little note, or making a special treat, or saying I love you at an unexpected time - these all build on each other to create joy and love.

There are probably hundreds of these tiny little interactions every day, and those opportunities for joy and love can’t be wasted. We need to give positive exponential growth a fighting chance to happen. We can’t wait for grand gestures to grow our love and trust - they’re not enough to help our marriage at least, last indefinitely.

As it happens, the idea of managing exponential growth also is rooted in a mindset of humility. Because by trying to managing exponential growth, we’re acknowledging that negative exponential growth could crush us and that our marriage is not naturally dynamic enough to survive without positive exponential growth, either.

It seems to me, the key to a marriage that lasts indefinitely is to deeply and truly respect the challenge and then act accordingly. For many years I have wondered where that sort of humility comes from. Like why do some people have it and some people don’t? Humility, to me, seems like one of the most important dispositions to have when participating in human relationships.

It’s the subject of deeper reflection, but I think listening and observing the world around us (even the ugly parts) and experiencing real pain and loss are two things that help humility to germinate in a person.

Asking for directions, when it matters

I have probably had to ask for directions while traveling, less than 10 times in my life including trips to foreign countries. This is an incredible feat. We have Google to help us with this sort of question. And because we have Google to help us with this, I think I’ve also been asked for directions less than ten times in my life. 

And by extension, I’ve rarely, if ever, had to say to someone, “I’m lost, can you help me?” And finally, to wrap up this observation, I’ve also probably never had to ask someone, “You look lost, can I help you find your way?”

And when it comes to getting to where we intend to go, like when it’s finding a new restaurant, or getting to a friend’s house in a new city, maybe it’s not a huge deal that we don’t have much practice asking for or giving directions. Maybe it’s nice that we are rarely “lost” or see someone who appears to be lost. On the surface, at very least, this seems like a good development.

But it dawned on me, what if the stakes were higher? What if we need directions on something that isn’t easily found on the internet? Say if we don’t know where to begin on a new project, and we need directions on this. What if we’re “lost” in our marriages or in fatherhood. What if our friends or family are veering toward a dark path, and we need to tell them they look lost?

These four scenarios - asking for directions, giving directions, admitting I’m lost, or identifying someone who is lost - are hard to begin with. It’s hard to ask for help, it makes me feel foolish. And it’s awkward to tell someone, “you look lost, but don’t worry, I’d like to help you.”

If I don’t have to do these things that often because we have Google, can I be sure I even know how to? It’s unsettling to think I may be out of practice asking for or giving directions. Because there are times, I’m sure, that it’s going to actually matter.

The pizza stone, snowblower, and being that kind of man

Two gifts I’ve been using a lot lately are a snowblower and a (2nd) pizza stone. Both were Christmas gifts from our parents in recent years.

The extra pizza stone has doubled our oven’s throughput for making pizza. Which is convenient for us a nuclear family, but it isn’t essential on a weekly basis. Where it makes a big difference is when we’re hosting - say close friends or family. Having that 2nd stone gives us the capability to throw a pizza party. 

Similarly, the snowblower is convenient - especially on days of large snowfall - but not essential. I can muddle through with just a shovel if I really need to. Where the snowblower makes a huge difference is for our block. 

Our next-door neighbors and we have an unwritten code: whoever gets to the shoveling first takes care of the others’ sidewalk. This makes it easier for whoever comes out second, and it clears more of the sidewalk, earlier in the day, for people walking down the block. Having the snowblower makes it much more possible for me to honor that neighborly code.

With the snowblower, I can basically guarantee I’ll be able to remove snow from our house, as well as for each of our next-door neighbors in about 30 minutes. Without the snowblower, it might take me closer to two hours on a day of heavy snowfall to manage that same task.

Receiving the stone and snowblower wasn’t a particularly flashy ordeal. Both were extremely generous and practical gifts, but it wasn’t particularly exciting to receive something so mundane, in the moment of unwrapping the present on Christmas day.

But these sorts of gifts, I’ve realized, are much more than practical. I’ve come to think of them as exponential because they give us the ability to give to others. In this example, the 2nd stone and snowblower has made the amount of times we’ll end up throwing pizza parties or helping out our neighbors over our lifetime exponentially greater.

I’ve thought recently, how humble one must have to be to give an exponential gift. When someone says “thanks for the pizza, it was great” I don’t, after all, make it a point to say something like, “You’re welcome, it would probably wouldn’t have happened if our parents hadn’t got us a 2nd pizza stone for Christmas 3 years ago.”

Or talking to our neighbors across the fence, I would never in a 100 years say something like, “No problem, I was happy to get your snow while I was out. The credit really goes to our parents who got us this snowblower. It would have been much harder to help you if not for their gift.”

And it’s not like I frequently say to our parents, “oh thanks for those gifts, it’s really helped me to be a better friend and neighbor.” Maybe I should, but that’s not really the sort of exchange I’d probably naturally have in real life.

Nobody knows the impact these gifts from our parents have had. Our parent’s probably don’t even realize it.

Essentially, when you give an exponential gift like a 2nd pizza stone or a snowblower, you can’t expect to get credit for it. This is much different than say a more novel gift that other people notice, like a consumer electronic or a very nice piece of new clothing.

Take a sweater I got this Christmas, for example. People noticed and said things like, “that’s a nice sweater, is it new?” And I could reply with something like, “oh yeah, I’ve loved it - it was a great Christmas gift from our parents.”

That sort of affirmation doesn’t happen with exponential gifts. Which is why I think giving an exponential gift takes tremendous generosity and humility, because the gift-giver isn’t recognized for it, nor might they even know how impactful their gift was.

And as I started contemplating this, I began to wonder - am I humble an generous enough to give gifts that nobody will ever know I was responsible for? And let’s put aside Christmas and birthdays and get to the big stuff.

What about in my job? Am I unconsciously holding back on making a contribution that I know won’t help me land a promotion? Am I working hard, just so I can get a pat on the back? 

Do I volunteer in my community because I relish the credit and respect it provides, or because it’s just the right thing to do? Are there things I do, only because of how someone else might see it on instagram? Am I humble and generous, or am I just a peacock and a brat who gives only to get back reciprocally?

I don’t know how to know this, not yet at least. I think this problem - of knowing whether our own actions are done for their own righteous sake or because of the rewards we expect for them - is one of the essential, practical, moral struggles that we all face.

But I feel strongly that it’s important to try understanding this, and acting differently - more humbly and generously - if we can. Because exponential gifts are transformational in real people’s lives, and they transform the culture we live in for the better. I want to be humble and generous enough to give an exponential gift that I never expect to get any credit or recognition for. 

I want to be that kind of man.

Imagining a world with less shouting

Robyn forwarded me a three-day “no-shout challenge” that she heard about through a speaker at conference she attended. I made it two and a half days, and every hour was hard. I didn’t realize how much I shouted at my son until I tried to stop.

The challenge helped me to understand why I shouted and think of an alternative pattern of behavior.

Upon reflection, I realized that I shout because my most foundational belief about parenting is that what I owe my sons - above all else - is to help them become good people. So when my son deliberately screams to wake up his big brother, or bites me, or doesn’t follow what I believe to be a high-standard of conduct, that moves me from zero to ten in a second. That’s my baggage, not his.

I decided that my replacement behavior would be to say, “neither of us are perfect, but we are going to figure this out” when my temper was rising, instead of shouting.

But the point here is not that I am cured of shouting (I’m not even close). The point is to share what happened after I started shouting less.

We have been struggling a lot as a family during this pandemic. In many ways, this period of our lives has been a blessing, but it has been a trying time. Our elder son, now, is very aware of the virus and he misses our family, his friends, and his teachers at school. He’s confused about why he has to give far-away hugs and why he can do certain things but not others.

He’s also a toddler, so we have had power struggles over really small things as is the case with most families.

But when Robyn and I started this challenge and began shouting less, something changed for the better in our house. In a word, everything deescalated.

We still all have tantrums, but they are less intense. We still have power struggles, but we’re able to take a breath more quickly that before. Bo says “excuse me” to get our attention more, instead of screaming indiscriminately. Sometimes, instead of shouting we find a way to talk about his sadness and confusion, even though he barely has grasp of the words and concepts needed to express what he’s feeling.

Again, there is still shouting in our house, and I’m not proud of how I act on many days. But even just shouting less has created more space to listen, love, and resolve the very real problems we have. We have not reached the promised-land of a fully peaceful house, but we are on a different trajectory than we were.

While this was all happening, Robyn and I have been observing, listening, and talking intensely every night about the problems of race in our country. It its something that we are deeply stirred by, personally and professionally.

Because we saw a reduction in shouting bring about real and almost immediate change in our own household, I can’t help but wonder what might happen if we shouted less when trying to resolve community issues.

Say if we all just decided we would stop shouting for a week or a month, what would happen? In my wildest dreams, I wonder if that could be the very humble beginning of a transformation that eventually got us to a moment where we could live in a community where shouting was no longer needed.

The skeptic in me feels that this type of scaling is difficult and perhaps impossible. After all, Robyn happened to attend a conference, where she heard a speaker, who shared a no-shout challenge, and we happened to try it out. Getting to the point of trying to intentionally shout less resulted from a lucky mix of circumstance, humbling work, and serendipity.

In our household - whether it is us as parents or our children - someone had to take the first step. And luckily, it is clear that the first step to a no-shout home was our responsibility as parents.

But with complex disagreements that are compounded by hundreds of years of pain and violence - like race, poverty, and others - it’s less clear whose responsibility it is to take the first step. Moreover, that first step of not shouting takes incredible courage, humility, and grace.

I pray that I can summon that courage, humility, and grace whenever I need to take that first step. Being ready to take that first step is something worth preparing for, even if my number never is called to lead in that way. It is for all of us.