Something Personal: The Rules

Over the course of teaching interpersonal communication and doing my own life, I've come up with a set of rules that I try hard to live by, and recommend that other people do as well. As they are excellent guidelines for human functioning, here they are:

1. Stay Away From Crazy
   
   Yes, yes. I understand we all have a little bit of crazy lurking about inside of us. Things set us off and make us behave irrationally. I'm not talking about that. I'm also not talking about any sort of legitimate mental illness. I'm talking about people who either refuse or don't know how to behave correctly. I'm talking about people who lie compulsively, who are manipulative, who aren't willing to take responsibility for their actions, who make more excuses and explanations than sincere apologies. I'm talking about people, who when you interact with them, routinely make you feel angry or hurt or frustrated.
   
   Why should you stay away from crazy? Because crazy people are takers and not givers. They are usually too self absorbed to actually contribute anything meaningful to our lives and people like this drain us of resource that we could be giving to other people who feed us and help us to grow and live a life full of love. For more on that, see the Glowworm lecture.
2. Never Ask a Question You Don't Want Answered Honestly
   
   It amazes me the number of times I've seen people shocked when someone gives them an unpleasant truth in response to a question. Just a few examples: "Have I gained weight?" "Am I a diva?" "Do you think I make bad life choices?" "Do you fantasize about other women?" "Did you cheat on me?"
   
   If you're going to ask a question like that, you had better assume that there is a possibility that you aren't going to get a nice, tidy, socially appropriate, self-esteem-affirming response. If you are being a diva and if you ask me if you're being a diva, I can assure you that 100% of the time I will tell you that you're being a diva. You may be asking, why wouldn't I just tell a nice little lie that will make you feel good about yourself? Because you asked. And because you asked, you've given me permission to tell you the truth.
    
3.  Seize Joy
   
   I don't just mean stop and smell the roses. I mean go out of your way and find some roses and smell the heck out of them until you suck the scent right off of them and love every minute of it. You have one short, little, precious life on the planet. Go out and seek and grab and pull to you those things, experiences, and people who fill your heart with boundless delight. Be responsible (no, "seize joy" isn't equivalent to the idiotic mantra of millenials, "YOLO"), but know that joy isn't going to happen to knock on your apartment door while you're bingeing on whatever you binge on when you're home alone at night. Rather, ya gotta go out and get it. And when you do, hold the hell on to it.
4. Act Right
   
   Usually, when I tell people this in conversation, the whole rule is, "Act right; it ain't that hard". Perhaps my greatest pet peeve is when people choose to do what they shouldn't or fail to do what they should. In my experience, there are few situations that legitimately impede a person from behaving in whatever way is called for by the situation or relationship in which they are behaving. Rather, we fail to adhere to our responsibilities because we don't want to, and then we make excuses for it. What really drives me bananas is when a person, in the course of making excuses for a failure to act right, bemoans the negative consequences that accompanied whatever ill-conceived choice they made instead of acting right.
   
   I don't care why you didn't do what you should have, or why you did what you shouldn't have. I don't care what unfortunate thing happened to you as a result. Your job, my job, the job of the collective humanity is to behave in responsible ways that minimize to the best of our ability, the chance that our actions in any given moment are going cause someone hurt. Put that way, why wouldn't you act right. It really is too easy.

So, these are the rules. Sincerely, I try very hard to live by these. I don't always succeed, and some I struggle with more than others, but I find them to provide a good framework for making the best of my small little life.

Soapbox: "You have such potential" Isn't a Compliment

As my students and I begin another academic year, I think about the words we hear when we are feeling fresh, renewed, and motivated. Words like: excited, pride, optimism, and potential.

This word, “potential”, is the subject of this brief Soapbox post today.

My professorial colleagues and I often talk about students who “have potential”. When people who are young (like pre-pubescent young) are described as having potential, it is a compliment. It means that we see in a person raw material – talent, skill, intellect, whatever – that can be honed, cultivated, and harnessed into something possibly spectacular. To be sure, to be seen as inherently talented or gifted, is a compliment.

Unfortunately, we never reevaluate what it means to be told that we have potential as we move out of childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood. I would contend that for a 20-something year old person to be identified as having potential is not quite the compliment that it might have been a decade earlier.

Here’s the thing about potential in adulthood: by the time we’re 20 or 30ish, should have met or harnessed it by now. That we still have potential in our adulthood means we aren’t working, executing, or getting the job done.

Don’t believe me? Think about the way language changes when we talk about people of varying ages who have potential. In reference to children, we often use a big adjective to describe potential, like “enormous” or “unlimited”. As we refer to people in late adolescence or early adulthood, the modifiers associated with having potential become less big, as in, “he has such potential”. Once a person gets past their early thirties and that person still has yet to meet or unleash their potential, we start talking about potential in the past tense – “he had so much potential. If only he had [insert action never taken to meet said potential here]”.

My point: as we come to the beginning of a new academic year (or wherever you are in your own life) consider whether you’re meeting your potential. Are you actively engaged in tapping every bit of raw material you possess, or are you letting it drift increasingly far away from your grasp? Potential isn’t limitless. We do have a window in which to begin to harness it. If we wait indefinitely for exactly the right impetus or circumstance to present itself before we begin our work, the window begins to close. As more time passes, the open space in the window shrinks, and the window becomes increasingly difficult to hurl open.
 
Don’t waste whatever raw material you were gifted. Seize it. Wield it. Use it to become more excellent than you are. It seems to me that if you do, you’ll end your life with no potential whatsoever, and I do believe that’s a good thing.

Soapbox: Adulthood = Acting Right

Okay, this isn't about relationships, but since I have an audience I'm going to take this opportunity to hop on my metaphorical soapbox (which, if you ask my students, is something I'm highly prone to doing) and give a screaming lesson about life.

Today's soapbox: Being an adult means acting right.

Listen, life is tough. My mom started teaching me that lesson when I was about 8 years old. Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do - like going to work instead of posting up on our couches for three days and watching marathons of Golden Girls and the Walking Dead. Sometimes we have to put up with people whom we don't like and find it difficult to deal with, but they are our bosses or co-workers or in-laws and they aren't going anywhere. Sometimes we'd really love to drop a couple hundred bucks on a shiny new whatever-the-heck instead of making a car payment. Sometimes, we are bored with our romantic partner and entertain the idea of a tryst with a hot stranger.

Get of over it. Seriously.

Being a grown up - a full-fledged adult means taking responsibility for ourselves. I will grant you, getting old and bearing the responsibility that comes with movement through life as we age isn't always awesome. And it doesn't always come with benefits and rewards commensurate with increased responsibility. But you know what? That's life. Handle your business, pay your bills, contribute to society, and treat people well. Do these things even when you can't see a good reason for it because the success of larger social structures relies on individuals' willingness to make responsible choices.

Or you know what? Don't.

Here's the catch, though. If you want to choose to shirk the responsibility of adulthood and act like an irresponsible child, that's fine. BUT, that means you have to bear the consequences of those choices. If you lose your job, get your car repossessed, or have your spouse leave you because you were self-indulgent and utterly lacking in conscience, empathy, integrity, or foresight, then so be it. But shut up because I don't want to hear you gripe about your lousy lot in life. If your bad life circumstances are directly tied to silly, stupid choices, then revel in the mess you've made for yourself. Don't ask me for a ride, don't ask me for relationship advice, and don't ask me for a loan. You did that to yourself, so figure out how to work it out.

Quit sucking and act right, for crying out loud.

*hops off soapbox*