Enough, already!

When I got up yesterday morning, the outside air temperature was 33°F, just a tad above freezing. During the day, the wind blew, but not as much as it did Monday, when it blew so hard and so long that, when I went upstairs to cook dinner, I noticed that the mountains were all but obscured in a giant cloud of dust. Almost as if Providence was using a second-rate vacuum cleaner (and not one of those spiffy new models by Oreck or Dyson).

This morning, after a refreshing night's sleep (the first one for several days, but I'll stop before I devolve into a mode I have sworn to avoid...), I got up, stretched, and pulled up the blinds. The mountains were obscured again.


I almost went back to sleep.

Then again, with weather like this, the date of the annual Forest Service ukase banning campfires in the woods ought to get pushed back a bit.

Yes, another few winks would be nice, but no! Work calls, with its myriad attractive (and not-so-attractive) tentacles.

Cheers...

Something of an out...

In thinking of my late mother, it occurred to me to ask: Just when does one stop using "late" to describe the deceased? I mean, my intuitive understanding of the word is that it refers to someone recently dead. One can speak of "the late Ronald Reagan," but it would be strange to refer to, say, "the late Theodore Roosevelt" (or "the late Franklin D. Roosevelt," for that matter).

The web suggests that the word can properly be used for anywhere between 10-15 years (according to William Safire) to half a century (according to Theodore Bernstein). At least one source maintains "the late can be applied to people whose lives were recent enough to exist at any point within the living memory of the writer or speaker."

As it's been about 4-1/2 years since my mother died, and since she obviously lived recently enough to exist within my living memory, I guess I'm safe on both counts.

It's nice to get the little things out of the way.

Apropos of thinking of my mother, it has occurred to me, over some time, that almost every mention of her in this journal has not been all that flattering. On the one hand, I have nothing to apologize for, as I have not made things up. On the other, I should face the fact that some healthy portion of who I am is the result of her positive efforts. That, combined with the wisdom of of Shalkespeare's lines from Julius Caesar, to the effect that people's faults are remembered long after they die—while "the good is oft interred with their bones"—makes me want to focus my recollections along more positive lines.

Something to think about, as it continues to snow outside.

Cheers...

Faking it...

From time to time, when I am faced with doing new things, I recall the reaction of a co-worker, some years, ago, upon my bringing up the subject of Dale Carnegie. The subject had come up as I tried to explain why various of our clients might not be enthralled by the performance of our staff purely for objective, impersonal reasons, and that, indeed, some of our most successful staff members were almost certainly not as technically proficient as others, but clients were very satisfied with their work.

Piffle and other expletives, said my interlocutor. Carnegie and his entire How to Win Friends and Influence People philosophy were nothing more than an exercise in manipulation, and that it was morally and ethically wrong to feign an interest in the "other" just to develop a good working relationship with them.

As far as such criticism goes, that last part is right. If you're trying to be manipulative and the only reason you express an interest in the other is to upsell the next more expensive model of gizmo, then shame on you. The funny thing is, the strategy is a lousy one. Over the years I've met my share of people who've twisted the Carnegie philosophy around like this and as a rule, pretty much everyone in their immediate vicinity catches on to the scam in short order. (The short explanation as to why is that manipulators don't reciprocate when interest is shown in them.)

Still, to a lot of people, the idea of "forcing" yourself to take an interest in the other just doesn't sound like a natural activity. They'd feel bad doing it. And since feeling bad is a reasonable result of doing something inappropriate, the conclusion most people draw is that "faking" an interest in something is bad and not something they want to do. A consequence of this is that most people thus condemn themselves to a life in which all of the things they are interested in are largely the result of random factors, such as what their family or friends are interested in, or the deliberate efforts of advertisers to appeal to basic emotions.

But feeling bad about something you do is not driven only by your view of right and wrong. Feeling bad can also be (and often is) also the result of doing something you're not comfortable with, of moving out of your "comfort zone." And that's the flip side of "faking" an interest in something or someone: it moves you out past that boundary. (A boundary that is always there, I might add. Although I've gotten to the point where asking people something about themselves involves almost no effort, it's still an effort.)

By forcing yourself to move out of your comfort zone—and let's face it, that's what you're doing when you take an interest in something that hasn't interested you before—you create what I think of as a multiple-win situation.

It's a win because you've expanded the walls of your comfort zone. In my view, barring acts that indeed aren't moral, there is no particular virtue in maintaining a close comfort zone. In fact, in a world that seems to change at a greater rate with every passing year, doggedly defending one's comfort zone may even be counterproductive over the long term.

It's a win because you're probably going to learn something new. A couple of years ago, I started asking Feht about his stamp collecting, and it reawakened an interest that fell dormant in my adolescence. I am, I think, a happier person for it.

Another time, during one of my assignments in Kazakhstan, I casually asked one of the Russian managers about his personal recipe for making pickles (although I have to admit, they were so good, I can't imagine anyone not asking), and even I was surprised at his reaction, which included a detailed recipe for said pickles and, over the longer term, a more friendly, less formal relationship. Pathological situations aside, I can't imagine how learning something new can have a downside.

It's a win because most people react positively to someone who takes an interest in them, and in a world where parading around, in various ways, with a big sign reading "Look at me! Look at me!" is the norm, people will invariably stop and pay attention to someone who has taken the first step and is paying attention to them. At that point, everyone can put down their sign, grab a chair, and interact.

A lot of what I call "chicken and egg" goes in in the brain, I think. Do you smile because you're happy, or are you happy because you smile? Do you feel good because you have a positive attitude, or do you have a positive attitude because you feel good? Are you interested in something because you're curious about it, or are you curious about it because you're interested in it?

I'm not sure there are clear-cut, black-and-white answers, but over the years, I've learned that the smart money doesn't necessarily bet on what intuitively seems to be the right answer.

Cheers...