Month: October 2022

On the Chin

Keep your right hand up.

So directed my grandfather as he taught my sister and I some boxing moves.

He wasn’t grooming us to be prizefighters. But he wanted us to have the skills to defend ourselves. And the first order of business was getting that right hand in position to protect our faces.

I was incredulous at first. Wasn’t fighting about aggression? Wouldn’t the objective be to throw some powerful left hooks? And if it was, wouldn’t it be harder to land them with my right hand blocking my view?

My grandfather drove the point home as clearly as he knew how.

If you don’t keep your right hand up, you’ll end up like me.

He pointed to his nose, permanently broken after a sparring incident in his youth. And the message landed with gusto.

Failing to protect myself would mean a blow to the nose, or maybe taking one on the chin. Neither outcome was desirable, and it was my duty to avoid them.

I stopped protesting and put my right hand in front of my face.

Some years later, I attended a boxing match.

The action was frenetic at times, boring at others. But only one moment really stuck with me.

It occurred during the undercard – the fight before the main event.

One of the boxers threw a punch that missed wildly and — crucially — failed to get his right hand anywhere near his face. His opponent then landed two punches in quick succession.

One smashed into the boxer’s forehead. The other bashed his chin.

The battered boxer dropped like a rock, while the crowd gasped in horror.

Moments later, medical staff carried him away from the ring. The silence was deafening.

I don’t know if that boxer’s career ended with those blows, or even if he survived the night. I don’t know his name, and I don’t care to know it.

What I do know is what taking it on the chin looks like. And given the choice, I want no part of it.

Prediction? Pain.

So utters boxer Clubber Lang in the movie Rocky III, when a reporter asks him about his prediction for an upcoming fight.

It’s a basic line, almost commonly so. But it leaves a mark.

With all our glorifying of conflict, from the schoolyard to the battlefield to the silver screen, we seem to forget what it feels like to bear the brunt of aggression.

The force of a big hit hurts in unproductive ways. Pain in this context is not weakness leaving the body; it’s the body telling us something is dangerously wrong. And crowd support for the assailant is like an aftershock rattling our psyche.

Are we supposed to override the alarm bells of our body, and simply endure this damage? Are we not worthy of protection, concern, or grace?

In Wild West duels, no one paid all that much attention to the gunslinger that took the bullet. The lifeless body simply lay in the street until someone saw fit to drag it away. And all these years later, the same principle reigns supreme.

I think about this while watching football or similar activities with physical contact. But I also consider it in other contexts.

For Taking it on the chin has long been associated with situations where no punches were thrown, and no bullets were fired. It resonates for those who have been deliberately denied opportunities or left footing hefty economic bills.

This second example is particularly resonant these days.

As I write this, the world is in a precarious position. The global economy is out of whack, inflation is far too high, and a financial recession seems imminent.

How all this unfold and how this adversity can be mitigated are each up for debate. But if past is precedent, one thing is certain. Many everyday people — in America and elsewhere — are about to take it on the chin.

This could be in the form of layoffs and unemployment. It could be in the form of paying crippling prices for food, clothing, and shelter. It could be in the form of disappearing retirement savings. It could even be all these things in tandem.

There is no alternative.

You see, economies are but constructs, filled with entities that serve people. Businesses, government agencies, financial institutions — they’re all instruments that facilitate commerce. They can’t take on water to cushion the blow. They can only succeed or fail.

At the end of the day, it’s ordinary people who take it on the chin when things go haywire. It’s ordinary people who experience significant pain — often for no fault of their own.

And yet, this struggle is shrugged off, ignored, forgotten. Much like that prone boxer who was carried out of the ring, our strife becomes out of sight, out of mind.

It’s nauseating.

Several years ago, I saw Man of Steel in a movie theater.

My friends raved about the storyline, the acting, and the special effects. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the collateral damage.

Many of the battles between Superman and Zod’s army level entire city blocks. Instead of protecting his environment, the Man of Steel cuts through it like a buzzsaw on his way to take out the bad guys.

I found myself asking follow-up questions. Were those buildings cleared of people before they were toppled? And even if they were, wouldn’t the tenants now be destitute?

No one seemed to care about the answers. For those victims who took it on the chin had little impact on the plot. They were out of sight, out of mind.

And that’s precisely the problem.

We must cease this cruel business of trivializing suffering. We must stop ignoring, justifying, and glorifying the pain of others.

Strife in the service of the greater good is still a detriment. There is no gain great enough to wipe away what was lost entirely.

The more we normalize taking it on the chin, the more the fissures in our society build. Divisiveness simmers until it boils over, leading to even deeper ruptures.

It’s on us to rein in the high-level rhetoric. It’s on us to let our humanity show instead.

Indeed, we should kind and compassionate to those suffering. And we should resolve to help them out where we can.

This work might not keep some of us from taking it on the chin from time to time. But it can soften the blow.

That’s a step in the right direction. And one that we should not hesitate to take.

Let us begin.

Adaptability and Availability

This was a dumb idea.

That was the first thought to cross my mind as I lay prone on the sidewalk, my outerwear and shoes covered in a coating of ice.

I had decided to go for a midday run in a cold rain, before the temperatures dropped further and the roads froze over. But I’d failed to consider that the sidewalks were already dotted with patches of black ice. And I ended up wiping out on one of those patches.

I landed on my side, with my quad making first impact with the ground. I was fortunate to not have been badly injured. But at that moment, I was too bewildered to recognize how lucky I was.

I looked up to see a pickup truck stopped nearby. The driver rolled down the window and hollered, You OK?

I’m fine, I replied. I’m just an idiot.

The driver nodded and drove away. I got back on my feet and gingerly started the trek back home.

On that 1.5-mile journey, I realized I still had some of my workout left to complete. So, after a pit stop at home, I trudged over to the gym to knock out a few miles on the treadmill.

As I ran in place for a while, free of the elements, I wondered why I hadn’t just headed to the treadmill in the first place. Why had I risked the treachery of wet roads and icy sidewalks.

Of course, I knew the answer to that. My stubbornness and machismo had gotten in the way of sensibility.

I had believed that a consistent routine of outdoor running held the key to my success. If I was to achieve my goals for races and fitness, nothing else would do.

But this mindset had almost cost me bigtime. I would need to be adaptable moving forward.

We’ve all grappled with the dueling forces of adaptability and availability in recent years.

Much of this reckoning was driven by a global pandemic. The health crisis disrupted all the familiar patterns we relied on.

Work, school, and other community locations went from being safe spaces to unavailable ones in an instant. And we were forced to adapt.

Our quick pivot to survival mode drew praise. But once the initial shock wore off, we lost patience.

We had no appetite for adaptability. We yearned for the reliability of all we had ever known before the plague came to our door.

I was well-aware of this sentiment. For I was living it myself.

At the start of 2020, I made myself a promise. I swore that I would run or walk at least a mile outside every day.

The burgeoning pandemic soon threatened to upend all that. I went from commuting to a busy office every weekday to spending 90 straight days away from anyone I knew. I barely shopped, barely drove, and never traveled more than five miles from home during that time.

Still, I held firm to my promise. Even amidst the scare tactics and misguided stories of those days — no, you didn’t need to wipe down your groceries to stay alive — I made sure to step outside and tackle a mile of movement each day. At a time when nothing seemed worth the risk, my availability certainly was.

As the months went on, this commitment only intensified. I started running more often, and for longer miles. Then I joined running groups and took up racing.

My commitment to running had quickly become an obsession. No matter how I felt, or what the weather was, I was going to let my feet hit the pavement.

Availability was a rallying cry. Adaptability was an afterthought.

I had chosen poorly. But not in the way you might expect.

Disrupt yourself before someone disrupts you.

This is a proven maxim in the world of modern business. And we see proof of it everywhere.

General Motors is going all in on electric vehicles. Sonic Drive-In is selling hard seltzer at convenience stores. And Time Magazine is offering vintage editions of its publication as Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs.

These businesses are trying to avoid the fate of Blockbuster Video and Kodak. Both of those companies failed to anticipate the ripples of disruption around them until it was too late.

But by undertaking such drastic pivots, these legacy companies are making a point. Adaptability does more than unlock new revenue streams or keep competitors at bay. It also keeps the prospect of availability on the table.

Yes, the world is consistently inconsistent. Weather strikes and recedes, dynasties rise and fall, fads emerge and are cast aside.

Those who treat this delicate two-step as a straight-line sprint finds themselves on a path to nowhere. It’s only by embracing adaptability that one can maintain availability.

This principle has proven itself with Words of the West, which is now seven years old. For 365 straight weeks, a fresh piece of material has been available on the website.

Adding a new article each week is quite a feat. But it’s also a testament to the power of adaptability.

Indeed, some of those articles were written from the road. Others only saw the light of day after some technical issues were resolved.

I needed to be adaptable to achieve the mission. Much like those legacy businesses, I needed to adapt to stay available.

The decision between one factor and the other is nonexistent. The only option is both.

As I write this, I’m working my way back from a running injury.

This injury wasn’t related to my fall on that icy sidewalk. But it did leave me sidelined for eight weeks.

While working my way back, I’ve resolved to be smarter. I’ve stopped tacking on extra mileage for posterity’s sake. I’ve taken rest days when my body yearned for them. And I’ve even moved some of my workouts to the treadmill.

In short, I’ve been adaptable, so that I can continue to be available.

We all can follow this path when it comes to adaptability. In fact, I believe we must follow it.

It’s our only way to keep pace with a changing world. It’s our only recourse for relevance. It’s our only true means of survival.

The days of relying on what got us here are over. We must adapt to move forward.

Let’s get to it.

The Safety Net Vice

I was starving.

All around me, options abounded to quell my hunger. Just about any cuisine I would possibly desire — all available within my hotel complex.

I started perusing menus and checking wait times. But I quickly realized there was a significant problem.

For I was in Las Vegas — the land of $50 steaks and $25 burgers. And those options wouldn’t fit within the contours of my Per Diem.

For those uninitiated with business travel, the Per Diem is a daily flat rate for meals. It’s set by the United States government but paid out by companies to their employees.

The Per Diem is meant to level the playing field. It aims to set a benchmark for how much companies should expect to reimburse.

Normally, the Per Diem is a relatively fair proxy for meal costs. Maybe not a one-to-one match. But at least in the ballpark.

Yet, this was not the case in Las Vegas.

And so, I was left to determine the value of my starvation. Was it worth paying a bunch of my own money for the privilege of my nourishment? Or should I go without, in hopes of being made whole financially?

I chose the second option.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

This advice is practically gospel. For it’s the truth.

I experienced this truth firsthand during my misadventures in the desert. Unsatiated hunger has a strange way of driving home hard lessons.

But the no free lunch principle goes much deeper than my own foibles. It strikes at the heart of the Per Diem system itself.

Yes, it’s hard to find anyone who’s truly a fan of the Per Diem as it exists today. Many feel that it should be increased, or that companies should cover expenses on top of the set limits.

Such sentiments are understandable. Who wouldn’t want to avoid the mental gymnastics I went through in Las Vegas?

But this desire for a kinder Per Diem system misinterprets its purpose.

After all, the Per Diem is not a government handout. And even if it were, we would pay into that handout in the form of hefty taxes.

By contrast, the Per Diem is motivational tool. It’s something that incentivizes us to take our work on the road — and incur related costs — by recouping some of that spending.

The Per Diem isn’t designed to help us live high on the hog. It’s meant to help us work with what we’ve got.

But in doing so, it opens a whole other can of worms.

Many Texans know the legend of Judge Roy Bean.

The 19th century saloon keeper also served as the Justice of the Peace in Val Verde County. He branded himself as The Only Law West of the Pecos [River], often adjudicating from his saloon.

Val Verde County was part of the Texas frontier back then. And the law in that part of the world was open to some degree of interpretation. Judge Roy Bean espoused his flavor of it, and his work became Wild West legend.

Judge Roy Bean is long gone. And so is the world he lived in.

Indeed, modern-day Texas is governed by a series of uniform laws. Legislative codes that look the same in Mentone (population 22) as they do in Houston (population 2.3 million).

And perhaps the most notorious of these laws are the state’s liquor regulations.

For those uninitiated, Texans can only buy packaged hard liquor — such as bourbon or rum — from liquor stores. Those liquor stores must remain closed on Sundays. And on all other days, they cannot open earlier than 10 AM or close after 9 PM.

Liquor stores could keep even shorter hours, of course. But in all my years traversing the Lone Star State, I’ve yet to find one that wasn’t open from 10 to 9, Monday to Saturday.

There are some valid reasons for this conformity.

You see, operating a liquor store is challenging in Texas. Many counties are dry, banning packaged alcohol outright. Even in wet counties, some cities will ban liquor sales, but allow stores to sell beer and wine.

After navigating this labyrinth just to open their doors, liquor store proprietors generally yearn to keep them open as much as possible. And if they don’t, they’re wary of competitors. Competitors who could take a bite from their customer share if they opened late or closed early.

In essence, Texas’ liquor sales laws have put proprietors in a bind. They don’t directly mandate a 10 AM to 9 PM schedule, six days a week. But they make it nearly impossible to operate any other way.

This principle can be found in countless other corners of our society.

Sales tax rates tend to stay in a basic range from town to town and state to state. Banks generally refuse to guarantee anything above the $250,000 limit covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission. And of course, companies tend to stay within the guidelines of the Per Diem.

By setting an artificial floor in our capitalistic system, the U.S. government has also lowered the ceiling. Any chance at variety is crushed, leaving us all with immobile, undesirable options.

It’s a phenomenon I call The Safety Net Vice.

The Safety Net Vice might seem like a force of nature. But we’re not powerless against it.

How can this be? Well, let’s consider the factors.

On one side, there is legislative action of some kind. Tax codes, deposit guarantees, and Per Diem guidelines are all influenced by government entities.

We have few means to influence this factor. While we do vote our representatives into office, we have little impact on what they will do once they’re in place.

Indeed, it’s the other side of the equation that is key. The demands of the free market impact our behavior, all too often giving that legislation its vice grip.

This is the area where we can drive change. By tweaking the ways we spend our money, we can flip economic patterns on their heads. The status quo will no longer be tenable, and institutions will have an impetus to offer guarantees above safety net levels.

The road to this outcome is sure to be long and arduous. But the longer we delay the journey, the more treacherous it gets.

So, let’s break free of the Safety Net Vice. Let’s stop starving ourselves in the desert. And let’s seek out a path that works better for everyone.

The time is now.

Excess on Parade

The lagoon was massive.

The body of water filled a space the size of six football fields.

Around its edges, tourists milled about. Street performers did their thing. And fancy hotel structures towered over the water.

At first glance, this man-made structure seemed like a mistake. A waste of valuable space and real estate.

But then the music would start. The tourists would take note. And the hustle and bustle would fade away.

For a few majestic moments, the lagoon would transform into a majestic fountain, with water shooting up to 400 feet in the air. The experience would leave everyone watching in a trance.

Yes, the Fountains at Bellagio are about as unnecessary an attraction as there is. Gallons upon gallons of water housed in the Nevada desert, whose only function is pure spectacle.

And yet, they’re as intractable a part of Las Vegas as slot machines, neon lights and showgirls. The essential of all essentials. Something so iconic that even the strait-laced, reclusive business traveler — that would be me — makes a point to seek it out.

It’s excess on parade. And we can’t get enough.

About 800 miles east of Las Vegas, a billboard rises menacingly over the open plains of the Texas Panhandle.

It tempts drivers passing through Amarillo on Interstate 40 to stop at the Big Texan Ranch and try the 72-ounce steak.

Such a cut of beef carries a hefty price, even out in the heartland. But those who polish it off in one sitting – along with a few preordained sides — can have their check comped. It turns out there is such a thing as a free meal.

I love Texas as much as anything, and a good steak as much as anyone. I would seem to be the right clientele to take this challenge on.

But as I drove by this billboard, I was nauseated.

I thought back to my teenage years, when McDonalds would goad me into Super Sizing my fries for additional sweepstakes entries. I’d feel worse and worse with each bite, as excess calories filled my stomach and excess regret consumed my mind.

The Big Texan Steak challenge wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t about to take it on.

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But clearly, some do.

There’s a reason that highway billboard is there. Just like there’s a reason why there are fountains in the desert.

Excess on parade is a powerful magnet.

Excess has always been in our DNA.

This nation’s beginnings were essentially an agrarian revolt. A group of mostly rural colonists objected against taxes levied by a faraway monarch. They decided to go it alone instead.

Yet, the Founding Fathers sold a vision far grander. The reframed our fledgling nation as a beacon for liberty and democracy. It was quite the overstatement for the actions of settlers who were tired of paying the crown.

This expression of excess morphed into a rallying cry in the decades that followed.

We decided that expanding westward was God’s will, displacing native tribes and Mexican settlers in the process. We lionized the titans of the Industrial Revolution, even as the front-line workers at their companies toiled away in squalid conditions. And we focused our gaze on the biggest, the brightest, and the most extraordinary. Nothing less would do.

All of that led us to the present moment. Where we’re expected to step into boots two sizes too big and fill them with ease.

This is not the world we live in. It’s the world we’ve created for ourselves.

Excess on parade is part of the fabric. Consequences be damned.

From my couch, I watched with a mix of horror and amazement.

On my television screen was the United States men’s soccer team. The finest of the Stars and Stripes were taking on a Belgian side at the World Cup in Brazil.

Well, more like chasing the Belgians.

Indeed, the Belgian strikers and forwards had a couple of steps on the closest American defenders for most of the game. They would waltz unimpeded toward the goal, only to be stymied by goaltender Tim Howard.

Howard made a remarkable 16 saves in that game — a record for any World Cup match.

But it wasn’t enough. The Americans lost the knockout-round game 2-1 in extra time. Their World Cup quest was over once again.

I was baffled.

America had dominated the world stage at every turn throughout my lifetime — and for a generation before it. Our nation had outsize influence on both the global economy and geopolitics. It had driven pop culture trends. And it brought home the most medals in nearly every Olympic games.

Yet, the United States was an afterthought when it came to World Cup soccer. Our nation had never won the tournament — or even played in the championship match. And now, a country whose population was 96 percent smaller had outclassed the best soccer stars America had to offer.

The United States invested plenty in avoiding this outcome. The U.S. Soccer Federation had invested plenty into training and player development.

But it didn’t matter. Howard’s brilliance was the only protection against total obliteration on the soccer pitch.

As I stared on in silence, I started questioning the principle of Excess on Parade. How valuable was it anyway?

Consider one of Belgium’s culinary delicacies – Frites. The same dish that we like to Super-Size actually originated across the pond.

Over the years, Belgians have perfected the art of the Frite. But instead of serving up piles of it at a time, they put a sensible amount into a paper cone, and serve it with dipping sauces.

The Belgians favor quality over quantity. They don’t participate in Excess on Parade.

These same principles have made their way to the Belgian soccer pitch. Instead of going all-in, sparing no expense to build a title contender, the Belgians focus on perfecting their craft. On doing just enough for the moment, and doing it well.

It might not be flashy. But it gets the job done.

And more often than not, we don’t.

It’s time.

It’s time to shed the illusions of grandeur. It’s time to do away with spectacle for spectacle’s sake.

It’s time to say goodbye to Excess on Parade.

For this pattern wastes much and achieves little.

It does us no favors. And we needn’t kowtow to it.

So, let’s chart a new course. Let’s write a new chapter. One free of high-volume, yet full of substance.

This new path might feel strange and unnerving at first. But it will fit just right.

And shouldn’t that be enough?