Tag: lessons

Thoughtful Idiocy

As the sun set on an October day in Texas, anticipation rose.

The Texas Rangers were about to take the field for their first home playoff game in three years. With a win, they’d advance to the next round of baseball’s postseason.

The ballpark was filled with 50,000 fans, all waving red and white rally towels. And I was one of them.

I’d scored my seat thanks to some good fortune. There had been a lottery for the opportunity to buy playoff tickets, and my name had been selected. All around me, fans who had come by their tickets the same way were remarking how fortunate they felt.

The game started. The roar of the crowd was deafening. And the view from down the third base line was honestly not all that bad.

But then, in the second inning, a beer vendor started walking up and down the aisles. He was directly in my line of sight as I looked out toward home plate where the action was.

I craned my neck to look around him, knowing he’d be gone in a moment.

But then a fan approached him in the aisle and ordered two beers. The fan, wearing the opposing team’s jersey, stood there while the vendor tried to serve him.

It was as if the fan was in the concession stand line. But he wasn’t. He was blocking the view of hundreds of Rangers fans. Fans who hadn’t paid hundreds of dollars to stare at him buying beer.

Eventually, some of those Rangers fans had enough. They asked the opposing fan to crouch down while he waited, so that they could watch the game.

The opposing fan replied by threatening to drop his pants. He then verbally abused all of the Rangers fans in the section, oblivious to the fact that he was vastly outnumbered.

It was all so childish, so comically immature. But it left an impact.

I’d paid top dollar to see playoff baseball. But my enduring memory of that experience are the actions of an idiot.

What were you thinking?

These words fill me with dread.

When I hear them uttered, it means that someone has just done something idiotic. And they’re getting raked over the coals for it.

You see, the answer to this phrase is self-evident. The target of wrath couldn’t possibly have been thinking. If they had, they wouldn’t have done something this dumb.

This critique itself doesn’t make me cringe. But what it symbolizes does.

It means there’s already been collateral damage from the idiot’s actions. It’s the ballpark fiasco all over again.

I feel for all those impacted by this self-absorbed behavior. Those who are essentially victimized by thoughtlessness.

And I seek to never be that thoughtless person. I yearn to never find myself rightfully called to the carpet.

Still, such plans are far from foolproof.

Back at the ballpark, behind that obnoxious fan in the aisle, a duel was going on.

Well, more like a series of them.

Each time a player strode to home plate and dug their cleats into the dirt, a new confrontation would begin. A high stakes battle between the batter and the pitcher.

The batter was looking for a pitch he could hit hard. And the pitcher was looking to make the batter miss.

Occasionally, one of these combatants would make the other one look foolish. The batter would drive a pitch over the heart of home plate to the outfield wall, 400 feet away. The pitcher would fool the batter into swinging at a ball in the dirt. Both of those things happened in this playoff game.

But sometimes, the pitcher or batter would do exactly what they wanted — and end up with nothing to show for it.

That was ultimately how the game got away from the Rangers.

In the sixth inning, with his team down by a 2-0 score, Texas starting pitcher Martin Perez returned to the pitching mound. He gave up base hits to the first two batters — both on pitches below the batter’s knees.

The ball was thrown where he wanted it each time. But it didn’t yield the desired outcome.

Perez was pulled from the game. Both batters he gave up hits to would ultimately come around to score when his replacement gave up a home run.

As I write this, Perez has yet to start another postseason game. Surely, he must think back on that night and wonder how it got away from him.

Truth be told, Perez pitched decently well in that game. His intensity, focus, and effort were where they needed to be.

But the results belied his best intentions. And for years, that disconnect cast a shadow over his career.

There’s a term that defines Perez’s predicament that October evening.

Thoughtful idiocy.

Perez was seeking to command the game. But he still ended up sinking his team’s chances.

Thoughtful idiocy is a bitter pill to swallow. It’s insidious, as it takes a good thing and turns it bad.

We are primed to be the opposite of that fan waiting for beer in the middle of the aisle. We’re supposed to be selfless, conscientious, and committed to the cause.

It’s tantalizing to tie outcomes to these attributes. Act absent-minded and suffer the consequences. Operate with thoughtfulness and reap the benefits.

But that’s not how it works in practice.

In truth, we can try too hard. We can push too far. We can get beat at our own game.

Sometimes this looks like Martin Perez on the pitching mound that October night. Minimal mistakes yield lopsided results — with thousands watching in disappointment.

Other times, it can be a bit more subtle. It might mean pushing ahead on a work project without getting the requisite sign-off. It might mean ramping up a workout regimen faster than your body can handle. It might mean trying a bit too hard to reconnect with long-lost acquaintances.

I know all these mistakes. For I have made them before.

That my heart was in the right place mattered little. The results told the story.

I was an idiot. Not for doing too little. But for doing too much, without even considering a sanity check.

You’ve got to be part strategist, part psychologist.

This is the unofficial job description for a baseball manager.

It’s only fitting. In a sport where 9 players take the field each night for six months, it’s a requisite skill. Especially when you consider how difficult it is to hit a baseball.

Yes, great baseball managers have mastered the art of nuance. They get their teams in the right tactical positions to win. But they also get their players in the right headspace to thrive.

The best managers must remain active without overacting. The must be thoughtful without overthinking.

Such skills are not relegated to baseball. Many coaches in other sports display similar nuance. So do many supervisors in office settings. And many parents in households across America.

Nuanced thought and measured action can help just about anyone thrive at their role. They can avoid the polarizing extremes of absent mindedness and of taking things too far. They can avoid both supreme dumbness and thoughtful idiocy.

But we can’t get to this point right out of the gates. Experience is an unrivaled teacher in this endeavor. And blunders sometimes provide the most vivid lessons.

When I recount my moments of thoughtful idiocy, I first feel humiliated. How could I have been so foolish? How could I have gotten things so wrong?

But then, I remember to give myself some grace. To treat the incident as a building block. To show the same level of dedication next time, but with a bit more restraint.

This is the roadmap to a better tomorrow. For me. For all of us.

But we must commit to it.

We must not bury our thoughtful idiocy. We must instead have the courage to address it and iterate off it.

There’s nothing dumb about that.

Lessons to Live By

As I got behind the wheel, I was terrified.

I had never driven a car before. And now, I was about to.

I was in as acceptable a setting I one could be for this process — the inside of a Driving School vehicle, with an instructor in the passenger seat. But still, I could only think of what would go wrong.

You see, the only driving experience I’d had before was in those racing games at the arcades. The ones with the loose steering wheel that would send you careening into a wall if you weren’t careful.

Once, I’d gone off the course in one of those games and plowed down an entire Redwood forest. Now, I was horrified about what damage I might inflict in real life.

After spending an eternity adjusting the car mirrors, I set out on the suburban roads. It didn’t go well.

I didn’t crash into any cars or run any stop signs. But there were enough close calls that a fellow student spent the next day telling anyone and everyone about how I’d almost killed her.

Humiliated, I pledged to do better. I ran through the instructions I’d been taught — check your mirrors and your blind spot, use your signal, go light on the gas and start braking early. I thought of how to best apply them when I was in the driver’s seat. And I followed those directives the next time I got into that driving school car.

This approach paid off. A few months after my ill-fated first drive, I passed my driver’s test. And I’ve spent years behind the wheel since then, mostly without incident.

I soaked up those driving lessons. I internalized them. I embodied them.

To me, they were not a set of suggestions. They were lessons to live by.

From our earliest days, we’re in a state of learning.

As infants, we must figure out how to walk, talk, and take care of ourselves. Once we get to school, we are educated on math, science, literature, and social studies. In our spare time, we might learn to fish, ice skate, or hit a curveball.

There are so many lessons headed our way that it’s hard to keep all the information internalized. So, some lessons will fade away over time, while others remain timeless.

I know this as well as anyone. For I am the son of teachers.

To be clear, my parents were far from overbearing. But they weren’t exactly hands-off either.

In my parents’ view, each day was an opportunity to learn something new. And so, they did their best to stimulate that continual improvement in me.

I learned plenty from my parents during my formative years. But three lessons from my father, in particular, have stuck with me.

  1. Don’t make the same mistake twice.
  2. Don’t pee in swimming pools.
  3. Don’t say you don’t like something until you try it.

These three edicts don’t seem to fit together. But they remain snug in my mind.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve remained open to new experiences. I’ve done my best to learn from my mistakes. And I haven’t even considered taking a leak in the pool.

I learned plenty in school as well — from the core tenets of algebra to the principles of democracy. And yet, of all those lessons, three directives from my third grade teacher loom largest.

  1. Stand up straight.
  2. Look people in the eye when you talk to them.
  3. Give a firm handshake.

I’ve forgotten the name of the penultimate Roman Emperor. And I can’t remember the symbol for Iron on the Periodic Table without looking it up. But the principles of good posture, eye contact and a firm handshake? Those have endured.

Lessons to live by always do.

What makes a lesson timeless? What gets it to click just right in our mind?

This is something I’ve long struggled to comprehend.

After all, the lessons we internalize become our charter. They help define the way others see us.

If we cling tightly to edicts of caution, we might avoid taking chances. If we set our memory receptors on math formulas instead, we could become savants in data science without any semblance of social skills.

Of course, it’s rarely that simple.

The lessons we live by are often a cocktail of advice. Some of the tips we take to heart might be practical. Others might give us an edge. Some might just be whimsical.

Each cocktail has its own distinct flavor. And that variation helps explain our divergent personalities.

In my case, the lessons I’ve internalized have kept me conscientious and polite. They’ve also inspired me to keep searching for improvement.

These qualities aren’t inherently good or bad. They’re just part of who I am. They’re key for how I see myself, and how others see me.

I wonder sometimes what my parents and teachers think about all this. Are they satisfied with the lessons I took to heart? Or do they wish some others had stuck instead?

Still, asking such questions misses the point.

The learning process is a set of inputs and outputs.

The material that’s taught to us represents the outputs. That information is foisted on us by others.

The inputs, on the other hand, are firmly within our control. If we have the will to engage with the information, we will do so. And the lesson will become internalized.

It’s futile to mess with this equation. Whether my parents or teachers gave me a piece of advice twice or twenty times was irrelevant. All that mattered was if I turned those outputs into inputs. And that was totally on me.

Similarly, I have dispelled plenty of advice throughout the 300 articles I’ve shared on Words of the West over the years. This advice has landed differently depending on who was viewing it.

I’m sure some articles had a profound effect on my audience, while others were met with a shrug. Perhaps some topics that were a yawner for some were pure gold for others.

The choice is yours, dear reader. You decide what sticks and what fades into oblivion. I’m just here to spur that decision, by giving you something to think about.

Perhaps then, that is the greatest lesson to live by. We can’t mandate what others will internalize. But we can guide them by providing material for consideration.

And in the end, that could prove to be enough.

Eraser Marks

Have you heard of Julius Caesar? What about Alexander Hamilton?

There’s a good chance you have. And not because you had a salad for lunch or watched a Broadway musical at some point.

We know these names because we are students of history.

In America, we learn about the history of our own nation in school. We also learn of those societies that came before — such as the Roman Empire.

Reminders exist far beyond the classroom walls as well. Idioms, memes, and other colloquial wisdom weave the markers of history into the fabric of our culture.

These lessons allow us to capitalize on what those before us did well. They also allow us to avoid repeating what our predecessors did poorly.

It’s been this way for generations. But now, this arrangement is endangered.

The sea change effectively started in 2017.

America was emerging from the shadow of some contentious events. A brash outsider had won the United States presidency months earlier. And there was a growing clamor that foreign nations might have interfered in the presidential election.

Tensions were high. Then, two events sent the kindling ablaze.

In August, white supremacists marched on a Virginia college town. Then, in October, the New York Times published a sexual harassment investigation of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

At first, these events don’t seem directly correlated. The white supremacists were spewing racist hate on one side of the country. On the other, an entertainment mogul was coming undone after years of mistreating women.

But if you look at the response to each of these events, the connection is clear. In both cases, the repudiation of these actions went to a new level. Symbols tied to racism started disappearing from the south, while Weinstein-produced movies vanished from entertainment services.

This was a turning point in what came to be known as Cancel Culture.

The message was clear. No longer would those on the wrong side of history simply face scorn. They might find be erased from the record altogether.

In these initial cases, the cancellations turned out to be prudent.

After all, the Confederacy lost the Civil War, and racial discrimination is against the law. So, maintaining symbols of a vanquished cause did little good.

And as for Harvey Weinstein, he was ultimately convicted of rape and sentenced to prison.

But Cancel Culture would grow in the ensuing years. And as the revisionist history exploded, we started to lose our way.

I am a proud alumna of the University of Miami.

Like any institution, the university is not perfect. But it’s had a profound impact on my life. And it’s proven to be a valuable member of the surrounding community.

The university has made several transformational decisions in recent decades, including upgrading facilities and expanding its healthcare network across South Florida.

But a recent decision caused me to furrow my brow.

The university removed the names of several prominent figures from campus buildings, including that of founder George Merrick. The university claimed that an anti-racism stance fueled their decision.

On the surface, this decision seemed prudent. While Merrick donated 600 acres of land to build the university in 1925, he also spoke of keeping Black neighborhoods outside of greater Miami.

Viewed from a modern lens — or indeed, a humane lens — such ideals are repugnant. But in the 1920s, they were par for the course.

It was the heart of the Jim Crow era back then. And Miami was the newest outpost of the South — a coastal town built along a rail line extension.

Fidel Castro’s ascension in Cuba was still more than 30 years away. And it would be a decade before Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered the infamous El Corte massacre against Haitians.

Such events helped spur a wave of migration to Miami, turning it into the multicultural mecca we know it as today. But back in 1925, Miami was a mostly white city in a segregationist state.

Merrick’s views on city planning are not to be celebrated, for sure. But canceling him from the university is not necessarily the answer either.

Such actions are effectively castigating one man for the sins of his time. It’s a move that even civic leaders think is unfair.

This is not the case of Alabama governor George Wallace openly defying the Civil Rights Act and bellowing Segregation forever. If George Merrick had lived in a more equitable era, there’s a chance he might have had a more progressive stance on racial relations.

But he didn’t. He lived in the South in the 1920s. And now, he’s being punished for that fate of circumstance.

There are few names more infamous than that of Adolf Hitler.

The Nazi leader led the genocide of 6 million people, spurred the rise of fascism in Europe and sparked the Second World War. In most circles, he’s considered the embodiment of evil incarnate.

More than 75 years have passed since the fall of the Nazis. Most Germans these days have no firsthand knowledge of that despicable era. But they do know who Hitler was.

This is intentional. In the shadow of World War II, Allied powers removed Nazi symbols from German buildings. But they didn’t scrub their atrocities from the history books.

The more German schoolchildren learned about the sins of prior generations, the less they’d be inclined to repeat them. At least that was the prevailing idea.

For the most part, this strategy has worked. Some pockets of right-wing extremism have bubbled up in Germany recently. But such scourges took many decades to re-emerge.

As I look at our society, I wonder why we are so set on deviating from this path. The actions of Confederate leaders — let alone the Nazi regime — are far worse than the thoughts of a George Merrick.

Cancelling Merrick for racist views — or any number of figures for the warts of their era — is a flawed approach.

Taking an eraser to the history books doesn’t wipe the slate clean. It simply leaves us with eraser marks.

Such actions deprive us of the database of missteps. They rob us of tangible signs of society’s progression. And they leave us every opportunity to make mistakes that could otherwise have been avoided.

History is made of people. And people are flawed.

Julius Caesar got power-hungry and ended up assassinated. Alexander Hamilton’s hotheaded style led him to a fatal duel with Aaron Burr.

Those flaws ended their lives, but not their relevance. In fact, those flaws have become a crucial portion of their relevance.

This is the power of history when it’s left annotated but unvarnished. It offers us the chance to make tomorrow better than yesterday was.

So, let’s not give Cancel Culture a free pass. Let’s stop pretending that eraser marks can rectify the sins of the past. Let’s investigate those sins at face value. And then let’s resolve to do better

A Year of Wow

This week marks the one-year anniversary of Words of the West. The decision to launch this website was both the realization of a dream and a call for responsibility, and it was a decision I sat on for months until I felt the time was right.

It’s been liberating to share my stories, my reflections and my perspective with the world at large. And the significant task of adding fresh pieces of wisdom every week has kept me both sharp and grounded. But these sensations are just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve learned so much through this experience, in so many unexpected places. And as Words of the West is all about sharing wisdom, I felt compelled to share what I’ve learned so far here.

  • Time Is The Boss: I’m not going to lie — sticking to a weekly schedule is tough. Writing inspiration doesn’t come with a clock; on some weeks, conjuring up fresh ideas was a challenge. While I’m fortunate to have a robust swipe file of ideas, there were definitely some moments where I felt as if I was going through the motions. But I knew that Words of the West deserved my best every week, and that challenge helped keep my writing to a high standard, even on days where natural inspiration was lacking.
  • Consistency Breeds Quality: Looking at some early Words of the West articles and some recent ones, I noticed one major difference — length. The early articles were significantly shorter than recent ones. (In fact, if this was an early Words of the West article, it’d be about over by now. Additionally, many those early articles more poetic in nature — the words had a nice rhythm, but readers had to connect the dots. Over time, the articles became both clearer and more comprehensive.
  • Emotion Is Real: I’ve been writing for most of my life, in one format or another. But I’d never before experienced anything quite like what I felt when I posted Darkness in the Light. As I prepared to publish the article — a firsthand account of the events of September 11th, 2001 — my hands were shaking and my heart was racing. Yes, the process of putting words onto the Internet can be a deeply emotional experience.
  • Think On Your Toes: On a hot summer night, I spent hours writing an article extolling the virtues of Dallas — prose meant to quash the national perception of Big D as a “City of Hate.” But as I was putting pen to paper, 20 miles away, a sniper was taking aim at Dallas Police officers patrolling a Black Lives Matter protest. By the time the sun came up the next morning, five of those officers were no longer with us. Not surprisingly, the article I’d drafted up never saw the light of day — replaced instead with a personal reflection of the event that shook our region to its core. Everything doesn’t always go to plan; it’s important to be prepared for anything — even something terrible.
  • It’s About You: The stories, thoughts and reflections shared on Words of the West have originated from my memories and perspectives. But the process of putting them on this website has changed their purpose; the goal has become to share, not to tell. I realized this early on, and I’ve tried to ensure all articles have a valid takeaway for you, the reader. This has made the writing process a bit more complex, but I do hope it’s been worthwhile for y’all.
  • Tech Is Tough: Writing weekly articles for a website is one thing. Maintaining the site is quite another. Over the course of the year, I’ve made some technical changes, tweaked the website theme, switched to self-hosting and worked around several issues with broken code. While I’m an Internet marketer by trade, rolling up my sleeves and dealing with these technical issues wasn’t easy, and sometimes took several hours at a time. However, these trips down the rabbit hole have been useful; I now understand how to navigate some deeply technical and syntactic components of websites — a skill that will prove useful in the long run.

Looking forward, I’m excited to tackle some new challenges I aim to improve at distributing Words of the West, so that more readers have access to the wisdom contained in these articles. I hope to further customize the website design and get rid of the little quirks that keep me up at night. And, of course, I’m ready to tackle the ongoing challenge of adding high quality writing for y’all to read, week in and week out.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned. The best is yet to come!

I Am Not Perfect

I am not perfect.

I have sinned.
I have lied.
I have sworn.
I have stolen.
I have overindulged.
I have imbibed.
I have hated.
I have failed.
I have quit.
I have been too bold.
I have given in to temptation.
I have put myself before others.
I have talked when I should listen.
I have shown a lack of humility.
I have let anger get the best of me.
I have wished ill on others.
I have hurt those I care about.
I have disappointed those who depend on me.
I have acted inconsistent to my moral composition.
I have strayed from the path to righteousness.

I have made mistakes. But I have learned from them, and become a better man in the process.

And I wouldn’t trade that for being perfect. Ever.