Tag: safety

Tragic Misconceptions

It was a jarring sight.

A Toyota sedan missing all four wheels. The disk-like rotors were fully exposed to the elements, as a small rock kept the rest of the chassis off the ground.

Some bad actors had stolen away with the tires and hubs in the dead of the night. An inner-city occurrence that was all too frequent.

Only this car wasn’t in the inner city. It was parallel parked along a tree lined street in a suburban neighborhood. My neighborhood.

Oh God, I mused as I passed the disabled vehicle. Am I safe here?

I thought back to a few nights earlier, when I’d taken an evening stroll on that same street. I don’t remember seeing the Toyota sedan parked there yet. But I don’t remember seeing much of anything at all.

You see, the streetlights were out in that area. The sidewalk was pitch black.

I wasn’t worried about criminals attacking at that moment. I was more concerned about tripping over a rogue tree branch or colliding with an aloof squirrel.

But now, I recognized the error of my ways.

I should have been more vigilant. I should have reported the extinguished streetlights – on that street and every other across the neighborhood. I should have been prepared to face down thugs on every corner.

Or maybe not.

The disabled car sat on that rock for a couple of weeks before it was towed away.

All the while, I scanned the neighborhood for other signs of mischief.

I started walking the neighborhood with a flashlight, protecting myself against a potential ambush. I perused postings on Ring and Nextdoor, looking for the patterns of local perpetrators. I pondered enrolling in a Concealed Carry course.

But trouble never came to my doorstep. Just like lightning, it only struck once.

This left me in a strange purgatory.

My neighborhood had proven to be about as safe after the wheel theft as it was before it. But that incident was too brazen to ignore. It had skewed my judgment.

No matter what the numbers stated, I could never truly feel safe there again.

Wrong place, wrong time.

It’s the predominant explanation for tragedy.

We do not tend to court misfortune. Yet, it sometimes finds us anyway — in the most random fashion possible.

There’s no way to truly rationalize these brutal occurrences. Wrong place, wrong time is all we have for an explanation.

But there’s a hidden implication in this statement. Namely, an acknowledgement that a right place and a right time exist somewhere else.

The quest for that somewhere else has served as our societal North Star for generations.

It has led us from colonial encampments to the wild frontier. It has led us back to the cities and then out to the suburbs. It has spurred innovation and infrastructure, but also White Flight and gentrification.

Yes, the legacy of the quest for somewhere else is a complicated one. For the world is not as straightforward as we’d like it to be. And the green grass on the other side of the fence is sure to turn brown once we trample all over it.

Our quest for utopia is a recipe for disaster. And yet, we commit ourselves to baking the cake.

We condemn the Southside, the South Bronx, and South Central. We exalt the fancy enclaves with the elite public schools and the well-heeled police forces.

We wrap ourselves in the illusion of safety. And when the veneer is stripped away, we feel the full weight of the betrayal. Just as I did when I saw the wheel-less Toyota sedan a mere 500 feet from where I lay my head at night.

It’s an insidious pattern. And we’re to blame for it.

Our society is obsessed with rankings.

We’re always eager to see how the football team we root for, the college we attended, or the price we paid for gasoline compares to the other options out there.

Fortunately, there are several organizations out there to satiate our list-mania. One of them is WalletHub.

The personal finance company is best known for its credit card recommendation tools. But it also publishes rankings of the safest cities in America.

WalletHub’s most recent annual edition released a few weeks before I sat down to write this article. So, naturally, I gave it a thorough read.

The first few cities didn’t lead to any raised eyebrow. They were in predominantly rural states that featured low populations.

But when I saw the city ranked #6 on the list, I gasped.

That city was Yonkers, New York.

While I’ve been a Texan for my entire adult life, I spent my childhood in Yonkers. I grew up in a decently-sized house with a front yard and a backyard — luxuries most residents of nearby New York City did not have.

The surrounding neighborhood was hilly, shaded by tall trees that dumped bushels of leaves every fall. The streets were quiet. The neighbors were too.

It had all the appearances of a nice place. But appearances can be deceiving.

When I was just 6 years old, someone stole my father’s car from right in front of our house. A few years later, a nearby home was burglarized. Shortly after that, someone drove across the front lawn of our across-the-street neighbor before plowing into a retaining wall.

It was all more than a bit unsetting.

I wanted to believe that my home was safe. That I didn’t have to worry when I closed my eyes at night.

But each time the blue police lights lit up our street, I doubted that premise. And each time my father installed an alarm system or trimmed the hedges a little lower, uncertainty proliferated.

I moved away from Yonkers many years ago. And my parents eventually sold my childhood home.

Several months after they left the city, a man in a parked car shot a Yonkers police officer approaching his vehicle. The officer’s partner returned fire, leading to an extended shootout. Terrified onlookers told news reporters that it felt like the wild west.

The whole incident took place on the same block where I grew up. If I were still there, I could have watched it unfold from my childhood bedroom.

Yet, despite that shooting and all the criminal activity I witnessed before it, Yonkers found its validation. Despite its star-crossed legacy as the site of the fire that killed Malcolm X’s widow, the arrest of the Son of Sam killer, and the early misdeeds of the rapper DMX, Yonkers was ultimately lauded as a beacon of safety.

What gives?

Signal and noise.

It’s the central paradox of statistics.

As we accumulate data, we yearn to find meaning in its patterns. But some of those associations ultimately don’t hold water. They’re the noise that the proven conclusions — the signal — must compete with.

The officer-involved shooting near my childhood home is a prime example of this. It spooked the neighborhood, no doubt. But it also was the first time in 30 years that a Yonkers Police Officer was shot in the line of duty.

In the grand scheme of things, it was not signal. It was noise.

The prior criminal incidents I witnessed on that block also fell into the noise column. While each was unnerving, they took place far too infrequently to cause real concern.

My childhood neighborhood, it seems, has long been a predominantly safe place. It just wasn’t perfectly safe.

The same can be said about my current neighborhood. And many others across our nation.

It’s that variance that gets me — that gets many of us.

Safety is such an existential need that we seize upon any sign of imperfection. One lapse is too many, and two is catastrophic.

But this trend is not feasible or productive. It leads us to overestimate bad outcomes and succumb to paranoia. It fosters tragic misconceptions of the places we frequent, and the people we share those places with.

We need to let go of those delusions, and to choose a more sustainable path instead. We need to recognize the risk of a wheel theft or a crash into a nearby retaining wall for what it is – low, not zero – and calibrate our responses accordingly. We need to stop casting out the good with the bad.

This will be an uncomfortable shift for many of us. Myself included.

But it’s a necessary one.

We will never find a true sense of security without making peace with our surroundings.

It’s starts with us. Let’s get to it.

Risk Reduction

I sat on the snowy ground and tried to regain my bearings.

I had just fallen for the umpteenth time while trying to grab onto a T-Bar ski lift. Frustration was mounting, and I needed a minute.

So, I sat there, staring out at what lay ahead.

It was late June. Back home, it was beach weather. But here on the border of Chile and Argentina, snowy peaks surrounded an alpine lake — their wintery reflection reflected immaculately in the frigid water.

This view, this place — it was any American skier’s dream. But not mine.

You see, I had never skied before. And I hadn’t harbored a strong desire to, either.

But I’d ventured to South America for a study abroad program. And my classmates — all avid skiers — had begged me to join them on a weekend excursion to the Andes.

So, here I was, giving this new experience a go. And struggling mightily.

Getting on the lift was just one issue. Making it down the bunny slope was another. And stopping my momentum before plunging into the lake was a third.

For much of the day, I was miserable. Not only was I flustered, but I was also terrified of injuring myself.

Finally, I started to make some progress. I stayed on my skis all the way down the slope, feeling the wind rush by my face. My form was still a work in progress, but the misery was gone.

Sadly, so was my energy — and daylight.

I made my way back to the lodge to turn in my rental skis. But I pledged to give it another go when I was back in the United States.

For a while, I made good on my promise. I’d hit the slopes about once a year. Despite some misadventures, I did get better at skiing. And I found the experience of gliding down a snowy slope uniquely exhilarating.

But eventually, I stopped trekking up to the mountains.

My demurral from skiing wasn’t driven by its costs or the travel distances to the slopes — although both were significant.

The cause? Risk reduction.

My family tree is marked by community influence.

Both my parents are educators. So too were my maternal grandparents.

My paternal grandfather is a doctor. My uncle is a renowned surgeon.

If there’s one commonality among my relatives, it’s a devotion to helping others be better, safer, and healthier. And that means reducing risks.

When I was growing up, my parents would encourage me not to make the same mistake twice. And my grandfather would often share the most basic doctorly advice in the book.

If it hurts to move your leg like that, don’t move your leg like that.

I was primed to steer clear of recklessness from the start. And I’ve followed that North Star into adulthood.

These days, I make a living in the insurance technology industry. So those risk reduction edicts have only further solidified.

Now, this hasn’t turned me into a frightened recluse. I don’t spend my days assuming everything will go wrong.

But I do imagine what could go sideways. And I try to avoid that outcome as much as possible.

This ethos has underpinned many of the choices I’ve made over the years. It spurred my decision to stop eating dairy and fast food. It led me to quit drinking alcohol.

And it led me to stop skiing.

You see, I was never fully in control on skis. I took turns too wide and still struggled to stop on a dime when I got into trouble. I feared that my shaky form would lead me directly into a tree — and a broken leg.

I’d also taken up running during this time — first for exercise and eventually as a competitive endeavor. As my devotion to running deepened, the costs of a ski run gone awry started to seem as steep as a Black Diamond slope. It just wasn’t worth trying.

Now, this decision was not exactly a prevalent one in the athletic community. I know of several runners who have won distance races weeks after a ski vacation.

But for me, the potential costs were too high. Getting to the starting line healthy was paramount. Nothing that could jeopardize that mission was worth engaging in.

This line of thought constitutes Risk Reduction 101. And it’s worked as expected for me.

Or has it?

As I write this, it’s been a decade since I went skiing. And it’s been four months since I went for a run.

A high-speed crash on a snowy slope hasn’t paused my running career. But I’ve come across some significant injuries, nonetheless.

There hasn’t been a single cause for these setbacks. Some were due to overtraining. Some were due to chronic physiological issues. Some were simply due to bad luck.

But regardless, I’ve paid the price.

I’ve lost four months of an activity I love. I’ve dropped out of five races, forfeiting hundreds of dollars in the process. I’ve gone through surgery and an arduous rehab process.

If I had a skiing mishap, I’d likely have missed about the same amount of time while healing. My rehab process would likely have been somewhat similar.

Taking all this into account, my decision to cut out skiing doesn’t look all that stellar. After all, those risks I was trying to avoid found me anyway.

I might as well have lived with reckless abandon. I might as well have let the chips fall where they may.

This is a tantalizing argument. Yet, I don’t buy it for a second.

Sure, I’ve encountered a bit of a rough patch lately. I’d even call it the nadir of my running career.

But such an outcome can’t be viewed in a vacuum.

The odds of what happened to me without skiing are lower than they would have been if I kept hitting the slopes.

No, I might not have avoided fate. But I didn’t actively invite it either.

This is an important distinction.

All too often, we view risk as binary. We either aim for total avoidance or throw caution to the wind.

Neither approach truly steels us for a bad outcome.

In one case, we’re forced to reckon with our recklessness in the most brutal of fashions. In another, we’re left wondering why we threw away the chance at adventure — only to encounter its bitter toll.

The best way around this is to take the middle path. To accept small risks and shun outsized ones.

This requires judgment without clear guardrails. It requires a feel for the odds. And it requires us to embrace the gray.

Put it all together, and we’re left with an incredibly high bar to clear.

But with some discipline and devotion, we can clear it. I am proof positive of that.

So, let’s take this journey together.

Let’s resolve to feel the rush of the wind without getting in over our skis. Let’s be mindful of risk, but not paralyzed by it.

We might not always win this way. But we’ll surely lose less.

The Bubble Dilemma

I slowly made my way through the crowd, trying to reach the front gate.

It was New Year’s Day and I was heading to a hockey game with my friends. But not just any hockey game. An outdoor hockey game.

Events like this only happen a few times a year in hockey. And one had never before come to my neck of the woods.

Because of that, this had been the hottest ticket in town. And I was lucky enough to snag some tickets before they sold out.

But right now, I wasn’t feeling so lucky.

I was stuck in a crush of people, with barely an inch of space in any direction. There were thousands of us trying to make it through the main entrance of the stadium, which had become a massive bottleneck.

As the throng made its slow approach, I was filled with anxiety. Would I be separated from my friends? Would the throng of people send me to the wrong part of the stadium? Would I get trampled, or worse?

About 20 nerve-wracking minutes later, we made it into the stadium. I took several deep breaths before continuing up the ramp to our seats.

Never again, I thought.

Few items are more sensitive to us than personal space.

Whether we’re from wide-open spaces or cramped cities, we crave it. We desire it. We depend on it.

Now, to be clear, we’ve long been able to get by in a pinch. In times of normalcy, we’ve packed into that crowded train car or bravely got in that two-hour line for a ride at Disney World, if the situation demanded it.

(Obviously, this behavior no longer applies at the moment I’m writing this.)

But just because we’ve traditionally been able to manage close quarters doesn’t mean we enjoyed the experience. Quite the contrary.

We are most comfortable when we are within our bubble. When we have an arm’s length of space between us and the nearest person. We demand permission for others to get within this bubble, and we don’t like it when people invade our space without invitation.

This is not conjecture. Our brains are wired to treat the violation of our personal space as a threat.

This is why it’s common to see people take a step back when someone gets in their face. Or to see people reflexively sticking an arm out to keep intruders away.

Our bubbles are sacred. And we must protect them at all costs.

The bubble has been part of our physiology for millennia. But recently, it’s become part of our identity.

With the boom in technology and media options, we extend our bubble to every aspect of our lives. We can choose what to engage with and what to believe. We can create our ideal reality.

This is a mixed blessing.

Choice brings diversity. And through the process of choosing, we can express our individualism.

Yet, choice can also bring divisiveness. Particularly if we fail to respect the viability of alternative options.

So, as we settle into our bubbles, the world fractures — split into billions of tiny fiefdoms. And any time our bubbles collide, fireworks could ensue.

Such confrontations were once sporadic. Even in more primitive times, the etiquette of respecting personal space was widely understood.

But now, the tensions are constant.

The Internet is always on. And the friction between conflicting bubbles percolates — like a >Hatfield-McCoy feud.

Worse, the Internet culture has percolated society at large in recent years. Polarization is as bad as it’s ever been. And there are few refuges from it.

Sure, our particular bubble could be off the grid, in a cabin in Montana. But for most of us, that’s not the reality.

So, we must face this friction. And we must recon with the discomfort it causes us.

The universe has an uncanny knack for calling our bluff.

At the outdoor hockey game, I said that I wouldn’t subject myself to crowds again.

I didn’t truly mean what I said. And yet, it still came to pass.

When the world plunging into a pandemic, crowds have eviscerated. Events have been cancelled. And our personal space bubbles have expanded.

Health experts have now recommended about two arm’s lengths of space between people, for safety reasons. And with many regions under quarantine, there have been fewer opportunities for people to intrude upon that expanded personal space.

In a world full of uncertainty and restlessness, this has been a rare bright spot. A rare sense of calm in a storm of anxiety.

And yet, as we move apart physically, we are also doing so virtually.

We are becoming more set in our ways, and our interpretations of reality. And we are growing ever more intolerant of alternative viewpoints.

Behind computer and smartphone screens, we are getting bolder. More extreme. Less measured.

And with in-person interaction on hiatus, we lack accountability. We don’t have to moderate our behavior to be accepted in public, because there’s no in public to speak of.

This is dangerous. And it flies in the face of precedent.

Indeed, the personal space bubble is only meant to provide protection, not fortification.

Sure, we feel uncomfortable when others get too close. But it does us no good to be too far removed either.

The quiet camaraderie of a shared experience is critical to our sense of security. It’s as important as the tacit understanding that strangers won’t get within an inch of our face.

But by hunkering down in our bubbles — even in the midst of a shared global experience — we take a machete to this ideal. We prop ourselves up at the expense of society.

The time has come to change course.

The time has come for us to be introspective of our behavior. To be empathetic toward the plight of those who differ from us. To be committed to our supporting role in a shared narrative.

The time has come for us to be more trusting. To be less vindictive. To be open to vulnerability.

The time has come for us to be better stewards of society.

It’s easy to hide from this responsibility, with altered reality and dire circumstances in our present. It’s easy to retreat further into our bubbles, as a turtle retreats into its shell.

But we must resist this temptation.

What we do today impacts tomorrow. And a tomorrow dotted with bubbles of isolation is a bleak one. A tomorrow of togetherness is far more promising.

Let’s make it happen.

Sheep and Lions

In like a lion. Out like a lamb.

Growing up, I heard this phrase in school every March.

It was an old proverb about the change in seasons over the course of the month. A saying that illustrated the transition from winter’s frigid roar to the relative calm of spring.

It’s hard to take this proverb at face value. After all, different regions of North America experience the shifting seasons in different ways.

In California and Florida, winter fades away quietly. Indeed, the weather is consistently divine in both places throughout the month of March.

In Texas and Oklahoma, the opposite is true. The relative serenity of a southern winter devolves into the destructive chaos of severe storm season — where green skies, tornadoes and giant hailstones lurk.

Even in the northeast, where I grew up, the adage didn’t exactly go to plan. The late stages of March would approach, bitter and blustery, and I would wonder where this lamb was that we were promised.

But while this talk of lions and lambs might be stylized, it still has some substance.

For it’s not just about the weather. It’s also about us.

Words on a page are not always equal.

Sure, most have the same size, color and font. But some of them are louder than others.

And perhaps the most resonant word out there is Roar.

When we see those four letters in sequence, our pulse quickens. Our adrenaline starts pumping. And our horizons expand.

We don’t feel this way because we are all jungle cat aficionados.

No, we feel this way because that one simple word reflects what’s expected of us.

From our earliest days, we are encouraged to be lions. To be hungry. To be courageous. And to make our voice heard.

We are expected to lead. To boldly break new ground while furthering our ideals.

These demands can indeed become reality. There are definitely times when we charge ahead as if we are the kings of the Serengeti, hot on the trail of a herd of antelope. And there are certainly moments where we take bold steps onto unproven ground.

But those moments are fleeting.

Most of the time, we are far more likely to appear as sheep. We are more apt to stay with the pack. To choose the security of routine over the risk of possibility.

This fate befalls just about all of us at some point, no matter how ambitious we were at the outset of our journey. Our devolution is close to inevitable.

In like a lion. Out like a lamb.

What’s driving this phenomenon? What’s the magnetic force repelling us from regal lions to feeble sheep?

The answer isn’t clear-cut. But I believe much of it can be found within the structure of our society.

For those of us in the westernized world are trapped by the friction that lies between opposing realities.

On one hand, there is the social reality. Here, we are expected to be courteous and communal.

On the other hand, there is the economic reality. Here we are asked to be cutthroat and self-serving.

Our economic reality, in particular, demands a degree of independence. After all, we can’t be go-getters unless we have the liberty to do the going out and the getting.

But there is a limit to just how free we are.

Ultimately, the magnetic force of our social reality will rein us in. Like one of those retractable dog leashes, the tether of public perception will keep us from straying too far.

This might seem disheartening. But it shouldn’t be all that surprising.

By their very nature, social conventions are filled with rigidity and inertia. Change is met with skepticism, and revolution is met with resistance.

Tradition holds court. Even if it keeps flawed perspectives in place for generations.

We can scoff at this shortsightedness. But we’d be foolish to ignore its power.

For in a capitalist society, it is our social community that holds the purse strings. Our economic destiny depends on its support.

We must kowtow to communal influence. Otherwise, we might end up cast out of society, left destitute and starving.

There’s no way we can truly be lions in this world.

In a moment of crisis, where will you run?

It’s a difficult question. An unpleasant one, even. But the answer can be telling.

If we were to follow the edicts impressed upon us, we would charge ahead. We would run toward the danger. Like lions, we would boldly lead.

But instead, we tend to do the opposite. Like sheep, we tuck our tails and retreat.

There are sensible reasons for this, of course. Protection and self-preservation are chief among them.

But on a wide scale, the results of our apprehension can be catastrophic. Our society becomes a rudderless ship, devoid of the bold leadership needed to propel it through tumult.

These collective failings cut deep. And they can resonate for the long-term.

How can we expect to meet the challenges of tomorrow if the crises of today paralyze us into inaction? How can we find a way forward if we keep backtracking at the first sign of trouble?

We must adapt our ways if we hope to rise to the moment.

It’s time to redefine success.

The traditional measure — the ability to provide for one’s family — is too conservative. While this measure is important, it’s table stakes.

We can think so much bigger. And we must.

The challenges of the world today and tomorrow call for bravery. They call for determination. And they call for leadership.

We don’t have to tout radical ideas or accelerated timelines for disruptive changes to take on these challenges. In fact, we’re more likely to find success by being incremental.

But we do need to get started.

We must have the license to embrace the bold. We must be allowed to be lions.

So, let’s loosen our vice grip on the status quo. Let’s be accepting of the potential of a new normal. Let’s exude courage and strength, even in the face of uncertainty.

In with the lion. Out with the lamb.

The Components of Safety

Safety.

It’s a term that instantly stimulates our minds.

It evokes imagery of a blanket. Or a lock and key.

These connotations demonstrate just how pervasive this aspect of our lives is. What else can combine images of something so warm and soft with something so cold and metallic?

Even so, it’s hard for us to pinpoint why safety is so essential. Much like True North or gravity, we seem to take its presence in our lives for granted.

I believe this assumption is less willful than it is inevitable.

We inherently know to hold safety in high regard. Yet, we can’t seem to verbalize our instinct.

Perhaps this is the case because the concept of safety crosses basic boundaries of classification. There’s the physical component, which insulates us from mortal injury. And then there’s the mental component, which insulates us from disastrous consequences.

At first glance, the physical component would seem to be the most important. After all, if this aspect were to eviscerate, so would our existence.

The physical component of safety is the reason there are railings on balconies and seat belts in cars. It explains why we know better than to jump from a cliff face onto jagged rocks below. Or why we shuffle our feet when traversing icy sidewalks in tennis shoes.

By tending to our physical safety, we prevent ourselves from getting maimed, paralyzed or killed. Perhaps just as critically, we avoid reduction of our existence to a statistic of infamy.

The list of tragic blunders is already quite lengthy. Anytime we say Don’t do that. It can kill you. it means two things.

  1. Someone did do that very thing and paid the ultimate price.
  2. Someone else likely witnessed the tragedy and warned others not to repeat the action.

If we keep safety front and center, we avoid becoming one of these cautionary tales.

So, yes. The physical component of safety is quite essential. But it doesn’t hold a candle to the mental component.

The mental component of safety is what insulates us from undesired outcomes. These can include the loss of status, the loss of income and the loss of possessions.

These circumstances are seemingly less severe than major injury, paralysis or death. While those outcomes are permanent, it’s possible to recover from the setbacks from a loss or prestige or earthly possessions.

Yet, the mental component of safety has an outsized impact on our behavior. While the physical component impacts our actions in the moment, the mental component impacts our behavior over the long term.

And this is not always to our benefit.

Consider this.

When we prioritize our mental safety, we often aim for stability. This causes us to become risk-averse to a fault.

Why? Because risk provokes change. And change threatens stability.

Avoiding risk is tantamount to maintaining our status quo. So, the safe play is the least risky option.

Yet, risk-aversion can cause us to limit our potential. It can cause us to sacrifice happiness for steadiness. It can cause us to leave opportunities on the table when they aren’t a sure thing.

The more decisions we make under this guise, the more we find ourselves trapped.

We settle for what we get. And we stick with it, even if it saps the joy and vitality out of our lives.

Worse still, our society actively reinforces this behavior.

We’re expected to work to earn the money that pays the bills. To follow the well-worn path others have walked before. To be inconspicuous, safe and normal.

Our happiness and our untapped potential don’t factor into these expectations.

Sure, we pay lip service to these factors through Christmas cards, Hollywood movie scripts and the year-end bonus system. But we are trained to be means to an end. To promote the system that keeps us all ordinary, and thereby protects us.

The problem is that all of this is a grand illusion.

No matter how safe we’re taught to play it, risk abounds. Bad circumstances continue to lurk around the bend, looking for the right moment to strike.

And since we’re ingrained with the values of stability, we find ourselves woefully unprepared to deal with sudden and unexpected changes.

When we lose our job or our home, we feel violated. And when we lose our status, we’re devastated.

These situations generally don’t leave us dead or disfigured. They generally don’t leave us in mourning over the loss of a loved one.

Even so, we end up emotionally broken.

We’re completely unable to cope with circumstance. The house of cards we built to organize our lives has been toppled by a Jenga tower. And we don’t know what to do next.

There’s only one way out of this maelstrom. And that’s to take a sledgehammer to the rules of the mental component of safety.

Only by accounting for risk can we be prepared to deal with it. That means acting a little bolder, staying a little truer to our spirit and even formulating Plan B while Plan A is humming along.

By making ourselves a little more vulnerable, we strengthen our resiliency.

And if we do this at scale, we can break the chains that bind us. We can formally reject the societal codes that leave us defanged in our volatile world.

So, let’s stop running from risk. And let’s embrace a universal truth.

Safety is important. But it’s not a panacea.

Act accordingly.

Lights On

Each year, as the days get to their shortest, something remarkable happens.

Up and down every street, we find rooftops, balconies, front lawns and driveways all adorned in light.

Whether you call them Christmas lights or holiday lights, these installations are a hallmark of our culture.

We’ve come to expect them. Yet, we still find ourselves amazed by them.

It’s not the displays themselves that give us pause. The ingredients of colored bulbs, green wires and brass fasteners are somewhere between tacky and blasé.

It’s not the fact that electric bills go up across town that grabs our attention. Only economists and this author find that noteworthy.

It’s not even the holiday spirit that leaves us gazing in wonder. The lights are just one part of a holistic ecosystem that makes us feel festive and warm as winter sets in.

No, it’s the sheer pervasiveness of these lights that leaves us in awe.

Even in a time when we can hardly agree which direction up is, we come together across faiths and demographics to light up the night. Across the country, we take on the arduous task of stringing lights all over the outsides of our homes.

It’s remarkable from a bird’s-eye view.

But take a closer look, and this practice can blur the lines between culture and cult.

There’s a Keeping Up With The Joneses aspect to holiday lights. Let it slip that you’re not hanging up your own lights, and you’ll be hit with an inquisitive Why Not?

The Why Nots seem to make more logistical sense than the Whys in this case. We generally celebrate the holidays indoors, so lighting up the outside of our home is not practical. And we don’t need an army of colored bulbs to lead us to the front door after dusk. Street and porch lights do just fine at that task year-round.

But none of that matters.

No matter the practicality, we’re expected to have our lights up between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. And then not to have them up the rest of the year.

These expectations drive the aura that surrounds holiday lights. For without critical mass, this phenomenon would merely be a spotty trend.

But what drives these expectations themselves?

What leads us to passively shun those who opt out of decorating? What inspires us to quietly shame those who put up their lights too early? What compels us to intuitively know when it’s time to take down the installation?

I believe the answer to this question is safety.

As members of a community, we strive for safety. We want to feel secure enough to trust others, and for them to trust us.

Few actions provide that sense of safety quite like putting up holiday lights.

It’s public. It’s communal. And it toes the line between conformity and expression.

Participating in this tradition helps us fit in. It indicates our goodwill. It broadcasts our good intentions.

In a world full of tribalism and deceit, we need those signals more than ever. But we don’t just need them in the winter. We need them in the summer too.

In fact, we need them year-round.

The challenge, then, is to apply the message from the holiday lights tradition to the other 11 months of the year. To illuminate our lives the way we illuminate our homes. To spread kindness and build trust, even when the overt reminders aren’t all around us.

We have the power to make these objectives a reality. But only if we let the light within us guide the way.

Let’s start today.

Shifting Barriers

Barriers can divide us. But they should never define us.

In the summer of 1997, my family took a trip to Washington with my godparents and their son. While we walked the National Mall one late afternoon, my godfather noticed a lost backpack on a park bench.

Since it was the age before cell phones, we took the backpack to our hotel and called the number we found on its ID tag. This allowed us to return the backpack to its rightful owner — a very embarrassed congressional aide.

As a sign of gratitude, the aide arranged a private tour of the U.S. Capitol for us. We took the Congressional Subway from the senate office building to the Capitol itself and got a behind the scenes look at the both chambers of Congress.

Looking back now, 20 years later, this story seems even less real than it did in real time. It would be inconceivable today to pick up a lost backpack from a park bench, let alone bring it back to a hotel in order to locate its rightful owner. And of course, just about no one’s getting a behind-the-scene tour of the Capital these days.

The landscape of this story is frozen in the past, in the same way the old Western tales are eternally tied to a frontier that no longer exists. And while the advancement of technology has certainly played a part in altering our perspective, so have changes in the barriers around us.

***

I have a unique perspective on shifting barriers.

I was born in the fading shadow of the Iron Curtain. The Berlin Wall fell about a month before my second birthday, and the Cold War mentality everyone had lived with for a generation fell with it.

It was a new era. One filled with seemingly endless optimism.

That optimism flowed all the way down to elementary school classrooms. I remember learning about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement in Kindergarten. Although the March on Washington was already 30 years in the past by then, my teachers kept talking about how the future was brighter than ever. They kept mentioning that there would be more opportunities and fewer barriers in our way.

And this was largely true. There was plenty of prosperity and innovation in America during the 1990s. We had a budget surplus for a while, and we quickly integrated the Internet into our lifestyles. An era barricaded by conflict, fear and distrust crumbled, with friendship and reconciliation filling its void.

It seemed that divisiveness would permanently become a relic of the past. Then the Twin Towers fell.

As I struggled to pick up the pieces after 9/11 — my innocence shattered and my heart broken — I noticed something different going on around me. The barriers our society had spent a decade tearing down started to appear all over the place once again.

These new barriers were evident at airports, border checkpoints and sports arenas, of course. But you could also see them in more subtle areas — such as attitudes toward minorities or reactions to abandoned backpack on a park bench. As an era of suspicion took hold, the cultural connections we’d worked so hard to build faded to grayscale.

Although the initial shock and horror of America’s darkest day soon subsided, it quickly became clear that these new barriers were here for the long haul. I remember checking in for a flight in Rome in 2004, only to notice a military sharpshooter perched overhead. It was a terrifyingly normal sight — one that reflected how an initial fear of terrorism had evolved into a societal norm.

This is not to say there haven’t been some barrier-smashing changes over the past 15 years. The invention of the smartphone and the election of a black president are testament to that. But still, it’s clear that the openness of the 1990s is as much a relic of the past as the toy in the Cracker Jack box.

The tide is most certainly rolling in.

***

This all begs one big question:

Are barriers a bad thing?

Some would say the answer is a unilateral yes. But I’d beg them to reconsider.

You see, barriers do have their benefits. They can give us privacy in our bedrooms and bathrooms. Or keep convicts away from their potential victims. Or help us define which plot of land is ours.

These are all worthy causes for boundaries. Necessary ones for our well-being and survival. After all, there is a saying that goes, “Those who wish to abolish all barriers have never spent a night in the rain.”

Still, the act of building barriers can quickly become dangerous. And our actions over the past decade or so have certainly crossed that threshold.

For in our quest to block out the danger of our world, we’ve been building a wall around our heart. And spreading seeds of deceit and distrust throughout our society.

Those seeds have grown into weeds now. They’re causing the divisiveness, anger and angst running wild through our society. They’re slowly tearing our society apart.

It’s high time that we cut these weeds down.

Let’s take some responsibility for what we’re doing to ourselves.  Let’s unchain our hearts and learn to trust each other again. Let’s accept hope and shun fear.

In short, let’s start building a more open future.

That’s a shift in barriers we can all get behind.

 

Holding Back

There’s this thing that Seth Godin does nearly every time he delivers a keynote.

At some point, he’ll ask the everyone in the audience to raise their right hand, as high as they can.

When everyone has complied, he asks the following:

“Now raise it higher.”

Invariably, most of the audience will lift their arm another inch or so in the air. This leads Godin to muse, “Mmm, what’s that about?”

Of course, that’s the point. The exercise serves as visual proof of our propensity to hold a little bit back.

But while Godin goes on to explain how this thinking is a remnant of industrialized society — where we’re taught to leave a bit in reserve in the event someone asks us for more — I think our tentative tendencies go even further.

I think we hold a bit back as a means of self-preservation.

You see, for as much as we idolize those who “go all out,” we’re inherently fearful of the potential dangers that are unlocked by a full effort.

Sure, I could run as fast and as hard as I could, all the time, but then I might blow out my Achilles tendon. And if that happens, how will I get down the stairs? How will I get to work? How will I drive to the supermarket to pick up groceries?

Better to play it safe by holding back.

And this is not just a physical phenomenon. We hold a little back when formulating ideas or supporting causes, all because of the chance we might fail. What we champion might not work or be fully accepted — and if that happens, we better have an exit strategy if we want any chance of saving face.

So yes, holding back is a crucial construct for acceptance and protection. It’s as essential as the governor in a car or the blowout preventer on an oil rig; it shields us from the dangers of flying too close to the sun.

But while there might be valid reasons for avoiding full throttle, must we hold back so much? Protecting ourselves from grave danger is one thing. Insulating ourselves from any sign of disappointment is another.

While we might not like it when things don’t go our way, we must be willing to take some chances. We must summon the courage to give a little more, to devote ourselves something that might not work out.

We shouldn’t be reckless, of course. But we shouldn’t short-circuit our potential on account of our fears either.

After all, life is defined by experiences. And shielding ourselves in a bubble is not living.

So, let’s not permit “What if” block us from exploring “What is.” Let’s open our hearts and our minds to the world.

It’s time to stop holding back.

Order Matters

We live in a turbulent era — a time where order has been challenged. And for good reason. Our most fundamental right — the one that allows us to live — has been challenged by some of those sworn to protect it. And all too often, skin color is at the center of these tragic incidents.

As this grave issue has gained notoriety, related ones have come to light as well. We’ve collectively shown outrage at the blatant inequalities of our justice system, reopened discussions as to how we actually view black and white, and mourned disturbing acts of retributive violence that have rocked our communities.

We’re certainly a polarized nation. If you don’t believe that, look at the varying responses to NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s decision not to stand for the national anthem — a protest coined to shed light on race relations. Most of the support for the move has come from the black community; the white community has been much less forgiving.

Situations like these show our nation’s current predicament. We must fix these societal problems — but we need to do this in a unified, orderly fashion. This is a difficult feat, since there’s a crisis in confidence with our system of order at the moment. But it’s something we must pull off— as a world without order is fraught with danger.

***

I understand this as much as anyone. A short time ago, I went to a college football game in Oklahoma with a friend. Our seats were right next to the Oklahoma student section, and we decided to move over five feet and watch the game with the student body. While I was at first apprehensive about standing on the narrow metal bleachers with the student — especially considering it had just rained — I soon found out I had other concerns to contend with.

Shortly after kickoff, I felt something pushing against my back. It turns out the drunk guy behind me had dropped the cap to his pint of Jack Daniels, and he had knocked into me as he clumsily tried to pick it up. Moderately amused, I turned my attention back to the game. But a few minutes later, I found myself in the line of fire again — as the same guy started jawing with someone a row in front of me. As the argument got more and more heated, my focus for the evening drastically changed. I was no longer worried about watching the football game. I was instead worried about leaving the stadium in one piece.

Unfortunately, my fears soon became reality — although not courtesy of Mr. Jack Daniels. A man two rows above me had been trying to start fights all night. Someone finally obliged, shoving him and sending him flying; the man knocked me down a row as he fell, leaving me with a twisted ankle. When I looked up, he was charging through the crowd throwing haymakers.

It was only at this point that police and security showed up. They ultimately decided not to throw anyone out, but most of the troublemakers left on their own accord, as the game had become a blowout.

***

This experience was eye opening for me. A trip to a football game had become Jungle Law, simply because there was no one around to restore order. The situation was incredibly dangerous — although my minor ankle injury appeared to be the extent of the damage.

Take this scenario outside the walls of a football stadium, and the consequences are even more dire. While I certainly believe that Black Lives Matter and absolute power can corrupt absolutely, it’s clear that a complete lack of order is just as lethal as a corrupted system of order — maybe more. For when ill-meaning characters are allowed to run amok, we are all in the crossfire.

So we must not shun order completely. Instead we must work together to improve our system for everyone. We must ensure not only that innocent people are not victimized, but also that actual troublemakers are held accountable.

Restoring our confidence in order is not a black issue, or a white issue. It’s a gray issue.

It’s a challenge that affects all of us, but it’s one we’re compelled to take on directly.

Let us begin.