Reckless or Righteous

In 1972 Stealers Wheel’s Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan wrote, “Stuck in the Middle with You.”  In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, claimed the song was a parody of Bob Dylan paranoia.  The course says, “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, (but) here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”

The song points out how they had found the exact right spot, and everybody else was wrong.  Good for them. 

In the 1980s, Jerry Seinfeld had a bit in his stand up routine, pointing out how, when you are driving, you consider anybody who drives faster than you to be a maniac, but you think anybody who drives slower than you to be an idiot. 

Since being enlighted by Jerry, I have noticed his comments hit the mark.  It seems all of us believe the speed demons who pass us on the highways of the world will cause people to be injured or die as a result of their recklessness.  At the same time, we all know the slowpokes produce numerous needless crashes as we all slam on our breaks to compensate for their traffic clogging over cautiousness.

I believe I have found the exact right speed to drive.  It maximizes the speed and safety of civic society to coexist and prosper alongside each other.  Please set your cruise control to the exact level of my Tahoe.

The world is moving into a phase—one with masks.  Or maybe one without masks.  

Modern COVID-19 times have many people applying the logic of faster/slower cars on the road to other people’s approaches to our current situation. 

At times you are made to feel you want people to die if you skip wearing a mask or open your business.  While others see people with masks and assume they don’t care about the job loss, or that our government is taking away our civil liberties. 

The situation is obviously much more complicated than the paragraph above. But it is a world with fistfights breaking out because people are told to put on a mask or because they are choosing not to wear a mask.

We tend to give ourselves more credit for being more righteous than our fellow man, while at the same time judging others as reckless because they aren’t complying with our standards.

Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book “Talking to Strangers” does a great job of helping us sort through our current situation.  “Talking to Strangers” lays out the case for understanding others before jumping to conclusions about their actions.  Understanding where people are coming from helps us understand why they are taking the path they are taking.  

I recently served on a panel with a speaker who referred to assuming positive intent as a critical point in all of her interactions.  At Willmar Electric, we agree wholeheartedly with this concept.  It is why we made it an underlining assumption within our company’s published “Meeting Code of Conduct.”

Seinfeld can’t use my example because it would get him booed off the stage. But most COVD-19 rants make me think of his routine from over 30 years ago.  Thirty years from now, I’m sure we will still have issues where each of us believes we have found the perfect balance between the maniacs and the idiots.

Do I Raise the Average

Motivational Speaker Jim Rohn has been credited with coining the phrase, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

Please don’t take Rohn’s advice too literally.  Hanging out with five celebrity chefs isn’t going to make your meals worthy of a cooking show.  Assuming you are open to their suggestions, it should make you a better cook. Of course, it might cause you to add some extra pounds.

Rohn’s concept is so elementary.  If you hang around smart people, you get smarter. 

Spend time with people who lie and cheat, and you will become a better liar and cheater.  Yuck.

Famous Businessman, Philanthropist, and Author W. Clement Stone wrote: “be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.”  Stone is advancing the same logic as Rohn’s.  We become who we spend our time with and our time around.

During this era of sheltering at home, it is much easier for us to figure out who the five people are you spending the most time with.  (Hopefully, you’re figuring out a way to connect with at least five people).

Usually, this type of advice is given to people to encourage them to look at who they are hanging out with and making sure those people are a good influence, and they are helping maximize their potential. 

I think we can all relate.  We have all have had people in our lives we know are a good influence on us and make us better.  We also have all have had people in our lives we know are a bad influence on us and make us worse. 

For just one moment, I would like to challenge you to reverse the logic of Rohn and Stone’s famous quotes.

Ask yourself what influence you are having on the people around you.  Do you raise the level of others?  What are you doing to improve the environments of the people around you?

I realize most of us seldom stop to think about what our specific influence is on the people around us.  Especially if we don’t have something to gain in the short term.  But imagine a world where people thought in those terms more often. Imagine a world where we each focused on being an influence of good.  It would be a much better place to live. 

A true win-win-win.  The person you are influencing wins because you are lifting them.  You win because it feels better to build something than it does to tear something down.  Everybody else wins because the two of you are a positive influence.

As the shelter at home restrictions slowly get removed, and we all get the chance to mingle more with a larger group of people, the world is going to know from the people I spent my time with if I raised or lowered the average of the people around me.

Waiting for Somebody Else to Do the Right Thing.

Later this month, we will cross over the second anniversary of moving into our new house.  We love our new home.  We have loved it since day one. It is located on a local golf course and offers beautiful views of lush green grass and trees. 

The beautiful view was one of the main reasons we build our the house where we did. 

But one piece of frustration has been with us since day one.  A the bottom of our view is a pile of what used to be a barbed-wire fence—mixed in with the barbed wire, is some white piping.  From our dining room window, it looks like trash.

The main reason it looks like trash is because it is trash. 

We complained to the contractor who built our house.  They told us it was part of the golf course the property and we should contact them.

We contacted the golf course several times.  They never got back to us.  I did once see a young groundskeeper who was picking up trash go over to the pile and grab some of the wire.  He quickly pulled his hand back.  I can only assume he found out it was barbed.  Being poked by the pile promptly brought him to the same position the rest of the golf course staff seemed to have about the situation. 

Let’s just leave the pile of trash alone.

We have mentioned it to fellow neighbors.  They always agreed it looked like trash, and they joined us in complaining to the golf course.  But they also didn’t hear back from the golf course. 

Over time rock got placed on top of the fencing materials, and mud washed over it, making the barbered wire get buried in the dirt.  But the eyesore remained. 

It was clear nobody had any plans to get rid of this trash.  The longer it sat, the more it became permanent. 

My wife, Sue, and I thought it was a problem.  We thought somebody should do something about it. 

Our thinking has been it isn’t our problem.  It is somebody else’s problem. It’s not on our land and we didn’t put it there!

But since it only really bugged the two of us and nobody else was taking action, it was our problem.

So this weekend, I put on my leather gloves and a pair of work shoes and set out to see what it would take to move this pile of trash up the hill 50 yards to the construction dumpster on the street.  (The contractor who built our house is building another house nearby).

I moved some rocks and pulled.  It moved the pile slightly. 

I moved some more rocks and pulled some more.  I got more movement.

I repeated the process several more times, and in what seemed like no time, I had the pile moved next to the dumpster.  The victory was ours.  The trash is gone. (The next day the contractor but the trash into the dumpster).

All the time we spent trying to get the “right” people to do the “right” thing and clean up their mess was a waste of time.  We spent hours of our lives complaining to people trying to get the issue cleared up.  When I stopped complaining and went into action mode, it took about ½ hour. 

Have I become a world-class enabler?  Will the golf course start to think I will do their work for them consistently?  No, and doubtful. 

I’m happier, and my view has improved.  I feel kind of foolish.  Why did I let an issue I could solve myself bother me so much?