TIME CANNOT STAND STILL

The earth moves around the sun. If the earth stopped moving around the sun, it would fall into it and burn up.

Hummingbirds are the only birds that can stay aloft without moving forward. All other birds fly forward or fall to earth.

If I do not improve, I regress.

We all have met people who seem to have given up on life. They drag themselves through the day with little joy and seem to get almost nothing out of their day. For them, time seems to be standing still.

When we observe these people we are tempted to console ourselves with some thought like, "at least they are not getting any worse." They are getting worse.

Time does not stand still. Neither does the earth even though we do not feel it moving. Neither do birds. Even the hummingbird can only hover for a short period of time. Eventually, it must move forward or it will fall.

If I do not improve, I regress. The same goes for you. The same goes for everyone.

Improvements do not need to be very big to be significant. In fact, almost all success is an accumulation of very small improvements. Think about all the things you have done in life. How many resulted in a dramatic change in who you are and what you do? Very few. Maybe none.

But I am not the person I was when I was born. Neither am I the person I was when I started school, or when I got my first job, or when I was fired from my job for the first time, or when… Name a point in time. I am not the person I was then. Neither are you. Neither is anyone else.

Living is about changing. The change can be for the better or it can be for the worse. But we all change constantly.

If you are not moving up, you are falling. The only way to stop falling is to grab something or someone and pull. If you are not falling too fast, you may get by with a small pull. If you are falling faster, you will need to pull harder. Sometimes you will be falling so fast, you will not have the strength to stop your fall on your own. Do not be afraid to grab onto me. When the time comes, you can be assured that I will grab onto you. Even if that time never comes, you can be assured that I have grabbed onto other people when I needed to.

EDUCATION

More education is usually, but not always, better.

I was reading an article about the probability that a new business will succeed. According to the article, the more education the entrepreneur has, the higher the likelihood that his business will succeed except at the doctoral level. Having a Ph.D. does not increase the likelihood of success. In fact, it decreases the likelihood that a new business will succeed.

At first I was startled by this finding. I know that I learned a lot during my doctoral program, and I am certain that others also learn a lot in the process of earning a doctoral degree. Why was more education worse than nothing, at least in this regard?

After reflecting on the matter, I am no longer surprised. Learning so much about one discipline of study really has two parts. First, the person learns so much about that discipline of study. Second, the person learns to evaluate almost everything from the perspective of that discipline. Knowing more about one particular discipline is not the problem. Looking at an issue from the perspective of the law, or psychology, or history, or whatever discipline means seeing only one small aspect of the issue. This narrow perspective makes it easier to understand the issue from THAT perspective but HARDER to understand the issue from many other perspectives that are as important or more important.

An entrepreneur must see a problem from many perspectives. To see things from many perspectives, he must have a wide range of knowledge and a wide variety of experiences. Too much knowledge in one area or too many experiences of one type interferes with evaluating an issue broadly.

While this may be most true about an entrepreneur, it is also true to a great extent about all managers and even about all people. Life throws many issues at us. A specialist must evaluate professional issues from the narrow perspective of his professional discipline. Nevertheless, a specialist who evaluates nonprofessional issues from the narrow perspective of his profession is making a significant mistake.

When I am home, I am not a psychologist. When my children have issues (they still do even though they are essentially "all grown up"), I should not and do not evaluate their issues from the perspective of a psychologist. Frequently, my job is to evaluate their issues from the perspective of "Pop." Sometimes, my job is to evaluate their issues from the perspective of an impartial person. At other times, my job is to butt out completely. (Now that I think about it, that is the best approach almost all of the time.)

More education is better than less education provided that it helps us view the many types of problems that we each face from the many different perspectives. Viewing every issue from the same narrow perspective, no matter how knowledgeable you are about that perspective, interferes with good problem solving.

MOURNING

Mourning is for the benefit of the living, not the departed.

Every culture has a series of practices to mark the departure of a loved one from this world. These practices are generally referred to as "rites of mourning" or simply as "mourning."

In some cultures, mourning involves a lot of crying and other behaviors generally associated with venting grief. These cultures seem to believe that grief has to come out one way or the other. Better to get it right out in the open from the start. In other cultures, mourning involves a lot of partying and other behaviors generally associated with countering grief. These cultures recognize the pain that is associated with grief and try to redirect it into more pleasant emotions. A little grief may be OK, but let's prevent it from getting out of hand by having some fun. A few cultures stress "maintaining a stiff upper lip." They do not seem to want to recognize grief as a genuine human experience at all. Better to suppress it, and continue with our lives as if nothing has changed.

The common denominator of all these practices is "grief." We either accentuate it, counter it, or suppress it. But we always do something with it when a loved one departs from this world.

But what are we all grieving about? Almost everyone believes that the departed person has gone to a better place. If we believe this, we should be happy for the person. If a person does not believe in the afterlife, he should still be happy when a loved one passes on. After all, a person's suffering in this world stops once he passes on. Why are we not happy about the end of this person's suffering?

If we looked at the situation strictly from the point of view of the person who has passed on, I believe that we would be happy for the person. But we do not look at the situation from the viewpoint of the departed. We look at the situation from our own viewpoint. When a loved one leaves this world, he leaves us behind. Our lives continue but without the comfort and support that the departed person had provided us in the past. When someone dies, he may go to a better place, but we do not. Where we remain becomes a little more difficult to bear because of our loss.

Mourning is for the living, not for the departed. At its best, it brings people together based on their common bonds with the departed person. These old bonds no longer function in the same way that they functioned in the past. No matter what we do, we cannot bring anyone back. But we can forge new bonds with the people with whom we share our mourning. These new bonds may never make up for our loss, but they can make our current experiences easier to bear. At the very least, sharing the grief spreads it around and makes my share (and yours) a little lighter to carry.

TRUTH

One man's truth is another man's lie.

People seem to be able to convince themselves of almost anything. We see this on a grand scale almost every time we open the newspaper or watch the news on television. In one article we read about the scandals concerning child molestation in high places. In another article we read about an international organization composed of men who dedicate their lives to helping young boys come to terms with their early sexuality. (That is another way of saying that this organization has as its core value the early initiation of boys into sexual activities with mature men.) No doubt some of the members of this organization join because of the "benefits" of membership. These members almost certainly recognize that what they are preaching is a grand lie. The core membership, however, seems to be sincerely convinced that their goals are highly admirable even if they are totally misunderstood and rejected by most people.

I believed that we had seen the ultimate expression of this grand lie when we started to learn about homicide bombers who kill as many of their enemies as possible by blowing themselves up in highly populated places. These people sincerely believe that the grievances they have against their enemies are so strong that blowing up a bus of schoolchildren is fully justified. While this is certainly an extreme form of an enormous lie expressed as a righteous truth, I have no doubt that the future will reveal even grander lies that some people believe to be absolute truth.

We need not limit our discussion of this type of lie to such extreme examples. On a daily basis, we see people justify behavior that to us cannot possibly be justified. Psychologists identified this phenomenon decades ago and gave it a grand name, "cognitive dissonance." According to this theory, once a person behaves several times in a way that is "dissonant" (not in agreement) with his beliefs, he must either change his behavior or change his beliefs. All too often, what used to be an obvious "lie" becomes a fully justified "truth."

How can we avoid this all too common human failing? Doing so is very difficult. Being fully aware of the consequences our actions have on others is a prime requisite for avoiding this serious problem. Whenever we try to justify a behavior that we will benefit from we must ask ourselves who will be hurt by this behavior. We must also carefully weigh what we stand to gain against what others stand to lose. We may not always like the answer we get when we are really truthful with ourselves.