THE ONLY TOOL

May 15th, 2018

Our most powerful tool is not an answer. 

The most powerful tool is a question, and our brain’s ability to form and apply questions is our greatest attribute as a species. 

What?

How?

Why?

Often the real genius of this tool is when it’s applied to itself, as in: is this the best question we can ask? Is there a better question that is more helpful? In this way, our greatest tool can be used like an ax that sharpens itself.

Take the Rubix Cube as an example. It’s widely considered a sign of intelligence for anyone who can solve it. The feat appears almost magical when it is finally completed. Like pouring out a bag of scrabble pieces and watching a sonnet appear.

How is the Rubix Cube solved?

A fair question.

But is it a useful question?

Inevitably, that question would involve tracking the position and orientation of 26 cubic pieces relative to each other with 54 colored faces. For the average person this is far beyond our telephone-number-sized memory.

What is a better question?

Well, that first question had too big of an answer. This is one way to analyze a question. How big and complicated is the answer? Most often it's like Thanksgiving Dinner where our eyes are much bigger than our stomachs. In this case the question begs an answer we cannot fathom.  We need a smaller problem, a more narrow question. We need to take smaller bites.

Can the question be downsized to arrive at a smaller answer – a more manageable answer?

This might be a useful question. And notice it is a question applied to the first question.

How about starting with just one side of the Rubix Cube?

This is often how it goes. People retreat from the 3 dimensions of the Rubix cube to just 1 dimension, and look to solve just one color (9 out of 54 faces).

Getting one side to have all one color is not terribly hard. And this is where progress stagnates. . . this is where most people abandon the puzzle.

But Why? 

After one side is ‘done’, there’s the realization that none of this face's adjoining edges match up correctly.

Suddenly the effort of accomplishing one side seems unproductive and we are back at square one faced with 3 dimensions of confusion.

This is the crucial point where people usually give up, and it is because the right question has still not been asked.

The mistake is jumping from the one dimension back to three dimensions.

What about just 2 dimensions?

What does that mean? What would that look like?

Well, what if we attempt to solve one side as before, but this time do so with the aim of having just one edge – just three of the faces on an adjoining side –  have the correct corresponding colors. I.E. Solve the whole white side with just three of the red faces lined up that share an edge with the white side, so at the end of this tiny exercise 12 of the 54 faces look like they are in the right position.

This is jumping from 1 dimension to just 2 dimensions.

Notice how much more specific and detailed this question is.  It does not jump from 9 colored squares to 54, it jumps only 3, from 9 to 12.

Increasing the specificity of a question often yields a more useful answer. It helps break down a problem into manageable parts. And if it is still too difficult to answer, it must be broken down further.

Perhaps one edge is too much. What about a full side and just two corresponding red faces that match up? Or just one? And then two.

Can this strategy then be reapplied to the other edges of the white side?  So that we end up with the top level of the rubix cube being solved.  I.E. the whole white side and the 3 colors on the adjoining edges, red, green, orange and blue?  If we can move in the way, we go from 9 colored squares to 12, to 15, to 18 to 21.

Might the small differences between strategies for each edge create a familiarity with how each dimension of problem solving affects the next? Could the principles deduced from these smaller exercises be one of the keys to getting the very last face into place? Absolutely.

Likewise, the best teachers do not simply profess the best answers. Rather, they ask the better questions. Nor do they dodge questions for which they have no answer. Instead they use these as points of departure to further explore their topic and improve their expertise. And if a teacher gets excited about a question for which they have no answer, you know you have a winner.

Indeed, if Curiosity were a superhero, the ‘question’ is certainly the lightsaber it carries.

But as with any tool, our mastery of it requires constant use, constant practice and training, because a tool is only as useful as the person who wields it.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: CHANGE OF SCENERY

May 14th, 2018

When Lucilius was 170 years old, he was living in a cave, meditating for 15 hours a day. He had been at this practice for many years and was perfectly content, finding the exploration from that seat unending and expanding.

One day, while Lucilius was meditating, two figures entered his cave. They were clad in black armor made from interlocking titanium plates. Their helmets shown only as black mirrors curved before their unseen faces. In unison they approached Lucilius and as he opened his eyes to greet them, they hoisted him up by his arms and dragged him out of his cave. 

He was thrown in the back of a small armored craft where he stayed as the figures loaded into the cockpit and the craft ascended. 

After some time, the craft landed and Lucilius was taken from the holding bay. The craft was in a building now and Lucilius was lead through a series of halls until he was guided into a large room. It was a courtroom of sorts from what Lucilius could tell. But he had been at his practice of meditation for so long that he no longer knew the language, nor indeed how people communicated since the entire proceeding appeared to happen in absolute silence. The figure central in the room, whom Lucilius thought might be a judge of some sort, wore a similar helmet that curved like a black mirror before the person’s face. The figure lifted an iron gavel, dropped it quickly, and the same figures who had brought Lucilius pulled him away from the room and lead him back to the craft in which they’d brought him.

Lucilius could feel the small pressure of lifting off and then again as the craft accelerated away, and after some time again, they landed and took Lucilius from the holding bay. They had landed atop a massive compound with no windows or distinguishing marks of any kind. All Lucilius could make out about the building before they entered was that it seemed to be made in a repetitive manner with the same large basic structure, so that the building could grow infinitely, if only another like piece was added to it’s sprawling configuration.

Inside, Lucilius was led down a long hall lined with door after door. None had windows, only a small number affixed in the center. And it was silent. Lucilius could hear nothing aside from the light foot falls of himself and the figures guiding him. They slowed and stopped before a door which opened with a hiss, and silently swung wide as if by a careful and invisible hand. The figures pushed Lucilius into the small cell and behind him the door swiftly swung shut and clicked. 

Lucilius looked at the four walls and smiled. He sat in the center and was positioning himself when an unseen panel in one of the walls opened and a bowl of steaming vegetables emerged on a retractable shelf. 

Lucilius ate the delicious food, looking at the perfect craftsmanship of the surfaces of his cell. He placed the bowl back on the board, which retreated back into the wall and vanished as the panel replaced itself.

He settled down in his posture, smiled, and began to meditate once more.

120 years prior to this, Lucilius was filled with compassion for a woman who was miserable having been forced to wait an additional 5 minutes in a waiting room. The day preceding this miserable existence, Lucilius had seen the same woman sitting in much the same way in a cafe, doing nothing.

THE SELFISH PARADOX

May 13th, 2018

When aboard an airplane, we are told: place the mask on yourself before you turn to aid others. 

This even extends to your own children!

And yet how many use the reason of others, of children, spouses, friends, needy strangers, coworkers and the demands of a boss to ignore what we need first, foremost and before spreading whatever generosity we can?

It is difficult, emotionally, and even counter-intuitive, to sacrifice the loud obvious need of someone else in order to tend to the needs of one’s own.

But a well rested mind. Good nutrition and exercise. All of these things that may feel selfish in the short term are long term benefits in our quest to be of good use to others. 

Helping someone else at the detriment of one’s self is a zero-sum game.

We want a non-zero sum game. Meaning that both benefit when all is said and done. We want both ourselves and others to be in a better position after all is said and done.

The issue is often a problem of order. ‘Placing others before one’s self’ is often taken too literally, with nothing left over for one’s self.

Putting our most important needs first is not selfish.

It generates a greater ability to aid those around us. 

By serving ourselves first, we can be of greater benefit to those we love and care for.

Notice the precarious balance here. So easy is it that this might slip into down right selfishness. The bad kind.

Best to err on the side of caution? Just throw our needs out the window in favor of tending to those of others, so that when all is said and done, we might play the martyr card. This outcome might broadcast as a noble one, but it’s still not the outcome we genuinely wish for.

Best to walk the harder path, that tightrope: with abject selfishness on one side and abject selflessness on the other.

We must take a bite of the bread first, so we might walk the extra mile down the line, where even more hungry people wait.

TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT, MANY DO

May 12th, 2018

How many times have you been wrong?

During your whole life. And not just the obvious basics like the answer to that third calculus problem on the final in High school. How many times have you been wrong regarding anything?

Placing that left foot the first time you tried to walk? Fumbling the sound when you tried to say ‘Mom’ for the first time. (or the 1,000^th time) The pronunciation of the word “whale” when you first tried to read it. . .

Is a big reason that little kids are cute because of how they fail? Without shame. Without embarrassment. With total willingness. How cute. Complete abandon, completely relaxed. . . No fucks given.

Do we laugh and smile because they are cute?

Or do we laugh and smile out of embarrassment for ourselves? That we have lost that ability? To experiment shamelessly. To try and understand the world without guilt, without embarrassment?

How much could be learned from what has been forgotten?

So often we should bolster more confidence when we feel fear. So often we should assume humility when we feel confidence.

What can we learn from kids?

This: You’re not going to get it right. Not until you’ve done it wrong many –probably, many, many times.

So go ahead. Make a mistake.

It just might turn out to be the right thing to do.

It’ll be cute.

ME-TIME

May 11th, 2018

Compare:

The café goer, just settling in, holding a nice hot cup of coffee still steaming, laptop just getting propped open, or book thumbed open to a page, or just watching people come and go. Smiling.

The barista. In the same place. Steaming some milk that will definitely take a good 25-30 seconds, stressing about all the other orders that need to be made after. Aggravated that nothing else can be done during that 25-30 seconds, except holding the stupid froth tin.

They are in the same place. Strange how a place of leisure can be so stressful.

During that short time, nothing can be done about the impending orders. So why think about them? In that moment, the barista is just a person, in a nice coffee shop, holding a hot cup.

It’s a missed opportunity for me-time.

We cannot control the slings and arrows that come our way. 

We can control how we look at them. 

We can control how they affect us.

This morning as I waited for my coffee in a busy café, I noticed all the stressed workers, taking orders, running food, taking cash, scurrying from ingredient to ingredient. Wide-eyes and taut voices. 

And then.

A barista, steaming some milk. Quietly smiling to herself. 

Perhaps she was thinking about a great date she’d had the night before.

Perhaps she’d just reached a goal. 

Perhaps an old friend had just reached out to tell her how much she was missed.

Or.

Maybe. Unlike her co-workers,

She was enjoying the simple fact that she is in control of how the things around her affect her. And at it’s most basic: she was just enjoying some time, in a nice café, holding a hot steaming cup. Smiling.