Overwhelming Good

Everyone is minding their own business. It’s Sunday night, and Sargent dining hall is crowded. Seats are hard to come by, empty tables even more rare. Each table is a world unto itself, independent and self-sufficient, casually ignoring the rest of the universe.

But suddenly there’s something that begins to catch the eyes of the worlds. It may have been the tall, lanky European fellow and the solid Hispanic figure marching back and forth between the CCI back room and the main dining area. Nobody does that. If they’re going to eat in Sargent, they pick a place and stay there. Or maybe it was the furtive looks coming from the table, excitedly occasionally pointing at the CCI private room, or extended necks peering around the dining hall, checking the presence of any potential predator. Or maybe it was the two backpacks brought in, handed to the Hispanic guy, who unzipped the very top of the backpack, looked in, and then began to laugh. Maybe that caught their attention.

Regardless, by the time the five people at the table stood up, in sync with three others from
around the dining hall, and marched back to the CCI room, inquisitive and excited murmurs spread throughout the main dining hall. Who were these people, and why were they not following the standard norms of dining hall procedure? Two walked to the back of the CCI private room, four hovered around the middle of the room, and two stood by the large open sliding doors connecting the CCI room to the rest of the dining area. By now, most of the tables in the dining hall had someone glancing or watching interestedly the thing that was undoubtedly about to go down.

The lights in the CCI room suddenly were extinguished. Loud music thumped into existence, and a strobe light appeared from one of the backpacks. The two at the door grabbed the handles and slid together the sliding doors quickly enough that everyone with half a shred of interest was now half-standing in the main dining area, trying to peek into the obviously under-attack private room.

Within the CCI room, a dance party was under way. The eight, and a ninth and tenth that
appeared from the main dining area, began to jump up and down and dance to the techno music with the strobe light. The fifty people or so who were previously in the middle of scarfing down their meat loaf and undercooked string beans in the CCI room took pause to evaluate what was going on around them.

But here is where things did not happen as they could have. Rather than join the painfully
obvious party going on, rather than dance even in the anonymity of darkness, not a single person stood up. Most turned and watched the celebratory dancing (although the cause for celebration was still rather a mystery). Even more surprising, however, was that some people even refused to acknowledge that anything was different. They continued to eat, staring straight forward, ignoring all changes in their environment. Amidst the loud whispers of “What is this?” and “What’s going on?”, one student, fork in hand, solely acknowledged that anything was different by asking one of the dancers to “please
get this away from me”, referring to the strobe light set down on his table, facing away from him.

Within minutes, the song came to a close. The lights turned on, the strobe light and speakers disappeared into backpacks, the CCI room doors slid open, and the ten nonchalantly walked back to their seats in the dining area. It was over as quickly as it had begun.

This week in my role as SafeRide Coordinator for Northwestern University, I had to deliver news of the results of our most recent hiring round to all the pending applicants.  Thirty-three people applied for eight positions.  In other words, the application process was extremely competitive; we had many qualified candidates apply.

Per usual, each applicant went through a two-interview process (one “driving interview” and one interview with a dispatcher), and based on the results and feedback from those interviews, I would work with the dispatchers to gradually narrow the applicant pool, cutting those who performed below par.  Of course, it quickly became very difficult once we had trimmed the initial group of applicants.  We realized we would have to be extremely selective with this group–we would not be able to hire anyone with any outstanding driving issues… and after that was completed, we still weren’t able to hire everyone left.  It became a question of “who would be the best person for the job at SafeRide” rather than the initial question of “who wouldn’t be terrible?”.

The last several rounds were a struggle, though.  At some point in the interview, I give applicants the opportunity to give their own reasons for why they should be hired, and the results of that question brought an interesting dilemma that reminded me quite a bit of the debate between the natures of non-profits and for-profit corporations.  Although many applicants extolled their potential contributions to the position, several noted their financial need for the job.  And as I cut out those who didn’t express their potential contributions, I couldn’t help but question myself:  was this the right thing?

Although I treated SafeRide like a for-profit corporation, only acting in the interests of the performance of the organization, I wondered about the merits of incorporating a broader idea of social good into the hiring process.  It was obvious to me that many very qualified applicants didn’t have a particular need for the job (or, at least, it certainly wasn’t apparent if they did), while some were careful to explain how important it was for them to attain the position.  I shrugged some off as pressure tactics, but I felt that some of these pleas were more genuine than others; where was I to draw the line?  Could I make a case for those who “needed” the job, that they might perform better because of their need?

In the end, I hired only those who demonstrated a high level of performance in their interview, but I can’t help but wonder if I’m missing a piece of the greater puzzle.

These past few weeks, I keep finding myself in situations where I’m forced to reconsider my law school aspirations. I don’t think I’m quite ready to give a definitive answer on all the issues surrounding that (e.g. is it worth it giving up being a client-serving attorney if you end up just working for someone else in some other field?), but I have been thinking a lot about one aspect of the reason why I’ve long had the desire to become an attorney: Negotiation.

When I was a whopping three years old (or maybe I was five—my parents will have to do some fact-checking), I was at a family reunion for Christmas where my cousin Travis had just gotten a brand new tricycle. Travis was pedaling around, laughing and carrying on, while I glowered on the sidelines. Travis wasn’t letting me ride his tricycle. I went crying to my dad, “Daddy, Daddy! Travis won’t let me ride his tricycle!” My dad patiently told me, “You need to negotiate with Travis.” And when, a few minutes later, my dad came to check and see how we were doing, Travis and I were happily taking turns riding the trike, as happy as could be.

From a very young age, expertly negotiating my way into win-win solutions has been something I’ve worked to develop.  And slowly but surely, I’m improving.

Last summer, I enrolled in a three-day Institute on Negotiation through NU, where I was introduced to several key negotiation techniques, the most stand-out being “interest-based” negotiation.  The idea behind interest-based negotiation is that people have varying motives for their stated end-goal desires.  Rather than working in direct opposition to each other, if you evaluate the underlying reasons for why each negotiating party wants a particular thing, then it’s often possible to find a creative solution to meet both needs more effectively than otherwise.  But besides seminars and formal instruction, I think I’ve shaped my experiences to include negotiation whenever possible.

When I had broken up with a girlfriend who I had plane tickets to go see (and I certainly didn’t want to go there at that point), I spent 30 minutes on the phone with a few representatives at American Airlines to work my way out of paying the $100 fee to change my flight, all because they had changed the arrival time of my return flight by six minutes.

Another realm that’s given me plenty of negotiation practice has been an online game I’ve played on and off for the past five years.  Earth:Empires is a game where each player manages a country’s production, finances, governance, and military actions.  Countries are often aligned to create large alliances that function as a single negotiating unit; for the past year and a half, I’ve been managing an alliance of about 40 people, where I’ve practiced dealing with everything from the fallout and later, restitution, of a rogue member to navigating a complex web of entangling alliances to achieve growth and other motives.  Balancing the needs of the particular members of the alliance, the interest of my own alliance, and what’s best for the game has been an interesting challenge.  I’ve learned a lot about framing through my experiences with LCN.  When trying to convince someone to take action, I’ve found much more success by obliquely introducing potential consequences before asking for a particular action.  Getting a “No” response before getting the opportunity to give reason for your stance definitely has a weakening effect on your negotiating stance.  I’ve also noticed much more success when I leave the decision-making up to the other party.  By framing the potential choices (or, even better, finding a way for the other party to come up with the choices) that ALL meet your needs at the very outset of discussion of solutions, the other party feels empowered to make the decision and is thus happier for it, even though he or she may not have initially been as satisfied with that particular solution.

Beyond particular experiences, I think I’ve always been a very empathetic individual.  When, my senior year, I took a course on Decision-Making and the entire class took a test of our empathy levels, scored on a scale of 1-100 (0-50 being not empathetic, 50 being of moderately high empathy, 100 being extremely/always empathetic), everyone ended up with a score in the range of 20-54.  Except me.  I scored an 84.

Law school is often said to teach you how to “think differently”, like an attorney.  I’m not sure what the “secret sauce” is that they provide, but I’m realizing that, regardless of my career path, perfecting the art of negotiation is something I can continue to develop and pursue, on my own and through my personal experience.

It’s been a heck of a while since I’ve been on a schedule like this.  I think the last time was actually my junior year of high school, when I had to be at school every morning at 6:30am so I could snag a good parking spot before going to orchestra rehearsal at 7.  And for those of you who know me well, this is definitely out far from ordinary.  Throughout college, I’ve often been known as the one who is awake at bizarre or otherwordly hours.  During my junior year of college, I was a head “Community Assistant” for several residence halls.  There were two head CAs in my area, myself and Rachel.  Rachel would get up at 5 or 6am every day; between the two of us, we’d have 24-hour coverage.  If an incident went down at 4am, I’d be awake to deal with it, then I’d hand over the information to Rachel when she got up, and she’d handle the administrative follow-up through the morning while I slept.  My sleep schedule would fluctuate rapidly across all hours of the day and night.  This week, however, I’ve found myself sleeping from 9 or 10pm until 5 or 6am.

Why the sudden and drastic change?

I think it’s because of the law of unintended consequences.  You see, at Probity we decided last week to try something new to keep each other productive and accountable.  We decided that, in addition to our weekly Saturday a.m.  meetings, we would do a “stand-up” meeting (something out of the Agile Web Development community) where we would each give a brief status update.  Each member, each day prior to the meeting, come up with three to five tasks to do that day.  Each of us would give a status update (complete or incomplete and why) on our tasks from the previous day, and then would list our tasks for the upcoming day, as well as any potential barriers foreseen.  We do a fifteen-minute conference call for all of this, and if a member doesn’t call in on time, or hasn’t come up with their tasks or updated us on why they are incomplete, then consequences ensue, as Neal has discussed in one of his blog posts (although the rules are slightly updated now).  This wasn’t so bad, until we decided on the time for our daily meetings:  7:30 am.

Every day.  Without exception.  7:30am meeting.  Now, this caused a funny thing to happen.  My sleep schedule when we started this included me going to sleep at about 4:30am or 5:00am.  Less than ideal, I know, but it is what it is.  My natural solution to this was, of course, to stay up until the end of our meetings.  A.k.a. go to bed at 8:00am.  I’d sleep after the meeting.  Our “five things” daily stand-up effort started off pretty well.  No problems, and being the competitive person I am, I made sure never to miss the meeting or miss updating my tasks.

But I am devious.  I found a way to procrastinate.  Although I could get my tasks done during the evening (the time that I normally work), in my ceaseless effort to do things at the last-minute, I decided to sleep instead.  I could put off my tasks to the mere hours before our 7:30am meeting!  So that’s what I did.  My infinite capacity for procrastination allowed me to make myself fall asleep at 9pm so that I could get up at 5am to complete my tasks.

Now here’s where it gets serendipitous.  I started enjoying doing work in the morning.  It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten up this early regularly, but the memory surfaced that I actually enjoyed being productive through the sunrise.  I felt good about what I was doing.  And what’s more, is even after our meetings finished around 8:00am, I was still feeling productive.  So I’d keep on working.  I’d keep getting things done, knocking out my tasks for the day in the morning.

And I’m on a regular sleep schedule.

In the morning.

Maybe you don’t know me that well, so you might not be as shocked as some others to hear how strange this is for me.

Paul David.

The mornings.

Doing work.

Sleeping regularly.

Weird windfalls.

…Weird.

A productivity measure led to procrastination which led to productivity.  Go figure.

Sure, I’ve been to thirty-four of the fifty United States, but that doesn’t stop my friends from being surprised when they find out I haven’t ever been out of the country, that I don’t even have a passport.

“Why does that surprise you?” I ask.

“You seem… worldly,” comes the response.

I wasn’t really sure what to make of that the first time I heard it.  I mean, I understood it as a compliment, but I didn’t know why I was on the receiving end of it.  At first I thought it might be because of the languages I’d been taking in school–by the time I was a sophomore in college, I’d taken seven years of French, three of German, two of Mandarin, and two of Spanish.  I thought, maybe that gave me some sort of leg-up in the worldliness department, as “worldliness” I assumed had some sort of inherent relationship with familiarity with cultures abroad.  But as I travel through a period of intensified self-reflection as I write personal statements and prepare for law school interviews, I am beginning to think that my “worldliness”, as others see it, has other origins.  Two elements of my personality come to mind: humility and respect.

I believe humility has been a significant element in my upbringing, as well as something that has developed over the course of my friendships growing up.  I grew up in an upper-middle class family in a very, very affluent neighborhood.  The benefits were numerous.  Not only did I get the benefits of education from a world-class school system, but I also learned how to manage the concept of “not having” when so many others “had”.  My parents worked extremely hard to give Jesse and I our high standard of living, and it was obvious by how hard they worked the value of the lives we had.  I cannot remember a time when my parents didn’t both have multiple jobs or occupations, and after work time was filled by projects and ventures; rare was time or effort wasted.  I watched my parents put themselves through school at the same time to better their positions and themselves.  And although one might assume that expensive luxuries come easily from the number of BMWs and Mercedes driven by my peers to our high school, I came to the realization very quickly that that is far from a given.  Unlike the other kids who were given expensive cars on their 16th birthdays, my parents wisely chose to give me a key to our gardener’s-style truck (complete with chipped paint and a slightly-rusted lumber rack!) on my 17th birthday.  The key was taped to the inside of my birthday card, which was printed with the caveat: “We are not giving you the truck, but we are entrusting you with a key to it, to be used with our permission and following the rules we have set forth for safe driving practices…”  The provisions continued for another 15 lines, including limits on number of hours I could drive, etc.  Most complicated birthday card ever.  Either way, I embraced the gift, and promptly duct-taped some battery powered speakers to the dashboard so I could plug in my portable CD player to replace the broken stereo system.  And while I watched others squander their fancy new cars in fender-benders and worse, I cherished the gift bequeathed to me.  I realized that, regardless of how standards might be different across families, individuals, and communities, the value of a thing lies not in its monetary cost, but rather the worth assigned to it by its owners.  My parents had shared with me a valuable tool and had thereby risked their hard-earned personal investment, and that carried significant weight to me.

Humility developed more as my friendships changed through my younger years.  After my closest friend moved away in third grade, I never was particularly close with any of my friends until I finally was rejected by my “friends” in tenth grade, and started hanging out with a new group who accepted me as I was.  After being browbeaten by being kept at arm’s length for so long, I learned to recognize the value in true friendships.  I found meaning in the deeper connections some people ventured to make with me.

Respect came most notably from Judo/Aikido and my church.  Starting Judo at a fairly young age and graduating into Aikido, everyday practices reinforced notions of respect.  From saying “hello” and “goodbye” when entering and leaving the dojo, to bowing as one stepped onto and off of the tatami mats, to bowing with a “please” and “thank you” with each new practice partner, to cleaning the mats after every practice, respect was an integral part of the routine from an early age.  But beyond the obvious, respect was intrinsically intertwined with many of the ideas we practiced in the dojo.  Every time an opponent was thrown, special care was given to make sure the opponent’s head would never hit the ground with any force.  When talking about the possibility of real-life altercations, we were never to become egotistical about our abilities; in fact, our teacher often encouraged us to avoid sharing our martial arts experience.  If a fight were to break out, we were to never underestimate our opponents.  Whether the opponent be skinny or fat, short or tall, there were always certain advantages and disadvantages to be applied; taking someone at face value–not having respect for their potential to cause harm–could easily end in trouble.

Church was another source of learning respect.  Although I don’t consider myself particularly religious in terms of spirituality or the more “mystic”/ritualistic senses of religion, I took the lessons about being a good person very much to heart.  Regardless of lifestyle or credo, our ministers always emphasized treating others as well as one were capable.  One particularly salient sermon that resonated powerfully with me incorporated our preacher extolling the virtues of pursuing the greater good beyond simply picking the right religion.  ”If I were born in India, and my parents were Hindu, then I’d probably be a Hindu, too,” he said.  ”And there’s nothing manifestly wrong with that.”

With humility helping me to recognize value in unexpected places, my eyes were opened to be able to respect a broader spectrum.  I don’t think that fluency in languages, or even particular knowledge of a different culture can give me the distinction of being “worldly”.  I think the meaning of the word really harkens to the humility of ignorance–I understand that experiences are different and unequal on a surface level–and the respect to understand that, although practices may be different, they still hold value, and, above all, every person has worth.

When I started college, I knew I wanted to be a Philosophy major.  After late in high school discovering that being a Linguistics major didn’t actually mean learning lots of languages, I decided that learning to engage in discourse and–at least–in one language learn the art of argumentation was the next best thing, hence, Philosophy.

My first introduction to the subject were “History of Philosophy” courses, mostly focused on ancient philosophy.  I was fascinated by the Socratic method as I read through Plato’s dialogues; although I was familiar with the idea of question-and-answer to reach new conclusions, it was a completely different beast to watch the personage of Socrates leap off the page as he made Athens denizens rethink their lives in Plato’s masterful stories.  I was thrilled with my major–I knew that I would love this type of dialogue, constantly reexamining our existence and considering different viewpoints in an all-encompassing journey towards truth, fulfillment, and happiness.

Until I started realizing what a Philosophy major really was.

Some–or perhaps I should say very few–of my Philosophy courses at Northwestern were what I had expected.  With rare exception (my Bioethics course, a class on Stoicism, and one class on Socrates), a major in Philosophy doesn’t actually mean learning the practice of philosophy.  A major in Philosophy really (apparently) means the STUDY of philosophy.  It’s not the love of (phil-) wisdom (-sophy).  It’s the -ology (study of) other people’s love of wisdom.  It’s as if one does not become a philosopher with a Philosophy major; one becomes a philosophologist.  Bizarre, right?  I realized, in course after course, that the professors were not looking for original ideas, nor were they looking for critical thinking skills.  Over and over I got the impression that all the good ideas had either already been thought up, or they were much too complex to originate in a simpleton undergraduate mind.  My Philosophy major was suddenly a History-Classics major, and over and over it made me wonder:  Why is it that we are so reluctant to allow open, free thinking about our own lives?  Why must we place everything in the context of another’s writing?  I wanted to debate problems of the past, present, and future, and think critically about how to improve our lives, not be forever stuck in the past and a single man or group’s singular viewpoint.  Every paper was expected to be primarily focused on regurgitating dead people’s ideas–analysis in lieu of critical thinking.  When I tried to share my own viewpoints, I could expect my grade reflect the choice: much lower than pure analysis.  God forbid we actually do some philosophizing, some thinking for ourselves without the context of another’s writing.

So how did we get to this point?  Where and when did we replace creativity and exploration with rote and categorization?  It seems that inquiry, instead of directly targeting the unknown, now is merely an exercise in repetition.  I rue the Philosophy professors who always have “the right answer”.  It’s a real travesty–instead of training students to be free thinkers, those professors have inculcated a paranoia of having “the wrong answer” among their students, creating minions who seek approval rather than truth.  Even those who are bullheaded enough to continue their free thinking are negatively affected (and I count myself among them!); we find ourselves missing out on valuable feedback from those who would help us clarify our thoughts after being trained to ignore the criticisms of the “Everything-Has-Already-Been-Discovered” camp.  It was really disappointing to find that for the vast majority, the only place where one could find new, current developments being made in philosophy (and even those made by “professionals”, not students) were in the convoluted realms of meta-philosophy like Reference (When I say “the sun”, am I referring to the actual object, or my idea of what “the sun” is, or your idea of what “the sun” is, or what I think your idea of “the sun” is, or what I think you think my idea of “the sun” is?) or others that seem to be centered more around making up long and complicated-sounding words than actually coming up with anything actionable.

I still cherish one of my early Philosophy courses, “The Philosophy of Socrates”, where the goal of the class was to try to figure out what Socrates’ philosophy really was.  Socrates never wrote anything himself, so all we have of him is secondhand from Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes, whose writings were each influenced by their own philosophy.  The goal of the course, under the apt direction of our professor, was to attempt to create a caricature of a person’s mind and ideas.  There is, of course, a “right” answer, but there was no possible way for us to know.  Thus, it was an exercise in true critical thinking–each of us in the class had to creatively draw conclusions and defend them, and the professor created an answer-key-free environment.  Looking to the professor for answers yielded, instead of disapproving looks of “you’re wrong”, shrugs or raised eyebrows at a student’s assertion.  The professor participated right there with us as we explored new ground.  And through it all, if we tried to get an answer out of our philosophy professor, he only offered opinions tempered with a, “but I don’t know for sure.”  It takes a lot of fortitude from a professor to say that.

So, concluding my Northwestern experience, I realize I don’t want to be the typical Philosophy major.  I’m no good at it.  I like being creative, I enjoy breaking new ground, I love tampering with the unknown.  And that is certainly full of worth.  As much as my professors attempted to know all the answers, they don’t.  It’s not as if we’ve solved the simple questions asked so many eons ago.  What’s the meaning of life?  What makes people happy?  What is wisdom, and how do we know and define truth?

As Socrates is famous for saying, “I know that I know nothing.”  Perhaps if we took that a little more to heart, a Philosophy major could actually make a philosopher.

Somehow, I manage to do my best thinking in the shower.  I don’t really know what it is about it–the hot water (or the occasional freezing cold water), the steam, the time when you’re doing something that takes almost no brainpower…  I’m not sure.  Maybe it’s the idea of getting ready for something, a cleansing of the dirt and buildup of the day past that is subconsciously symbolic.  I’m not really sure.  But I always feel motivated when I’m in the shower.  Like I’m ready to take on the world, ready to finish all those assignments left undone, ready to finally keep a calendar that I’ll stick to, ready to list on amazon that box of books I haven’t used since sophomore year.

Then I get out of the shower, and it all ends.

It’s magnificently frustrating to be so hyped up for something, and then suddenly lose all the gusto and motivation all at once.  It happens time and time again (I mean, I do shower regularly), and it’s finally getting on my nerves enough to do something about it.  So here I am, hair still dripping on my shirt, rocking my first pomodoro in probably three weeks.  17 minutes remaining.  I had, as usual, an awesome shower where I thought about all the ways in which I was going to seize the day, take advantage of every opportunity, fulfill the potential that I know I have.  And as I got out of the shower, I thought to myself, I should go pick up some food.  I’m sick and haven’t eaten yet today. But then I realized, I would be getting food for thirty minutes, then I’d come back here, probably wouldn’t write my blog post, and would forget about my motivation somewhere between my pad see ewe and an episode of Arrested Development.  You see, I’ve had a problem with productivity for a while–this isn’t something new.  But I’m finally beginning to feel the pain.

Since Monday (today is Wednesday night), I’ve been at home sick with one of those sore throat-cough-cold combos.  I thought to myself, well, I shouldn’t expose everyone at the office and in class to my illness; I’ll just stay home and get some work done here, and stay hydrated and rest. So what did I actually do?  Stayed home, slept a lot, watched some TV shows, and played some games.  It harkened back to the days of middle school, when I’d get a tickle in my throat and convince my parents to let me stay home from school.  I’d actually get sick by the second or third day, but by the fourth day I’d be mostly better.  And yet I’d try to convince my mom and dad that I was still sick, and that “I’d really get all my work done from here, I promise!”  They could see through my silly excuses, and would most of the time succeed in getting me back to school (or at least leave me feeling guilty enough that I wouldn’t just play computer games for the entire fourth day home sick).  But man, I’d never be productive when I was sick at home.  Grand illusions of productivity would turn into hours of StarCraft.  What a waste.

And yet, here I am, TEN years later, still doing the same stuff.  Have I learned nothing?  It hurts to think about that.  How much of my potential am I wasting every day when I do this sort of thing to myself–surely the times when I’m sick are merely a microcosm of the rest of my life?    Excuse after excuse for not actually getting down to business.

Five minutes remaining on my little Cook-Rite timer.  When I think about the huge amounts of waste I’m committing every day in my own life, it physically pains me.  My shoulders hunch in shame even as I sit here writing about it–it’s hard to admit publicly.  I.  Have.  Wasted.  So.  Much.

It’s time to ease the pain.  Time to harness the power of the shower.  I still don’t know what it is, but I can’t let the momentum waver.  I need to take the motivation and excitement past the shower walls; it’s time to bring some melamine laminate into the rest of my life.

I’m sick, and I can come up with plenty of excuses.  But all the excuses in the world won’t end the pain of not being able to do what I really want to do with my life.  Bell rings.  School  is out.  Time for life.

A couple weeks ago, Neal recommended that I find a couple of hobbies and stick with them, rather than trying to do everything (ironic, given the title of his blog).  But I took the advice to heart, and really started thinking about the things I’ve done over the years, and thought about what has been truly meaningful and engaging, what’s really been important to me in my life.  I thought about Aikido and Judo, the martial arts I had practiced for almost ten years with Patrick Augé Sensei, and how much I missed the discipline and respect I learned so much about in the dojo.

The next day, I spent three hours scouring the internet for information about Aikido and Yoseikan Budo (the particular school of thought in which I was trained), and found out how extremely lucky I was to have been able to practice with such brilliant and skilled mentors.  My teachers were at a stage of development I have rarely seen–and probably will rarely ever see again–in my life; when I think of the Buddha’s journey towards nirvana, the closest experience I can relate it to is the dojo and my teachers.

I realized that this was something seriously lacking in my life; I remember being surprised at how emotional I was leaving the dojo when I first went to college, and every time after that when I was leaving a visit to return to Chicago.  Leaving my family has been the only other thing to affect me in that way.  So, with the means now to find something to feed my rediscovered hunger, I set about following the advice I had received so many months ago from my Sensei when I had asked him about finding an Aikido dojo in Chicago.  ”I don’t know of the Aikido dojos in Chicago,” he had said, “but you should try Kendo.”

So, after appending a couple more hours of research to my Aikido revitalization, I found a place where Kendo was practiced in Chicago.  Last week, I traveled down to the church on the North Side where practice was held, and observed the new environment.  The practice was held in the gym of a United Church of Christ–nothing fancy, and not exactly what I had expected after the dojos of home that everyone in the community had worked so hard and that Sensei had always inculcated to make pristine.  But as soon as I watched the first person enter the room, I knew it was a real dojo.  A Japanese man in his late forties bowed and greeted the room as he entered, and he bowed towards a table in the corner of the room, where two other older Japanese men were seated, and then he instructed me to take off my shoes.  ”Kendo is not easy–lots of footwork, over and over,” he mentioned to me.

“Like tai sabaki in Aikido?”  I asked.

“No, just footwork.  All footwork.  Kendo is footwork,” he corrected.

And as I took my seat beside the elders in the corner of the room and began to observe the practice, I saw what he meant.  The beginners repeated steps over and over and over again, and as the nearly three-hour practice went on, I watched as the more advanced students spent the majority of their practice on similar exercises, repeating and repeating the same patterns, correcting even the slightest misstep, edging ever-so-slightly towards a perfect movement, ideal timing, exact positioning.  So it came as little surprise at the end of the practice when the man I had talked to earlier explained that he had been practicing Kendo for 14 years, and he was “still only intermediate”.

And though the practices were different from the dojo at home, I recognized with instant familiarity the way in which the structure of the practice, and the resulting ever-so-important cleanup, occurred with the precision of a well-oiled machine.  Every member buzzed actively about the room, acting out his task independently, with the goals of the whole clearly understood by all.  I recognized with instant familiarity that this was not a place where time was measured in minutes or hours, in pomodoros or lunch breaks, but was part of an ever-flowing whole that progressed invisibly, the way a glacier moves without being detected, indiscernable but unstoppable.  I recognized with instant familiarity that this was something I was missing in my life, the overarching story arc that drives me beyond a particular assignment or action, the broader goal and motivation that inspires and affects beyond the constructs of simple units of time.  And I recognized with instant familiarity that this was a place I could call home.

Wish me luck.  I start Tuesday.

A couple days ago I had a conversation with an old friend about the people we choose to spend our time with.  He made a comment about how positive energy emanates from certain people.  Some people not only act negative, but also give off a vibe of negative energy; in contrast, some people are able to transmute their positivity into something with real, physical effects.  Often it’s subconscious, but as I thought about it more through our conversation and later, I recognized the truth of what he was saying.

And it wasn’t the first time I was hearing it, either.  I read a book several years ago (and for all my soul- and Google- searching, I can’t for the life of me remember/figure out what it was called) about a group of people who discover that they are able to multiply their abilities through their attitudes and proximities to one another–in a near-psychic fashion, they are able to tap into hidden powers within themselves via a positive connection with other people.  It was sort of like string theory for people.  Everyone’s connected, and once you realize it, you are able to discover immense amounts of energy within the positive connections between people.  It was a tremendously exciting and inspirational book, and when I finished it I wished there were more, but I ultimately ended up categorizing it in my mind with the rest of the fictional novels I was reading at the time.

This conversation, however, rekindled my old thoughts on the matter.  Although we all know that there is some sort of power or presence in spending time with positive people, we often relegate it to our subconscious, passively letting ourselves continue with whomever we so choose instead of actively deciding with whom we should be spending our time, based in part on their transmutative ability to translate positivity into energy.

Perhaps I’m getting too caught up in semantics, but it happens.  Conversations with some people leave you drained, and with others they leave you energized–and not because of the subject matter, either.  It’s just part of how some people are able to translate their optimism/happiness/passion into something transferable, something physical–and we completely ignore it!

As I continued to explore this new territory with my friend, I realized how excited I was becoming, how we were both feeding off each other and becoming increasingly impassioned.  Our energy was multiplying, and we could both recognize it for what it was…

The conversation eventually ended (much later than planned), but I later extracted from our talk a few conclusions:

1).  The “ability” to transmute positivity into energy for someone else isn’t rare–it’s literally just a basic ability to communicate and connect with people–but it does take work.  You’ve got to open yourself to being filled with positive thinking.

2).  This doesn’t work (as well) on yourself.  ”Positive thinking” may enable you to have more energy for something specific for the time being, but energizing from someone else’s positive thinking is MUCH more effective.  You can try to lie to yourself, but coming from another is patently un-contrived (at least, for all practical purposes).

3).  Being positive with others enables and helps them return the favor.  The power of focusing on the good doesn’t always pay off immediately personally, but when shared with others, it reflects and multiplies.  The effect is magnified.

So give it a shot, test my people string theory, and let me know what you think.  Worst that can happen is you’ll brighten someone’s day.

He was confident in his abilities, and arrived without remorse or fear. The base camp wasn’t a simple place to get to, but he had managed without difficulty. The real challenge still lay ahead, however. He gathered his gear; he slung his sack of tools and sustenance onto his back, his belay rope hung in a loose loop around his carabiner, and set off towards the others.

Sidelong glances glazed past him as he joined the group.  He was an outsider, inexperienced with the others.  They didn’t mind his presence, but always remained skeptical.  It could take years for their skepticism to chip away.  As one, they looked upon the peak that they were to reach by the afternoon.  As one, they hoisted their packs and set off towards the early tendrils of dawn.

The first part went without a hitch.  But by midmorning, he was having trouble.  He flagged as the others charged on defiantly.  The one in front of him gave one terse tug of the rope without looking back; he gasped a breath and pulled himself together, matching the pace of the group.

By the dangerous last third of the climb, his goggles had fogged and his ears were cold, even underneath the expensive product.  Here a single wrong step could pull the whole group down.  He was thinking about his down coverlet at home, his warm house in the sun.  The daydream continued, the climb lingered on.  Step after step, he marched up the hill, alternating ice pick with sunbathing, measured breathing with sighs in the jacuzzi.

Midway through his exhalation, things all went wrong.  His pick missed, his foot slipped, and he began to slide away on the ice.  The crevasse opened beneath him and nearly swallowed him in a single gulp, only stopped by the last-second hitch of his pick on a tiny ledge of ice.  He looked forward for the next one up to pull him to safety.  The one in front looked back for a moment, and shook his head.  If they veered off-course to save him now, they would all slide away.  He muffled for them to pull him up through his outer layer.  The one in front unclipped his carabiner, and the rest followed suit.

He panicked in the moment, then realized his predicament.  A line from the one who had warned him stood out in his mind, forgotten until that moment.  ”They work together, but they will not carry you up the mountain–they will celebrate their victories together and mourn their losses, but you and you alone will be the one to achieve or the one to fail.  They will not decide for you, except to leave you to your decision.”

The ledge broke, and he dropped another five feet into the crevasse.  His pick dug into the ice, and his body dangled.

They will not carry me up the mountain.

He looked down into the darkness of the depths, and looked up at the impossible feat of climbing himself out back into the light.  He looked inside himself–it took less than a split-second–and made his own decision.