Whenever something bad happens, our first reaction is always to figure out who to blame.

Why is this the case? Shouldn’t our first reaction to be solve the problem?

The reason is it is so much easier to immediately blame somebody else than to admit fault or determine exactly what happened. If we look at a problem for too long, we might even find out that we were partially responsible. And that is unacceptable.

When a problem wasn’t caused by us, we have no dog in the fight. We sit outside the issue as the omniscient, sinless judge, shaking our heads disapprovingly. Anything we do to fix it should be applauded as heroic, selfless, and going beyond the call of duty. After all, this wasn’t our mess to clean up, but we did it anyway. Where is that parade we deserve?

Combine this with the fact that people in power often say things like: “Whoever owns up to this will be punished less than if I have to find out the hard way…”

No they won’t! They’ll be blamed for something they probably aren’t fully responsible for and will be forced to face some ridiculous consequences just so everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that blame has finally been assigned. In the same way, police and prosecutors always want to open and shut cases as quickly as possible by pressuring people to confess, even when the suspect’s guilt is dubious at best.

Blame is analogous to the occasional bear who walks into a residential neighborhood: very few of us are going to even consider doing anything about it, but we’re so glad when someone finally does. (Even then the blame can be unclear. Who is responsible for that bear coming into the neighborhood? It can’t be us due to our rampant deforestation practices. It can’t be the bear’s fault. Is it the President’s fault? God’s? Oh man, another puzzle to solve. I’ll feel so much better once someone on the Nextdoor app tells me who’s responsible).

Let’s all try this, myself included: let’s take responsibility for everything, good or bad (no matter how illogical) that happens to us for an entire day. From the minute we wake up, we are responsible for everything and we will not blame anyone else, no matter what. (Philosopher William James actually performed this experiment for a full year. It’s detailed in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson).

If we saw everything through this lens, how different our world could be.

If you do try it, let me know what your experience was like.

Compromise: one of my favorite 10 letter words (right behind zygomatics). We hear incredibly boring people without any semblance of a sense of humor often quip: “a good compromise leaves both sides unhappy”.

Well, Martin the accountant, you’re right. Compromises, by their nature, involve both sides giving up something so that they can come to a somewhat reasonable solution. But how much are we willing to give up?

When it comes to a dinner debate, I’m often willing to step down from my level 14 spice request for our shared Pad Kee Mao Thai dinner to meet my wife closer to her preferred level of 0 spice. I can grumble about it, but I still get to eat the delicious Thai food.

I’m more than willing to compromise on the number of sardine cans I store in the pantry. It’s a valid point: 10 is more than I’ll use at any one time.

But recently, I watched a clip of a local high school meeting where members of the crowd were standing and holding the Nazi salute, meeting no opposition whatsoever. I’m not sure how anyone of moderate values can compromise on that. Do we have to? Is a political agenda really worth partnering with actual Nazis?

I don’t know where I draw the line for my own compromise standards, but I’d say it’s somewhere between the acceptable number of sardine cans to store in the pantry and chatting with Nazis as if we just disagree on how our taxes are being spent.

To be clear, I’m not advocating violence, but I don’t think this type of expression should be tolerated. These people need to be shown that we won’t allow hatred to go unchallenged. Through clear messaging, reasonable debate, and respectful engagement, we need to show that hate speech is intolerable no matter which side of the political system we support.

If you consider yourself to be a moderate, this has to be one compromise you can make.

One of the most powerful quotes I can think of comes from the anthropologist Margaret Mead (It probably wasn’t her. I’ve never found a quote that’s been correctly attributed to someone): “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

That quote always gives me hope and makes me think deeply about the consequences of my actions.

But there is an inherent premise in the quote that is very interesting. In saying this, Mead implies that people DON’T often think a small group can change the world. Or at least we didn’t back when she said it in… *Google searches her frantically, not finding anything to indicate whether she actually ever said it or when she did* …the period between 1901 and 1978 when she was alive.

But why then do all time traveling stories and theories like the Butterfly Effect ring so true for us? We all accept pretty easily that if we went back in time and disrupted something, even in a small way, we would change the future in incomprehensible ways.

Why should we not believe that our actions now can change the future? Why aren’t small changes “worth it”?

If we believe that going back in time and stepping on a butterfly would change the pace of our technological evolution by a few thousand years, it can’t be hard to believe that using a little bit less water, donating a few dollars to a worthy cause, or just being kind to someone will make an enormous difference in the future.

“…indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”.

Stoicism is one of my favorite guiding philosophies for life, and especially for my career in working with the public. In the stoic philosophy, there is a phrase that often comes up in the writings of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and the other big names: Memento Mori.

Roughly translated, it means “remember that you will die”.

When I was talking with someone about this concept recently, I was reminded of the scene in What About Bob? where Bob (Bill Murray) and the family’s son are sharing a room. As they are about to go to sleep, the son starts saying over and over: “I am going to die, you are going to die, we all are going to die” (it’s a comedy, I swear. Check out the clip here). This leaves Bill Murray’s character completely horrified and unable to sleep. And then hilarity ensues.

The stoics, for their part, were known to tell themselves every night that they may not wake up in the morning, and to tell themselves every morning that this may be their last day alive.

What the stoics were trying to convey was not that we should be worried about our legacy, or how short of a time we may have on this earth. Rather, they wanted to show how important it is to recognize that nothing is permanent. Anything can be taken away from us at a moment’s notice.

In my job as a physical therapist, I’ve had the joy of working with many patients throughout all different phases of life. Some very young, some very old. Many times the older patients would pass away from their disease or just from the natural aging process. Sometimes it happened while they were patients (luckily not while they were working with me), other times they died many months later and we’d learn about their passing in the obituary.

Today is Monday. Two days ago, on Saturday, a former patient texted me asking if I could come by and show her how to use her new stairlift and practice some transfers. We arranged to meet today.

When I arrived, I walked in and was met by a home nurse who informed me that last night the patient had slipped into unconsciousness and was not expected to recover.

On Saturday she was planning how to improve her function at home , and by Monday she was no longer able to communicate.

Perhaps these individual situations will make us sad, and it’s ok to grieve, certainly. But the fact that up until her last moments she was looking for ways to continue to progress and thrive as best she could, should give us all comfort.

If you want to do something, do it. If you have wronged someone and never apologized, do it. Live by your guiding principles, help others, keep yourself healthy, and enjoy your time on Earth. Tomorrow isn’t promised.

Memento Mori.

The next time you have a few minutes to sit and quietly ponder, think about the intentions involved in a given situation in your life that had a poor outcome. Both your intentions and the other parties involved.

Let’s provide an example scenario:

You run a successful startup: Barter with Bees. In essence, your company has figured out how to communicate with bees, which has allowed you to negotiate honey and pollination deals in return for bee currency: bennies, bickles, bimes, buarters, and bollars. They have a sophisticated society about which we knew nothing until your company unearthed this potential (the job is incredibly stupid but it doesn’t matter for our scenario).

Your cousin comes to you and is very excited to tell you about an idea for the direction he thinks your company should pursue. He outlines his ideas in a presentation and at the end, you determine that while it seems like it might work, you’re not willing to take the risk. So, you pass.

He becomes irate. He slams down his little laser pointer thing that people who give presentations love and storms out.

You feel bad, but you think that you still made the right decision.

What were your intentions?

1. You wanted to hurt your cousin’s feelings because he stole your wife 3 months ago;
2. You wanted to protect your employees after determining that the risk was far too high as compared to the reward;
3. You want to steal the idea and give your cousin no credit.

I think many of us would argue that option two is a virtuous reason for turning your cousin down. But what if the real reason was number 1 or 3? The outcome would have been the same, does it really matter in the end?

You will have to decide this for yourself, but my answer would be yes, it does matter. If your reasons for turning him down were immoral, then you acted immorally, regardless of whether the outcome would have been the same with the improved moral intentions inherent in number 2.

While slippery slope arguments can sometimes be fallacious (meaning based on a fallacy, get your minds out of the gutter), approving of actions just because the end result doesn’t change is a waterslide I do not want to ride. We should be thoughtful in our actions and do things because they are the right things to do, not because the end result will be the same regardless of our intentions.

Being all-knowing seems, on the surface, like it would be completely awesome. Say you just randomly woke up one day and you knew everything there was to know: You could know how every process in the world works, whether or not one of your favorite crime show suspects was guilty or innocent, what your friend was thinking when they pushed you into the cheese fountain at that upscale wedding, how many aliens have visited Earth in the last two weeks (it’s 14 cargo-loads by the way. Alien cargo-loads hold about 45 aliens each, so you do the math.), and literally everything else.

Questions and answers would no longer be relevant for you, you would just…know….everything.

But if you knew everything there was to know, what would day-to-day life look like for you? Would there be any reason to intervene in the affairs of your peers? Would you be so horrified by some of the realities of the world that you felt the need to take action against certain injustices? Or would you be so far removed from humanity that you wouldn’t even be able to effectively communicate or interact with anyone at all?

It’s interesting that the wisest person in his time was Socrates, who claimed to know nothing. If he knew nothing, and was the wisest person around, what does that say for the person who knows everything?

We can never be certain whether knowing everything would be a blessing or curse. What we can be reasonably certain of is that no matter how much knowledge we gather throughout the course of our lives, no matter how good we get at our jobs, no matter how many Shakespeare quotes we can drop casually at our niece’s Quinceañera; we will never know everything. And one way or another, we need to become comfortable with that reality.

It’s amazing how often we think about the past or the future. It seems to be a universal truth that we would rather think about anything else but the present moment. The interesting part about this phenomenon is that the present is the only thing we have any power over or ability to enjoy.

Sure, it’s very likely that you’ll eventually witness the death of everyone you’ve ever known in your lifetime, unless of course you die first, or we start cryogenically freezing ourselves like Austin Powers and Ted Williams.

It’s also possible that you’ll watch the collapse of civilization due to some environmental catastrophe. You may be left to farm roaches in an apocalyptic wasteland where you barter with the alien race who has taken over half of our planet (if this happens, sign me up as a pet. I can curl up into most small places and all I really need is food and water).

So thinking about these future possibilities may occupy most of your time.

Or, on the flip side, you may think about the past. What position would you be in now if you’d accepted that job in Ontario? Would you still be making balloon animals for “CEO’s and Balloon Fellows” adult birthday parties?

Whatever you dwell on: the past or the future, you need to hear this: you cannot enjoy life if you reject the present moment. There is nothing you can do to change the past. You can plan all you want for the future, but none of us has any idea what will happen 20 years from now, let alone 10 minutes from now.

The only thing you have even the slightest control over is this present. So you are free to use this moment and every subsequent one to think about the past and/or future, but why would you? Breathe in the fresh air, imitate a rhinoceros, try to organize a flash mob; the future isn’t promised and the past is already gone. So enjoy the present moment, it’s all we really have.

Think back to the last time you did something for someone else simply because it was the right thing to do. Things that you were able to leverage into a career or monetary gain for yourself don’t count. I mean something that helped someone else, that you didn’t tell anyone about in anyway afterward.

If you’re having a hard time thinking about an example, it’s probably because either

• You’re a sage who has completed so many random acts of kindness that you can’t pick a single one;

Or

• You have never done such a thing.

If you’re in the second camp, you’re not alone. We all do things for the reward. We win a tournament, we get a trophy. We do extra work, we get a promotion. We finish the “Boss Hog Challenge” at Marco’s Seafood and Pork Restaurant, we get our picture on the wall.

It’s how our brains work. Some type of feedback is necessary to let us know whether what we just did was a good or bad thing.

It’s important to note though, that we already get that feedback internally. We feel good when we help somebody or win a game or complete a goal.

Why do we always have to have extrinsic rewards? Why do we need something tangible that we can point to and admire? Why do we need to have something we can list on our resume to show what a great person we are?

What if instead, we did things for the intrinsic reward?

If we did the right things just because we know it’s the right thing…I’m not even sure what that world would look like. But I’d sure like to see it.

In the past few months, when really compelling news stories have been absent from the headlines, I’ve heard an interesting confluence of ideas from both right and left wing media. To be more specific, I should state that it’s really just an “idea” and not “ideas”. We’re not quite there yet; the agreement is only with one very specific stance.

This stance is: “Every worker should go back to the office”.

And I truly, madly, deeply (name that band) don’t understand why this is such an emphasis.

To be clear, I obviously understand that for some jobs to exist, they have to be performed in person. I’m not saying that I don’t understand why emergency surgeons and other workers need to be available in the flesh.

What I can’t grasp is why we are pushing so hard for people to go back to the office who are happier and more productive while working from home.

I heard an interview (I wish I could find the link. It was Morning Edition on NPR, I believe. That’s all I’ve got. But it also could have been a podcast…or another radio show. I know it wasn’t TV…I think.) where the interviewer was talking to a person who was adamantly opposed to businesses extending work from home options. It went something like this:

Interviewer: “Why do people need to go back to the office?”

Interviewee: “Steve (maybe?), we are finding that babysitters and childcare centers are struggling to stay open because parents are at home with their kids more. More children are being diagnosed with mental health issues. Restaurants that were usually frequented by workers during their lunch break are having to lay off workers and only open during dinner hours.”

The interview went on from there to talk about other things and pretty much just let those points stand on their own. Granted, I’m probably not doing these people (whose names I can’t remember) justice by paraphrasing their words, but I have so many questions:

1. Why is it a bad thing that parents are spending more time with their kids?
2. If more kids are being diagnosed with mental health issues, couldn’t a possible reason be that their parents are actually able to spend more time with them and recognize the signs that might otherwise have been missed if they were at the office for most of the day?
3. Restaurants seem to be notoriously difficult businesses to keep afloat, don’t changes in consumer habits drive how these restaurants have to operate and respond?

Now again, let me clarify:

• I feel horrible that any workers and businesses such as daycares, babysitting services, and hospitality workers would fall on hard times and have to make adjustments. I know that must feel scary and it must be really hard to make the decisions they’ve had to make.
• Mental health issues increasing in children could be caused by a variety of factors and I could be completely wrong that parents being home is only improving diagnostic capabilities.

That being said, am I crazy in making the statement below?

“Workers who are completing their assignments on-time, with the same level or even improved quality of work, who are happier, who are leaving a smaller environmental impact on the world by reducing their commute times, and who simply WANT to continue working from home, should be able to do so.”

Is there anything in that statement that you disagree with?

When I first started thinking about this concept, I thought, “Obviously it’s quality. There’s no real deep reason that pure quantity would ever be better than quality.”

I thought long and hard about the subject and then thought even deeper about it (but not as hard as Robert Pirsig…Where my Pirsig fans at?) and I couldn’t come up with anything that I thought would be better in mass quantity instead of less of it with excellent quality.

Food: obviously quality is more important.

Exercise: Quality.

Sleep: Big quality

Time with family: Q to the u to the a to the….

But then, as we were visiting our friends last night and meeting their daughter for the first time, it hit me…

Diapers: Quantity.