Lessons From Life: Recent Episodes
Ezra Hale
On the Normalization of Suffering
I spent a long time thinking about this podcast before I even started writing. Originally I had a much more controversial title in mind that probably would have generated a lot more interest but in the end my wife made me change it. So I guess in a way she has inadvertently become a silent partner in this endeavor and I can blame her for this much more boring title. But if you’ve come this far I guess you deserve to know, I was going to call this podcast “On White Privilege and Trauma”.
Irregardless, oh yes irregardless is a word, look it up if you disagree. It happens to be a word I like a lot because so many people want to argue that it isn’t a word at all. So, irregardless of the title of this podcast, the subject matter remains the same. I will tell you a story of White Privilege and I will tell you a story of Trauma. And then in the end I will tie these two things together for a lesson on the normalization of suffering.
Where to begin. I guess my thinking on this subject all started with Joe Rogan of all places. As you may or may not know he got into hot water a few weeks back after he made some comments on his own podcast to the effect of how all heterosexual white males have been essentially “canceled” en-mass. To be fair, I didn’t watch the podcast and I don’t care to, but I got the gist of what he was saying from the few clips I saw on TV.
This isn’t news to me and it isn’t something I haven’t heard before. In fact it is something I’ve heard many times from all kinds of people I know. Good friends who I consider quite woke and liberal in their thinking have joked to me “haven’t you heard the news that we don’t count anymore, that we’ve been canceled!” So I have to acknowledge that there is a real feeling in the air, not just among the Joe Rogans of the world but in general that the heterosexual white male is somehow under threat of being canceled or whatever. And I understand exactly where this feeling is coming from. I would never deny a person or people their feelings. Their feelings belong to them and are valid because it is what they feel. But the conclusion that is being drawn from those feelings, that is what I take issue with.
My message to Joe Rogan and to my friends who may or may not be having these feelings is this: “it’s ok, don’t worry, nobody is canceling you and your thoughts and especially your feelings are still as valid today as they ever were.” The fact that we in as a culture are taking a closer look at the suffering and plight of a segment of the population to which you do not belong should not in any way be seen as a threat. The fact that they are seen as a threat I believe comes from a fundamental misunderstanding about the thing that lies at the very core of all of these movements and that is human suffering.
An executive summary would probably be good here so I’ll make my point and then I’ll elaborate with some stories and a conclusion. My point is that suffering, human suffering is not a competition. It’s not like there is a pie of suffering and if we acknowledge the suffering of one group we must deny the suffering of another. Suffering is just not like that, it is something we all deal with. It is a part of the human experience.
In fact I would venture to say that the more in touch you are with your own suffering and your own experiences of trauma the more empathy you will have for the suffering and trauma of others. You first have to be vulnerable with yourself, you have to think back to a time of your own suffering and trauma. Contemplate it, spend time with it, as much as you need. Then turn your attention to the suffering of someone like George Floyd dying on the streets of Minneapolis. I guarantee the next emotion you will feel will be an overwhelming sense of empathy. I know my own suffering well and as a result I can relate to what it must have been like for George Floyd not that my suffering matched his but that I know what it is like to suffer and I can extrapolate from there to at least imagine what George Floyd must have gone through. Combine that sense of empathy with the knowledge that suffering itself is not a competition and I guarantee that the feeling you will draw from these social movements will be not one of threat but one of solidarity. Solidarity for Black Lives Matter, solidarity for Diversity Equity and Inclusion. And that is the fundamental principal of the normalization of suffering.
I told you I would share some stories and then I would come back to the thesis with a conclusion and so I will.
My first story is about white privilege.
It takes place in Minneapolis of all places. I was 22 years old and my best friend Larry and I were out in Uptown looking for our first apartment. Larry happens to be black but that is really immaterial to this story. We were looking at an apartment, what became our first and my only apartment in Minneapolis. We loved it at first sight, a two bedroom in a 5 apartment building with a nice front porch covered in vines. By today’s standards the rent was low around $650 but it didn’t matter because Larry and I had only recently arrived in Minneapolis and neither of us had jobs. We looked at the apartment with the landlord and told her we wanted to rent it. She asked a few questions one of which was if we had jobs. We both replied that we did not. She looked back at us with a concern on her face. “How do you plan to pay the rent?” She asked. I looked her right in the eye and said “It’s ok, I’m independently wealthy” Now this was a complete fabrication I admit. True I could have begged my parents for the rent money if push came to shove but I wasn’t about to do that. Larry and I planned to go out the next day and find jobs with temp agencies, whatever it took to get on our feet but she had no clue about that. But none of that mattered because the landlord looked at me and said simply “Ok” and handed over the keys.
This is a pure example of white privilege in action. This was Minneapolis in 1992 do you think that if Larry had been by himself or we had both been black she would have taken my offhanded remark as a satisfactory answer for the critical question of how we were going to pay for the apartment. There is no way in HELL she would have done that. In fact we would not have even thought to say something like that. Not because she was racist or anything like that but because in saying “I’m independently wealthy” I was leveraging a common narrative in American culture. The narrative of the independently wealthy young white male. There is no corollary for the young black male. On the contrary the common social narratives applied to young black males are quite the opposite. They aren’t positive in any way but in fact quite negative. So negative in fact that they result not in someone getting an apartment but in someone dying on the street. These narratives positive for the one and negative for the other are woven into the very fabric of our society. The story I’ve just shared is a shining example of one side of that coin, the side of white privilege.
Let me turn now to my second story. This is a story of trauma.
In a previous podcast “On Letting Go and Letting God” I spoke of my older brother Ian who thrived on chaos. He moved out of our house when I was about 10 years old, but those first ten years were very traumatic for me as a child. I won’t go into the specifics of this trauma but I will tell you a story from the result of that trauma. When I was 28 or so, I traveled to Tucson Arizona with my Mother. This is where my mother grew up and we went back occasionally. When we did we’d look up Ian to see how he was doing. Ian was an alcoholic but at the time 1998 or so he was still able to hold down a job. My mom asked me to come with her to visit Ian at his work and I agreed. I remember he was working at some steel manufacturing facility doing odd jobs or something. I just remember walking into the warehouse. I was a couple steps behind my mother when I first saw Ian.
When I saw Ian, I had a very visceral reaction I’ve never had before or since but that I’ve heard reflected from other trauma survivors. I felt myself suddenly transported back in time I was no longer a 28 year old man walking a few steps behind my mother but a little child hiding behind my mother’s apron. This mental event only lasted a few seconds or so and I snapped out of it but it was surprising and unexpected. I’m sure a therapist would have a field day unpacking this but the point is that undeniably trauma and suffering persist deep somewhere inside my subconscious.
So what is the point of these two stories? What is the relationship between them? One the story of white privilege the other a story of trauma. How could they possibly be interconnected? That is entirely my point. They are not interconnected in any way. They exist entirely independent of one another within my consciousness, and within my personal history. One does not affect the other, nor should it. I can acknowledge both independently of the other. Yes I have experienced white privilege and thus I can say without a doubt that white privilege exists. Yes I have also experienced trauma and suffering and I can say without a doubt that suffering is part of the human experience.
What I can do is leverage these both for the purpose of social progress. My own experience of white privilege helps me recognize the injustice of the social narratives woven into the fabric of our society. My experience of suffering helps me feel empathy for the suffering of others. I recognize the social narrative that led to George Floyd lying on a street in Minneapolis with his neck under the knee of an officer of the law. I also feel empathy for the suffering that he went through and the injustice of it all.
I don’t feel threatened at all by the social movement spawned in part by the suffering of George Floyd instead I feel empathy and solidarity because I understand fundamentally that suffering is not a competition. We can recognize and fight injustice without denying our own personal history. In fact the normalization of suffering teaches us that the better you understand your own experience of suffering the better you will be able to have empathy for and thus fight against the suffering of others.
On the Modern Non-Nuclear Family
The concept of the nuclear family or at least the term nuclear family has been around for at least a century by now. Many people associate the concept of the nuclear family with the 50’s and 60’s and the rise of the atomic age after WWII. But this is incorrect. Actually the use of the term nuclear family predates the atomic age and refers instead to the family formation as a nucleus as in the core of an entity consisting of a mother a father and their children.
In modern times the entire nature of the nuclear family as first defined has been challenged from all sides as families in the United States have changed dramatically in their formulation. The concept of a family consisting of a mother and father, a man and a woman has expanded to include single parents, co-habitating unmarried parents, divorced parents, same sex parents and the list goes on. From these dramatic and broad social changes one might conclude that the concept of the nuclear family has fallen by the wayside as we have moved into a new age that makes room for and embraces a broad variety of family formulations.
I can easily see how one might come to this conclusion. The nuclear family has a rigid structure that no longer applies in the modern era. One might assume that it is for the most part a thing of the past. One might assume this, but this assumption would be wrong. Wrong? you say. How is that possible. How is it possible that the nuclear family persists in the face of such broad social change. Can a family with a single mother or a single father, or two mothers or two fathers still be considered a nuclear family?
In order to understand what I’m talking about you really have to step back for a second and consider not simply the genders, or the number of people in the family. Instead you have to take a closer look at the nuclear metaphor itself.
In all cases the term nuclear refers to the existence of a core. This could be the nucleus of an atom, or a cell or even something like a solar system. In all of these examples, an atom, a cell or a solar system something is at the center and everything else is on the periphery. I like the example of a solar system because it places some entity at the very center, the sun while all the other entities orbit around the center held in place by gravity.
When you take this broader metaphor and apply it to an actual human family you see that it is defined, not by the gender or number of people at the head of the family but rather by the family structure itself. Gender and number, these are physical dynamics but the true nature of the nuclear family is not defined by physical dynamic but by emotional dynamics. Some person or people are at the center and all other people are on the periphery orbiting around that center.
Obviously I don’t know anything about your family but I can tell you that this exactly describes my family of origin. My father, who I have spoke of often, was a famous linguist at MIT. When asked to place my family members into the structure of a solar system I would say without hesitation that my father was at the center, the sun so to speak. All other family members from my mother to my three brothers and myself orbited around his center of gravity. Dad wasn’t a greedy or narcissistic person far from it, he was just an incredible intellect, a genius. It was impossible for our family to have any other emotional formulation in some sense as we all basked in the reflected glory of his talent.
When my father passed away in 2001 at the age of 67 it was devastating for our family system. I con only really speak for myself, but I can tell you that I felt completely unmoored. Like a dark planet suddenly left adrift in the galaxy released from the gravitational pull of an immense sun which had suddenly twinkled out of existence.
One day several weeks after my father’s death. I was sitting at our kitchen table when I noticed my mother take a small waste bin over to my father’s desk. She opened one of the drawers in his desk and began pulling out his papers and cassette tapes and placing them into the bin. I walked over to her and knelt down beside her. “What are you doing mom?” I asked. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said simply “I don’t know what TO do” “It’s ok mom, I said, I understand and I helped her take the papers and cassette tapes out of the bin and place them back into his desk”. This was the nature of our family, without the warmth and gravity of my father at the center we were all left adrift in space and time, unsure how we would move forward, what the future looked like.
But here I am 20 years later with a family of my own. My wife Kristin and I struggled for years over our family dynamic. We tried everything, breaking up tasks, dividing up the labor, everything that you might expect in a modern household. One day I got kind of pissed and I said something like man my father didn’t know how good he had it. He didn’t do any of this shit.
I think that caused a kind of epiphany in my wife Kristin because she looked at me and said “that’s what this is.” You grew up in a family that had the emotional dynamics of a solar system. Your father was at the center, the sun so to speak. And you’ve been trying for 20 years to force me into the same dynamic. You’re trying to re-create the solar system that you grew up in, only this time you want to be the sun, at the center. Huh, I said, I couldn’t really disagree, the comparison was obvious so I just agreed. You’re right I said. I want to be the sun in this solar system.
This is where things really got interesting and I credit my wife completely with this revelation. I don’t want that she said. I don’t want a system where one person or people are at the center and the rest of the people in the family orbit around the center. I don’t want to live in a solar system where you’re the sun and I’m one of the planets. Instead she said. I want to think of our family as a completely different structure. Instead of a solar system, you me the kids, we are each our own star and together we create a constellation.
If you’ve been listening to these podcasts it’s probably clear by now that I’m a guy who loves a good metaphor. Given the right metaphor I can understand anything and this one was a complete revelation. A constellation I said. I really like that. I want to be part of your constellation. And I want to be part of yours said my wife. We could be like Orion or the Big Dipper I said. Yes she said. Each family member gets to twinkle in their own right and together we create something beautiful.
This is the nature of the modern non-nuclear family. As I said before you can change the gender and number of the people in the family and still easily maintain the families fundamental nuclear structure. In order to evolve into a modern non-nuclear family you have to change the very paradigm of the family structure itself. You have to change, not the families physical characteristics but the families emotional characteristics. The metaphor of a constellation achieves this goal. Whenever you feel one person in the family drifting towards the center remember you are not in a solar system but a constellation and in a constellation each star gets to shine in its own right.
On Leading In A Crisis
I don’t know how I learned this, or when I learned it exactly but at some point I came to the realization that in every crisis there is actually opportunity. This isn’t so much true of crisis in your personal life. Those are just crisis and you have to keep a level head and get through them. But in the workplace especially, when a crisis arrises it affords you an opportunity. I say that it is an opportunity in the sense that you are given the opportunity to show how you as a professional behave in a crisis situation. You are being given an opportunity to lead and show leadership. It’s not something to jump up and down about in excitement but it’s not something to shy away from either.
I guess some people figure this out and then like to manufacture crisis so that they can then resolve them. Kind of like a firefighter who is also an arsonist. This is obviously phony and a waste of everyone’s time so this is not the kind of thing I am talking about. Generally people like this don’t last long in an organization, but if they do well then you’ve got a larger systemic organizational problem that should be addressed.
Naturally crisis situations are uncomfortable for everyone and should be avoided at all cost. However they do arise and when they do they provide the backdrop for a display of true leadership. There are a couple of simple guidelines you can use to show leadership and guide your organization through a crisis situation.
- Remain calm. Don’t panic. Many people will be running around with their hair on fire. I don’t have any hair so I don’t have to worry about this in particular. But in general you know what I mean. Tensions rise, voices rise, tempers flare, fingers start pointing, people turn on each other etc… Don’t give in to this wave of emotions. Stay centered and grounded. There will be plenty of time to figure out what went wrong when the crisis is over (blame, finger pointing, throwing people under the bus) these all fall into that category and should be left to the crisis post-mortem, during the crisis they only serve to deepen the sense of impending doom so they should be avoided at all cost.
- Ultimately a crisis is just another problem that needs to be solved. There is obviously a sense of urgency around solving this particular problem but as a problem, basic problem solving techniques can be used here as well.
- Break the problem down. What needs to be done in the short term, medium term and long term to resolve the problem.
- Short term things are like, “well, the break room is on fire so we should probably put that out” Good idea, where is the fire extinguisher? Let’s do that. You don’t need to break the whole problem down before you start working on the short term items. Identify them up front and start addressing them immediately.
- Mid term issues are the meat of the problem. Get a team of people together, identify the meat of the problem and assign tasks. Circle back frequently to make sure people are working on their assigned tasks. Communication is super important in this situation. Find a way that you can communicate with the entire team working the problem. If this is email or chat, make sure you have one thread which includes everyone. I’ll cover communication in another podcast but one thing I’ll point out here is that, in a crisis situation, nobody has time to read some long diatribe on the situation. Keep your communication simple, short and sweet. Bulleted lists of tasks and assignments that kind of thing.
- Long term issues are the things that ensure that the problem and crisis doesn’t happen again. In this you’ll have to figure out the root of the problem that resulted in the crisis to begin with. Identify ways in which you can make changes in the organization or your processes that will help avoid this in the future. Nobody enjoyed the crisis of course so they should all help work on doing the hard work of digging into root cause and figuring out how to avoid a recurrence.
Communication:
People involved on your team will have a tendency to mix and match items from this breakdown in their communication. This is also not helpful but mostly unavoidable. Just keep everyone on task and remember the breakdown of tasks. When someone starts finger pointing gently remind them that that can be addressed in the post-mortem. When someone starts ranting about some systemic problem that causes this remind them that this fits into the long term issue category and can be addressed once the short and mid term issues are out of the way. Your entire goal here is to lead the organization through the crisis, things like finger pointing and ranting only feed the fire. Remaining calm and centered at all times this will help guide you and your organization to a successful resolution.
Post-Mortem
Once the crisis is out of the way there should be some sort of post-mortem. To be honest this is my least favorite part of the task. I think it is this way for most people so often times the post-mortem falls on the floor completely. It’s pretty important though because that is how you truly figure out what the hell happened. How did a possibly systemic problem turn into a crisis? I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that post-mortem are easy, they are not. This is where the fingers come out and people start getting thrown under the bus. In general finger pointing and bus throwing are not helpful they just deflect or throw up a smoke screen around the real issues at hand. Guide the team over the whole problem and how it grew into a crisis. There will be plenty of blame to go around, make sure you take some of the blame yourself as this will put the team at ease with the knowledge that you’re not going to just start lopping heads off willy nilly. It might even set an example that other people will emulate. In the best situation everyone naturally takes responsibility for their part in the problem that turned into a crisis. You identify what went wrong and some ways in which it can be avoided in the future. Finger pointing, head lopping, bus throwing, these are all the signs of typical bad leadership. If this is the way your post-mortem always go and you can’t guide the organization in a more positive and collaborative direction then you might think about whether this is a work culture you want to be involved in long term.
I started off by saying that a crisis is actually an opportunity and I would like to come back to that in summary. The crisis itself provides a backdrop for a display of true leadership. True crisis should be avoided, and, if you are at the helm of an organization or team I would hope that you gradually put processes in place that lead towards fewer and fewer crisis situations. This will be your overall goal. If you’re working for an organization that is always in crisis then you have another problem on your hands and if you can’t change the work culture towards one of stability again you might reconsider if you want that to be your work life over the long term.
On letting go and letting God
Nerderbajetikanba
The title of this one might be familiar to you this is because it comes from Alcoholics Anonymous among other things. It is something my mother used to say often about people she felt she could no longer support or have any relationship with, people who were essentially toxic to her personally.
In saying this my mother meant that she was letting go of her desired outcome with this person and putting their fate in the hands of God. My mother’s own adopted son, my brother Ian was one such person. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for her to essentially turn her back on the son she had loved and raised from a baby to adulthood. But Ian was a toxic person. He probably suffered from schizophrenia or something, refused diagnosis and help his entire life and ultimately died of Alcoholism or the streets of Tucson Arizona at the age of 47.
It is hard to believe that someone afforded so much opportunity could torch everything he touched to such an ignominious end but it is true. Ian was a person who thrived not on support and love like most of us, but on chaos. He would turn every situation into one where chaos reigned supreme and it was in this environment that he felt most at ease and in control.
Hard to believe right, but examples of this type of personality are all around us. Donald Trump being probably the most successful example I can think of. For some the internal forces at play are so strong, so overwhelming that they will undermine even the kindest hand of support, even a mother’s love.
You may never have encountered such a person in your life yet and if you haven’t then you’re lucky. But i have no doubt that there will come a time in your life that you’ll have an epiphany. And you will realize that this person before you who you like, who you might even love, is actually toxic to your well being. I hope at that time this saying will come back to you and you will find the strength to do what you need to do to save yourself. You will need to cut them out of your life completely and in so doing you will say “let go” as in, in letting them go I let the desired outcome if having a relationship with them go AND “let god” as in I leave them in the hands of god.
True narcissists, alcoholics, drug addicts, bad friends, bad romantic partners are all examples of people who may at some point fall into this category for you. In order to save yourself and your sanity you will have to be brave and set a firm limit with them. The best thing to do is to just sever all contact with them. When they reach out ignore them. If they ask for something just use the broken record technique: No, no, no, It’s ok they won’t actually miss you. You’ll be surprised how quickly the will move on to an easier target. You may miss them, you may mourn for what could have been. But that too will pass and you can take solace in the thought that you have left them in good hands, the hands of God.
Youlkamiknangu
On Driving
Neitdbajetikanba
Fair warning there may be a lot of swearing in this episode. If you want my overall take on swearing please check the intro. Ok so fair warning
You probably think you know everything there is to know about driving a car at this point right. What’s the big deal? You get in the seat, fire up the car and step on the gas. WRONG! nothing could be farther from the truth. Driving is a deceptively complex and dangerous endeavor. Until you get into an accident you operate under the false assumption that what you are doing is inherently safe. It is not. But there are things you can do to protect yourself and others.
My mother who had a perfect driving record to the day she died taught me a couple things that I will share along with a few of my own additions.
The first thing mom said to me was her overall philosophy. Driving is about getting from point A to point B and you have an obligation to yourself, your passengers and everyone else on the road to do so safely. Safety is a critical part of driving and it is not optional.
Everything else was little strategies and tactics to support this overall philosophy.
Following distance:
you are at a safe following distance when you can see light under the car in front of you meaning your angle of vision should make it possible to see the roadway in front of them between their tires underneath their car. If you cant see this you are tailgating and you are too close. Remember the person in front of you is not responsible for the fact that you left late or you are in a rush. Riding their ass won’t make them go faster it will only piss them off. You are responsible for planning your travel and executing it safely. Believe me there is nothing worse than leaving late and arriving on time only to find out that you are fucking dead!
Passing on a two lane highway:
occasionally you’ll get behind someone who is driving too slow for your taste. Even though the little yellow lines say you can pass in the oncoming lane don’t do it. It’s just not worth it. Do you want to risk a head on collision just to arrive five minutes earlier? You’ve got some little old lady in front of you driving the actual speed limit? Suck it up motherfucker. She won’t be there forever, she’ll turn off. Cherish those extra five minutes in the car with the knowledge that at least you will arrive in one piece.
Passing on a 3-4 lane highway:
I only pass to get around someone who is driving erratically, a truck throwing debris on my car or some other large vehicle that clearly doesn’t care about those around them. Otherwise find a lane you like and stick with it. For me this is the center lane between two vehicle clusters. You will notice that vehicles drive in clusters on the highway. In between the clusters there is a gap. This is where you want to be.
I don’t travel in the fast lane because there are always vehicles coming up behind me that want to go faster this isn’t the freakin autobahn but there is always some asshole who thinks it is so unless you need it for passing stay out of the left lane.
I don’t travel in the right lane because there is always some person coming on or off the highway which is also a pain in the ass.
Trust me the middle lane or lanes is where you want to be. If some asshole rides your tail they can just go around you so ignore them, let them pass. If you notice that all the other cars are going faster then you don’t worry, go at your own pace it is not a race remember that.
Going through a green light at a 4 way intersection.
You have a green light so everything is hunk dory right? Wrong! Don’t hit the gas and hope for the best. Instead let up a little on the gas. Check both left and right and make sure no idiots are coming into the intersection. This strategy has kept me from t-boning someone and it has kept me from killing someone. One afternoon after work in St. Paul I was going through an intersection slowing down a little bit when I saw a guy on a bicycle flying in from the left. I came to a complete stop and this maniac without a helmet flew right in front of my car. If I hadn’t stopped immediately he would have been killed for sure.
Another time in North Mpls. The same thing happened this car came from the right this time and I stopped again and it flew through the intersection. If I had not stopped it would have been a T-Bone for sure. You just don’t know who’s out there on the road so don’t make the false assumption that they know what they are doing because sometimes they just don’t. Which brings me to my next piece of advice.
Road rage
In MA we do this thing on the road called the one finger salute or flipping the bird. It is so common it is something of a state pastime. I remember when I first moved to mpls I was such a masshole driver I cut someone off on 94 AND flipped them off in the process. The reaction on their face was priceless like they couldn’t believe or process the double whammy. At about the same time my brother moved to Atlanta. Totally different country down there. He did something similar with a very different reaction. The man he flipped off spun out blocking his car on an exit ramp and pulled out a handgun that he leveled at my brother. What do you say now!? He yelled as Caleb contemplated his impending death. Caleb got out of there ok but he never gave anyone the finger on the road again and neither did I. So the lesson is this. Don’t do it, don’t engage on the road. Could be some little old lady in the car next to you or it could me jeffrey fucking dahlmer or john wayne gacey for that matter hell it could be dahlmer and gacey out together for a moon light drive you’ll never know and it’s best not to find out.
Driving in bad weather
Whatever you do in bad weather go slow. Take turns slowly. Drive extra carefully. Remember your car may be all wheel drive but it sure as hell isn’t all wheel stop. And that is the key because in bad weather it is when you hit the breaks that all hell breaks loose. Going too fast in snow or freezing rain you could easily end up in a snow bank, a ditch. An intersection or worse. It’s true you’ll see people especially in trucks driving like idiots in bad weather. They treat it like it is their time to shine. Don’t worry about them and certainly don’t emulate them. Down the road they are the ones you see flipped over or in the ditch. Just stay away from them and go at your own pace. Proceed with caution and you’ll make it to your destination every time. You might arrive a little late but that’s ok. Just think of how late you would be if you had to wait for a tow truck to winch your car back onto the roadway.
Ok so those are some lessons and things to think about next time you get behind the wheel.
Youlkamimanagu
On Genius and faith
Hey neirdbajetikanba?
Tis on is for you Henrik. As you know I’m your godfather and as such I was responsible for your religious upbringing. Well to be honest I was never very religious so I failed you in this regard, but I would love to make up for it now.
You may have heard or read about my father Kenneth Locke Hale. If you haven’t go to Wikipedia and look him up. He was by many accounts a genius. He was a savant with languages from an early age. He spoke some 50 languages. He was a linguist at MIT in th golden age of linguistics in that institution. Say 1960 - 2000. When he would go to a new country he would learn the language beforehand so he would be able to deliver his lecture in their native tongue.
I have many stories of my father and there are many more online. But I will tell you just one to give you the flavor of the man.
Not only was he talented, he truly loved language it was the way he interacted with the world. He was Normally quite shy but you get him talking in some strange dialect and he would go for hours. In 1983 we were living in Brussels, dad was on sabbatical from MIT. We took the xmas break to travel around France, Spain and Italy. On the way to northern spain dad sat in the back of the car reading a book on Catalan which is a language only spoken in North Eastern spain. Well we arrived in a medieval city I think it was Girona, parked our car got out and dad immediately disappeared. Mom and Caleb and I walked around taking in the city and wondering what happened to dad. At some point we walked into a convenience store. We were in there a couple of minutes and in come these two old men arguing over something. They argued for a bit and finally mom turned to us boys and said well I know where dad is. Catalan is close enough to spanish that mom could sus out what the teo men arguing were saying and it went like this: there is an American in the square and he is speaking catalan. No! Says the other. Yes says the first and he says he learned it from a book, No! Says the the one, impossible. Yes says the one and so the argument went on. So we proceeded over to the Square and shire enough there was Dad surrounded by old men having an absolute blast, in his element, talking away in Catalan until it was time to go. We collected dad and continued on our way.
This is the kind of thing my dad did regularly. He was a true genius and I have always described a true genius as a person touched by the hand of god. The rest of us get nothing. But for some reason God reaches down and gives one a little tap right on the forehead.
We were not religious growing up. Mom was a unitarian, dad was an agnostic. We didn’t go to church and I don’t care to now. But there is no doubt in my mind that god exists. I have faith because I saw with my own eyes the presence of god in my own father. Not just in these linguistic feats but in his true love of language. He saw language as one of the great gifts of evolution. He share this love with me and you could see it in his eyes and hear it in the excitement of his voice. It was infectious and people responded to it from all over the world. It wasn’t something he kept for himself as some intellectuals might. Instead he was completely selfless with his work.
And so I will say in conclusion that to be close to him was to be close to god. Not that he was godlike but that he was affected by god and you couldn’t deny that affect.
But you never knew my dad so how could you possibly experience this for yourself? I contend that it is the easiest thing in the world because examples are all around us. Take for instance Michelangelo’s David in Florence. If you have a chance one day go there and stand in front of the David. You will see that it is at once enormous yet somehow delicate and subtle.,Now imagine Michelangelo carving it out of a single slab ob marble. This was the renaissance, there were no computers to assist him, no lazers, nothing. He did this with his hands his eyes and his mind. This was Michelangelo again one of those touched by the hand of god and in the David you can see it and feel it for yourself.
And so this is my lesson on Genius and Faith.
Youlkamikanangu
On surviving at a startup
Nerdbjedikanba
One day you may work at or be asked to join a startup company I have been fortunate to work at several and at least one, Ember Corporation was successful. So I have a lot to say about startups and will have to break this into several lessons of which this is just the first.
Ember was a rough ride. Startups can be like this. You work your ass off pulling all nighters to get demos up and running and the like so that is hard but also fun and exciting. the hardest part of surviving at Ember was just getting through all the way to the Exit. The Exit is when a startup transitions from being a startup to being a real company. It can happen very quickly or it can take many years. Generally the quicker the better.
There are several ways an exit can happen but there are two that are most popular: the startup can get bought by a larger possibly public company or the startup can go public itself by selling shares on the stock market. This is when the Venture Capitalists or VCs make their money and scurry away. I say scurry for reasons I will make clear in a future episode.
Either of these exit scenarios can* be good for the employee. I say can because not all exits are good exits and I’ll talk about that in more detail in a future podcast too because this one is just about survival. Before you can be part of a startup’s exit you first have to survive within the company to the Exit.
Startups often go through periods of growth, when they bring on new investors and their capital and new employees and also contraction when they realize they have overspent and have to lay off employees. All kinds of employees can get laid off during a period of contraction. Even the founders can fall victim to a period of contraction. This is not uncommon so don’t think that just because you’re in a startup that you’re safe. Nobody is safe from layoffs in a period of contraction. But there are ways you can help yourself and give yourself a better chance of not getting laid off. I survived 7 layoffs at Ember corporation over 11 years before we were finally bought by silicon labs on July 4, 2012. Even the founders were gone by then. So I know something about this. How did I do it? Well let me tell you a story.
In like 2010 during what I think was our last layoff I was sitting around with a bunch of engineers. Some of us were getting laid off and some were not. I fell into the were not category. And as he was packing up his stuff, one of the engineers lets call Dave asked me point blank. Ezra how did you survive all these years? In effect like why me and not you.
I was offended by this but I took it in stride. I simply said Dave I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you. I left it at that, no further insight or anything. I reality if he had been kind about it and asked for my advice I would have given it to him as I am now. But he was pissed and being a dick so I left him hanging. Like fuck you man you think it should have been me instead of you? Go fuck yourself that kind of thing.
It’s true though I wasn’t the best engineer. Everybody knew this. It’s not something you can hide when every commit to the SW repository is seen by all. In all reality Dave was a better engineer than me but that didn’t matter because all along I had something Dave didn’t. I had a strategy for survival and he didn’t. That was the difference.
My strategy was simple, but if it was employed by all it would have lost its power so Im giving it to you and you alone and the strategy is this: Always stay close to the money. The money is everything in a startup. It sits in a bank account (or investments) and slowly or quickly dwindles according to the “burn rate” of the organization. The burn rate is the rate at which money is disappearing from the company coffers. The runway is the time the company has until the money is gone. Unless you are working for free which I hope you are not (compensation a later episode) you are part of the burn rate because the burn rate is directly proportional to the number of employees and their individual comp. you can quickly calculate all this for yourself by asking how much money they have in the bank and how many employees they have. If they are paying you shit chances are they are paying everyone shit. But in a SW engineering startup 200k per head fully loaded (salary health insurance etc.) is a good estimate. You can ask them how much runway they have. But in reality it is quite easy for them to lie to you or in a lot of instances only the CFO knows this, so just do the math for yourself. This company has 6 months or one year before they either need an exit, a new influx of cash or a serious contraction. But that is not even what I mean about staying close to the money. In addition to all that you would hope that the company has at least one good customer. That customer is also adding to the bottom line, they are hopefully paying for shit. If they are not you have another problem because it means your management is spineless and won’t stand up for the company. But hopefully, that customer is slowing the burn rate and extending the runway for the company. This is where you come in.
You are going to be that customers best friend. When they need something you are there. Need someone on a plane? That’s you. Need a PoC that’s you. You will become close friends with the contacts (engineers) at the customer. For me it was a company called Control 4. I ate at their houses. Their spouses made me food to travel with. We played jokes on each other. I truly enjoyed our friendship. But I also guarantee that when lists were made up for layoffs I was almost always not on them. And that is how I survived 7 layoffs to our final exit. I wasn’t the best, but I didn’t just fill a seat either. I was savvy and made myself indispensable to the org because my close relationship with the clients gave me a negative burn rate. Where others were part of the balance sheet problem I was part of the solution. Do you see? Do this and all the other shit I will tell you about startups and you too will survive at a startup to the Exit. O k youlkamiknangu
On toxic masculinity
Nerdbajetikanba?
This first one is for all of you of course but mostly for the men since they are the ones who desperately nerd to hear this. I have some good close male friends. I am fortunate in this way and I hope you are too. And one day I was hurting inside and I needed a friend a male friend to talk to. So I reached out to one of my good friends and asked. Can we have some time together this weekend? I have a story to share and I could use a friendly ear. This friend of mine is a very busy person but he immediately responded wen? Where? He said it would be his number 1 priority the following day and we scheduled a walk in the woods away from all others where we could have true privacy.
When we met in the woods I started like this. I have reached out to you because you are my close friend and I believe you will keep what I have to say in confidence. Dude I’m a lawyer, he said as you can imagine I’m use to keeping things confidential. Good I said. And before we begin I said this. there is a common narrative in society as a whole that men do not emote man to man. That when we get together we only talk about sports and tits. I would contend that this is untrue. He agreed completely. In fact it is a poisonous misconception about men that has brought us nothing but harm. Men feel. We hurt not only on the inside but on the outside too. It doesent matter our color or our sexual orientation. And we share our feelings with other men. Not only when we are drunk but other times too. There are things that you will need to share with another man for their advice, for their council and for their ear. It will be helpful to know who you can trust and reach out to. Do this don’t be afraid to express, to rage, to cry when you need to. The common narrative that men are stoic and do not emote to other men is at the very core of toxic masculinity and it needs to go now. When you need the ear of a male friend don’t be afraid to reach out and admit your vulnerability you will be surprised by what one male friend will do for another. Take this leap of faith and you will be rewarded as I was. Ok youlkamikanangu.
Introduction
Hey all,
Nierdbajetikanba, is Warlpiri. And it means what are you doing literally it is the way my father would always greet me Eija.Nierdbajetikanba. My father only spoke to me in Warlpiri from the day I was born to his final breath. So that is how I will start each episode and the other thing he would say was youlkamkanangu which means I like you or in close terms I love you. That is how I will end each episode youlkamikanangu. So those will be our book ends., And In between there will be a short story from my life or from history and a lesson or takeaway.
I hope that these will be both entertaining and informative for you all. Some things of course you will have already heard or learned for yourself. In those instances I apologize in advance you can always feel free to skip anything you don’t like or agree with. Noam Chomsky is famous for saying don’t believe anything you hear from anyone not even me. I like this do you get why I like it? It is logically inconsistent but also a truism. Beautiful right. So of course this is a giant vat of free advice. Take it for what it is. It will be most useful to you at the exact time you are experiencing it yourself and probably not before. So if you don’t get it now of course come back to it later. The lessons aren’t going anywhere. You are changing through time these lessons are not. They are static like a buoy in the ocean of life. If you find yourself lost and tired from swimming through life. I hope these lessons will at least give you something to cling to until you can swim again. If at any time you would like to discuss something with me and god willing I am still alive it would be my immediate priority of course. That is a message for you peter, Henrik, Luisa, Hattie, Kenny
Did I mention there would be swearing? Well there will be, see another thing my dad taught me is that swear words are just words. Racially insensitive language hurts people so that should never under any circumstances be used but swear words are just words they’re not directed at degrading an individual or a group of individuals so I always felt free to use them for effect. If you don’t like this I apologize in advance. One other thing, at some times it will seem like I am reading these lessons. This is because I am. The written word is my true form of communication, these podcasts are just the presentation. OK? With that in mind youlkamikanangu and lets begin.