WordFeeder

Saturday, September 5, 2009

*See the Preface to the “Saul’s Laws” page at the WordFeeder.

Saul was one of the good guys. Most people… No. Everyone, except me, who knew him assumed it was because he genuinely liked people, which was true. In fact, my father taught me to like and trust everyone I met – regardless of any superficial attributes, gender, race, style, whatever – until they gave me good reason not to. (It’s Saul’s Law #22: Relationships, which includes a corollary that, I discovered when I was in college, is really helpful for men wanting to meet women and visa versa.) Saul liked people alright, but what was interesting was his confessed reason behind everything he did which, he theorized, was the same for all of us.

“Everyone,” he told me, “does everything for selfish reasons.”

Whatever we do, it’s not because we want to improve the condition of the other person, it’s because helping the other person makes us feel better. Now, you say, “Of course.” “Being kind to others is its own reward,” so the adage goes. That’s all my father was trying to tell me. Well, you could say that, but you’d be wrong. If that was what he was talking about – that kindness is its own reward – that’s what he would have said. That would be Saul’s Law #9 on “Kindness,” but it isn’t.

My father’s point wasn’t about goodness as a goal in and of itself. He was talking about pure, raw self-indulgence, devoid of any virtue. Academically, I get it, but was he making a technical observation or was he trying to tell me that “the greater good” was a construct, a somewhat superficial belief, recently layered onto the history of our species, that glossed over the primitive motivation at the root of everything we do?

What difference does it make? The difference may have been that he didn’t trust “good.” Selfishness, greed, these were things he believed in, palpable emotions he considered fundamental to being human and, more broadly, to being a living thing of any kind – essential to our survival, and the reason for our tendency to socialize.

Far from being cruel, it was an innocent realization completely consistent with the intellectual honesty which was the subtext of every conversation we ever had.

Some of Saul’s laws were less straightforward, less obvious for their implications that others. Growing up – and, even as an adult, I’m still very much a work in progress – it’s been something I’ve had to deal with. (If my seventh grade teacher, Mrs. Campbell, is reading this, “How are you? And yes, I know a dangling preposition when I see one. Sometimes, I just prefer the way they sound.)

-wf

Friday, September 4, 2009

*See the Preface to the “Saul’s Laws” page at the WordFeeder.

Saul’s Law on going it alone was an admonition not to. “Don’t try,” my father advised me, “to do important things by yourself.”

At the time, I thought he was talking about himself and my mother, that I shouldn’t be afraid to ask them if ever there was something I was having trouble figuring out on my own. But then he could have just said that, and didn’t. One thing about my father, he seldom blurted. He was smart, no question about it, although it wasn’t so much that he was mentally quick, as it was that he was always thinking and seldom encountered a situation or topic he wasn’t prepared to discuss. The intelligence he demonstrated so casually was hard earned. I think he meant exactly what he said.

It makes sense. There’s a lot we go through growing up and as adults, personally and professionally, that’s more than we can handle well by ourselves. On the other hand, and here’s the rub, my parents brought me up to be independent, to be able to take care of myself, to figure out things on my own and be proud of it. Independence was equated with strength. Dependence, with weakness.

“Life’s full of contradictions” could have been one of Saul’s Laws, but wasn’t. I guess it was one of those things he expected me to figure out for myself.

There was more to it that came later: “When you reach out for someone to help you, Son,” he called me “Son” and almost never by my given name, “and they do, be sure to help that person back if you ever get the chance, or someone else if you don’t.” The fact was, he taught me by his example over the years I lived at home, sometimes you’ll find yourself helping other people just for the heck of it. He thought of it as making a deposit, of banking the goodwill until he or someone else needed it someday.

No doubt about it, my father was one of the good guys, but not entirely for the usual reasons you might be assuming. You’ll understand when you learn Saul’s 9th Law of Business and Life: “Selfish Behavior,” next up.

-wf

Thursday, September 3, 2009

*See the Preface to the “Saul’s Laws” page at the WordFeeder.

I have a little voice, sort of. It doesn’t talk to me. It types, in Courier, in the air in front of my face so I can read what it says, each letter materializing, one at a time to the distinctive sound of the keys hitting the roller on an old manual typewriter. And then it pauses and hits the period very deliberately, as if to say the word “Period” out loud.

When I was a senior in college, I came back from a date with a girl who lived on the women’s campus across town. While I was waiting for her in the lobby of her dorm that morning, I had run into another girl who I had dated for almost two years. I’d been crazy about her, but we had broken up and I hadn’t seen her for some time. We talked briefly when she came out to pick up her copy of the Saturday paper. It was nice, but then she left to go back to her room.

Later that evening in my apartment, I was standing in front of the mirror over my bathroom sink, not thinking about anything in particular, when my little voice typed out the following message, one keystroke at a time: “Y o u ’ r e g o i n g t o m a r r y E l l e n” … “.” And because my little voice has never been wrong, never, I walked over to the phone in my bedroom and called her. I told her, straight away, that I was coming over the following morning to ask her to marry me. She told me she had a date, and I told her to break it. She did. I asked her, and we were married that summer.

Marrying Ellen turns out to be the smartest thing I’ve ever done, so you can understand how much I respect my little voice.

Mostly, I rely upon my little voice to help me resolve less life shaping issues. I’ll be thinking about something all day and late into the evening until I pass out on our bed. The next morning, I get up, fill up the sink with hot water, lather up and, more often than not a short sentence materializes, one Courier letter at a time in front of me. “Pricing won’t be affected,” or “A wet bird never flies at night,” whatever, and that turns out to be the key to figuring out what I couldn’t the day before.

Sometimes my little voice is very, very specific. I’ll have written something the day before. Could be 10, 20 pages which I’ve proofread two, three times. It’s perfect, but it’s too late. No one will be there on the other end to read it so, what the heck, I put off sending it until the morning. I get up, sit on the edge of my bed for a moment and, “At the bottom of page 4, you left out the ‘to’.” Unbelievable, isn’t it. All night, while I was sleeping, my brain was thinking, going over the text of what I wrote, word by word, remembering it in a way I could never do consciously, and then waiting patiently for me to get up before bringing me up to date. More likely, it was something I had noticed, but never thought about fixing. Either way, very impressive.

The other day I was writing a piece (“Congressional Dreaming: Doing Away With The Senate And Other Radical Changes We Need To Make Congress Work”) in which I advocated, among other things, reducing the House to only 100 Members so they can finally get something done. Fortunately, I slept on the idea, with the TV still on in the corner of our room, until I was awaken in the middle of the night by the unbelievably annoying “ehhh, ehhhh” of the emergency broadcast claxon. (If it were a nuclear attack, I’d probably assume it was a test and sleep through it.) Reaching over Ellen for the remote control on her nightstand, I froze for a moment while my little voice typed out suggestion, “1,000,000 people per Representative.” It was a much better idea which I wrote it down on the pad I keep beside my bed so I wouldn’t forget.

Time and time again, I’ve saved my tush from making costly or embarrassing errors just by giving myself the night to let my brain and its little voice do what they do best – proof positive of Saul’s Law #7 which says,

If it doesn’t make any difference whether or not something you’ve written, or need to tell someone, goes out at the end of the day, or the beginning of the next, always wait until the morning. Something may occur to you in the meantime.

By the way, I’m just finishing this up at 11:04 PM with plenty of energy left to watch at least the first half hour of Conan while I do the dishes… (You know who is already asleep on the couch.) …but no way am I posting it tonight.

“G o o d,” wait for it, “.” Hey? Who typed that?

-wf

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

*See the Preface to the “Saul’s Laws” page at the WordFeeder.

Ever said, written or done something, something important that you weren’t entirely sure about, and then regretted it?

The uncertainty you were feeling was your brain’s way of telling you that it didn’t had enough time or information to evaluate the consequences of what you were about to do. Or maybe it was that emotions were attempting a coup, taking charge of your decision process, rather than just being content to be part of it. Who knows?

The only thing we can say for sure is that, for some reason, you weren’t comfortable. There was a palpable, at least momentary uneasiness that you had to ignore or override. Could be fear you were experiencing. More often, it was the apprehension, the mixed signals that come from inexperience or from the conflict between what you’ve learned from experience or have been taught and the circumstances of the moment.

It’s for times like these that we have this particular Saul’s Law: “If you have any real doubt about doing something, something that could be important, don’t do it. Wait until it feels right.” Still want to do or say it? Maybe you can change the rules or context, even a single word can make a difference, until the instinctive uneasiness you’re feeling has resolved itself.

Too conservative for you? What? You we’re expecting something more like, “When in doubt, go for it.”? My father was a Republican.

The more astute among you may be sensing a contradiction between this law and #5: “Never let being afraid stop you from doing the right thing.” For the record, in the latter case, Saul was talking about doing things having moral or ethical content, not bungee jumping.

Also for the record, Saul’s Laws are full of contradictions. When I was older, and would confront him on just this point, he would argue that it was on purpose, but I would see the corners of his mouth turning up which was a sure sign he was just pretending to have thought about it. In fact, if there was one thing he was trying to accomplish, it was to get me to think, about what he had to say and everything else. At that, he pretty much succeeded.

-wf