Try not to be a dick

It seems simple, right? I’m not even asking you to not be a dick, I’m only asking you try not to be a dick. Unfortunately, this will be much more difficult than it sounds, not due to your shortcomings, but because it’s really hard to not be a dick all the time. Sometimes, everyone acts like a dick. And I mean everyone; Mother Teresa, The Dalai Lama, Jesus, all your heroes, and yep, your Mom and Dad.

The hardest part of this one is looking at your actions from someone else’s perspective. It forces you to consider how your words and actions appear to and affect those around you. That’s the thing about life, if you stay focused on yourself all day, never thinking of how the things you say and do will seem to others, you’ll inevitably dick someone over. I’m not saying you’ll intend to give someone the shaft. I’m saying that by virtue of not giving a shit, you just might be a dick to someone without realizing it.

Problem is, focusing on yourself is the default state of existence. Everyone is the star of the movie of their life, and it can be hard to realize that the bit players in your life have entire three-part trilogies based on theirs. But that’s the truth. Every single person you meet faces challenges you’ll never know and is fighting battles you’ll never understand.

But, like your balls after 40, that’s low-hanging fruit. I’m not discounting the value of not being a dick on accident, but that’ll be easy compared to the next part.

Some people suck. These people will be dicks to you. You’ll want to return the favor and they’ll deserve it. That’s where I’m only asking you to try. Realize that people don’t suck for no reason. Consider what happened in their lives to make them suck, and ask yourself how you would feel in their sucky-ass shoes.

Maybe they don’t have shoes, or they didn’t have shoes growing up. Maybe their parents used to beat them with shoes. Maybe, just maybe, their parents were both clowns who used to parade them around the mall in floppy shoes while the other kids called them BingBing and Buttplug. You can’t know what someone else has been through to turn them into the people they are.

While I’m not making excuses for their dickishness, it makes more sense when you realize that people are rarely terrible with no reason. And if you can try to give them enough grace that you don’t reflect their failings by being a dick right back, then you’ve got something to be proud of.

I’m not suggesting you let someone attack, abuse, or hurt you. Always stand up for yourself, and no, this won’t be easy. But you’ll be amazed how often kindness can break through anger, or even flip it completely. In David McRaney’s book You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself he writes about “The Benjamin Franklin Effect.”

While he was running for his second term as clerk of the Pennsylvania general assembly, a colleague disparaged him while speaking out against his election. Dick move. As much as Franklin might have wanted to be a dick right back, the colleague was rich, powerful, and well-educated. So, “Franklin set out to turn his hater into a fan...without “paying any servile respect to him.” Franklin’s reputation as a book collector and library founder gave him a standing as a man of discerning literary tastes, so Franklin sent a letter to the hater asking if he could borrow a specific selection from his library, one that was a “very scarce and curious book.” The rival, flattered, sent it right away. Franklin sent it back a week later with a thank-you note. Mission accomplished. The next time the legislature met, the man approached Franklin and spoke to him in person for the first time. Franklin said the man “ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.”

I’m not implying you can turn every dick into a friend by being nice, but you’ll be surprised how far it will get you.

Lastly, there will be days when you’ll swear God is pissing on your head, and on those days, you’ll want to take it out on someone. I wish I had some wise words to explain why these days or weeks are what they are, but just like some people suck, sometimes life sucks. You’ll want to scoop it up and pass it on, and I get that. When you’re getting the shaft, dicking over the next guy in line can seem like a good idea.

Thing is, they don’t deserve it anymore than you do. And while being a dick to them might feel good in the moment, it will eventually rot you from the inside out. Everything gets easier with practice, ideas become habits, and when you start being a dick to people for no reason, you end up being a dick all the time. And unless you’re a sex toy or a guy named Richard, that’s no way to go through life.

So, the next time you’re having the worst day imaginable, remember this: It might get worse and it might get better. You might not have much say which way it goes. The one thing you can always control is how you react. If you do your best to not be a dick, no matter what situation you find yourself in, you’ll make yourself happier in the long run, you might turn your enemies into friends, but you’ll definitely make your Dad proud.

Go forth and try your best not to be a dick.

Love you buddy,

Dad

Sep 23, 2022

Time for everything, time for anything

I originally planned to finish this series in twelve months, intending to write one entry a week for 52 weeks. But, other things came up and I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would. We moved, you started a new school, I had other projects, etc. But finally, I’m starting my last entry in September, nine months after I’d planned. Which is the perfect intro to this one.

Time is funny like that. It marches on like a metronome, indifferent to how much you wish it would slow down or speed up. It offers no do-overs, no matter how frivolously you spend it. And it gives zero fucks what you planned to accomplish in the time you had. Once that time is over, you’ll get no more. But, it also stretches out ahead of you into an unknown future, offering untold possibility and infinite choices.

Which is why I hope you both learn to make choices about how you spend your time and understand what those choices mean. Because while there’s never enough time for everything, there’s still enough time to do almost anything.

Sep 9, 2022

On rules: the good, the okay, and the ones that suck

I have no doubt that I will someday regret giving you the advice I’m about to give you, but I’m going to give it to you anyway. That’s because like all the shit I’ve included so far, it’s important, and I want to make sure you know it.

This advice is about rules.

Some rules are good, and should be followed.

Some rules are okay, and can be bent.

Some rules are bad, either for being unjust or for being stupid, and depending on the consequences and the nature of the rule, deserve your ire, to be broken, or at the very least, followed with extreme disdain.

The hard part is figuring out which rules are which.

Jul 15, 2022

Heaven is for real. Or it isn't. And nobody knows which.

Let’s talk about God.

Wait, don’t go.

I know invitations to talk about God have shut down countless conversations and gotten hundreds of thousands of doors slammed in Jehovah only knows how many well-intentioned faces, so before you stop reading, let me tell you what I’m going to tell you.

Of all the advice I’ve given you, this one might be the least instructive. It touches on God, religions, and what I believe.

But.

More important is what I’m not going to tell you.

Jun 16, 2022

A personal account of incredible kindness

Last week, you knocked a top front tooth out, again. You knocked out the top front left in 2020, mid-pandemic. This time is was top front right, but as awful as the experience was, it also gave us the opportunity to meet two incredibly kind people who went out of their way to help us when you (and I) really needed some help.

I’m going to tell you that story and why I hope theirs is the kind of behavior you grow up to emulate; because more than anything else you can be in this world, I hope you grow up to be kind.

Jun 9, 2022

Be Humble

Be humble. Because no matter how much you think you know or how much you actually know, the list of things you don’t know will always be way the hell longer than the list of things you do know. As if that weren’t bad enough, there’s also a list of things you think you know that you’ve got wrong.

Trust me, those things you think you know are just waiting out there in the world to make you look like an asshole as soon as you open your mouth to declare something you’re sure of. And I’m not telling you this to say I know more than you, or that I’ve got it all figured out. In I have no idea what I’m talking about, I was pretty clear that I don’t know everything. What I’m telling you is that you don’t either, and you should act accordingly.

How? Be humble.

Mar 24, 2022

Choose Discomfort

Your Mom and I are making ourselves uncomfortable on purpose, which sounds like a terrible idea. It’s not, though, and I’m going to tell you why it’s good for us and good for you.

Late last summer, a recruiter contacted your Mom about a job. After lots of emails, phone calls, interviews, and soul searching, she decided to take a job as the VP of Sales at Sierra Nevada Brewing. This also meant we’d relocate from Cincinnati to Asheville. Which all sounds great, because who wouldn’t want to work for the brewery that started the craft beer industry and live in the mountains of North Carolina where they got married? And we’d be closer to my family. What could be uncomfortable about that?

You have to consider what we’re leaving behind.

Mar 8, 2022

Sam Vines on boots and money

Let’s talk about money, why the idea that “you get what you pay for” is almost always true, and why not having money can cost you money. To set the stage, I’m going to share the Samuel Vines theory of Economic unfairness. Who is Sam Vines? Sam is a character in Terry Pratchett’s 1993 book Men at Arms.

He says, “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

Feb 19, 2022

The Sex Talk

This one’s going to be a doozy. And for your grandparents, they might want to look away; we’re going to talk about sex. So strap in, or strap on, whatever floats your little man in the boat.

At some point, we’ll have a you-and-me version of this talk, where you’ll have to listen to me struggle through this stuff while you suffer soul-crushing embarrassment. But, since this blog is about writing down things just in case I don’t get to explain them to you, I’m also going to embarrass you in writing.

We’ll skip the biology lesson, because this isn’t that kind of sex talk. You know, about fallopian tubes and seminal fluid. Although, you should learn what those are before 6th grade. Otherwise, you might end up like your Dad, who at the urging of Scooter Bailey, told Lee Raymer to “suck my Fallopian tubes,” in a cutdown fight on the school bus. Not surprisingly, your Dad lost that cutdown fight.

But, this is not a talk about fallopian tubes. This is a talk about consent, responsibility, emotions, accidents, and consequences. So, without further ado, here we go.

Jan 25, 2022

Don't Text Important Sh*t

When it comes time to talk about important shit, pick the right way to do it. Text messages, email, and written letters have their places and their uses, but when it comes to conversations that really matter (about things like relationships, sex, money, legal contracts, etc.) get to face-to-face, or at the very least, get on the phone. Yes, it’s less convenient, but you’ll be less likely to miss important details, misunderstand, or miscommunicate. You’ll also be 100% less likely to be autocorrected into telling someone to “shave the date,” or ordering “Egg rolls with fuck sauce.”

Don’t think I’m anti-text/anti-email. Especially because it’s possible text messages won’t even be a thing when you’re old enough to read this. We will have certainly developed new ways of communicating short snippets of information by then, who knows, maybe we’ll be sending mini-holograms back and forth. But, unless that technology manages to perfectly replicate every nuance of in-person communication, it will still be imperfect. More importantly, it will be at least one step removed from in-person communication, which by design, reduces the emotional immediacy and impact of that communication. What’s that mean? The further removed you are from a person, the easier it is to say something you wouldn’t say to their face.

Jan 21, 2022

Listen up, Mom has the mic.

When I think about the qualities I want you to emulate and share with the world, I think about kindness, empathy, respect, hope and love. As I reflect more on what is at the root of these qualities and behaviors, the art of listening comes to the center and forefront. I’m not sure I’m qualified to write to you about this as it’s something I struggle with every day. So, please don’t always follow my actions in this regard (although I try to get better with practice each day) but do try to cultivate and practice active listening.

Listen is a verb – it’s active, it requires energy and focus. The Merriam-Webster definition includes three parts:

To pay attention to sound
To hear something with thoughtful attention: give consideration
To be alert to catch an expected sound

I think the second part is the most critical. To me this speaks to not just active listening BUT also listening with a willingness to be influenced.

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