Other People's Problems

Everybody’s got problems. You, me, and everyone you know. Even mega-famous billionaire and rap mogul Jay-Z has 99. And I’m here to tell you to leave other people’s problems alone. As tempting as it is to swoop in and save someone you love from a situation you’re sure you have the solution to, don’t do it. Take it from a recovering “other people’s problem solver,” you, your friends, and everyone you know will be better off if you leave other people’s problems to the people whose problems they are.

How can I be so heartless? What if other people need your help? Up to a point, I’m not talking about these situations. If your buddy’s car breaks down and he asks you for a ride, by all means, help him out. If he chooses not to get his car fixed and expects you to drive him all over creation, I’d reconsider doing so. But generally, I’d say it’s okay to help people with their problems when they ask for your help.

The other people’s problems you should avoid fixing are the ones they didn’t ask for your help with.

Why? First, fixing other people’s problems for them generally only provides a temporary solution. Let’s go back to your buddy’s car. You could arrange to have it towed to a service station, get it repaired, and then pick it up and drop it off at his house. Best friend ever, right? Wrong. Not only did you rob him of the chance to navigate the situation and solve the problem himself, but you set the expectation that the next time his car breaks down because he’s not doing the regular maintenance, you’ll get it fixed for him.

This leads right into the next point; always examine your own motives for solving other people’s problems. Two of the big reasons I find myself fixing problems for others are because it puts me in control, and it feels good to be necessary, to be needed.

How does it put me in control? It alleviates the discomfort I feel watching another person suffer. Currently, you’re learning to pull your own pants and underwear up after you use the toilet. You can mostly do it yourself, but you don’t quite have the fine motor control to get the back waistband up.

Every time you get off the toilet, you expect me to pull up your pants, and you whine and grumble about it when I don’t. Sometimes you cry and scream, and this is very awkward in public restrooms. Sometimes you bump your head on the cabinet when you bend down to pull them up, and then you get sad. Since I really don’t like seeing you sad, I could just pull up your pants for you. In half a second, I could eliminate all the discomfort and take control. But if I do that, I’m depriving you of the opportunity to learn how to pull up your own pants. I’d be taking away your chance to practice and to develop the fine motor control you’ll need and use for the rest of your life. So, instead I choose to bribe you. I let you flush the toilet only when you make an honest effort to pull up your pants. And since you really enjoy flushing the toilet, this seems to be working. Sometimes. Hopefully by the time you read this, you’ve mastered this skill.

The need to be needed isn’t really applicable to your underwear example, so here’s another. Albeit one that’s so personally embarrassing that I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it. But, since I hope my mistakes can be your heads up, I’ll carry on.

I dated a girl once who treated me much like her therapist. We talked for hours about her problems, how much of a dick her ex was, and all the ways the world had done her wrong. And since I was really into this girl, I liked that. It made me feel important, like she needed me. But, when she dumped me, rather than deal with my own feeling of loss and sadness, I fixated on her. Without me to listen to her problems, how would she be okay? I’d convinced myself that she needed me, that without my shoulder to cry on, she’d be lost, heartbroken. So I called one of her friends, told her we’d broken up and asked her to check in on the girl who’d just dumped me. And after typing that, I can’t tell you how much I want to go back in time, slap myself in the face, and tell myself to man up and have some self-respect.

That, however, is not the point. The point is that I liked being needed. Fixing her problems helped me feel necessary. And even after she dumped me, I kept trying to fix her problems, mostly because I was dumb. Don’t be dumb.

Side note, this is a shit role to play in a relationship. If you are always pleasing, doting on and doing things for the other person, and that isn’t reciprocated, you are in a bad relationship. Find someone who values you for who you are, not what you can do for them.

Back to not fixing other people’s problems.

I still struggle with this. It pains me to see people I care about suffer, to see them in a situation where the solution seems so obvious. But I’m working on it. My happiness and well-being are my responsibility. Other people’s happiness and well-being is their responsibility. And when I try to solve their problems for them, I’m taking responsibility for something that’s not mine.

Whether it’s a broken down car, a bad job, or a cheating boyfriend, sometimes the best thing you can do for a friend, significant other, or spouse is listen when they complain about their problems, help if you’re asked, but don’t ever just jump in and start fixing shit. While you might have the best intentions, it makes you sound condescending, it robs them of the chance to solve their own problems, and in the worst case scenario, it makes them overly dependent on you in the future.

Leave other people’s problems for other people.

Now I’m going to go back and read this three or four times to see if I can convince myself to take my own advice.

I love you,

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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