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.

In Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, he says that “astronomy is a humbling and character-building profession.”

Why’s that?

Let’s start small, with our planet.

And by small, I mean relative to the rest of the universe. Relative to you and me, the Earth is pretty fucking huge. We’ve got 7.7 billion people, 99.999999% of which you’ll never meet. There are 196 countries, most of which you’ll never visit. Even in a country with only 50 states, I’m still 11 short of visiting all of them, and I like to travel. The size of our planet should be humbling enough.

We live on a massive planet with more cultures, history, and people than you’ll ever have a chance of understanding completely. And yet, that Earth is just a teeny, tiny fraction of the planets in our universe. Viewed in just the context of our galaxy, Earth is tiny.

How tiny?

In 1990, as NASA’s Voyager 1 was headed out of the solar system, it turned around to take look back at Earth. From so far away, (3.7 billion miles from the sun), our whole planet was just a pale blue dot. In his 1994 book, “Pale Blue Dot,” Carl Sagan wrote about the significance of that picture. If you haven’t read that book or heard his thoughts about that picture, go back and click the pale blue dot link. Spend 4 minutes watching the video, and then come back. I’ll wait.

When I watch that video, it humbles me. It stretches my perception of the size of our universe and reminds me just how tiny a part of that universe I actually am. The city and state where we live is just a small part of a small part of our planet. And if that planet is a small part of something so vast I can’t begin to comprehend it? That humbles me, as it should anyone.

I don’t say this to make you feel unimportant; you are and will always be the only star of the movie of your life. You also play a massive role in the movie of my life. I only want you to realize how much else there is around you; more to learn than you’ll ever learn and more to see than you’ll ever see.

So, don’t act like you’ve seen it all; you haven’t.

For that matter, nobody else has either, so when you meet people who pretend like they have, don’t believe them. (More on this in a bit.)

Beyond the things you don’t know yet, there are the things you think you know, but don’t. You’ll encounter an idea and wonder why it was never adopted, only to learn it has been tried and actually sucks. For example, Communism or shaving your butt crack. Both interesting in concept, and awful in reality.

I’ve been certain of many things in life that turned out to be not so. In some cases, I’ve come to understand how wrong I was on my own. And sometimes, other people helped me with this discovery. This is, unfortunately, one of the most memorable ways to learn that you do not actually know what you’re talking about.

Here’s how you avoid feeling like an asshole in those situations. If you’re not sure, admit it. If you don’t know, say so. At the very least, just keep your mouth shut and listen. That’s how you can avoid looking stupid and learn.

In What Will People Think?, I mentioned “the knowers.” You’ll know them by the never-ending stream of self-assured nonsense that comes out of their mouths. These are the ones who mansplain, who talk over experts, who are so incapable of humility, of admitting the limitations of their own knowledge that they put these limits on display for everyone to see.

It’s counterintuitive, but it takes a strong and confident person to admit they don’t know something.

Humility isn’t easy.

No, the easy path is pretending you know, or shouting down everyone who actually does. Instead, listen to a mantra your Mom picked up from one of her mentors at work. “I reserve the right to get smarter every day.”

How?

“Be curious, not judgmental.”

That link goes to a scene from Ted Lasso, and is Ted misquoting Walt Whitman. Don’t let the misattribution throw you off, the idea still holds water. By withholding judgement and letting curiosity lead, you will learn more, you will be wrong less, and most importantly, you will get smarter every day.

As just one person on a pale blue dot spinning round an enormous universe, you can’t know everything. You’re going to be wrong plenty.

Both are okay.

As long as you don’t let what you don’t know today stop you from knowing it tomorrow, you’ll be just fine.

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

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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