Gossip isn’t news.
Gossip isn’t an informed opinion.
Gossip isn’t fact.
Gossip is speculation about other people based in unverified details.
The reason it is so seductive is that it can feel productive. That you are uncovering a conspiracy.
But how much gossip around the office has ever amounted to anything of substance?
More important to note, the one’s in the middle of the drama tend to be the most miserable.
The opposite of dramatic isn’t undramatic.
The opposite is not dramatic. Without the narrative we carry about the world and the people around us.
Driving in Costa Rica was stressful the first time I did it.
I didn’t understand the rules, the narrow streets, the signs were in a different language, the lines on the pavement were faded, one ways were everywhere, there is no place to turn around, the GPS didn’t work…
I was white knuckling the wheel.
And then, day two, I got a little better. Then a little better by day three. I understood a few more of the signs and how traffic moved.
“People like us drive like this.” At least that was the story I was telling myself. After a while, we begin to believe that everyone must drive like we do. This was my first experience driving abroad. And now I am reminded that there is a whole world out there.
Each of us has a story of how we live. Unique to the culture we were raised in, what we have been taught and what we experience.
Stating the obvious: Driving is only foreign once we drive somewhere foreign. At home, it isn’t unique, it’s just what we do.
My wife told me this incredible story of the hospitality worker at the hotel we stayed abroad. I will call her L:
L was born in India and was trying to get away from her violent father. She had experienced being tied up as a child, beaten and under threat of sexual abuse. Absolutely terrible.
L told my wife the feeling of being stuck. Hopeless. She can only make $100 per month and rent was $100 per month. She would share places to live to put food on the table.
One day, a man traveling abroad who owned a hotel got sick and L nursed him back to good health. Impressed, when he was about to leave, offered L a job in Costa Rica.
It was a way out that so many dream of.
Except…
Many of L’s friends and family tried to get her to stay in India. They told her that she would be human trafficked in Costa Rica. Life would only get worst.
Fortunately, L took the chance and the story for her has completely turned around. She is living the life she chooses.
While each of us has experienced hopelessness, I have never been even close to dire circumstances that L was in. Fear and no hope is what keeps people in captivity. It paralyzes us. It is what maintains the status quo.
We tell ourselves a story that,“This is the best it gets.”
That is utter defeat. So paralyzed with fear that you can’t even take the next step. Because the last ones were so hard. Because of the fear of oppression and consequences. The fear for your safety.
Difficult to make decisions without resources or safety or access or education or experience or without someone to help. Without hope we’re doomed to see circumstances as finite instead of the world of endless possibility. One door closes and there are many more to open. If you are fortunate to live without such fear and are feeling stuck, we need to remember that all we need to do is take a couple steps back and recognize the degrees of freedom that we have taken for granted.
Stand up. Stand out. Go.
Someone born and raised in Manhattan will stand out at a rodeo in Nebraska.
You can see the differences in mannerisms, in how they walk, talk, sound, dress, their haircut…everything will seem a bit off.
And it’s really easy to point them out because everyone around them is different.
Someone who is culturally conservative might even begin to tell a story that Nebraska is even becoming more liberal. (Even though, the data doesn’t support it.)
Juxtaposition is a powerful tool for telling a story. The examples we use from the culture we live in are not necessarily the best representation in what is actually happening.
Everyone can always think of, “This one time…” but it doesn’t actually mean there’s a pattern or a trend. It might be what is sticking out to you because of the narrative you have created.
It means positive-negative. The origins of the word are to describe dualism. Which is a way to see things that may seem opposing at first are actually complimentary.
We never really know how much we truly love until someone is gone.
We can’t know how much we need the light until we experience the dark.
One teaches us the other.
The only constant is change.
And change is happening much faster than ever before. The changes from 5,000 years ago to the Industrial Revolution can be measured as incremental. Thanks to the internet and Google and Apple it has made life unrecognizable of what it looked like 200 years ago.
When my time here on this earth is done, it will be unrecognizable again.
It is difficult to recognize the wave as it moves towards us. Yet, impossible to ignore once it is here.
Change creates tension and discomfort. Particularly those in power who fight to keep things the same.
You can’t simply push injustice under the rug anymore. The world is changing. What kind of world do you want to build where we can all be proud of?
Every choice feels wrong when you’ve forgotten how to believe in yourself.
And when you have lost the ability to make decisions, you will surrender your agency to someone else who will make decisions for you.
Even if that person goes against your code of conduct.
Every day we are miscalculating or making the wrong assumption.
If mistakes are a given then what we do next is all that really counts.
However, what’s next might be really difficult but…
We are not our mistakes.
Each of us has a capacity to learn from the decisions we make.
Seinfeld‘s series finale aired in 1998 with 76 million viewers. Making it one of the most watched series finales of all time.
Unless you are airing the Super Bowl, we don’t get to have an audience like that anymore.
The internet has broken major markets into many, many micro markets. And the internet has also made it easier to explore the edges and find the others. We don’t have three TV stations, we have infinite amount.
We are all idiosyncratic. No one likes what everyone else likes.
We can’t be a big fish in a big pond anymore. Those days are gone. But we can be a big fish in a small pond and that is the search we should be on.
Find your right size pond. One where you can make a splash.
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