Josh Allred's Blog

Our nonprofit brought back mask requirements sooner than most. And it really ruffled some feathers.

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Anonymous people doing anonymous things. Sending hate mail behind a computer screen. Trolls who don’t even live in the state of Utah coming out of the wood works.

All because someone didn’t think it was fair to wear a mask to a free rock climbing clinic.

The irony is, they didn’t pay for the program and they had no intention for paying for our services. Instead, they overreacted to a policy that interfered with their worldview.

We could have overreacted too. We could have tried to compromise or explain our actions. Instead, we ignored the trolls.

Not everyone is going to agree with the work we do. And the one star reviews are not going to make our work better. Why change for anonymous people?

If it’s not for them, it isn’t for them. Our work is for somebody. Not everybody.

So let’s just get this out of the way:

We are truth seekers. We believe in science. We believe we are in the business to help people. And that means, for the time being, we need to wear masks to protect students, the staff and their circle of people they interact with.

Further, just so we are clear, if people think that coming to Pivot Adventure is going to “make them gay”, we can show you the door. Yep, we’ve had comments like those. Inclusive doesn’t mean we pick and choose and exclude others because of who they are. This is a course to build resiliency. And if you are ready to learn, to take a leap forward, we’re here for you. That journey can take many years and Pivot Adventure is here to help speed that process.

If that doesn’t work for you, that’s fine with us. We will keep doing the work we do. Because it’s important and it matters. Not to everyone. Not for the trolls. But to the people we seek to connect with and help light a spark.

It’s not possible with our finite brains to be empathetic to everyone. To a specific group of people who can’t get a vaccine and want to get one or to those who are at high risk, we mask up. And by making that choice, we are making others upset. We can’t make everyone happy here. We have to make a choice. And we are okay with that. We didn’t do it for them. And since millions of children are not dying from wearing a mask, we are sticking with our decision.

Lastly, if you didn’t pay, you don’t have the right to boo. You don’t get to complain about voluntarily showing up to something you didn’t pay for. If it’s not for you, give your spot up to someone who needs it. A simple, “No, thank you” would suffice. Why tear down a nonprofit trying to help teens get outside to improve mental health? Did you not have anything else better to do today?

When we believe the end justifies the means, there is no telling what people can do. Which is why humans can justify atrocities like slavery. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand when someone else is in pain. Yet, in the moment, when we reduce someone’s status to a number or use a label that is inferior, we are now on a dangerous path.

It’s easy to always be upset if you set the bar so high that you can never reach it. No wonder you are always disappointed.

But if we are setting imaginary lines, we can always set it somewhere different.

Nothing wrong setting it higher or even out of reach from time to time. But the bar for perfection is just an excuse to hide or to berate the world.

The culture is always changing. Morphing, evolving into something new. Constantly.

People, however, want things to stay the same. To have a more safety and reliability. A predictable world.

The intersection of where culture and people meet causes drama.

Not for the culture, of course. Because the culture doesn’t care about our feelings.

The more time we spend wishing for things to be different is time wasted that can be used to push back.

Separation is the core problem to poverty. Us and them.

Create a system that is there to help those in need and then blame the system when it doesn’t work. “Not my problem.”

We love having someone to criticize, especially when there is no face or name to the problem. “Someone else is to blame.”

And it’s easy to ignore problems when they don’t show up on our doorstep. The age old question, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Physically distancing ourselves makes it easy to pretend problems don’t exist. “What problem?”

Labels are another way to dehumanize people. You are no longer human, you are homeless, an addict, a convict, an illegal alien, an orphan, someone with a disability, gay…labels create division and classes.

Statistics take out the humanity in reducing people into numbers. “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic,” Joseph Stalin.

The common bond is we are all humans. With hopes and dreams and fears and insecurities and stories. We can tap into the humanity if we decide to show up without judgement.

Sure the problems of inequality are enormous. No one person is going to bring balance. But the choice is small to extend a hand. Adopting a posture of generosity and kindness. We don’t need your opinion. We need you to stand up and make a difference.

Every couple of months, I get a phone call from someone asking, “I always wanted to start something like this. How did you do it?”

If there was a secret, as if there was a trick that needed to be revealed, I could market it online. Sell it for a premium price.

There is no shortcut to doing something that hasn’t been done before.

The only thing I look back on is the long list of mistakes. Over and over again, one failure on top of another. And that is why we have succeeded. We didn’t have the answer, we started with a question and assertions.

Recently, I went over to one of the big retailers to post a help wanted sign for our nonprofit. I’ve done it before numerous times, but as customary, I asked for permission.

The floor manager stunned by my request said, “We don’t post jobs for competing businesses.”

Really? This is a major chain with hundreds of locations spread across the US valued at billions of dollars–and they’re worried that if I post a job on the community board that I am some how competing with their bottom line.

Of course, that is silly. This floor manager couldn’t see past the manual. Couldn’t reach in to their humanity to recognize that a teen suicide prevention nonprofit in their area is not competition.

It isn’t their fault. They had been brainwashed into thinking that the pie is fixed. And if my slice gets bigger that means their slice is smaller.

We spend an exorbitant amount of emotional labor wishing for things to be different instead of finding something productive.

Staring at your soufflé isn’t going to help it bake any faster so you might as well do something else.

We become so attached to the outcomes that we end up ignoring the opportunities to create more art.

Taylor Hawkins, the legendary drummer for Foo Fighters, tells this story about the moment he knew he was a drummer.

He was at a friends house and his friend tells him to pick up the drum sticks and to follow along to his beat. Hawkins immediately picked it up and his friend stunned turned to Hawkins and said, “You’re a drummer.”

The story suggests that Hawkins had this innate gift to drumming. But that is unlikely. What is more likely is from there, Hawkins spent the next 20 years perfecting his craft through thousands of hours of practice.

Sometimes though, it helps when someone gives us a label and we embrace it.

We tell ourselves stories of inefficiency, that we are frauds, that we are not as good as the other drummers–until someone tells us we are who we set out to be.

Beloved author, Neal Gaiman, has noted that he has to be extremely bored in order to write.

Most of us fear being bored. To sit with our own thoughts.

As a result, we fill the space. Occupy our mind with junk food media and don’t allow space to think, to explore and to be creative.

When is the last time you sat down just to think?

Perhaps, your greatest hit is just bursting at the seams if you just give it time to reflect.