What is Fair?

I have this thing about fairness.  I was told as a young child that life is not fair.  I believe that.  But I don't like it.  So, I try as hard as I can in my personal actions to be fair to people (I include my dogs in that).

But, what is fair?

Here is Merriam-Wester's simple definition of fair:

• : agreeing with what is thought to be right or acceptable
• : treating people in a way that does not favor some over others
• : not too harsh or critical

So being fair is trying to do the right thing, in a way that does not favor some over others, and is not too harsh or critical.  It doesn't sound hard,  but it feels hard.

I'll give a couple of examples.  Whenever I give one of my dogs a treat, I give them both a treat.  It wouldn't be fair to favor one over the other.  But sometimes, Scarlett drops her treat and Beaux grabs it before I can stop him.  I give Scarlett another treat, not two treats. Then I worry if I was fair.

There are three Christmas cookies left.  I give one to my husband, one to me, and break on in half, to make sure that I am fair.  But then I worry if the halves were even.

Those are the easy examples, and not the fairness questions that keep me up at night.

I have had an amazing life.  I got a very good job at twenty-four that turned into a lucrative and fulfilling career.  I have a beautiful, smart healthy daughter.  I have a wonderful husband who is also my partner and friend.  I made serious mistakes in my youth that have undermined other people's opportunities, but somehow they did not undermine the opportunities that I had.  How is that fair?

I had a friend who did everything right healthwise.  Exercised, watched what he ate and drank, got the recommended amount of sleep every night, died from brain cancer at thirty-nine.  How is that fair?

I know people who work fifty and sixty hour weeks, and yet can't get ahead because their student loan debt is crippling, or because they have medical debt, or extended families to care for.  How is that fair?

Those examples all support the "life is not fair" hypothesis.  So I try in my little ways to be fair.  But it feels inadequate.

So how can our little ways of trying to be fair make the world more fair?

Well, we can support candidates that want a more fair system.

We can promote fairness in our conversations, and in our writings.

We can advance the position that much of success is luck, and much of failure is luck as well.

If we are ever going to see more fairness in the universe, it will be because we stop believing we create our success, and others create their failures.

Yes, we all have the ability to make choices that limit the next set of choices we have available.  But even if a person makes all the best choices available, bad stuff can still happen because life is not fair.

So, instead of trying to convince myself and others of why I deserve what I have, I'm going to work on giving of my bounty.  And not just material giving.

Giving compassion, giving forgiveness, giving understanding, giving opportunity.

Because I can't make the world fair.  But I can acknowledge that it isn't fair that I have been so blessed by good fortune that others haven't been blessed with.  And then I can try to share the blessings that have been bestowed on me instead of hoarding them.

My own worst enemy

Sometimes, I am my own worst enemy.  I was thinking about my blog post today, and I was going to title it "And instead of but".  As I started to compose the posting in my head, I realized I can't encourage my readers to do something I am incapable of myself.

The idea was, that for just one day, in every conversation and encounter, we should all try really hard to find something we agree with in what everyone we talked to said, and then build on it to find common ground.  And instead of but.

So, I started playing out conversations in my head to see if I could do it.  And, a lot of the time, I just can't.

Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I look at humans as a flawed species.  We try hard, a lot of the time, but we are an error prone, failure prone, emotionally motivated flawed species.  We do things out of anger and fear that are not logical, and are sometimes self-damaging.  We make errors that hurt ourselves and others.

Because I view the species this way, my prejudice during my career as a safety professional was toward intrinsic safety, (where you use a safer method or material) or engineering controls (where you design protection into the device).

I realized any conversation where a human would assert that taking a personal action to mitigate a hazard would be more effective all of the time than implementing intrinsic safety or designing an engineering control would always get a but, not an and from me.

And that is the crux of the dilemma.  When we feel passionately about something, when we have dedicated ourselves to an ideal, it is almost impossible to see things any other way than "our" way.  And you can't have productive discussion without common ground.  And you can't find common ground if you won't compromise your absolutes.

So, every time I think of a contentious conversation where someone wants to have total behavior control over an easily recognizable hazard, I immediately start thinking of ways to convince them that there should be another layer of control, even if only administrative controls are available.

So I have no and.  I don't know that I want to have an and.  But I want to have the conversation.  So what can I do?

It still has to start with finding common ground.  The next step then would be to agree that we disagree on a subject, and either leave it alone, or decide it is too important to walk away from and has to be discussed.

Then the next step is, instead of selling my position, instead of trying to convince the other person why I am "right", is to simply state why I believe what I believe, and why I think it will lead to better outcomes.

And then listen to the other party, and why they believe their position will lead to better outcomes.

As a safety professional, I had that conversation over and over again as I saw sustainable solutions in terms of intrinsic safety and engineering controls, and many others saw sustainable solutions in terms of administrative and behavioral controls.

Now I need to learn to bring that professional face to my interpersonal disagreements.

Fair warning, I'm still going to be trying to win you over.  Like water on rock.  But if we don't at least have the conversation, neither one of us will have the opportunity for information which may shape our future ideal.  No buts about it.

The same day, all over again

My husband shared the story with me of a man he used to work with.  Every day, the man would open his lunch bag, take out his sandwich, and say "Ham and cheese, again", and then eat his lunch.

After observing this for a couple of weeks, a co-worker asked the man, "If you don't like ham and cheese every day, why don't you tell your wife?"  To which the man replied, "Why would I tell my wife? I make my own lunch every day."

I hope that provided you with a little chuckle, but there is a profound lesson in that little story.  Many times we have the power to change what we don't like, but instead, we complain about it and just keep living with it.

Change is hard.  And it is scary.  And it can be distinctly uncomfortable.  As strange as this may sound, being unhappy with how things are can be easier than trying to change them.

I am a lover of routine.  Routine comforts me.  Routine helps me to not make mistakes.  But I recognize that loving my routine more than my quality of life is a hazard I have to be aware of to avoid.

One of the things that the internet has shown me more clearly than I saw before is that some people live to complain.

If you follow any news source, or group, or blog, you will notice other followers who always complain.  There are many people whose comments are a balance of positive and negative, some whose comments are overwhelmingly positive, some are thought-provoking, some are funny.

But there are a persistent few that are always negative.   And it makes me wonder about the people behind the comments.

If reading certain things or types of things makes you angry or uncomfortable, why would you keep reading them?  Why not do something else with that time that provokes more positive emotions?  If supporting a certain sports team, or watching a certain television program, or reading a certain author contributes to you having a bad day, why do you keep subjecting yourself to that?  In other words, why make yourself a ham and cheese sandwich every day and then complain about eating it?

Changing your job, or where you live, or who you live with is big hard scary stuff.  But if you are profoundly unhappy with your job, or where you live, or who you live with, shouldn't you at least be thinking about what can be changed to make it better?

Keeping in mind that the only thing you have control over is yourself, what can you do differently to make tomorrow a better day, or at least a different day than today if you did not like today? It could be that all you need to change is what you focus on, or it could be that you really need to make radical change to be happy.

But whatever your circumstance, even if you need big, scary, slow to happen change to get what you really want, you can remove the petty irritants that you choose and choose something else to fill that time with.

Life is too short to complain about the ham and cheese sandwich you made for yourself.  Be mindful of the choices you make.  When the choices you make leave you feeling unsatisfied, or filled with negativity, make different choices.

The big changes you may need to make will be easier if you don't deplete your energy with the little irritations you can easily remove.

I honestly believe the more practice you give yourself in making small decisions that make you happy, the better you get at making the big decisions that make you happy.

Take a chance on making a small change in the direction of happiness.  It may start an avalanche of change in the right direction.

On fear

Fear is a primal emotion.  Fear is an essential element of survival, as if we had no physical and emotional response to real danger, we would get killed fairly easily.

Our fear mechanism as humans developed when real physical threats existed in our everyday environment.  Snakes, bears, lions, and other predators shared our living spaces.  We needed the physiological responses of heightened awareness, diverted blood flow and increased adrenaline to appropriately fight or flee the threatening foe.

And that fear mechanism still serves us well in modern times when confronted with real danger.

The problem is that the initial fear response is not rational, so can be provoked when no real danger is present.

When danger is perceived, there are two pathways that are followed in the brain, psychologists and neuroscientists have dubbed these the high road, and the low road.  The primal survival mechanism is what has been dubbed the low road, and the processing time is very fast.  The high road, where the response is integrated with memory and reasoning, is called the high road and is much slower.  In order to defeat an irrational fear, your brain has to be trained to take the high road.

I will use myself as an example.  I have an irrational fear of bridges.   When I was about six or seven years old, a bridge near my parent's home suffered a catastrophic failure, and a couple of cars fell into the river below.   I guess that is where it started.

The fear grew until it became paralyzing for me to cross a bridge.   I moved to Louisiana, where you can't not cross bridges.  

Initially, I would literally be shaking in fear every time I crossed a bridge.   But I had to.  So I did.  It was exhausting.  I lost ten to fifteen pounds.  Then, I got used to the bridges on my usual pathways;  work, the grocery store, the mall and I could cross those without fear.

Every day, I would talk to myself as I crossed the bridges, reminding myself that there was nothing to fear, that my fear was an irrational response, and that I had a large body of evidence supporting that I was capable of regularly crossing that bridge.

But I still freeze up at unfamiliar bridges.  Sometimes I have to pull off the road to work myself down from panic to drive across an unfamiliar bridge.  And there are bridges that I adjust my route so that I will not have to cross.

What is the point of all this?  When you are afraid, you are not rational.  You are working from a compromised position.  This can save your life, or it can limit your life and make things very difficult for you.

When frightened, it is important to consciously ask yourself, "Is this fear rational?  Is there really something to be afraid of?  Or is this just an inappropriate response to stimuli?"

Sorting through all the data on the high road takes time.  But if you allow yourself to stay in a fearful state when you are having an inappropriate response to stimuli, you are a target for people to use your emotions against you, and for you to use your emotions against your own best interests.

Data is the enemy of irrational fear.  If you feel that someone or something is feeding your fears, look for more data.   Seek data from multiple sources so that you get a well rounded perspective.  Think rationally about what you are afraid of when you are in a calm state.

Fear can control your life, and take away the quality of your life.  Some fears grow so big that professional intervention is the only course of action that will help.

For many of us though, we can combat our fears with reason, but first we have to understand that we can combat our fears with reason, and actively decide that we want to make that investment.

The amalgam of my many selves

Most of us are an amalgam of our many selves.  We carry pieces of our child self, our adolescent self, our young adult self, our mature self.

We are child, parent, spouse, friend, employee, boss, colleague, sibling, cousin, grandchild, acquaintance.

We are weak and strong.  We are informed and ignorant.  We are hopeful and hopeless.

At times, in reflection, it is all too easy to see the imperfections in our many selves, and to dwell on them.  To do this occasionally, and carefully, is not a terrible thing, because when we see our own imperfections, we can seek to correct them.

The more we reflect on the imperfections of the past, the more we can become our best present self, so to that end, reflection is good.  What can be damaging is when we punish our present self for the mistakes of our past selves.  Fix what you can, leave the rest behind.

One of the things that I believe is that when we grieve, we grieve not just for the person we lost, but the self we lost when they left our lives.

I remember how profoundly I felt this when my dad died.  I would always be George's daughter, but I would never feel the very special love and acceptance I got from my dad ever again.  That self, that George's daughter self no longer had the person that made me that self.

That probably sounds incredibly selfish to some, and maybe I am the only person that ever felt that way.  But when I miss the people I have lost, I miss not just them, but who I was when I was in their presence.

So appreciate the many selves that make you who you are, and the people that make you that self.   Appreciate the uniqueness of all your relationships, and treasure that uniqueness.

We are all here for a very short time.  We will all experience loss.  We will see the best of ourselves, and the worst of ourselves manifest with different people in different relationships.

Choose to nurture the relationships that bring our your best self.  Treasure the relationships that you have, and the unique nature of each.

If you have ever grieved a sense of loss of self when you have lost a loved one, know that I have experienced that grief as well.

We are all an amalgam of many selves.  That is what makes life so very rich and wonderful, but it is also what makes life so very hard sometimes.

My wish for you is a powerful sense of self.  One that will survive all the inevitable losses, and will continue to grow towards the best self you can be.

Thinking outside the box

I woke up this morning thinking about the expression, "Thinking outside the box", and wondered where it came from.

The origin is largely credited to the nine dots puzzle,  where the solution lies in seeing beyond the edges of the square implied by the nine dots.

Nine dots puzzle

That got me to thinking about why we tend to think in boxes, why we tend to follow patterns, and why we retry familiar solutions even when we are fairly certain they will not correct the problems we have.

Why is it so difficult to break out of the box?

I think there are a number of reasons, the first of which is that we don't recognize the box we are in.

Most of us do the same things over and over again.  We eat the same foods, go to the same stores, cheer for the same teams, drive the same route to work.

The more we repeat a behavior, the stronger those pathways in our brains become.  And the stronger the pathways, the harder it is to get out of those pathways.

The best way to prevent getting boxed in is to break your patterns.

Go to a different grocery store, or shop backwards in your usual store.  Take a different route somewhere.  Try a new food, or a different restaurant.  Try a new brain teaser, puzzle or game.

The more you willingly expose yourself to new experiences, the more new pathways your brain has to make.  Write.   Honestly, since starting this blog, and starting to put the stories in my imagination on paper, I'm seeing things in entirely different ways.

There is always more than one right answer.  The rightness or wrongness of answers is so very dependant on other changing variables.  The more we open ourselves up to new things, new experiences, new people, new locations, the easier it gets to see that there is always more than one right answer.

When we stop looking for right answers, and start looking for the best available answer, we've gone a long way to breaking down the walls of the box.

Creativity is elusive when you are stuck in the familiar.   Providing yourself with the spark of something different can unleash an avalanche of creativity.  And that can make the world a very fun and exciting place indeed.

A New Year - A Blank Canvas

I opened my Garmin Connect account this morning, and when I opened the calendar, it was completely blank.

I know it is New Year's Day, so I should have expected that, but it kind of took me by surprise.  It was a very graphic visual of what an open ended opportunity awaits me in the next 366 days.

We all write our own story, one unit at a time.  We can look at the units as measures of time, like minutes, hours, or days.  Or we can look at the units as acts; acts of kindness, acts of friendship, acts of love.

But however we measure our lives, we are the ones writing the story.

What do you want your story to be?  Do you want it to be inspirational?  Do you want it to be dramatic?  Do you want it to be funny?  Do you want it to be romantic?

Knowing what you want your story to be helps you to build the outline so that you can live the story you want to live.

Life will always throw curveballs at you.  Things will happen that you didn't expect.  You will not get to live your life exactly the way you want, because there are too many things that are out of control.

But if you know what you want your story to be, if you choose a purpose and dedicate yourself to it, at the end, your story will be what you want it to be.

It is easy to just live.  Wake up, meet the day's responsibilities (or not), go to sleep; do over.  And for many people, that is a comfortable way to live.

But it is not comfortable for me.  I am driven to have a vision, and to have a purpose.  That vision, that purpose provides hope in dark times and comfort in sadness.

My vision and sense of purpose are the outline for the story of my life.  My life story is one of trying to make it better.

Bringing light in darkness, bringing laughter to sad days, bringing comfort to the hurting, bringing inspiration to the hopeless.

I don't know from measure to measure how well I am doing.  But I just keep on trying.  Because while I think I am creating the story of my life, it is actually the people I interact with that are writing the story.

The memories of me that I leave behind are truly the story of my life.  The more memories I make with people that make them smile or laugh when they think of me, the more successful my story is.

The more memories I make with people that inspire them to keep on trying, the more successful my story is.

2016 is another blank canvas to fill with memories.   I hope the memories I create with you this year are good ones.