• Lessons From Life

  • 著者： Ezra Hale
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Lessons From Life

著者： Ezra Hale
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  • Short stories and lessons from life to help you with your day
    Ezra Hale
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Short stories and lessons from life to help you with your day
Ezra Hale
哲学 社会科学
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  • On The Normalization Of Suffering

    On The Normalization Of Suffering
    2021/05/29
    On the Normalization of SufferingI spent a long time thinking about this podcast before I even started writing. Originally I had a much more controversial title in mind that probably would have generated a lot more interest but in the end my wife made me change it. So I guess in a way she has inadvertently become a silent partner in this endeavor and I can blame her for this much more boring title. But if you’ve come this far I guess you deserve to know, I was going to call this podcast “On White Privilege and Trauma”. Irregardless, oh yes irregardless is a word, look it up if you disagree. It happens to be a word I like a lot because so many people want to argue that it isn’t a word at all. So, irregardless of the title of this podcast, the subject matter remains the same. I will tell you a story of White Privilege and I will tell you a story of Trauma. And then in the end I will tie these two things together for a lesson on the normalization of suffering.Where to begin. I guess my thinking on this subject all started with Joe Rogan of all places. As you may or may not know he got into hot water a few weeks back after he made some comments on his own podcast to the effect of how all heterosexual white males have been essentially “canceled” en-mass. To be fair, I didn’t watch the podcast and I don’t care to, but I got the gist of what he was saying from the few clips I saw on TV. This isn’t news to me and it isn’t something I haven’t heard before. In fact it is something I’ve heard many times from all kinds of people I know. Good friends who I consider quite woke and liberal in their thinking have joked to me “haven’t you heard the news that we don’t count anymore, that we’ve been canceled!” So I have to acknowledge that there is a real feeling in the air, not just among the Joe Rogans of the world but in general that the heterosexual white male is somehow under threat of being canceled or whatever. And I understand exactly where this feeling is coming from. I would never deny a person or people their feelings. Their feelings belong to them and are valid because it is what they feel. But the conclusion that is being drawn from those feelings, that is what I take issue with. My message to Joe Rogan and to my friends who may or may not be having these feelings is this: “it’s ok, don’t worry, nobody is canceling you and your thoughts and especially your feelings are still as valid today as they ever were.” The fact that we in as a culture are taking a closer look at the suffering and plight of a segment of the population to which you do not belong should not in any way be seen as a threat. The fact that they are seen as a threat I believe comes from a fundamental misunderstanding about the thing that lies at the very core of all of these movements and that is human suffering.An executive summary would probably be good here so I’ll make my point and then I’ll elaborate with some stories and a conclusion. My point is that suffering, human suffering is not a competition. It’s not like there is a pie of suffering and if we acknowledge the suffering of one group we must deny the suffering of another. Suffering is just not like that, it is something we all deal with. It is a part of the human experience. In fact I would venture to say that the more in touch you are with your own suffering and your own experiences of trauma the more empathy you will have for the suffering and trauma of others. You first have to be vulnerable with yourself, you have to think back to a time of your own suffering and trauma. Contemplate it, spend time with it, as much as you need. Then turn your attention to the suffering of someone like George Floyd dying on the streets of Minneapolis. I guarantee the next emotion you will feel will be an overwhelming sense of empathy. I know my own suffering well and as a result I can relate to what it must have been like for George Floyd not that my suffering matched his but that I know what it is like to suffer and I can extrapolate from there to at least imagine what George Floyd must have gone through. Combine that sense of empathy with the knowledge that suffering itself is not a competition and I guarantee that the feeling you will draw from these social movements will be not one of threat but one of solidarity. Solidarity for Black Lives Matter, solidarity for Diversity Equity and Inclusion. And that is the fundamental principal of the normalization of suffering.I told you I would share some stories and then I would come back to the thesis with a conclusion and so I will.My first story is about white privilege. It takes place in Minneapolis of all places. I was 22 years old and my best friend Larry and I were out in Uptown looking for our first apartment. Larry happens to be black but that is really immaterial to this story. We were looking at an apartment, what became our first and my only apartment in Minneapolis. We loved it at first ...
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    12 分
  • On The Modern Non-Nuclear Family

    On The Modern Non-Nuclear Family
    2021/05/22
    On the Modern Non-Nuclear FamilyThe concept of the nuclear family or at least the term nuclear family has been around for at least a century by now. Many people associate the concept of the nuclear family with the 50’s and 60’s and the rise of the atomic age after WWII. But this is incorrect. Actually the use of the term nuclear family predates the atomic age and refers instead to the family formation as a nucleus as in the core of an entity consisting of a mother a father and their children.In modern times the entire nature of the nuclear family as first defined has been challenged from all sides as families in the United States have changed dramatically in their formulation. The concept of a family consisting of a mother and father, a man and a woman has expanded to include single parents, co-habitating unmarried parents, divorced parents, same sex parents and the list goes on. From these dramatic and broad social changes one might conclude that the concept of the nuclear family has fallen by the wayside as we have moved into a new age that makes room for and embraces a broad variety of family formulations.I can easily see how one might come to this conclusion. The nuclear family has a rigid structure that no longer applies in the modern era. One might assume that it is for the most part a thing of the past. One might assume this, but this assumption would be wrong. Wrong? you say. How is that possible. How is it possible that the nuclear family persists in the face of such broad social change.  Can a family with a single mother or a single father, or two mothers or two fathers still be considered a nuclear family?In order to understand what I’m talking about you really have to step back for a second and consider not simply the genders, or the number of people in the family. Instead you have to take a closer look at the nuclear metaphor itself.In all cases the term nuclear refers to the existence of a core. This could be the nucleus of an atom, or a cell or even something like a solar system. In all of these examples, an atom, a cell or a solar system something is at the center and everything else is on the periphery. I like the example of a solar system because it places some entity at the very center, the sun while all the other entities orbit around the center held in place by gravity. When you take this broader metaphor and apply it to an actual human family you see that it is defined, not by the gender or number of people at the head of the family but rather by the family structure itself. Gender and number, these are physical dynamics but the true nature of the nuclear family is not defined by physical dynamic but by emotional dynamics. Some person or people are at the center and all other people are on the periphery orbiting around that center.Obviously I don’t know anything about your family but I can tell you that this exactly describes my family of origin. My father, who I have spoke of often, was a famous linguist at MIT. When asked to place my family members into the structure of a solar system I would say without hesitation that my father was at the center, the sun so to speak. All other family members from my mother to my three brothers and myself orbited around his center of gravity. Dad wasn’t a greedy or narcissistic person far from it, he was just an incredible intellect, a genius. It was impossible for our family to have any other emotional formulation in some sense as we all basked in the reflected glory of his talent.When my father passed away in 2001 at the age of 67 it was devastating for our family system. I con only really speak for myself, but I can tell you that I felt completely unmoored. Like a dark planet suddenly left adrift in the galaxy released from the gravitational pull of an immense sun which had suddenly twinkled out of existence.One day several weeks after my father’s death. I was sitting at our kitchen table when I noticed my mother take a small waste bin over to my father’s desk. She opened one of the drawers in his desk and began pulling out his papers and cassette tapes and placing them into the bin. I walked over to her and knelt down beside her. “What are you doing mom?” I asked. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said simply “I don’t know what TO do” “It’s ok mom, I said, I understand and I helped her take the papers and cassette tapes out of the bin and place them back into his desk”. This was the nature of our family, without the warmth and gravity of my father at the center we were all left adrift in space and time, unsure how we would move forward, what the future looked like.But here I am 20 years later with a family of my own. My wife Kristin and I struggled for years over our family dynamic. We tried everything, breaking up tasks, dividing up the labor, everything that you might expect in a modern household. One day I got kind of pissed and I said something like man my father didn’t know how good he had it...
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    10 分
  • On Leading In A Crisis

    On Leading In A Crisis
    2021/05/21
    On Leading In A CrisisI don’t know how I learned this, or when I learned it exactly but at some point I came to the realization that in every crisis there is actually opportunity. This isn’t so much true of crisis in your personal life. Those are just crisis and you have to keep a level head and get through them. But in the workplace especially, when a crisis arrises it affords you an opportunity. I say that it is an opportunity in the sense that you are given the opportunity to show how you as a professional behave in a crisis situation. You are being given an opportunity to lead and show leadership. It’s not something to jump up and down about in excitement but it’s not something to shy away from either.I guess some people figure this out and then like to manufacture crisis so that they can then resolve them. Kind of like a firefighter who is also an arsonist. This is obviously phony and a waste of everyone’s time so this is not the kind of thing I am talking about. Generally people like this don’t last long in an organization, but if they do well then you’ve got a larger systemic organizational problem that should be addressed.Naturally crisis situations are uncomfortable for everyone and should be avoided at all cost. However they do arise and when they do they provide the backdrop for a display of true leadership. There are a couple of simple guidelines you can use to show leadership and guide your organization through a crisis situation.Remain calm. Don’t panic. Many people will be running around with their hair on fire. I don’t have any hair so I don’t have to worry about this in particular. But in general you know what I mean. Tensions rise, voices rise, tempers flare, fingers start pointing, people turn on each other etc… Don’t give in to this wave of emotions. Stay centered and grounded. There will be plenty of time to figure out what went wrong when the crisis is over (blame, finger pointing, throwing people under the bus) these all fall into that category and should be left to the crisis post-mortem, during the crisis they only serve to deepen the sense of impending doom so they should be avoided at all cost.Ultimately a crisis is just another problem that needs to be solved. There is obviously a sense of urgency around solving this particular problem but as a problem, basic problem solving techniques can be used here as well.Break the problem down. What needs to be done in the short term, medium term and long term to resolve the problem. Short term things are like, “well, the break room is on fire so we should probably put that out” Good idea, where is the fire extinguisher? Let’s do that. You don’t need to break the whole problem down before you start working on the short term items. Identify them up front and start addressing them immediately.Mid term issues are the meat of the problem. Get a team of people together, identify the meat of the problem and assign tasks. Circle back frequently to make sure people are working on their assigned tasks. Communication is super important in this situation. Find a way that you can communicate with the entire team working the problem. If this is email or chat, make sure you have one thread which includes everyone. I’ll cover communication in another podcast but one thing I’ll point out here is that, in a crisis situation, nobody has time to read some long diatribe on the situation. Keep your communication simple, short and sweet. Bulleted lists of tasks and assignments that kind of thing.Long term issues are the things that ensure that the problem and crisis doesn’t happen again. In this you’ll have to figure out the root of the problem that resulted in the crisis to begin with. Identify ways in which you can make changes in the organization or your processes that will help avoid this in the future. Nobody enjoyed the crisis of course so they should all help work on doing the hard work of digging into root cause and figuring out how to avoid a recurrence.Communication:People involved on your team will have a tendency to mix and match items from this breakdown in their communication. This is also not helpful but mostly unavoidable. Just keep everyone on task and remember the breakdown of tasks. When someone starts finger pointing gently remind them that that can be addressed in the post-mortem. When someone starts ranting about some systemic problem that causes this remind them that this fits into the long term issue category and can be addressed once the short and mid term issues are out of the way. Your entire goal here is to lead the organization through the crisis, things like finger pointing and ranting only feed the fire. Remaining calm and centered at all times this will help guide you and your organization to a successful resolution.Post-MortemOnce the crisis is out of the way there should be some sort of post-mortem. To be honest this is my least favorite part of the task. I think it is this way for ...
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    9 分

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