Although I have virtually no experience with raising children, being a parent strikes me as one of the most knotty things a person can attempt in a lifetime. Fundamentally, you become responsible for raising someone to become a normal, functioning, and productive adult, and after working with kids of all ages as a teacher, I’ve come to realize that kids, in general, are fairly mediocre at things like listening, understanding, and knowing where their bodily fluids should go. I’m sure I was no exception.
Over the years, I know my dad tried to teach me important things by telling them to me. I, of course, can’t remember a single one of those important things. Instead, like a reporter clinging to any wildly out-of-context remark, I have assembled a patchwork of little things my dad has taught me that, even though they often didn’t seem important at the time, crystallized certain ideas in my mind.
1. You have to have an eye out for work.
The context:
This is probably the most didactic example of my dad’s “life lessons.” While I was in elementary school (maybe 5th grade), Dad was telling me a story about working with his grandpa on the farm. Apparently, my dad (as a child) was doing typical childhood things (chasing insects, poking the ground with a stick, and being generally unhelpful) while Grandpa was working.
The last line in his little story was, “And he told me, ‘you have to have an eye out for work.’” That was it. My dad didn’t lecture me about the value of hard work, didn’t ask me to interpret the meaning of the tale, and didn’t scold me for chasing insects, poking the ground with a stick, and being generally unhelpful while he was telling his story. As with all of these examples, the real value of this incident didn’t develop until I was much older, though I’m sure its essence was sloshing around in my subconscious for a long time.
The lesson:
I don’t think my dad was trying to inculcate a deep sense of Puritan work ethic in my developing consciousness with this anecdote, but that was the ultimate result. These days, I am a chronic workaholic and perfectionist, and I’ll be honest, there’s nothing I hate more than being around torpid, worthless procrastinators who are content to do the absolute minimum (or less) to get by, which, of course, seems to be the respected norm these days.
Though my work output and performance in everything I do are staggering compared to most of the slugs that comprise the wallpaper of my existence, it’s not just about that, especially since hard work, dedication, and actually caring about what you do rarely, if ever, gets rewarded. The fact is, there’s something deeply satisfying about knowing you’ve done the absolute best you can do, and there’s something deeply important about having the mentality that nothing you do is ever really good enough.
You have to have an eye out for work. Instead of just being content with something that works, you need to ask yourself how to improve it. Instead of just putting in the time, you need to ask yourself how much you can do with the time that you have. Instead of thinking you know everything, you need to actively search and discover things you don’t know and then come to know them.
“That sounds exhausting,” you might say if you’re one of the lazy shits who will never accomplish anything truly impressive in your life, and you would be right. It is exhausting. But I’ve had my slothful days, and I’ve plumbed the depths of meaningless enterprises, and I can say with certainty that there’s nothing more fortifying than actually doing something productive whenever you think of something productive you could do.
2. Let the boat pull you.
The context:
I’ve grown into a reasonably fit person, but I was not strong or athletic for much of my childhood. In fact, I was frequently called “a gangly youth.” My extended family owns a cottage on a medium-sized lake, and power-boating activities are a paradigm of my entire family’s conception of summer. Before a lot of newfangled things like kneeboarding and wakeboarding arrived on the scene, water skiing was the quintessential water sport. Everyone in my grandparents’ generation did it at the lake, everyone in my parents’ generation did it at the lake, and by golly, by gosh, by gum, my generation was going to do it too.
The first time Dad tried to get me to ski was in fifth grade. It could have been earlier (my episodic memory of anything that occurred before yesterday is pretty unreliable). I could go into details about the number of attempts, the gallons of water swallowed, and the amount of ibuprofen consumed after repeatedly having a ski rope ripped from my grasp by a 190 horsepower inboard-outboard motor blasting away from me at full throttle, but anyone who has learned to ski knows what I’m talking about and anyone who hasn’t just isn’t going to understand.
In any case, I didn’t get up on skis the first day I tried, the second day I tried, or any day that I tried over the entire summer. In fact, I actively boycotted trying to ski for at least one complete summer after that, and I guess I was obstinate and annoying enough as a pre-teenager to get my way. Eventually, after much prodding and harassment from my dad and mom, I did agree to try and do it again one summer in eighth (or was it seventh?) grade. Dad gave me all the same advice as before: “keep your arms straight, keep your knees bent, and keep your skis together.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before – let’s just get this over with, I thought to myself. The boat blasted off, I faceplanted in the water, and I was feeling angry and frustrated enough to murder a puppy because all my previous failures came rushing right back into my consciousness.
Dad pulled the boat around, and while I was floating in the water waiting for the rope to come by, he leaned over the side and calmly gave me the same spiel, but then he said, “David, just let the boat pull you up.” It was hard to take him seriously with his crazy, windblown hair and Dollar Store sunglasses that made him look like an alien, but for some reason, this phrase flicked a switch on in my brain. On the next attempt, I just followed all the advice from before, but instead of trying to stand up and force my way out of the water, I relaxed and waited while the boat took off. As I was dragging behind the boat and thinking about the lake water’s funky aftertaste, I suddenly got pulled out of the water into a standing position. I was up. I was skiing. Just like that. I made it all the way around the lake, and since I’ve started water skiing, I’ve only fallen once.
The lesson:
This story is not about persistence, dedication, and believing in yourself. All of those things got me absolutely nowhere with skiing. In fact, the harder I tried at skiing, the worse I seemed to get, which only added to the aggravation, frustration, and sense of absolute futility my angsty teenage self was feeling. Instead, I needed to know just the right thing to help me understand how to get out of the water.
This is something I’ve incorporated into every lesson I teach, every instruction I give, and every conversation I have. All of my expectations of others are based on my own efforts to clearly and precisely convey what it is that I expect of someone else. Ultimately, how can I expect anything of anyone if I haven’t told them precisely what I want? And how can I be upset at someone for not doing something if I haven’t told them that (or how) I wanted them to do it?
So often, bosses get angry at employees who “fail” to do something they’ve never been told how to do, or bosses pass really good people up for promotions because those employees weren’t doing things they were never told to do or how to do. Teachers fail students who have never been told what they will be graded on. And friends get upset at friends who aren’t being “good friends” when no one ever really communicates what exactly that means and what is involved.
I once dedicated an enormous amount of time and effort for a geography project as a freshman in high school. I worked all week and stayed up all night the night before it was due crafting an amazing tri-fold poster board with color graphics, typed summaries, and color-coordinated background colors that cross referenced with content. It was a masterpiece. The only problem was, I never read the assignment sheet, which is why I failed that project. The teacher had given me a guide to success and I ignored it. All of my hard work, dedication, and enthusiasm were worthless because I didn’t follow the key instructions that were spoon fed to me. What I needed to do was apply all of that hard work, dedication, and enthusiasm to the actual task at hand.
The other really important lesson I took away from this skiing experience is that – and I know it sounds cliché – you’ve got to let go sometimes. I mean, you literally have to let go of the rope while you’re skiing to save yourself from faceplants and broken fingers, but every so often you just have to let go of things to get them to work out. Sometimes this involves letting go of your dreams and aspirations. So many people today think they have to do the job that they love to be completely satisfied in life, and it doesn’t help that the entire industry of higher education promotes the illusion that going to Sunshine Rainbow Happiness University will mean you’ll get your dream job with a six figure salary and your life will then be complete, but of course that’s not true. Instead, we all need to flip that model around and decide to love the job that we do.
Other times, letting go is more simple. My dad and I sometimes do construction together, and I want things done immediately, especially when it comes to demolition. I’ll grab the reciprocating saw and reef on it until it overheats. I’m not generally a person who perspires a lot, but I’ll be out there sweating bullets and wasting all kinds of energy trying to cut a board, and I’ll get a whole lot of stuff done in five minutes. My dad, who always says, “let the machine do the work,” will basically be sipping on lemonade with one hand while letting the saw cut with the other, and he somehow manages to get just about the exact same amount of work done in the same amount of time. Sometimes, things just work, and it doesn’t require you to pound yourself into oblivion trying to make it happen. And although fortune often favors the bold, the vast majority of our lived experience is completely out of our hands already, so letting go is mostly a matter of dispelling the illusion that we have control over everything and realizing what we can and can not affect (or effect).
3. You don’t have to correct immediately.
The context:
Expending way too much effort trying to control everything brings up another teachable moment I experienced with my father during a trip we took to Lansing, Michigan. I had just received my driver’s permit that allowed me to tool around with my parents while learning to drive. Keep in mind that before driver’s education, I was confused when my dad asked me to pump the brakes to help him while he was bleeding them – I definitely flooded the engine pumping the gas pedal, and I will never forget his look of flabbergastment when he came around to the driver’s side window, asked me to push the brake, and watched me push the gas pedal.
Many months later, on the way home from Lansing driving a white Dodge minivan with wood-panel siding, my suspicion is that my family, who was in the back, was getting pretty nauseated as I jerked the car hither and thither trying to stay exactly in the middle of my lane at all times. Dad let out a sigh and said, “you don’t have to correct immediately. You can just slowly veer from one side of the lane to the other. Give it a try.” And I did. And nobody puked.
The lesson:
Obviously, it was a solid piece of really practical, easily implemented driving advice, and even today, I think of those words every time I’m on the highway. Like the other life lessons that my dad just sortof rattled off, this one stuck with me (you might even say haunted me) for some reason, and its application to other areas of my life have been abundant.
Again, my overachieving, perfectionist, chronic-oldest-child-syndrome neurosis often puts ideas into my head when something in my life goes wrong. Once, when my boss said one student had an issue with one thing I said in class, I wrote a survey that measured multiple factors – work ethic, general outlook, personality types, gender, satisfaction with course material, satisfaction with the instructor, etc.; made all of my classes take it; compiled the aggregate results in excel; and then wrote up a summary of the data and sent all of it to my boss two days after he talked to me. “That shows a lot of initiative,” I thought he might think, but it was probably just annoying. It was a classic overcorrection.
When something doesn’t go the way you expect or when someone has a problem, you should certainly consider the ways that you can ameliorate the situation. That does not, however, mean that you should immediately implement those plans. A lot of times, things just disappear or fade into irrelevance over time.
I still chronically overcorrect whenever something is amiss in my life (that boss’ favorite adjective to describe me was “thorough,” and he frequently added the adverb “very” to modify it), but I’ve learned to sit back and count to ten before launching a campaign of lengthy emails, phone calls, and impromptu meetings when one person does one thing that causes one small problem.
The point is to look at the big picture whenever possible. Most of the time, things that may seem dire are not actually worth your time and effort and stress. When one out of one hundred students complains, it doesn’t mean you have to change everything you do to become a completely different kind of teacher since the big picture suggests that about 99% of students are satisfied or enthused about the way things already are. When one of your bosses complains about one thing, you should do what you can, but the big picture might suggest that all your other bosses (in my case, like seven of them) are stoked about how you’re doing and want you to keep it up. The perfectionist in me wants to fix everything right now and make it exactly outstanding, but overcorrecting usually just means a lot of work and stress for me that gets completely ignored by everyone else, which doesn’t do anything to fix an issue that would probably resolve itself without any interference.
4. Measure twice; cut once.
The context:
My family has remodeled every room in my parents’ home, and we’ve remodeled just about every room in our family’s cottage as well. Now I own my own home and am constantly making improvements. In fact, I don’t remember a point in my life where there wasn’t some sort of all-consuming construction or home improvement project going on. One of the first major projects that I actually helped with (instead of chasing insects, poking the ground with a stick, and being generally unhelpful) was the big remodel of the basement in my parents’ house.
From trying to install a level floor in that 100 year old, dug-out basement to framing around forced-air ductwork, Dad constantly repeated one phrase (often with a smirk on his face) whenever I second guessed myself for a second: “measure twice; cut once.” He still says it when we do construction together during the summer. It’s really good advice, even if it is annoying hearing it five or fifty times a day.
The lesson:
The pragmatic point of this little adage is clear to anyone who has recently purchased treated lumber – you save a lot of money and time by not having to turn the mismeasured scraps of your carefully-selected boards into wheel chucks, stakes, or random piles of wood that you think you might someday find a use for but never actually do.
What I didn’t realize until my dad left me alone to rebuild as much of a deck as I could while he ran for supplies, however, was that measuring twice and cutting once is all about assessing your understanding of a situation. The fancy psychology term for this is “metacognition,” and we do it all the time. We ask ourselves if we left the keys in the car before we lock the door. We ask ourselves if we turned the oven off when we leave the house. When the weather is bad (and it always is in Michigan), we (the good drivers who don’t cause ten-car pileups that block all lanes of traffic and make everyone two hours late to work) test the road conditions in a safe spot early in our trip to see how we have to adjust our driving.
But big decisions in life also require us to measure twice. We need to look at the facts, double check our ideas, and get as comprehensive a picture of our situation as possible before we make a decision. These days, for example, any item I purchase that costs more than thirty dollars (and quite a few that cost less) gets the full research treatment – product comparisons, official reviews, customer reviews, friend and acquaintance interrogations, etc. It sounds exhausting, but I rarely, if ever, am dissatisfied with something I purchase, and the things I buy generally last a long time.
I also try my level best to rethink things even after I’ve settled on them. If I have a lesson plan all set up for teaching, I’ll mentally run it through step-by step or actually rehearse it just to double check the logistics. If I know a presentation I’m doing will be exactly as long as it needs to be, I still over-prepare and bring along some extra material in case I need it, even if I know I won’t need it. If I’m going somewhere I haven’t been, I’ll look at a map and write down directions even though I know my wife’s phone has GPS. I proofread every one of my emails – usually twice. Measure twice; cut once.
5. You can never let off the clutch too slowly.
The context:
I took driver’s training in the middle of Michigan’s January when I was fourteen years old, which was truly an excellent time to first encounter all things related to driving: black ice, whiteout conditions, other drivers with reasoning powers only slightly more advanced than a carrot, etc. A couple years later, my dad decided it was time for me to learn how to drive a stick shift. Initially, the concept seemed familiar because I had driven riding lawnmowers with different gears for as long as I could remember. The thing about lawnmowers is, if you drop the clutch, you just get an awkward, lurching blast of power that propels you forward in a mildly thrilling jerk. This is not the case with cars.
I learned this on a hot summer day crammed in a Fiat X1/9 with Dad. We were in a long-abandoned parking lot that had tufts of grass growing through the cracks in the old, faded tar. The lot was at the dead-end of a street. He explained all the basics to me while I was sitting in the driver’s seat.
My first attempts produced screeching tires, abrupt jolts, and teeth-gnashing grinding sounds vaguely reminiscent of those I imagine a constipated Optimus Prime might make. All of my attempts repeatedly resulted in a stalled vehicle. I’m sure Dad was dying on the inside as he listened to his favorite vehicle being tortured by my inexperience. He reiterated all the basics a few times, but I continued to stall the car immediately upon takeoff. Just like with skiing, I couldn’t figure it out. Then, he added one little phrase in a moment of patient exasperation: “David, you can never let off the clutch too slowly.”
Another switch flicked on in my brain, and I was off and driving. I only stalled at a light while waiting on a hill with a huge line of cars behind me (and then once on level ground at a stop sign with no one around, but I think that was because I was getting cocky at the end of the drive).
The lesson:
There is a dynamic correlation between the clutch and the gas in a stick shift. The more gas you give, the faster you can let off the clutch. The less gas you give, the slower you have to let off the clutch. Even if you give it a lot of gas, though, you can still sometimes stall the car if you drop the clutch. With the right amount of patience, however, you can avoid pushing the gas pedal altogether and still get rolling. Like my dad said, you can never let off the clutch too slowly. And regardless of how high your RPMs are, letting off the clutch slowly always results in a smooth, pleasant start or shift every time.
Life presents us with a lot of high-RPM moments – new jobs, new living situations, big bonus checks from work, really high test scores, opportune vacations, etc. All of these things are good things, but if we drop the clutch too fast on them, they can end up as disasters. By taking a new job, we can sometimes alienate our former employers; if that new job turns out to actually be less spectacular than we originally imagined, we might wish we had left our old job on better terms – we have stalled. Sometimes moving to a new location or moving in with new people seems like a great idea, but if we rush into it with high expectations and it turns out to be less than ideal, we may regret our decision – another stall. Having an extra pile of money around always seems to be great news (honestly though, who – besides the 1% – has any spare money?), but if we spend the majority of it on something we want and then require money for something we need afterwards, that purchase can put us in a precarious financial position – yet another stall.
Even small, simple things can turn out to affect us strangely. When we go see an awesome movie that doesn’t live up to the hype, it can put us in a funk. When we go into a situation confident and something goes wrong early on, it can throw everything off. When we prudently over-prepare by setting two alarms and neither of them goes off, our comfortable time buffer can become a frantic rush that snowballs for the rest of the day. When we’re having a fun time and someone doesn’t get a really good joke (or – worse – gets offended at the inoffensive), that sinking, deflated feeling can smother any amount of lightheartedness and carefree jollity we may have been experiencing.
Essentially, what driving a stick taught me was that you should expect things to go wrong even if they feel like they’re going right, you shouldn’t get your hopes up too soon, and you shouldn’t dive in without thinking even if everything seems to be in your favor. When you drive a stick and have to shift, you should always focus, be observant, and be conscientious about making as smooth a transition into a new gear as possible. When you reach a time in your life when it feels like you are ready to head in a new direction or make an important decision, you should focus, be observant, and be conscientious about making as smooth a transition into a new phase of your life as possible. You can never let off the clutch too slowly.
Survival experts talk about the idea of preparedness and how we always need more than we think (when you think you have gathered enough firewood, you probably need to gather four times as much), distances are always farther than we think (when you see an object in the distance, it’s probably going to take you ten times longer to get there than you think), and simple tasks are always harder than we think (have you ever tried to start a fire without modern conveniences?). But survival isn’t just something primitive man had to worry about while advancing though prehistoric temperate broadleaf forests – survival is a daily exercise that involves making prudent choices and living deliberately and conscientiously. To get the most out of life, you can never let off the clutch too slowly – you have to prepare for the unexpected, manage your expectations, and strive for the smoothest transitions possible because sometimes, no matter how great things may seem to be going or how well you’re prepared, shit happens.
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