Lately
By Jason Gillikin | November 19, 2008
I’ve been writing few things lately, mostly because I’ve been spending most of my time chatting with Ryan. So, here are a few random highlights, to keep y’all in the loop.
- Work has been interesting. Wrapped the most recent version of the Revenue Cycle Dashboards this week — an interesting project, which is going well.
- I subbed for a bunch of Tony’s classes last week. I covered two sections of American Government (campaigns, media, and interest groups) at Kalamazoo Valley Community College (two class periods for each section), and one section each of Biometric Law and Personal Financial Planning at Davenport University. The students were fun, and the whole experience was a great one. I’m glad I was able to help Tony with this.
- My cousin gets back from Madagascar soon. I’m excited.
- My thoughts and prayers go out to Jen as she … exists.
- Haven’t had too much time to run or go to the dojo this month, but I’ve nevertheless managed to lose about eight pounds since Halloween. Hooray!
- I hurt my back two weeks ago moving a file cabinet and was off work for two consecutive days, and I worked from home for a third. Back pain sucks.
- Got a new Blackberry. Went from the aged 7100i to a new Curve 8330. LOVE IT, although I need the IT guys to give me security access to actually install the new device on my hospital laptop.
- My experiences with Ryan have given me a lot to think about. For example, I think I was too quick to judge Edmund for moving in after a month with his boyfriend, since — well, since I’d move in with Ryan at the drop of a hat. And my “list” of things in the stickied post “On Relationship” has been turned on its head because of who Ryan is, and what he represents to me. Interesting how new experiences can really cause a change of perspective for the better.
- The old Towers building — where I worked for several years — is being demolished this week. The building is roughly 50 years old, and was past its prime, but I’m still a little nostalgic as I see the Jaws of Death moving toward the space that was my office.
All for now.
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Love
By Jason Gillikin | November 18, 2008
Love is a strange and wonderful thing.
It can survive intense pain. Fear. Uncertainty. Regret. It has the power to heal, the strength to comfort, and the wisdom to see all things to their final and happy end.
Ryan chose me, and paid a high price for it. I hope that I am worth it.
I do not know what my life will look like in four days, four weeks, four months, four years, or four decades from now. I hope that Ryan and I will settle on a beach, watching the sun set, as our grandchilden make sand castles around us. But I do know this — I am a better man because he has touched my life. I see things differently now, and look at people in a deeper way, and I understand what lies within in a more real manner than I did before. For this, I am grateful.
My pumpkin is coming soon, and although I know we’ll have some challenges at first, I am confident that love will keep us going until the last demon is slain and the twilight of our lives falls upon us.
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Ryan
By Jason Gillikin | November 12, 2008
What would you do if you found a person who swept you off your feet?
If you found a person who …
- has a pure heart
- is loyal and generous
- is thoughtful about the details
- remains open to new ideas and experiences
- warmly considers the needs of others
- takes responsibility for his own life, and makes good decisions
A smart person would grab this person and keep him forever. And that’s what I’m going to do with Ryan.
He’s beautiful, inside and out. A 21-year-old from the Bay City area, he’s interested in architecture and music and is something of an artist. He has a gift for building things, and for taking a picture in his head and turning it into reality. He makes me smile, and he has opened my eyes to different ways of seeing the world — something I’m very grateful for.
He will be relocating to Grand Rapids soon, which is a process complicated by him being pretty badly injured last week. He’s taking care of wrapping things up, though, despite his wounds, and will be here soon.
I’m proud of Ryan — and I’m honored that he loves me as much as I love him. He’s my man, and I’m holding on to him forever.
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Diction
By Jason Gillikin | October 29, 2008
More than once, I’ve been taken to task about my language. It’s been suggested to me that my word choices leave people confused, or that my sentence structures — even in plain speech — are “too smart.” That is, uniformly condescending to my listeners.
I just browsed some of my writing from my early undergrad days, and I was astonished at how plain it was. Short sentences. General-reference errors. Common words. What happened?
Two things, I think. The first was in-depth training in a foreign language. Having minored in Latin — including 10 hours at the graduate level — I was exposed to all aspects of formal grammar, even things that are obscure even to professional grammarians. I was also required to write Latin using all three dominant historical styles of that language: the simplicity of the early and middle Republic, the rich complexity of the early Imperial period, the inconsistency and orthographic chaos of the early medieval era.
Today, English speakers increasingly resort to relatively short sentences with a simple subject-verb-object grammatical structure. More and more, even native speakers rely on a small, common vocabulary, drawing on auxiliary parts of speech (including prepositional phrases and appositives) to flesh out meaning. It wasn’t always like this, of course; a reading of 18th-century prose, for example, will numb the mind with its serpentine sentences and obscure words and incredible density of ideas-per-column-inch that leaves contemporary readers perplexed.
Languages evolve over time, and my exposure to the varied dominant styles of Latin over 1,500 years of evolution undeniably impacted how I speak and write.
The other influencer was newspaper writing. For years, I had to churn out a fully reasoned and entirely self-contained editorial using a fixed number of column inches (usually, equivalent to about 600 words). And at least once per week, I had to write an on-demand bylined opinion column of varying length to fit the space left at the last moment by less-than-reliable staff columnists. Sounds easy … until you try it.
With blogging, there’s no word-count limit on post lengths. There’s no requirement to use tight, concise prose. No challenge to use the right word in the right context, even when the word selected isn’t especially common. No points are awarded for an elegant turn of phrase or finely balanced complex construction.
Some habits die hard. Circumstances forced my language patterns to change and my vocabulary to expand, and I’ve had to use thee new attributes to be successful. When I use “big words” or speak in semicolons, it’s not to insult others or to appear smart. It’s no more and no less than a function of experience, and I can’t not use the right word in the right setting than a bodybuilder can simply refuse to use 80 percent of his biceps when helping neighbors to move.
And I’m not sure that I’d want to. There’s so much richness that comes from delving into the mechanics of language, from mining the vocabulary of meaning, that to simply stop would feel almost criminal.
Topics: Writing & Editing | 3 Comments »
Perceiving Is Believing
By Jason Gillikin | October 28, 2008
There was an excellent column by David Brooks in today’s New York Times; he argued that the financial meltdown may prompt a “behavioral revolution” that, having finally acknowledged the fallibility of our collective risk assessment, will shift focus among economists from the determination of self-interest to the mechanism of perception during the economic decision-making process.
Some extended quoting from Brooks will be appropriate to the reflection that will follow:
Perceiving a situation seems, at first glimpse, like a remarkably simple operation. You just look and see what’s around. But the operation that seems most simple is actually the most complex, it’s just that most of the action takes place below the level of awareness. Looking at and perceiving the world is an active process of meaning-making that shapes and biases the rest of the decision-making chain.
…
My sense is that this financial crisis is going to amount to a coming-out party for behavioral economists and others who are bringing sophisticated psychology to the realm of public policy. … Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been deeply influenced by this stream of research. … Taleb believes that our brains evolved to suit a world much simpler than the one we now face. His writing is idiosyncratic, but he does touch on many of the perceptual biases that distort our thinking: our tendency to see data that confirm our prejudices more vividly than data that contradict them; our tendency to overvalue recent events when anticipating future possibilities; our tendency to spin concurring facts into a single causal narrative; our tendency to applaud our own supposed skill in circumstances when we’ve actually benefited from dumb luck.
The Brooks column hit close to home as I reflect on the decision-making process now underway with a friend of mine. He’s considering moving in with his significant other, after having been together for only about a month.
Understand that I’ve never met my friend’s S.O., so I have no basis by which to judge that person’s character or disposition. That said, I am aware that this person is in early middle age, is of average appearance, and has had a fairly limited dating history. I’ve also been made privy to information about the relationship that suggests that the S.O. is still eager to make a good impression on my friend and may be behaving in the “attraction” stage instead of the “building” phase of the relationship.
There are several considerations in play, but the most significant is whether the relationship is at a stage where cohabitation is natural and not inappropriate.
All relationships proceed in phases. We begin at the attraction stage; our goal is to find, and to keep, a potential mate, and we engage in behaviors designed to maximize our strengths and minimize our weaknesses in the mind of the other. The next is the discovery stage; we learn more about our potential partner to determine the most appropriate trajectory and outcome for the relationship, and we build a more in-depth understanding of that person’s essential character. The third stage is comfort-building; once on solid ground and there’s mutual assent to proceed in a long-term fashion, there is an absolute need to spend time together — especially mundane time — to ensure that various personality quirks that might be considered charming early on, don’t become a source of earth-shattering annoyance later (e.g., snoring, or one’s sense of humor). After a suitable amount of comfort is built, and trust becomes rock-solid, a couple can move into genuine and abiding love that is strong enough to weather most storms. This “love stage” takes a long time to grow — sometimes a year or more.
I believe, as a matter of my own personal bias, that it’s imprudent to consider cohabitation until well into the comfort-building stage. Until a couple has spent many months of quality time together, but living separately, there’s really no clear indication that cohabitation will be a successful endeavor.
Part of the “should I move in” question cannot be answered without a clear understanding of whether both halves of the relationship are at the same emotional stage. My concern with my friend’s situation is that he — by temperament, and by experience — is ready to move ahead at warp speed (despite knowing the dangers of pressing too hard, too fast). It’s not at all clear to me, however, that his S.O. is in the same boat. I question whether my friend’s romantic interest — in this case, from a lack of experience — sees my friend as the person he is, or as a role.
Consider Jack and Jill. Perhaps Jill is a bit worldly; she’s been around the block a time or two and knows which streets are which. She meets Jack, and they hit it off. Jack, however, doesn’t get out much, and he may not be the top prize at the bar (conceding, of course, that different people have different tastes). Worse, Jack is more open than most to be in a relationship of some sort, with almost anyone who’s willing to reciprocate. When he meets Jill, he falls for her, and they move very quickly into a formal relationship that’s marked by an intense degree of sexual intimacy. The question is this: Are Jack and Jill at the same stage of their relationship?
Part of me wonders whether Jack, because of his inexperience, sees Jill less as a unique person, but more as a role — in this case, a hot body to touch and to call his own, but who at this point is fungible. That is, Jill could be replaced by a different personality, and Jack’s reaction to the situation would be similar. On the deepest and most fundamental level, Jack isn’t seeing Jill for who she is, he’s seeing her as an object of desire and attraction — as the “hot girlfriend who pays attention to me and lets me bang her for hours on end” instead of as “Jill.”
We all go through this phase with each new prospective mate, but it hits harder and lasts longer for those with insubstantial relationship histories, because they are so eager to be “with someone” that they look first to the role that the other plays in their lives before they are prepared to see that other person for who he or she really is. This phenomenon is natural, healthy, and (because it typically doesn’t last too long) not at all inappropriate. It’s also a phase that’s utterly transparent to the person experiencing it — that is, a person going through it is probably highly skilled at saying things that imply an interest in the other as a person, but without in-depth knowledge, the attraction is really for the role that the other play’s in his life and not for the person as he or she may be. Behavioral assessment, not conversation, is the best arbiter.
Before Jack and Jill can reasonably discuss cohabitation, they both need to be at the same relationship stage. For a number of reasons, most of them a function of experience, Jack really isn’t equipped to appropriately diagnose his present stage, so Jill has to do the heavy lifting — to be the responsible adult. Jill needs to decide whether she wants the short-term gratification (from the move-in, from the initial intimacy, from perhaps escaping from an unpleasant current living environment) even if it might compromise the long-term stability of the relationship. After all, what’s worse than two people who are, for all practical purposes, strangers, trapped in the same living quarters if the relationship sours?
Getting to know someone doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen in a month. There have been some people I have met with whom I might have eagerly pursued a relationship at first, but it wasn’t until many months later — four, five, six months minimum — that I came to realize that a committed romantic entanglement would have been an unmitigated nightmare. Time brings a perspective that can be obscured by the initial rush of hormones and emotions.
This is why the Brooks column intrigued me. The very same perceptual biases that affected a major system like the market also influence individual decisions. When I think about my friend, and I review in my mind his likely justifications for why moving in with his S.O. makes sense, I can’t help but to think that he’s “overvaluing recent events when anticipating future possibilities” — that is, believing the present joy he experiences will continue in the future, and can survive the inevitable bumps that come along as two people develop a deeper understanding of each other. I think he will “see data that confirms his prejudices more vividly than data that contradicts them” — especially when he sets aside his own relationship history and its painful lessons over the last few years. I can hear him “spin concurring facts into a single causal narrative” when he explains why his current housing situation sucks and how much better it would be to cohabit.
My friend knows I wish him nothing but the best of happiness and success. Heck, I’ve put my money where my mouth is on this, helping him along in various ways as best as I can. He knows that seeing him happy makes me happy, and that I take no joy in being the crotchety old man in the corner raising objections to an action which he believes is about to increase his happiness.
But I have a bad feeling about this cohabitation issue. I’m not at all convinced that he and his romantic interest are at the same relationship stage, which means that there’s not an authentic meeting of the minds in terms of decision-making. I’m worried that my friend still has many things of significance to disclose to his S.O. that might affect the nature of the relationship. I’m not sure that the couple have enough of a sense of each other’s personalities that they won’t find a major thorn will develop in time that might sap the strength of the relationship — because even things that we might be OK with in small doses, or at first, can become a focal point for disaffection later. I’m nervous that if the relationship should sour, that neither party may be able (financially or emotionally) to definitively break things off and separate, thus raising the possible repeat of a situation that my friend once endured for four long years. I’m sad that my friend may not respect his S.O. enough to insist on a proper period of courtship and comfort-building before continuing the escalation process, which itself is a big red flag in terms of using another as a role instead of loving them as unique and feeling person.
In short, I really, really, really, really, really wish my friend would be the mature adult I know him to be, and delay cohabitation until at least after the new year. For that matter, I wish he’d spend fewer nights as it is in his S.O.’s bed. In relationships, speed = death, and it’d crush me almost as much as it’d crush him to see this relationship — in which he’s invested so much already — get derailed because too much was assumed too quickly.
Give it time. It’s worth it. You’re worth it.
Topics: Personal | 1 Comment »
Act V, Scene 1
By Jason Gillikin | October 27, 2008
I emptied my office this evening.
After seven months of dithering along, building infrastructure while steadfastly avoiding client-seeking, I decided enough was enough. Although I’m not shutting down Gillikin Consulting — far from it! — I divested myself of a commercial rent payment that was not-at-all offset by business revenue. It makes no sense to maintain a 1,000-square-foot office when I’m not being productive and earning business income.
The funny thing is that I’m not at all melancholic about it, given the amount of hope and promise I felt when I first leased the space. And the story behind my lack of emotion is probably worth sharing, if for no other reason than because I’ve discussed pieces of it in the last few weeks with Jen and with Edmund. (Frankie, this is your cue to skip to the next post.)
It helps to tell the moral of the story before delving into the details: I believe, with a sense of certitude that’s fairly strong, that I recently hit a milestone that marks the beginning of a whole new chapter in my life. Before I get to that event, though, let’s begin with a rough sketch of the Life of Jason.
Act I: Childhood. This period ran from birth until I turned 16. The most noteworthy characteristics were a rural upbringing (no neighborhood and thus less opportunity for youthful fraternization) and a family life marked by a strong mother. I also enjoyed a special status, being the eldest child of the eldest child and a boy to boot, on the maternal side of my family. Although I loved my childhood and still wouldn’t change anything, the isolation, sense of privilege, and inadequate early socialization that mark this time would come back for tragic sequels.
Act II: Independence. Ages 16-20. Wheels and a job meant I had a high degree of freedom, and a lack of close parental oversight translated to a lot of opportunity to grow in unstructured fashion. My later high-school years were not so unpleasant; I had some friends, and I had fun, but I didn’t learn some critical skills (like money management) and I was able to get through West Catholic with a reasonable GPA with precious little effort. I opted to go to Western Michigan University for no other reason than because my friends Aaron and Jenni were going there, and I was awarded a three-year advance-designee Army ROTC scholarship to pay for it — and while at WMU, I became something of a radical atheist and conservative attack dog. However, two problems loomed. The first was my first foray into obesity, which began as the result of a horribly bad date when I was 16; she was 32, and she preyed on me to the point of fondling me in a movie theater, but when she cried about it later, the only lesson I learned was that it was somehow my fault, and I responded by making myself fat and therefore “ugly” so as to avoid any future romantic possibilities. The second problem was my unconscious belief that I was above the rules, since I never really was held accountable for poor performance or bad behavior during my high-school years.
Intermission: Mid-Life Crisis. Ages 21-22. Can you say “implosion?” The mistakes of the prior few years, coupled with a horrific level of arrogance, had to come to a head at some point — and that they did, in spectacular fashion. In one year, I failed out of Western, nearly went bankrupt, incurred a fair amount of legal trouble, lost two jobs (one, involuntarily) and capped it off by deciding to “start afresh” by just picking up and driving to California without warning or disclosure to friends and family. This period ended on the beaches of San Francisco; having driven West with so much confidence that I could just hit life’s reset button, I realized that I actually did have obligations, and had to attend to them as best as I could.
Act III: Stasis. Ages 22-27. I started this period by recovering from my earlier meltdown. I returned to Catholicism, and I re-enrolled at WMU, and I took care of my legal and financial obligations as best as I could. This period featured me doing the same thing for five years: Working, and going to school, in relative social isolation. And every year, my waistline got just a little bigger. At 26, I moved to Kentwood and earned my B.A., but other than that, there really aren’t any milestones to speak of. Just wasted time.
Act IV: Transformation. Ages 28-31. This Act has four scenes. The first was the “Time of Conflict.” It began in the summer of 2004, when I first started to really become bothered by the abnormal behaviors associated with my eating habits, and culminated in December, after a rocky tenure as editor of the Western Herald. Three major things happened in a space of six weeks, at the end of 2004: I left the Herald and my grad program, my brother and his wife had a baby, and I nearly choked to death on a glutton’s breakfast; each of these events was the end-game of a long-running series of conflicts (internal and external). Scene 2, the “Time of Change,” ran for most of 2005, until my grandfather’s death in September; it featured me learning how to not be busy all the time, and — after figuring out that I was fat because of that one bad date at 16 — I lost a total of 110 pounds with relative ease. Scene 3, the “Time of Consolidation,” ran from September 2005 until October 2007. I kept the weight off, and did some exploratory dating for the first time, but I mostly maintained the gains of early 2005. Scene 4, the “Time of Turbulence,” ran from October 2007 through September 2008; it started with a sense of emptiness that prompted the strategic goal setting (Project 810) that ultimately led to the chaotic thrill-ride known as Jason’s Big Gay Summer [see the stickied post "Summer of '08" for details].
Which leaves me beginning Act V, which began — coincidentally — around my 32nd birthday. I had gone into the summer of ‘08 with a strong inferiority complex, much of it related to my utter lack of a social life, dating history, and sexual experiences. A lot happened over the summer, and by mid-September, after reflection on what the ordeal with Matt really meant, I was hit by the realization that my lack of self-confidence, rooted in a dearth of experience, was utterly upended. I came to internalize what I was had learned intellectually — that I am a good person, and compared to most, I’m level-headed, intelligent, and emotionally well-balanced. In short, I could be proud of who I am, and hold my head high above the waves as I tread the water in the dating/socializing pool. My final key learning was that I can no longer split my energies among multiple objectives, doing many things poorly instead of a few things well [see the post "Dry Powder" for a longer reflection on this important point].
I am consciously aware that the emotional dissonances within have been silenced; the issues I have, from a personal-growth perspective, have all been addressed, with no sources of angst or psychological unhappiness remaining. I am now a restored to a sense of internal tranquility and good health (with the slight exception of feeling incomplete for lack of a significant other), with my life motivated by achievable strategic goals, and a newfound understanding that the tactics for achieving those goals must result in an advance, not a flanking maneuver.
After Matt, and after fully processing the events of the summer, I felt that the door on a period in my life — Act IV, a time of prolonged recovery from the bad choices of my youth — had come to an end. My attitude and outlook and sense of responsibility has shifted a considerable degree, and it’s unquestionably for the better. I’ve finally become an adult in the fullest sense of the term.
So. Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen.
Topics: Personal | 1 Comment »
Perizoma
By Jason Gillikin | October 25, 2008
Perizoma. It is a Latin word with an origin in Greek; it means “loincloth.” In classical times, the term was used sparingly; there are not too terribly many documented uses of it in the Patrologia Latina. Yet the word has a fascinating history.
In Jerome’s Vulgate, perizoma is used twice: once to refer to the garment that Adam tied around his waist after he ate from the Tree of Knowledge, and once to refer to the garment worn by Christ upon the Cross. Within the Christian tradition, and with great rhetorical beauty and sensitivity to the Christological implications of the Fall, Jerome created — by word choice alone — a strong and enduring link between the fall of Man and Man’s salvation.
Because of Jerome, perizoma acquired an almost exclusively theological connotation; in fact, there are perhaps only two attested uses of the word in a non-religious setting after the Vulgate was widely circulated.
I thought about perizoma yesterday as I reflected on a conversation with Becca. I had met her at a restaurant a week ago to review the presentation on Beaumarchais that she was to deliver at a conference last Saturday. At one point, we had a sideline conversation about the degree to which the language and plot structures he used in The Marriage of Figaro reflected feminist themes.
What struck me about the whole idea of identifying proto-feminist thought in an 18th-century play wasn’t anything defective in Becca’s thesis, per se, but in the entirely natural assumption we all share, in using contemporary concepts applied without revision to past events. Historiographers call this the historical fallacy, and with good reason: Ideas evolve over time, and judging the past from the perspective of the present is unfair to the past and prejudicial in the present’s favor.
The historical fallacy is significant because, in linguistic terms, perizoma switched connotation so rapidly. A word that meant one thing, a mere half-century later, really came to mean something else entirely. Yet the radical language shift that occurred after Jerome may well be happening more frequently, before our very eyes.
One of my favorite anecdotes, pace George Will, is of a harried British commander working the evacuation at Dunkirk. Pressed for time, he signaled just three simple words to the Admiralty: “If be not.” He knew that the message — which was a psalm reference — would be immediately and clearly understood, and would communicate more than a detailed situation report ever could.
Today, our pool of shared meaning seems to have something of an algae problem. References to scriptural passages, to Shakespeare, even to art film or the classics, are likely to be understood by a rare minority. Pop culture isn’t universally followed, either, so it’s entirely possible that two American citizens could have radically different understandings of the world, with almost no appreciable overlap in content.
Even our words have changed, and rapidly. Neologisms aside, old standbys switch with breathtaking speed. Niggardly is out; the first two syllables condemn that word to the ash-heap of usage. Liberal is a swear word for many who once bore it proudly. Queer went from being a term of disparagement to a technical term within the academy, to being embraced by the very people against whom it was considered an epithet.
Read any random newspaper issue from 1955. Words like conservative are used as slurs, and negro is considered utterly neutral. Today, neither understanding holds.
Words didn’t used to change connotation or even denotation, this quickly. Perizoma is worthy of study precisely because it is something of an odd duck. That the phenomenon of radical connotative shift is truckin’ along today is not insignificant, nor are the related and proliferating opportunities for historical fallacies.
Topics: Philosophy, Politics & Culture, Writing & Editing | No Comments »
Halloween! Yay!
By Jason Gillikin | October 25, 2008
I am presently in the middle of a fairly busy time. Details are as follows:
- On Tuesday, I went out for drinks with an acquaintance, then met Tony for some conversation at Applebees.
- On Wednesday, I covered Confirmations at the cathedral.
- On Thursday, I ended up at Kava, talking to (Grand Rapids) Jen, and doing some miscellaneous writing work.
- On Friday, I had lunch with Edmund, ran some errands, did some light shopping, and did a LOT of cleaning — primarily because my planned excursion out on the town with Val and Stash was canceled on account of female instability. :)
- Saturday will be busy. I’m one of three co-presenters on liturgical art and environment during Advent and Christmas, for a diocesan workshop in Caledonia. I get to lecture on the parts of a church, sacristy management, people management, and “questions of taste and sensibility.” Should be interesting. After that, I’m off to Kalamazoo — presumably with Charlie — to attend the Tracy and Teri Halloween Party Extravaganza. I look forward to kicking Emilie and (Lansing) Jen into humble submission during the informal costume contest.
- Sunday, after the post-party brunch, I may do something with Andrew.
Topics: Personal | No Comments »
Dry Powder
By Jason Gillikin | October 22, 2008
Every now and then, I’m privileged to witness a moment of genuine growth in another. Today was just such a day. After weeks of hectoring and prodding by me and by his own conscience, a dear friend of mine took the very significant step of ending a serious — and seriously complicated — long-distance relationship.
The details aren’t relevant; the only salient point about the story is that I’m very proud of what my friend did. The direct way that he addressed the situation took a lot of guts — it wasn’t easy, but it needed to happen, and he deserves credit for his courage.
I think, on reflection, that the hardest thing he had to do wasn’t to end the relationship, per se, but to close the door on an option, on a Plan B.
I’ve been churning around in my head some of what Tony and I discussed recently, the gist of which is that I’m not “grabbing the gold” with my business goals because I’m too comfortable with my hospital employment. He said that people only live once, and that sometimes you’ve just got to take a calculated risk — without a safety net, and with the very real chance of epic failure — if you want to win big.
Tony’s right. His counsel dovetails nicely with the experience of my friend today, insofar as both are pervaded by an interesting theme.
We all know the admonition to “keep our powder dry” — that is, to prepare for any eventuality by keeping one’s options open and declining to commit to a single path until circumstances require such commitment.
My relationship-ending friend found comfort in knowing that even if his local romantic pursuits fizzled, he still had “someone” — even if this person were hundreds of miles away and seen infrequently. The comfort of having a backup plan is perhaps even more important than the actual person involved, and his breakthrough was in getting rid of the long-distance safety blanket, so that he had to put all of his energy in his current (and local) relationship.
As for me, I like having options. I like to plan an escape route. I like having a general knowledge of many things instead of a deep knowledge of few things. In short, I’m temperamentally inclined to keep my powder dry, to split my energy to preserving multiple lines of advancement, instead of committing all of my forces to one decisive battle.
I think a great parallel is the battle strategies of the Union and the Confederacy. The CSA, lacking materiel, tended to fight in larger formation, and to commit a larger share of forces in order to win a battle. The Union, especially under McClellan, didn’t; most generals before Grant split lines and formations, blunting their numerical advantage for the sake of theater flexibility. But what need is there of flexibility when you only have to defend against one, massive hammer strike? Hence an early string of Union defeats.
It takes time, energy, and resources to keep multiple options open. In life, as in warfare, the strategic price for this thoroughgoing flexibility is a slow advance, and in an emotional sense, it’s a great inducement for excessive caution.
I’ve advanced slowly. I’ve suffered setbacks. But, I’ve always had a Plan B. And oh-so-coincidentally, I’ve rarely won a major victory on life’s battlefield.
Today, I did something a little different. There is a person whom I know, and admire, for whom I feel a not insubstantial attraction. So, I made a point of disclosing this information this afternoon — an act which was respectfully received, even if not entirely reciprocated. Instead of keeping my options open and admiring from afar, I acted with more decisiveness than usual and put the issue on the table. I feel good about it; I set aside the ambiguity and reduced my options, but secured an emotional victory that was worth it. And even if my disclosure were rudely rebuffed (which would have shocked me), it still would have been worth it.
Tony’s point is well-taken: When life gives you but a single shot, it’s foolish to live in so guarded a manner that the best one can summon is an uneasy stasis, with no real progress but no real regress. The bold sometimes lose — and lose big — but they’re also more likely to win big, too.
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Starvation
By Jason Gillikin | October 21, 2008
Tony said something to me tonight that resonated. He said that he regrets that I’m not starving, because my foot-dragging with my business-development work is made possible only by virtue of a steady check from the hospital. Were I unemployed, I’d have to sink or swim without recourse to a safety net.
He’s right, of course. He succeeded in establishing his law practice because he suddenly found himself as an unemployed young attorney with bills and no revenue stream. He worked, because not working was not an option.
It makes me wonder whether I should consider the nuclear option.
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