How many of you have heard that college isn't about what you learn but about "learning how to think?" I know that I heard that multiple times after college - that Rose, and engineering in general, is good because it teaches you how to think or problem solve. And at it's face value, that statement is trite and cliched. It seems like the kind of thing people tell you to make you feel better about the path you take after college. Don't use your degree that you and/or your parents just spent thousands of dollars on, and will be paying off for years to come? Well, you learned how to think. Never mind the fact that you got into a school in the first place and presumably needed to think somewhat to do that. Or that you managed to graduate from the good school in four or five years. Never mind that you worked really hard on those classes, homework assignments, essays, and lab reports about C++, differential equations, or the Scarlett Letter. It's okay to never use that stuff again because it taught you to think. In 2005, author David Foster Wallace delivered a commencement speech at Kenyon College. His words were widely spread and eventually published in this book, This Is Water. Wallace agrees that it is a cliched statement, but that it can be more than a platitude. What if it doesn't actually mean how to think, in the sense that we initially assume, but instead is a statement about learning how to choose what to think about?
I agree with Wallace quite a bit on this point and it's something I've found to change my life. Choosing what to think about is not always easy, but it can have a vast difference on my attitude and general happiness. Let's consider the last time you were stuck in our wonderful Chicago traffic. Perhaps it was even on the way to this meeting tonight. We all know how frustrating times like that can be. You are tired from a long day of work and just want to get home or to whereever you have to go first, before you are able to go home. If it's the summer, the sun is shining in your eyes or rearview mirror, possibly making the car a little too warm for comfort. The car in front of you is going too slow, so you want to change lanes into the left lane that is moving faster. Of course, there's a jerk in a pick-up truck that doesn't want to let you in, but he eventually does. You get a few hundred feet and then that lane slows down too and all the people that were behind you are now speeding past. And then some other jerk in an SUV suddenly merges in front of you with barely any notice and an equally slim space to do so. Your first instinct, and mine, is likely to get angry. Perhaps you'll yell at the other drivers. "Gas is on the right" is one of my favorite for slow drivers. Perhaps you'll even show them a well known hand gesture to express your displeasure. And when none of that helps, because those drivers aren't paying attention to anyway, hence the issues, you'll slump back into your seat, smack the steering wheel, and keep crawling along, simmering and angry, because nothing you did helped. And then when you do finally get home, you are in a bad mood. Your spouse says something to you, which may have been innocent, but you can't take the nagging right now so you snap back. The you walk into the living room and trip over your kids' toys. They should know better, so you yell at them too. Since you were already angry and couldn't do anything about it, you yell at your family so they feel just as bad as you do. Now everyone in your house is grumpy and you eat dinner in silence. Another successful night. Sound familiar to anybody?
But what if, instead of choosing to think that all Chicago traffic is out to get you and that the other drivers are purposefully trying to impede your trip home, you choose to think about it differently. You choose to think about how those all those other people in all those other cars are trying to get somewhere as well. Maybe they all had long days at work. Maybe the guy in the pickup truck just got off of a twelve hour shift building a bridge or fixing that road you take to work every day. Maybe the slow woman in front of you is going to her second job, where she works evenings to pay for her kids' schooling, and she's being extra cautious because she can't afford a ticket. Maybe the guy that cut you off to go nowhere fast is trying to get to the hospital where his wife is in labor and about to deliver their first child. Or worse, to get there to see his parent before it is too late. It's harder to think about these things. It's harder to take the time to think beyond our normal self-centered point of view, because that what we are so used to. As Wallace says, "There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of." But if we can take the time to think differently, to choose to think about others and consider what they are experiencing and going through, we can all be a little bit more compassionate and even happier. If you think about the guy who worked the twelve hour shift doing manual labor, you might be more appreciative of your white collar job that you were only at for nine hours sitting in front of a computer. If you consider the woman going to to her second job, you might be thankful that you are going home to spend time with your messy, but lovable family.
This can also be applied to work situations. I experienced something very similar at a previous job. I had a direct report employee who could not be at work on time if his life depended on it. It didn't matter if he had to be there at 8 a.m. or 1p.m. He was always late. We've all had times when people are late to meet us for whatever reason and I responded with the most basic reaction. I got mad. Clearly he didn't respect ME, wouldn't listen to ME, didn't care about MY time or how it looked for ME to have an employee that wasn't around when management came looking. Even when he was only a few minutes late, I would be mad. After awhile, being mad at him wasn't enough. I got mad at others in the company for not caring enough or not supporting me. It ruined my enjoyment of that job. Maybe you've experienced someone who is always late for meetings with you. How do you feel? Do you choose to get mad about it? Certainly constant tardiness may be a personnel issue. But you can also choose to think about their own situation. Maybe they have to take a child to daycare in the morning and it isn't open early enough to make that 8 a.m. meeting. Maybe the family only had one car so they have to drive their spouse to the train first. There are many valid reasons why someone might be late and very rarely do they have anything to do with you. My employee didn't have a grand excuse; he was just horrible with time management. Not necessarily a good skill for an employee, but also not something that had to affect me personally, but I let it.
And in general, being angry is not fun. Sure, the occasional angry outburst can be cathartic, elevating your heartbeat and making you feel alive. But if you are always angry, it can fester and make you unpleasant to be around. When I was dealing with this situation, I would go home every night and complain for a long time, in minute detail, to my husband. I'm sure he couldn't have cared less. I'm also sure it wasn't very enjoyable for him. When looking back in hindsight, I realize how I let the situation get to me and decided that I don't want to always be angry and always think others are out to make my life hard. I know that most of the time, the people around me in traffic, or in my way at the mall don't have any special circumstances excusing their poor behavior. They are in their own self-centered bubble. But by choosing to think that there might be other circumstances helps me stay calm and happy and able to deal with stresses better.
David Foster Wallace opened his speech with this parable. There are two young fish swimming along one day. They pass an older fish swimming in the other direction who nods and calls to them, "Hey boys, how's the water?" The two young fish swim on and eventually one turns to the other and says, "What the heck is water?" The two young fish only had their narrow view of the world, centered around themselves. They didn't know what water is. Well, this is water. The world around us is the water and by choosing to think differently, compassionately, we can fully appreciate the water and others in it.
