Thin Skin

Thin Skin

This morning I did what I occasionally do, which is to go back over the past few weeks of posts to this blog to see what sort of comments have been made. I have one specific reader who has become one of the few commenters and he comments often. His name is Dr, Nicholas Bednarski and he is a nephrologist who lives near my in-laws Sharon and Woo. I met Nick through our motorcycling group as he and even he and his son joined several of our road trips. Nick is obviously a well-educated guy and he has a decidedly conservative world view. I know him to be a staunch Republican who would most likely characterize himself as a libertarian. He often reacts and comments strongly on my political posts that espouse liberal ideologies. I have sometimes wondered why Nick reads my posts since he and I seem diametrically opposed on many levels of our ideology. The great thing about this nation is that people can do that and they can enjoin a lively debate if they so choose. I was raised to believe that we must respect contrarian views and that the only way to grow as people and as a nation is to listen and perhaps learn one way or the other. It is in that spirit that I embrace Nick’s views and much as I may disagree with some (he sometimes makes harmless non-political observations as well). In fact, since so few people make comments on the blog (they more often just email me directly), I want to encourage Nick’s commentary.

But Nick has just crossed a line with me and I am bothered enough by it that I have decided to write this story to get this out of my system. I have asked myself if it is fair to call Nick out on this, but quite frankly, he made a public forum comment on my blog of several days ago that troubles me enough that I have decided that this is, indeed, the time and the place to address it. Strangely enough, when Nick has made harsh comments about my liberal political views I have been able to take them in stride, even when they are personally directed. One time when I was espousing my wealth inequality theme, Nick implied that I was hypocritical and why didn’t I give away all of my wealth to others less fortunate if I was so liberally-inclined. While I was mildly offended by that, I tried to take it as a learning moment and question myself as to whether I was, indeed, as hypocritical as he was implying. I retrospectively examined my giving record and my lifestyle choices and concluded that I have been generous to a fault in my giving (admittedly it was mostly directed to specified charities I trust), but I have also literally handed out money regularly person-to-person to bear witness to my beliefs.

The charities I have most supported have been Cornell University (to the value of education), CARE (the global relief and development charity) and the College of Staten Island (which is a public University with an impressive record of transforming students from one socioeconomic class to a better one). I always try to direct my giving to those institutions towards playing field leveling initiatives. At Cornell it has been towards scholarships and programs of enlightenment. At CARE it has been to general relief and development, but also specifically to girl’s education in places like Central America, India and West Africa. At CSI it was about general support, but it was due to my belief that the institution served the broader working class community by providing an economic stepping stone. On the person-to-person level, I always give to friend’s charities (Leukemia, CF, Breast Cancer, etc.) to show support for their causes. But beyond that, I buy meals for fire fighters, street people and anyone who seems in need and worthy of help. Whenever I hire day laborers, I overpay them intentionally and tip delivery people more than normal. It is a grass-roots way to level the playing field.

On a personal level, while I live an affluent lifestyle to be sure, I am not a NetJets person and I do not live lavishly by any standards. I refuse to live in a gated community and my home is only marginally more valuable than those of all of my and Kim’s siblings. I also work hard to share whatever I have with my family and friends through subsidized group vacations and help for any of them when needed. I have many loans to people that will likely never be repaid. That doesn’t make me a saint by any means, but my self-examination at Nick’s behest causes me to be more rather than less comfortable with my life choices and the view that I am NOT hypocritical. I live the line that I preach for the most part. And in a strange way, I am glad Nick challenged me to think that through.

The blog that Nick just commented on was my story titled Falling Uphill. It was intended as a somewhat self-deprecating story (I believe that sort of humility is import for us all to adopt on a regular basis) about my physical constraints and how they got manifested in my yard work. It chronicled a fall that I took while trying to improve my back hillside and the resulting injury that I suffered. Had Nick called me out for being clumsy, I would have laughed. If Nick had derided me as being a baby about my knee boo-boo, I would have found that particularly funny and somewhat true. If Nick had chastised me for not being coordinated enough or fit enough to take on simple menial yard work tasks without hurting myself, I would have politely nodded and had a hard time disagreeing with the admonishment.

Instead, he left me and all of you readers a searing personal comment that was a pointed and personal attack on me for reasons I cannot fathom. His comment was “A metaphor for your entire career—“falling uphill”?” I can think of few nastier and more personal things one could say to me other than perhaps I was a shitty and vile person. I invest a great deal of myself in my work and how I comport myself in it and have done so for over 45 years. I attained a very high level of position in three major corporations, implying that I did more than get lucky, even though good fortune is always a big part of anyone’s success. Most importantly, I believe and have strong empirical evidence to the fact that I almost universally treated my employees well and with dignity. I did, indeed, have several failures and I did indeed fall several times. The fact that those failures were all failures of omission rather than failures of commission is an important distinction. I believe that when you rise to leadership positions, you open yourself up to the possibility of failures that get inflicted upon you and that you might have been able to avoid if you were nimble or lucky enough to do so. But those are a world different from overtly doing things that lead to failure. I will not suggest that I did not commit some acts that failed, but the two large failures that were noteworthy (the only ones Nick would have reason to know about) were of omission and NOT commission.

But nevertheless, to randomly suggest that one’s career was about falling on one’s face is a harsh comment. I pride myself on having a skin thick enough to have withstood the travails of upper-level Wall Street for many years, and yet I too have a certain soft underbelly for specific criticisms when I feel they are undeserved. Nick had no basis or reason for making that comment and he seems to have found the part of my skin that is thin enough to have penetrated. He has given me a shitty mood this morning and I try never to consciously do that to another person. So, Nick, I have but one strong thing to say and that is what Teddy Roosevelt said,

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”