I am aware that I live too much in my mind. I can’t seem to help it. Someone broke off my internal volume control knob and I’m fairly certain many people who know me only wish I had an accessible external volume control. I recall during my college fraternity days that there was a caricature artist who came to the fraternity once a year (with 54 fraternities and probably 15 sororities at Cornell in those days, our campus was a pretty fertile place for such a commercial activity). With 20 or so new members each year per fraternity, there was a full evening’s work for the artist every night of the week for several months. At $25 per drawing (done in 15 minutes) that $500/night was certainly good pay.
The artist would ask the assembled crowd about the subject of his drawing while he crafted his basic facial features as a caricature. The questions were to learn enough about the person so he could capture some aspect of the person that everyone would find funny and relatable. For my roommate Gary, who was considered quite a talker (an interesting and well-informed one, but quite verbose) the artist made his body a record player with an on/on switch. Funny, right? For me, he put me on a motorcycle and had me saying, “Lookit…..”. I understood the motorcycle, since it was a distinguishing element of who I was, but I didn’t really get the “Lookit…..”. I didn’t know it was something I regularly said and I just didn’t get it. That caricature hung with all the others on the wall of the fraternity for another three years and I still never got it. An on/on switch was clear, but what was “Lookit…..”?
During my almost 50 years of career, I learned a lot about who I was and how I operated….we all do. I also knew that in a competitive world where the ability to advocate for your ideas and yourself played a big role in success, there would always be detractors as much as there were fans of my style. Therefore, I only paid scant attention to those who found me domineering or opinionated…it just came with the territory of success. But now in retirement, I do not have a success-driven motive and care much more about my social persona…or so I say to myself. I have tried to mellow myself and smooth out any of my blunt edges. The usual tactic of one-upmanship among professionals (caustic wit being somewhat a tool in the competitive arsenal of business) is something I notice more from others and consciously try to refrain from (with only partial success, to be sure).
But one of the things that hasn’t helped this mellowing effort is the divisive political environment we are living through. Part of me wants to keep saying that it is all so unprecedented, but another part of me wonders if it’s just always thus and I’m just noticing it more given the excess time on my hands. Could it just be another “these kids today!” moment for my bulging generation of people conflicted by social agitation in our youth followed by commercial focus in our adult lives? Are we just living the conflict and contradiction of our own making? I really don’t know any more. What I do know is that my domineering and opinionated ways did not get entirely left behind in the corporate boardroom…they have clung to me more than I probably like to admit. I’m not even entirely sure that I am more mellow in backing down than I was in my prime. But I do have more time to think about it all and worry about my comportment more than I used to.
It seems that every social conversation I have these days operates in a bimodal manner. I am either talking about trivial things like gardening and the weather, or I am talking about the end of the world as we know it. That’s a very challenging distinction and range. Conversations with like-minded people are relatively easy. In fact, dissecting the causes and cures for Armageddon are almost perfunctory with those people. After quickly agreeing on the common woes, we end up by conversational necessity, reverting to gardening and the weather, and occasionally, “How about them Padres?!” But with the half of the population that disagrees with my worldview (by self-selection on my part, I must admit they represent a fair bit less than 50% of my interactions), the conversation works in reverse.
Those discussions start by staying on safe ground like gardening and the weather, but if they linger on, they risk wandering into gossip or current events. Gossip is, strangely enough, the safer social territory. You can trip up on gossip by denigrating someone that others at the table feel better or more sympathetic about. But that leads to mere sheepishness when breached. If you move into current events you are going into shark-infested waters. You may feel well-armed to do so, but the thing about sharks is that they are, by nature, highly unpredictable. I’m guessing that more harm is done by panic or overreaction in those waters than by actual and concerted attack. And as we all learned after watching Jaws, it’s hard to go back into the water after an incident, no matter how much you might like swimming.
So, does that all mean that we are all going to spend the rest of our lives only talking about gardening and the weather…or even that we should try to do that? That feels pretty sterile and even somewhat irresponsible. We have all had times in life when we’ve realized that being oblivious can be a path to simplistic happiness. If happiness in the moment is your only goal, then keep it basic and stay in the shallow end of the pool. Spend your time worrying about your pruning fingertips. But how long before any thinking person will get frustrated with that unnatural constraint and push up against the limits of gardening and the weather? Even if we are mindful and cautious, chances are that a shark or two will play unfair and find its way into the shallow end and there you have it. Unavoidable and eventual confrontation.
I don’t know if I still say “Lookit…..” or even if I ever did. What I do believe is that I’m reasonably self aware these days and know when I’ve transgressed my own social boundaries. But I get tired of the shallow end of the pool and I guess I need to test myself once in a while. I don’t want to fight sharks, but be there sharks in the water, I may have no choice but to test myself against them. So, lookit, if I’m tired and tested and if you don’t like it, just stay away and I’ll try to get better.