The Human Condition

Musings

ORTIYKMWOYBNTO

Balancing Act: The Newsletter

(No. 242, October 2019)

Balancing act is in four sections this month:

Techniques for Balance (Observations)
The Human Condition: If...then.
Musings
ORTIYKMWOYBNTO

Observations

- I am constantly surprised and impressed by people who speak more than one language.

- Critics had always had a tough time with me because my work speaks for itself and I’m very successful. But now they have a new weapon: They say, with no context whatsoever, that I’m “old.” My response is, “Is that really the best you’ve got?”

- Why didn’t they put rollers on luggage in the 70s? Surely the technology was available, we’re not talking moon landings. Why did I have to schlep bags through airports into the 80s?

- I love professional football. It’s a combination of warfare and chess. Yes, it’s risky business to play. But so is life.

- Felicity Huffman was fined $30,000 and given 14 days in jail and 250 hours of community service for bribing someone to get her daughter into college. (I saw her daughter interviewed, and I’m surprised there’s enough money to get her into college.) If you were wondering about disparities in justice for the wealthy, well, there it is.

- I’m embarrassed to admit that no American Airline would be in my top ten for international, first class service. I’m hoping Jet Blue enters this market because they have the best domestic first class service.

- Pre-check is good, but with retinal and fingerprint recognition they can’t allow vetted travelers to simply walk in without examining the luggage?

- Tom Brady is the Sandy Koufax of this age, but unlike Koufax, we understand it at the moment.

- When you wait until the last minute and then complain that you don’t have the room, seat, or view that you desire, you’re not much of a problem solver.

- The software companies and I have vastly different perspectives about what “intuitive” means.

If...then.

We seldom suggest changes or initiatives or solutions that also consider consequences. No important alternative is ever completely free of risk. The philosopher Santayana observed, “A fanatic is someone who loses sight of his goals and consequently redoubles his efforts.” No wind is a good wind if you don’t know your destination.

Voters will almost always pass school budgets and facilities improvements until they hear the plans will result in a property tax increase of two percent. We love to be part of environmental and sustainability endeavors until we learn that there’s a fine if we don’t recycle correctly.

In organizations, people love to jump on the bandwagon for better working conditions and new products and services and more powerful technology—until they learn there will need to be a commensurate productivity increase required or more overtime or tougher work loads. We see only positives, and when someone dares to raise the negatives they are derided as killjoys, or pessimists, or Chicken Little.

You’re not a pessimist if you simply review what could go wrong or adversely affect you and plan for it or try to prevent it. New schools (or road repair or water treatment equipment) will almost always result in the need for higher taxes to pay for them. Changes in products and services will almost always adversely impact some clients. Whenever you take a new route there’s always the threat of getting lost.

We would all do ourselves a legitimate favor if we recognized what the “then” might be with each “if,” and demand of our political candidates and office holders that they spell out the “cost” of supporting their plans.

We have on our roads too many “bridges to nowhere,” terminated roads that ran out of funds and or ran out of purpose. We don’t need “notions to nowhere.” Tell me the cost or don’t tell me the tale.

When I was chair of the planning board in East Greenwich, RI, I was constantly amazed and disturbed by people who didn’t want “newcomers.” The feeling was that the “environment” would be sullied, the schools overrun, the quality of life diminished.

Of course, the people complaining weren’t exactly the original occupants of the land, but had moved there themselves a relatively few years earlier. These were the same people who often object to “parking problems” (meaning they couldn’t park exactly in front of the store they wanted to visit) because so many “outsiders” were visiting the restaurants and shops (thus providing a strong economy).

Today, as I write this in Dubrovnik, we’re besieged by people who cite the “environment” and “tourism” as respectively destroyed and destroying destination cities such as Prague, Venice, Marrakech, Florence, and Seville. They don’t seem to feel other people deserve to go places where the protestors have already been. They despise “tour groups” which, while being truly unwieldy, have every right to be there.

How else would the merchants, business people, and employees in these towns be able to feed their families? It’s true that Venice, for example, has huge tracts of housing owned by foreign money which is boarded up most of the year. But the Venetian families who once lived there wouldn’t be able to live there without tourists and foreign investment in any case.

Just as we’re hypocritical demanding that developing countries eschew the fuel sources and practices that were critical to now-developed countries, we’re hypocritical demanding that the new Holy Grail of “environment” preclude people from traveling and understanding the world more thoroughly.

The hypocrites demand that we try to leave things “authentic,” whatever that means. We all evolve, we all change. And all of us deserve the right to travel, to change our living conditions, and to improve. Nobody can claim the right to higher ground because they “were here first.”

They weren’t first. And they won’t be the last.

I had disembarked the train in Boston and was walking the six blocks to State Street Bank’s Headquarters, one of my clients. As I looked across the street, I was impressed by a well-dressed, very attractive woman who smoothly reached into the pocketbook hanging over her shoulder and withdrew her phone without missing a stride. However, in doing so she had somehow managed to hook her skirt to her pocketbook strap and her entire leg was now visible, up to her hips.

I slowly tried to decide if I should call to her, which she might find obnoxious, or hurry across the street in the midst of traffic, which she might find threatening. I hustled to keep up with her pace.

Suddenly, I was struck in the chest and chin with such force that I fell to the ground, dropping my briefcase. I had walked into a parking meter.

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