I always told myself I’d never be one of those people who got stuck in an intellectual rut with age.

I would maintain a sense of wonder, and constantly engage new ideas in new fields, never getting crusty or closed-minded. I couldn’t really imagine it being difficult to do so.

Now 40, I feel the steady pull of patterns and a decline in energy preventing that same level of exploration. The biggest hindrance is that with time, your bullshit meter gets better. And as time becomes more precious, you are inclined to abandon something at the first hint of bullshit.

This is a blessing and a curse.

If you let it continue unabated, pretty soon you end up whittling away every novel idea and are left with a handful of core truths and a handful of books or authors you know won’t waste your time so you come back to them over and again and little else. That’s not all bad, but it feels too safe and a bit defeatist.

But it sure is hard to go out there and engage lots of new ideas when the phoniness, sloppiness, and badness are easier to spot.

Cynicism shrinks a person, and I don’t want to shrink.

One of the keys for me is to remind myself the stakes are low. So what if you read some bad ideas? So what if you spend an hour on something frivolous? When you walk into the woods, do you consider it wasted time if you don’t encounter an amazing animal, or if you do encounter a stupid one?

I’m trying to get less ruthless with my judgements over time to stave off the tendency to shrink my intellectual landscape.

A long time ago, I had a boss with an incredible knack for malapropriating.

“Let’s touch basis”, instead of ‘touch base’.

“We’ll play it by hear”, instead of ‘by ear’.

And on and on. Yes, English was his first and only language.

It was uncanny because if he had absolutely zero knowledge of the correct idiom, you’d expect a fifty-fifty shot at getting it right. But he batted darn-near a thousand when it came to getting it wrong. I’m still mystified to this day.

I’m also trying to figure out why it’s so funny when people use words incorrectly like this.

Humor is a tricky thing to pin down. Arthur Koestler does a commendable job in his book, The Act of Creation, where he discusses what causes the moment of laughter in a joke.

He describes two separate ‘matrices of thought’ that intersect suddenly and unexpectedly. That’s the punchline moment of a purposefully designed joke. But what creates the humor in the accidental malapropism?

Perhaps it’s the same structure. In this case, the two matrices are less about the content than the context, or perhaps the contrasting social signals.

Idioms are clever. People who use them subtly signal a kind of quick-wittedness, folk wisdom, broad vocabulary, and deftness with language. It is a very grown-up thing to use idioms, as evidenced by how delightfully adorable we find it when kids do.

Unknowingly mispronouncing or misusing a word is just the opposite. It signals cluelessness, naiveté, a small vocabulary, and clumsiness with language. It is a childish thing.

When a serious adult seriously misuses and idiom in a serious soliloquy, these two matrices collide. The fact that the offender is unaware that two polar opposite social signals have collided adds to the tragic humor.

It’s similar to moments when an intense speech is interrupted by someone telling the speaker, “You have a bit of mustard on your chin.”

The unexpected intersection of these planes of reality – dignified, poignant, serious, inspirational, or clever; mundane, domestic, childish, trivial – creates a moment of delight.

Of course the unexpected is not always delightful. Sometimes it’s terrifying. I won’t venture into what separates funny from startling, but I suspect it has to do with the potential risks to the observer.

Can you go wrong seeking the truth?

Perhaps not Truth with a capital ‘T’, but seeking general truths has some traps.

Do you know the truth about what your neighbors are saying about you? What they are doing right now?

Probably not. And seeking to find out might drive you crazy or turn you into a weirdo.

Naïveté is not a virtue, but it’s not as bad as its reputation either. Yes, you want to be shrewd, not taken advantage of, and prepared for what might really be going on in the world. But if you start to dig and understand the secrets behind the secrets, there is a point at which you become less useful, less productive, more paranoid, and less happy.

If you ask yourself, “If I found the answer to this, what would I do differently than I am now?” and the answer is nothing, it’s probably not worth too much more effort.

“Take up your cross” is a monumental call. Being willing to suffer and die for the sake of others is the hardest thing I can imagine. But the call to take up your cross is harder even than that.

It’s easy to limit it to literal martyrdom, something which most of us will never face and which can seem rather romantic as a remote possibility. As the world collapses, some evil dictator demands that you renounce Christ or face the firing squad, and you boldly refuse, choosing death.

I do not deny the courage and honor of such a situation should it occur. But since it’s unlikely for most of us, what else can it mean to take up our cross?

St. Augustine said it meant to “Put up with all that is annoying.” Well that’s certainly not very romantic or heroic sounding. But there’s something important in it.

Your cross is the hardest thing, and, importantly, the thing that you don’t actually have to do. Remember, Jesus was innocent and it was within his power to prove it and avoid the cross. He bore it up willingly, without complaint, sacrificing what he had a right to and enduring scorn, torture, and death.

In most daily situations, the hardest or most annoying thing is not physical torture and death, but something like being misunderstood, or having credit misattributed to someone else, or kindly listening to a chatterbox, or refusing to say a true but negative word, or wanting the best for someone who cut you off in traffic. You would be within your rights, strictly speaking, to not do any of these things. But the small sacrifice of doing them anyway and without complaint is your cross.

It doesn’t mean just to suffer for its own sake or to be a doormat. Jesus certainly was not. It means, like Him, recognizing that doing what you are allowed to do often robs you of a greater birthright. By forgoing glory on earth, Jesus claimed eternal glory for himself and for us. By forgoing a petty complaint you have a right to lodge against someone, you begin to see a vastly more important battle to fight and win.

These crosses don’t just bring you low, they allow you to be someone who is raised up.

I am pretty good about not letting things out of my control dictate my emotions. Except sports.

When my team loses, I usually toss and turn half asleep replaying all the reasons in my head that night. I have to work hard to move on to normal life. Maybe that’s not healthy, but there’s a flip side too.

When my team wins, there is a kind of joy and camaraderie with other fans that is more than just fun. It’s a glimpse of something bigger. It’s a way of participating in things that bind us. It’s an inspiring and elevated form of play or ritual. It bleeds into normal life in good ways, and provides good lessons.

And you can’t really experience that joyful side of sports without being invested enough to experience that agony too.

We made it this far

And by “we” I mean not me

But I’ll still glory

Every sin is really the same,
A cheat code for the pattern.

The destination is not in vain,
But how you get there matters.

The man with sudden riches knows,
The power of their shackles.

The one who grows organically,
Is ready the traps to tackle.

Steer clear the oldest temptation,
An offer of the end that flatters.

The end is not the enemy,
But how you get there matters.

I used to tell new employees that there was no such thing as a stupid question in the first few weeks of their role, and then the percentage of questions which were stupid rapidly grew.

The idea is that, by the end of a month, they should not need to ask people many questions. They should be able to figure out on their own. If you keep asking noob questions too long, you lose the respect of your colleagues.

That’s not wrong, but it’s too simple.

I was asked yesterday what patterns I’ve noticed in the employees who have gone on to the most career success. It hit me that the real home run hitters were people who did ask lots of questions. What they didn’t do was ask me to make lots of decisions for them.

There are two types of quieries:

1. Asking someone to make a decision
2. Asking someone for their opinion, ideas, or input

When you’re new in a role, you should do a lot of the first and not much of the second.

Ask your manager whether you should do X or Y, who is best to run project Z, and what the budget should be for A. You’ll start to learn and see how they think and their logic for decisions.

Don’t spend a lot of time asking them their opinion on your crazy new idea, or other open-ended, speculative questions. You don’t yet have the context to ask good ones. Just get stuff done while you learn.

But to really become a beast, these things need to flip. You need to ask your manager to make fewer and fewer decisions for you, and you need to engage them more and more on speculative discussions and brainstorming back and forth.

The more you can say “I did” instead of “Can you?” or “Should we?”, the more valuable you become to your manager.

When you get to that level of ownership, the value of your curiosity and questions increases. You start to use your manager’s time to ask about changes to the business model, the target market, the pricing, the distribution. You begin to work with them as a peer, a sounding board, and a constructive critic of your ideas, and you of theirs.

Fewer decisions, more questions. That’s the progression. You’ve got to earn trust through results to get there. Make it the goal.

I had a chemistry class at community college taught by a guy who was apparently a brilliant chemist for Pfizer who had patented many products and processes. He retired as a Big Deal in his field, and decided he wanted to teach a class a few days a week to stay busy and near the lab in retirement.

He was the worst teach I’ve ever had for anything.

In high school, I had a half crazy science teacher who could never hold down a job in a lab so taught just about every science to every grade at a low-paid tiny Christian school.

He was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had for anything.

Being awesome at doing something doesn’t make you good at teaching it. And being awesome at teaching something doesn’t always require being good at doing it.

You ever see a fat, gray-haired, 5’10” basketball coach yelling at a 6’7″ muscular toned athlete about hustling more or perfecting their footwork?

I don’t think teaching requires being good at doing, but it does require a lot of curiosity, empathy, and ability to quickly identify the key principles at work.

Sales and marketing professionals know this, because they do it every day. Unless you are selling sales software that you use every day to other sales pros, or marketing marketing tools you use every day to other marketers, you will find yourself teaching potential customers how to do something you yourself don’t do every day.

That’s ok. Or at least it can be. There is a danger of just bluffing everything or pretending to be a know-it-all and making yourself a fool. But if you are curious, ask tons of questions, watch, learn, and tap into those who do the thing regularly for expertise on the finer points, you can do amazing things.

That fat coach may not be able to do a double pump, but he may be better positioned than most players to understand when and how to make a double pump effective if he’s watched a lot of film and is good at observing and asking questions and pattern matching. Sometimes being a little out of the weeds actually makes you better at describing them.

One of my favorite history books is Thaddeus Russell’s A Renegade History of the United States. The main thesis is that, contrary to classroom tales of great men of principle, most of the things we value in this country were won by degenerates, riffraff, slobs, and generally disreputable people.

It’s sort of like Adam Smith’s “not from the benevolence of the butcher” insight about markets applied to the grand arc of history.

There’s a weird paradox here that, I think, has a brilliant power to protect us from our own arrogance and corruption. How could people displaying traits that are not good or respectable for an individual – traits you’d never want your kids or friends to embody – be the very ones who bring about good things?

I’ve been thinking about this lately in regards to the Puritans.

I’d never want to live like them, and I’d be worried if my loved ones did. What an unhinged and joyless group! When they briefly held power in England, they were severe, and even banned the celebration of Christmas.

Yet they were relentlessly devoted to God, and chose exile or martyrdom rather than be forced to worship according to the state-sanctioned Church. Many fled England to the Netherlands just to be able to meet and worship as they pleased, despite not knowing the language or culture. When threatened there, some sold everything and boarded ships to cross the Atlantic to an uncharted new world rather than submit to worshipping in a way that violated their conscience.

As I said, I don’t agree with Puritan theology or practice and wouldn’t advocate it. Yet for a particular epoch in history, it’s hard to not see them as heroic. Many of the best things about modern culture, especially in America, can be attributed to them. Weirder still, many more great American traits can be attributed to the very type of sinners the Puritans would’ve most despised. How can we make sense of this?

The Kingdom of Heaven has room for both the devout Apostle John and the criminal next to Christ on the cross. It includes crazy people wearing Camel hair and eating bugs in the desert, those who murdered Christians, those who denied Christ, fishermen, carpenters, tent-makers, generals, priests, and kings.

Not all of these people were good in all their deeds. Many were awful much of the time. But all played a part in bringing about the good of the Kingdom. Meanwhile, others that did good in Christ’s name are apparently told, “Get away from me, I never knew you.”

This is astounding precisely because it’s not an inversion of good and evil. These examples do not prove that being bad is good, or being good is bad. Yet we are forced to acknowledge that God can use any vessel in many ways, that all have a chance at redemption, and that we can never be quite sure where people rank in God’s eyes.

All we can do is try our best to live rightly and be exceedingly cautious about judging or assuming we know where others stand or what role they play, while simultaneously being resolute against sin.

If that doesn’t keep you humble and filled with wonder, I’m not sure what will.

I don’t like most business books.

Written after success, they attempt to look back on the (sometimes fuzzy) facts and construct a formula that caused it. But success is bad at following formulas (evidenced by the fact that the millions of readers don’t succeed by following them).

I’m not saying it’s all luck and success has no discernible causes. What I’m suspicious of is our ability to discern them, especially in detail. There are so many variables, and we are really bad at knowing which are causal after we’ve already won. It’s too easy and satisfying to look back on success and say, “These were the three reasons” – reasons that always seem to make the story more convenient.

This is why we learn more from failure than success. It’s true, the same number of variable exists and causality isn’t always clear, but the ability to tell the story we wish was true is reduced. Ego is muted. We are humbled and have to face the fact that what we did didn’t work.

Even for success stories, I think the most valuable and applicable lessons are the negative ones. Less, “These were the keys to success,” and more, “These were the keys to avoiding failure”.

I’m reminded of Barry Sander’s answer to how he had such creative and elusive moves on the football field. “I don’t like get get tackled. It hurts.” Instead of, “These three techniques are the keys to my success”, Barry simply explained what he didn’t want to do; get hit.

If you know what to avoid, everything else is fair game. The paths to success are many. Avoid the pitfalls (which are surprisingly attractive) and you might find a way to win that breaks all the other rules.

I’d like to see more business books about companies that failed, and more books about those that succeeded focusing on what they didn’t do rather the genius of what they did.

Kids have bad poker faces. They try, somewhat ridiculously, to hide what they’re feeling, but it’s obvious to a parent.

This can result in one of the hardest forms of censure a parent can experience. If your kid is mad at you and tells you they think you’re doing something wrong (when you actually are) it stings. But far worse is when your kid doesn’t tell you, but you can read it on their face.

I’ve had moments where I glance at one of my kids and realize by the look on their face that I’m being too grumpy, impatient, or indifferent. When they’re little, kids think you’re a hero. The look on their face when their hero disappoints them cuts to the bone.

There’s nothing to do but take it, apologize, and work on getting better. There is always an urge to try to talk them in to not being disappointed, or do something really nice for them hoping it cancels out that moment when they saw your flaws. It won’t do. You’ve got to take the pain and resolve to get better.

You don’t know until you have kids just how convicting in can be to be around little humans who look up to you every day.

Preparing my friends

For an intense afternoon

Lions play at three

Many families, businesses, neighborhoods, churches, and cities have a diseased culture.

Gossip, squabbling, rudeness, passive aggression, cliques, manipulation, control: these are the symptoms of the disease.

If you find yourself in one of these the first instinct, if you cannot easily flee, is to eradicate the disease. You want some kind of strong medicine to kill it. Or to get rid of those most infected. This doesn’t work well.

The thing about culture is that’s it’s always infected with something. You can’t sanitize it and leave it alive. The only cure for bad disease in a culture is good disease.

Good disease can’t be prescribed or mandated. It has to spread, one person at a time, just like bad disease.

If you find yourself in a badly diseased culture, complaining about it will only increase the symptoms. Your only option is to begin infecting others with something good.

My wife makes delicious meals almost every night. She insists that it’s not out of her desire to please and care for her family with quality food as much as her own desire for something tasty.

I believe her. Not because I think she is a bad or selfish person. But because I know from personal experience that, no matter how good I try to be, my own interest is a better driver of behavior than anyone else’s.

One of the best ways to have harmonious relationships is to align your interests with those of the other person. That way, you don’t have to rely on either of your goodwill too much. If the other person acting in the way they want to act anyway is also what you would like, it will be an easy relationship. If they have to practice tremendous self-control and discipline and become a much different person than they are to keep things copacetic, you’re likely in for a lot of pain.

This doesn’t mean people can’t or shouldn’t change or improve or work on good habits and discipline. It means you need to be honest about yourself and others, and know what you really want and are likely to do when push comes to shove. If doing what comes easiest to you, and the other person doing what comes easiest to them, still leads to an acceptable outcome, you’re in a pretty solid spot.

It’s about recognizing your own and others weaknesses and tendencies and trying to put yourself in fewer positions that require you to be your very best. King David might’ve avoided adultery and murder had he led his men to battle instead of staying behind with all the women. It wasn’t just about lack of self control in the moment. It was also about allowing himself to be in a moment that demanded so much self control in the first place.

So if you want a wife that cooks great meals for your family, your best bet is to find a woman who loves to do that for her own enjoyment already.