What if Irony is Judging Others for Lacking Empathy?
I recently heard someone share with me
the following fear:
“I’m worried I’m pursuing an uncommon path,
because I’m afraid of the common one.”
Instantly,
I was reminded of others who had shared with me
the opposite fear:
“I’m worried I’m pursuing a common path,
because I’m afraid of the uncommon one.”
I’d like to share with you something I wrote back in 2011.
I was in the 3rd year of my research into the creative process I only knew to call “making art.” I had such strong feelings about my research that I felt compelled to share some of those feelings with my fellow graduates.
Unfortunately, my speech didn’t get picked.
What I did not know at the time was that the insights I gathered in art school would end up resonating most deeply with founders and CEOs. That the struggles I experienced in what I thought of as “making art,” would prove valuable those who “build companies.”
Enjoy!
Dear graduating class of 2011,
Let’s all take a moment to remember a few years back in time, back to your first week of classes at RISD. With that memory in mind, let me share with you a story from that week.
It was 8 o’ clock in the morning.
I was on the 2nd floor of ProvWash Foundation classroom looking around, nervous. I was surrounded by a group of freshmen students 12 years my junior. I knew them by reputation. Rumor had it that they drew amazingly realistic bicycles. I imagined their sketchbooks being filled with beautiful drawings freshly rendered just moments before coming to class. I wondered what my skills were. Just a year ago, I didn’t know how to draw. As a matter of fact, I still didn’t.
I was telling myself that the nine years I spent as a “professional” was going to help me get through this class, when the instructor gathered us at the front of the classroom to show us how to fold a piece of paper.
It looked easy.
I was feeling confident, until she turned to us and asked us to go fold our own.
“Fold our own what?” I wondered.
It was one of those tasks that could either seem completely self-explanatory, or completely… not. Anxiety struck, but I reminded myself that I had anticipated this. This was that art school “creativity” thing of which I had been forewarned.
Back at my desk, I reached for my post-it notes to sketch my ideas out. I sketched, sketched, and sketched some more in search of a design I liked. But, after a couple of hours, I ran out of ideas. Feeling anxious, I decided to skip lunch, to think of what to sketch. I brainstormed with more post-it notes, mind maps, and employed all the “professional methods” I had amassed over the years.
Time kept passing, with nary a hint of what I should fold. It was already 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I was starving. All that professional experience I was counting on seemed almost too cruel for not extending a helping hand.
In a moment of desperation, I decided to look around at what others were doing. I noticed a girl in the corner, who seemed very much focused on folding her paper. Curious to find out her vision, I left my desk for her’s. Even from afar, I could see a mountain of folded objects atop her desk.
As I moved in closer, I got excited to get a better look. But then when I finally got close enough, I noticed that none of the objects seemed particularly interesting.
“This is it?” I thought to myself, disappointed. “Why does she look so confident?” I wondered.
“Hey, what are you making?” I asked.
An answer came back.
“I don’t know.”
The answer echoed in my ears. I… don’t… know. Just three simple words.
“What are these other ones?” I asked again.
“I don’t know… I’m just trying stuff out,” she responded.
She didn’t know? How could she not know? How could her hands be moving when she didn’t know what she’s doing? How could she decide where to fold and in what direction? How could she anticipate what kind of effect a fold could have on her subsequent folds? How could she have folded a mountain of objects without knowing?
Then… it hit me like a ton of bricks. This… was youth. This… was what it meant to have a beginner’s mindset. This was what it meant to follow your heart. To be yourself. It was courage.
Never mind my lack of drawing skills. Courage was what I truly lacked. What I’ve been doing for a good chunk of my adult life was hide behind existing knowledge, formalized methods, and a fancy job title. I was a mere shadow of who I was, a bad imitation, at best, of a closed-minded, arrogant, dogmatic, adult stupefied by his own experience. I had never, in my adult life, felt like such a failure.
Even as I stand here now, after 3 hard years of graduate school, the lesson I learned in that classroom still seems highly relevant.
During the final semester, I was reminded over and over again, that the real challenge of graduate school, and, perhaps more so the world I am about to re-enter, is not to achieve success, gain recognition, or even to blow people’s minds with amazing work… Instead, it is to have the courage to not let anyone convince me that I am crazy. That just because I do not know exactly where I’m going, just because I do not have a clear vision, just because I cannot articulate what it is that I’m interested in, it does not mean that I am lost.
Do I feel confident that I will be able to do this?
No.
As a matter of fact, this is the least confident I have ever been. But no matter the situation, I somehow feel comfortable admitting my own feelings of cowardice, imperfections, and inadequacies. Maybe this is a cheap shot at sympathy or perhaps a way of comforting myself into thinking that things can only get better from here on.
Or perhaps this means that it matters less whether I’m confident or not. Because as I stand here, what I cannot stop thinking about is the fact that I have met fellow students and mentors here at RISD, who have demonstrated immense patience with me, who have encouraged me in ways I had never been, who have willingly spent time out of their own precious lives to engage in dialogue with me. And it is their confidence in me that gives me tremendous hope, that perhaps I am not crazy, and neither are you.
Dear graduating class of 2011, as one of my personal heroes once said.
You know very well who you are. Don’t let’em hold you down. Reach for the Stars.
Thank you.
In startup circles,
there is wide-spread worship
of “growth.”
The lure of building a company worth $1 billion,
known as a “unicorn,”
looms large.
In contrast,
we often hear people demean survival,
with phrases like “mere survival is not enough,
we must thrive!”
…
The reality is that building a company
often feels like being in a war.
Not because we’re in a competition,
but because we get hurt,
—emotionally—
often to significant degrees.
And what I find interesting
is that when I help founders recover
from these emotional wounds,
I often see them naturally grow—
their minds,
their hearts,
and their relationships.
The kind of growth made possible
precisely because they got hurt.
Just as our muscles grow
by getting hurt
then recovering,
perhaps we can also grow,
by recovering.
By surviving.
By living.
By telling the God of death,
“Not today.”
Words often mislead us.
This is normal.
In fact,
I spent much of my first book
talking about how words like
courage,
humility,
respecting,
listening,
considering,
acting,
had misled me.
Words do often lead our attention.
Yet, where the attention is led
can surprise us,
because words only have meaning in context,
And that context resides
not only with the person uttering the word,
but also the person interpreting it.
So much of our verbal disagreements happen
because we are unwilling
to let others lead our attention
to their meaning.
We’re more interested in arguing
that their use of the word is “wrong” or “bad,”
while our use is “right” or “good.”
Perhaps.
Except we’re back to the problem solver’s mindset.
Let us be honest.
Is this mindset helping us solve the problem?
If so,
great.
If not…
It may be time
to switch
to the paradox dissolver’s mindset.
I once attended a workshop
that laid out a model of how shame develops.
The model suggested,
that when children feel overwhelmed with emotion,
—pleasant or unpleasant—
their natural instinct
is often to reach out to others
—like their parents—
to process it.
Yet,
for better or for worse,
parents may unintentionally “reject“ such reaching out.
And with repeated “rejection,”
children may start to subconsciously judge themselves
as unworthy of love and attention,
when overwhelmed with emotion.
Thus planting the seed of shame.
In hindsight,
I spent much of my life coping with shame.
I did it by pursuing a self-image
of someone who never felt overwhelmed.
A stoic who could always “figure it out,”
through sheer intellect and will power.
It wasn’t until I began my work on empathy,
that I learned the choice
to empathize with that part of me,
instead of hyper-empathizing with it.
It was perhaps as Carl Jung once said,
“Until you make the unconscious conscious,
it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
One of the most profound things
I learned in art school,
is that we can learn
to physically see the world
differently.
To draw from observation,
I had to look at objects
and learn to see light
instead of objects.
To make a poster,
I had to look at a piece of paper
and learn to see a deeply 3-dimensional space
through the surface of the paper.
To sculpt figures,
I had to look at a naked person
and learn to see their muscles & skeletons
hidden underneath their skin.
To learn to act,
I had to learn to see myself in the character
in between the words written in the script.
In each of these cases,
I’d say “Oh, I see…,”
and that change of sight
would profoundly shift my mind,
which then naturally shifted my behavior.
It is no coincidence,
that the professors I admired in school
never bothered to change my behavior.
They merely helped me see differently,
after which a change in behavior
was inevitable.
One of the most difficult
and important need to manage
is our need to matter.
It is an existential need
that taps directly into our sense of self-worth.
Few are willing to admit to this need being a major driver.
Some admit to this in a roundabout way
by saying “I’m going to prove them wrong,”
which is a response to people who violated our need to matter.
Most will brush off the existence of this need
by emphasizing other needs
such as the need to contribute,
which is deemed more “altruistic,”
thus more acceptable and in alignment
with our desire to retain a self-image
of a “good” person.
Our need to matter
can serve as a powerful motivator to achieve something,
because achieving that thing may seem like the way to matter,
thus empowering us to persevere in the most difficult of times.
At the same time,
it can also blind us to behaviors that conspire against us.
Behaviors that, in hindsight, were excessive.
Behaviors we later regret.
Behaviors that may even cost us our lives
or lead to the demise of everything we’ve worked hard to build.
Our need to matter is a double-edged sword.
May we manage it
and manage well.
First time we snowboard,
draw,
lead,
we tend to use a lot of force.
When our snowboarding,
pencil marks,
teammates,
are not to our liking,
we may apply even more force.
Years later,
when we snowboard,
draw,
lead,
we may feel more relaxed.
When we have to stop abruptly,
make a bold mark,
assert a final decision,
we may still use force.
But these are different uses of force.
In the first case,
it was probably because we were afraid of falling,
making a mistake,
being judged.
Once we can empathize with
the snowboard,
our drawing tools,
our teammates,
fear can vanish for a moment
in the experience of oneness
beyond “I” vs “them.”
Force used in fear
resists
Like two opponents wrestling.
Force used while empathizing
flows
Like two partners dancing.
One of the most common block to insight
is cynicism.
To realize empathy with cynicism
it can be useful to model it
as doubt + judgment.
This implies that
once we strip our cynicism of judgment,
we can more clearly confront our doubt.
Then as we develop the requisite skill and will
to zoom into our doubt,
it can lead to the discovery
of our worry or concern,
ultimately fear,
over a future we do not wish to see happen.
When we can clearly see and hear
this undesired future
we can also increase the probability
of realizing empathy,
which ultimately helps us create choices,
the kind that gives us a feeling of possibility
beyond the horizon of cynicism,
which is a key
to designing toward a future
we do wish to see happen,
instead of staying stuck
unconsciously envisioning a future
we do not wish to see happen.
Options
need not
move us
to make
a choice.
For lunch,
we may have 5 options.
Yet, none of them
may move us
to make
a choice.
We can weigh the options
all we want,
but this may merely fuel
our inner conflict,
until we feel moved enough
to make
a choice.
Choices,
unlike options,
move us
to action.
Some choices
are made
begrudgingly.
Yet,
the kind I find fascinating
is the kind that arises
when we realize
empathy.
That moment,
when we’ve finally moved
from a state of dissonance—
of not empathizing—
to a state of resonance—
of empathizing.
That moment,
when what we once could not see
becomes surprisingly self-evident,
and oh so obvious
in hindsight,
making us go
“Oh, of course…!”
exclaiming at the possibility
that has just
unfolded.
p.s: My gratitude goes out to Dr. Paul Pangaro for the wonderful conversation that inspired this post.