Before we get started with this week’s dispatch from my 🧠 brain, have you signed the petition to make LeVar Burton from Star Trek the next host of Jeopardy?
Thank you! Now…to “business.”
How Many Unread Email Messages in Your Inbox? What Percentage Is Your Laptop Battery At? What About Your Cellphone?
Because I’m high-strung when it comes to this sort of thing. Right now, there are zero unread emails in my inbox. My laptop battery is at 100%. And my cellphone battery is at more than 50%. I can write these things with confidence, any time. Because they are always the case. Even with a three-week old baby in the house. I have backup chargers. I’m a glass-better-be-more-than-half-full person. Battery-wise.
Before COVID, when I worked briefly last year at Radical Health, a health equity startup based in the Bronx, founder Ivelyse Andino enjoyed tormenting me by telling me how little battery percentage she had left. I would shudder at the thought that she could continue to function with, say, 28%. And she would chair conference calls with that amount remaining. It did not even seem to upset her. Clearly, I realized, her priorities were more important than simple battery percentages.
In 2015 on a flight out of South Carolina, I had to re-cut an urgent campaign film using a failing hard drive. I hadn’t backed the hard drive up that morning. And as the plane took off, the thing still wouldn’t boot up. I turned my computer off and on again. Then I contemplated the possibility that a device might finally be in a position to let me down. I took a deep, cleansing breath. I turned pale. I began to sweat. And I made peace with it. Then it worked. Thank God. When we landed, I bought a new hard drive. And I vowed never again to travel without a back-up-back-up disk. I also now back everything up to iCloud. Essentially, I work in triplicate.
After college I worked briefly as a photographer’s assistant. I have a very vivid memory of his openness to the “benevolence of the universe” as we packed tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of camera equipment into a FedEx truck bound for Qatar where he was due in a matter of days to begin photographing the Sheik’s collection of Islamic art. He was kind enough to sit me down for a talk about how things just tend to go wrong in life. And that being genuinely creative was often a test of how one coped with the inevitable chaos. Not how hard one strove simply to avoid it. Thanks, Mark. It was a valuable lesson.
I come from a family where over-thinking systems failure is a state of mind. My father still beats himself up because his dad did a better job of sealing up his Christmas parcels. Even though penetrating my father’s own brown paper packaging is a task made to look easy by Goldfinger when he broke into Fort Knox. Granddad used sealing wax, you see. As in, he’d wrap things up once in wrapping paper. Then he’d wrap them up in brown paper. Twice. Then he’d tape them up. A lot. Then he’d use string. Tie knots. Then he’d get a special candle out, and melt globs of wax onto the knots. It would take us 45 minutes on Christmas Eve to get the presents into mere by-hand-un-wrappable condition for the tree.
Amazingly none of this extra effort prevented my grandfather from eventually dying. But I like to think he applied himself to it all with the belief or hope that on some level perhaps it could do. There was also an element of expressing love in all that extra work. A demonstration of care. Not easily done otherwise when you’re a man from Middlesbrough. Rest in peace, grandad.
For me, trusting the U.S. mail to deliver a package is an act of supreme faith. I can’t believe it when things arrive. Like paying taxes. Or applying for passports. My instinct is always to drive the things over several states and save on risk. And I don’t even own a car.
I have life insurance. I have business insurance. I have a million dollar umbrella policy.
I do like to trust people. It’s just that I have a hard time trusting anyone I haven’t known for more than, say, half my life. Because people do let you down. However hard it is to accept. And so one has to trust, but verify. Apparently that’s something Ronald Reagan said. Quoting a Russian proverb. Literally quoting people he did not trust. About trust.
Why tell you all this? Because in spite of myself I do actually like to work with people with the opposite approach. It’s taken me some time to get used to, like, 41 years, but actually these days I can’t think of anything more refreshing than walking into a meeting where the other person has no agenda. Where they’d rather trust me to protect their interests than go to all that effort on their own behalf.
Trust in the working relationship, for me, is about symbiosis. If your special skill is over-thinking minor but often critical details, then it also pays to associate with people who don’t. And vice versa. Even if that feels difficult or counterintuitive sometimes. I’ve found that people with crap battery instincts are often more likely to see the strategic wood for the trees. And sure, I may have perfect charging rates on most of my devices. But I love it when a person can remember what’s the most important. Like, say, fixing injustice for people on the wrong end of it.
Battery Lives Don’t Matter.
At least not very much, in the grand scheme of things. You know?
Although obviously, of course, I think my contribution to social movements is best delivered with a perfect battery percentage. But I’m open to persuasion. That’s the point. And not all of us have the time or energy to care about such details. There’s an element of privilege in such behavior. As in most of my behaviors. I’m…aware.
Most importantly. Did you sign that petition yet, to make LeVar Burton the next Jeopardy host? I grew up watching him on Star Trek The Next Generation on Wednesday evenings at six o’/clock on BBC Two, and I love his Reading Rainbow series for young people. Even if I’m old enough to find the content just a touch revisory. He just seems like he’d be exactly right for the job on Jeopardy, and I love that he even shared the link on Twitter, like, “I want this.” It was a nice piece of vulnerability in an industry where everybody fronts like they don’t need or want anything. So I would like very much to be a part of making him happy today, and I assume you would, too. Because if you can make someone happy, no matter how small the contribution, then to do so is beautiful and human. No matter where you stand on this battery percentage thing. Right?
Have a good week.
