Don’t pull the fire alarm every time someone lights a match.

In life-or-death situations, it’s often appropriate to have a bias toward safety. But most situations aren’t life-or-death. Or they’re not presently and urgently about life and death.

A little restraint can be powerful in the long run.

Even if you risk a minor burn in the meantime.

We don’t forget about our sledge hammer when we need to demolish a wall.

Or our whisk when we need to whip a few egg whites.

Or the camera flash when we need extra light in a shot.

Or a pen when we have a document to sign.

These tools naturally come to mind when they’re needed.

But from time to time, we do forget about tools we have. Tools like questions. Or humor. Or silence. Or stopping to breathe.

We learn about things like Michael Bungay Stainer’s seven “coaching habit” questions. Or Lincoln’s advice to write a letter that you don’t deliver. Or the idea of reflecting upon “What do I want to happen?” before voicing a complaint.

We’ve collected a lot of great tools.

However, these techniques and resources can easily gather dust if we’re not using them often enough. So take inventory. Practice.

And when we don’t know how to handle a situation, we might pause to think, “What tools do I have that I can use here?”

On my way to a commitment, time was tight. Just as I arrived at my destination, I noticed a driver whose truck was stuck in the snow. Accepting that I might be late, I put down my things and put my shoulder to the tailgate.

The driver was happy for the help. Still, I couldn’t quite push hard enough to make a difference. But within minutes, a young man hopped out of his own car and we pushed together. With both of us pushing, we had just enough strength for the truck to find dry pavement.

As we celebrated our victory, I recognized the truck’s passenger: a teacher from my son’s school.

I’m grateful for all the unexpected lessons that this interaction delivered.

• Stop to help. Even when you’re short on time.

• If you have traction of your own, you can help someone who’s stuck.

• You might not have enough strength, but you can still try.

• When others see you doing good work, sometimes they’ll join you, and it will make a difference.

• Every so often, the strangers you help end up being friends you know.

Finally, I learned this: if the hill is icy, and you have a two-wheel drive truck, park somewhere else.

“They laughed at me.”
“They said it couldn’t be done.”
“They said it was pointless.”
“They said I was wasting my time.”
“They ignored me.”

“They” have a lot of opinions.

But “they” are not going to offer consolation when you feel the dull pain of having abandoned a dream without giving it a fair shot.

Don’t listen to the naysayers. Listen to the fire in your heart.

In any journey, getting started in the right direction is the first major challenge.

But sometimes, we begin with incomplete information. In those moments, we have to go with our best judgement — and find out find out whether it’s the right direction only after we start moving.

Pointing and alignment is useless if we’re unwilling to take the first step.

With choirs of children calling for peace on Earth, asking that we walk “in perfect harmony” … one might be tempted to think, “How naïve. Perfect harmony? Impossible.”

But harmony isn’t about sameness. It’s not about conformity and being of a single mind.

Harmony is about ideas that work together. Different ideas that work together. Notes that coexist … resulting in beauty.

It’s not through uniformity. On the contrary: harmony is togetherness with difference.

Peace like that might feel like a longshot, but it’s possible. In small ways, we see it every day.

I recently ordered a silk Dracaena tree for the office. A person who saw me unwrapping it said, “That’s the weirdest plant I’ve ever seen.”

Indeed, it looked weird. All the leaves were vertical, straight, and packed tightly together. This was done to protect the item during shipment. Each leaf had an internal wire that needed to be bent into a more natural shape.

With the leaves bent and arranged (a slightly tedious task) the artificial tree is now quite attractive. Not as good as the real thing, but a satisfying substitute.

* * *

Are you still packed tightly together? Still bubble wrapped and protected?

Just beware. One, you weren’t meant to stay packaged. And two, you might look a little strange the first time you come out of the box. It might take a little stretching, bending, and arranging for you to come into full form. And of course, that takes time and effort.

In Bellefonte, it’s a wintry mix.

In Beirut, gentle showers.

Santiago, not a drop of precious rain.

Kyiv … missiles.

* * *

It can be hard to see beyond our own skyfall. Our weather is, after all, our weather.

But more than ever, we’re called to understand our connections — our shared weather. Locally and globally.

Deluge or drought, the forecast is for all of us. We’re not independent ecosystems; we’re ships together at sea.

It’s a shared humanity. Wet or dry, let’s make sure we’re sharing umbrellas and water.

Singer-songwriter Jane Marczewski died on February 19, 2022 after a four-year battle with cancer. I hadn’t heard Jane sing until yesterday when people began to pay tribute. “Nightbirde” — as she was known on stage — had been a contestant on the television show America’s Got Talent. Her performance of the original song “It’s OK” was heartfelt, beautiful, and emotionally moving.

In addition to some lasting memories, Jane left the judges with this wisdom: “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.”

Powerful.

True.

Reset in peace, Nightbirde.

When a puzzle piece doesn’t fit, we don’t berate the piece. We don’t take it personally. We just move on until we find the pieces that fit together.

Likewise with people. With vendors, customers, providers, mentors, pupils … it won’t always be a good fit.

When there’s flexibility to make a change, don’t dwell on the incompatibilities. Just politely move on; these things happen.

We’re complex beings. Sometimes we align. Sometimes we don’t.

Keep seeking the pieces that fit. They’re out there, and they’re worth finding.

I post one blog every day … but I also write a lot of other drafts.

What I’ve learned is that the hard part is not in writing drafts. There’s some work involved, but it’s not the hard work.

The hard work is in finishing. In completing a thought. In clarifying it. In translating nuanced feelings into sentences. And in evaluating the thought itself: its resonance, its worth, and its appropriateness for this blog.

One challenge for me (and for all of us) is to continue making drafts. Whatever “drafts” are for the work you do — the messy, bold, timid, unfinished, uncertain, behind-the-scenes work — keep creating them. Even if no one ever sees them. In delight that no one might ever see them.

And the related challenge is to be patient with the spirit that inspires the drafts. Don’t dismiss every idea that doesn’t quickly reveal its own path to the finish line. Some drafts — some ideas — need to be coaxed and tended.

Keep coaxing. Keep tending.

There’s nothing quite like a homecoming where you are embraced and your stories are told.

But for a homecoming to happen … it means that you first must venture away from home.

The qualities we seek to develop and imbue in the work we create … are so often the same qualities we seek to develop within ourselves.

* * *

(H/T furniture-maker Peter Korn, and Sue Heatherington for pointing me to Peter’s talk at the 2015 Hay Literary Festival.)

If there’s nothing to say … fine, don’t say anything.

But be careful. “There’s nothing to say,” is also a convenient dodge when creative resistance, self-doubt, and impatience begin to swell.

Don’t let the discomfort of staring at a blank page convince you that you that there’s nothing to say.

I don’t know how to express it.
I don’t know what I’m feeling.
I don’t know if this is any good.
I don’t know if this is worth the time.
I don’t know if this has been done before.
I don’t know how this fits.
I don’t know if this will work.

Hold that tension as long as you need to. Don’t let the uncertainty deter you.

Our best creative work begins with unsure footing.

No one accidentally plays tennis. You don’t all of a sudden wake up and have the realization that you have a racket in your hand and you’re standing at center court.

But we do play other games, sometimes unintentionally: pursuits of money, fame, achievement, or popularity.

These are games we can play knowingly, but they’re also games we can begin to play without a whole lot of thought. And at some point we might even realize: “Oh my goodness. I’m playing that game?”

The thing about games, though, is that we don’t have to play them if we don’t want to.

We might even remind ourselves, “That’s a game others play, but not me.”

Or ask ourselves, “Have I accidentally begun to play a game that I don’t need to play?”

We aren’t always seeking what’s new and novel. Sometimes we seek what’s known and familiar.

It’s why we reread books. Why we’ll watch a movie we’ve already seen. Why we’ll go to the same restaurant with the same friend — even ordering the same thing and telling the same stories.

And it’s not stale. We’re always changing. Like how we don’t step into the same river twice, we can experience newness within the familiar.

Novelty will fade, but our ability to see with fresh eyes is endless.

Sometimes we drag people across a finish line because we know they need to be in a certain position to start the next race. Whether it’s out of love, mentorship, or control … dragging others is not a sustainable practice. At some point, the people we’re tempted to drag need to run on their own.

And besides, they might not be trying to run the race we had hoped.

Better to help them learn self-direction, perseverance, and resilience — rather than how to be grateful for being dragged.

So that he could hop up on the bed with more ease, I built a set of steps for our small dog. We had something he used, but it wasn’t proportioned for the height of the bed: every so often, he would face-plant into the side of the mattress.

The new steps are just the right size. The rise and run were carefully considered. The carpeting matches the main staircase in our home.

Edison, our handsome canine, does not agree. He refuses to use the new steps. Instead, he insists on leaping the full 28 inches onto the bed … with a 90% success rate.

What I now realize is that my “improvement” includes too many steps. Four steps onto the bed is just too tedious for Edison. He would rather make one or two leaps. A single, midway platform would probably be an ideal solution.

* * *

A lot of productivity advice suggests that we break things down into small tasks. Tackle big projects by breaking them into little steps.

Sometimes this is good advice. Sometimes it helps. But other times, what we need to do is to move with confidence. To not get tripped up by tiny steps, but to take a bold leap.

Thanks for the lesson, Eddie.

As I shared the details of a project at the front of my queue, a colleague from another department laughed: “Wow. You worry about different things than I do.”

It’s a true statement. But it’s true in a wider sense, too.

The things that cause us so much stress and worry — can often be of little concern to others.

There’s the oft shared idea that everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

A cousin to this statement hits a little harder: the things important to us can sometimes be of no personal interest to others.

Don’t take offense. The battles personal to us are sometimes just that: they’re personal.

Whatever battle you’re facing … keep fighting.

Sometimes we ask someone to help us not because we need the assistance, but because we recognize the need for that person to be included.

It’s not always about efficiency. There are times when it’s about mentoring, engaging, and growing community.