So much of life is the story of how we navigate unexpected change.

“Take I-95 North. Look for signs for the Lincoln Tunnel.”

There weren’t many more directions on the piece of paper. I was sixteen years old, driving from Baltimore to New York City to visit one of my siblings.

I had to watch the fuel gauge; there weren’t lights or alerts to warn me when the tank was low.

I had to keep track of my speed; I didn’t have cruise control on that vehicle.

I had to watch the road signs and estimate my travel time; no GPS navigation back then.

I had to change the dial every so often to catch a local radio station signal; no satellite radio or podcasts.

Technology has connected us and given us more data than we can ever internalize. But it hasn’t always connected us to experience. In some ways, it allows us to disconnect. To stop watching. To stop paying attention.

But we can still curate moments where we rely on our senses. We can choose to look at signs instead of screens. We can choose to knock on a neighbor’s door. Or to hand-write a letter to a friend. Or to remember with our eyes instead of our cameras.

If only to remind us what it’s like — or to reconnect to our senses — we can every-so-often rekindle our interest in doing things in a distinctly human way.

A few years ago, I sang the Star-Spangled Banner at an event. It was my first time singing the national anthem, and I was nervous.

Leading up to the event — aside from worrying about the vocal performance itself — I had some things on my mind. What I would wear. How I would look. What I would do with my hands. What my eyes would do.

I was overthinking it.

When the moment came, I stood behind home plate, and with microphone in hand, I began to sing. To my relief (and instant clarity) everyone turned away from me to look at the flag.

Of course.

They were looking the same place I was looking. And for this kind of song, and this kind of venue, it’s exactly what I should have anticipated.

Sure, they were listening, but no one was focused on me. I wasn’t focused on me either.

For all of us, it was something bigger.

Rightly so.

Tracking and logging can seem tedious, but in measured doses, it can teach us a lot about ourselves.

You could choose a day, or a week, or a month … and just keep track.

Maybe you follow every dollar spent.

Or every calorie.

Or every minute.

Or every mile.

And yes, the data will be flawed.

And yes, it’s unhealthy to go overboard with this task.

But might it also be unhealthy to not know?

To pretend that we’re doing one thing when we’re really doing another?

Seeing what we’re actually doing might prompt a pat on the back.

Or it might be the impetus for change.

Either way, we’re better than saying, “I just don’t know where it all went.”

Thinking aloud is not the same as thinking allowed.

Often, we’re practicing one without fully embracing the other.

Helping can sometimes involve sacrifice and labor.

But most often, helping requires more intention than effort.

Because our daily life isn’t a stage for heroics; it’s a series of opportunities to be small expressions of love.

Being truthful doesn’t mean sharing every detail. And it takes skill to know what to share and when.

Consider a surgical drape. In procedures where the patient is awake, a drape is often used so that the surgical site is not visible to the patient.

The drape is a generous abstraction. (We don’t always want to know all the details.)

And outside the operating room, we can think of drapes as a metaphor. A useful way to soften harsh or disturbing realities. Drapes don’t encourage us to live in denial; at times they help us — on both sides — to focus on what’s helpful.

We know this from athletics. We know this from music. We know this from cooking.

Warmups are necessary.

We can begin from a cold start, but it all works much better after we’re warm.

Which is to say — when our creative projects haven’t yet hit their stride, it could be that we’re still warming up. And while some warmups are measured in minutes, others are measured in months and years.

The fable is told a few different ways, but the message is the same.

In a breakfast of bacon and eggs, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.

The flaw in the parable is that the collaboration always fails. There’s no breakfast because self-sacrifice is not on the table.

We often need collaboration. And we need commitment, too, but not as a casualty.

In healthy collaboration, those who carry the most risk have a say in the decisions that are made.

As for the chicken and the pig, they work together only when they can agree on a new recipe.

One of the doors in my office tends to slam. It’s done this for a long time. Years? Sometimes people catch it to soften the blow. Mostly, it just shuts loudly.

During an in-between moment this week, I decided to see what could be done.

I took the cover off of the door closer, noted the manufacturer’s name, found some documentation on how to adjust the mechanism, and now, the door shuts much more quietly.

Some lessons were learned:

• 20-minutes of attention can fix a two-second annoyance that occurs a hundred times a day.

• Some door closers can sweep quickly and then latch slowly. With adjustments for each. Those are nice features.

• Detailed manufacturer’s information can exist — even for decades-old products.

• Between big projects, sometimes it’s fun to find a small thing to fix.

• Finally: some people tend to notice changes and improvements, and others tend to be generally oblivious.

My son took a test at school — the kind that involves dozens of students sitting at desks in a large auditorium.

As he explained it, the test was briefly interrupted not by a commotion, but by its absence. At one point, the ventilation fans — whose industrial hum had been so constant as to be invisible — the fans suddenly stopped. And there was an unexpected silence. A silence that was disruptive because it suddenly revealed that what previously felt like quiet was not quiet at all.

Absence, as much as presence, prompts us to take inventory.

We cannot make happen what must be invited to happen.

In those spaces, we don’t need the tools of an engineer, but the heart of a sower.

It’s not so much a shame that we have to live with the natural consequences of our actions.

The shame is that in some areas of life, we are stubbornly slow learners.

It’s difficult to read a menu by candlelight.

Dinner by LED flood light solves that problem, but at a cost.

More isn’t always better.

Better is better.

And there are always concessions to be made.

You won’t always get clear directions, but if you can use a broom, you can always find something useful to do.

The skill is not in waiting patiently for your assignment — it’s in seeing the small ways you can help without needing instructions.

If you only have a little kindness to offer each day, then offer it in the morning. That small gesture has the power to lift the whole day for someone else.

Or offer it in the evening, where it can be the balm that soothes a weary heart.

Or perhaps midday, where it can make blossom an otherwise average slog.

Or maybe all three, because even a small bit of kindness is enough to spread across the hours.

When we’re frustrated, it can be an indicator that we’ve mistaken our position in the classroom. We think — in that moment — that our role is in administration, when we’re actually being asked to learn. That the instruction is not ours to give as the teacher, but ours to take as the student.

* * *

H/T Ajike

Just be careful.

There are tools that can streamline all your correspondence. Software can augment your shortfalls as a manager and clear-minded thinker.

Like a mental prosthetic, technology can be an enabler — helping us to achieve levels of efficiency and proficiency that would otherwise be impossible to do on our own.

But the distance between, “AI, help me,” and “AI, just do all of it for me,” is small. And the latter is not always appropriate.

In a real sense, my generative AI message to you could prompt a generative AI reply. And then it becomes the AI models talking to each other. And we become observers of our own communications rather than intentional participants.

Just be careful.

Because in many areas of life, unassisted humanness is sufficient. Even preferred.

Animals coordinate in remarkable ways. Consider a school of tetras, or mobbing birds, or groups of meerkats.

It’s a wordless expression of, “This is what we’re doing!”

Everyone falls in line. The group acts together. Movement, synchronized.

We can fall into this, too. And it’s not just at the fringes where mob-mentality and groupthink occur.

It’s in our day-to-day. In subtle ways. Like a scent that lingers with us. Or a social marinade that seeps in over time.

And depending on who surrounds us, we can be seasoned into courage and resilience, friendliness and generosity … or tenderized into cynicism, judgement, fear, and complaint.

So it’s worth carefully considering: Who’s in the room? Who walks beside me? Who shares the air I breathe?

Because our independence only extends so far; our lanes are inevitably influenced by fellow travelers and the surrounding currents.

Civil wars. International conflict. Political crises. Widespread unrest.

And yet … throughout modern human history, great artists, philosophers, and humorists have weathered these storms. Even produced remarkable work.

We live in difficult times.

Let creativity flourish, even as peace may feel like a stretch.