I haven’t written a post for a couple of weeks because all I could think about was the election which I wanted to avoid. I both found the campaign depressing and knew that I had nothing useful to contribute.
Today, on the day I turned 76.901391863 (but who’s counting?) and with the last day of voting coming up tomorrow, I feel liberated. I can write about something I can do something about.
In this case, myself.
Dr. Heal Thyself
I pride myself on a few things. I have firm beliefs. But I’m also tolerant of others. And I like to learn from the people I disagree with and, as I’m so fond of putting it,bringing strange political bedfellows together.
Sometimes, though, those things I am proud of get tested in useful and fun ways.
That’s been happening to me a lot recently and reminding me that 76.901391863 year olds can still learn.
Neuroplasticity and all that.
With a dose of humble pie.
That starts (and will end) with my weekly therapeutic hour last week. For reasons I don’t fully recall and aren’t all that relevant her (until you get to the end of this post), we were talking about who should be called doctor. Dr. Whohasnoname is a psychiatrist, so use of the title for her is a no-brainer. I’m a mere PhD, and there is some controversy about when and how I could and should be Dr. Hauss.
I’ll return to that question at the end, but for now, I do clearly remember thinking about the phrase “doctor, heal thyself” at the time. I wasn’t thinking about Dr. Whohasnoname and whether or not she needs to heal herself for the purposes of this post. That’s not my business anyway.
I was thinking about myself. How can Dr. Hauss heal himself?
And to the occasions in recent months when I might not have actually healed myself but used unexpected opportunity to grow and get better at what I do while becoming more consistent with my own beliefs.
Some are cute and might not seem all that important. All of them, however, took me back to my core beliefs and showed me ways that I can be more consistent in living up to them.
Five Examples
Mercatus. I wrote about my weekend at the Mercatus Center’s pluralism summit a few weeks ago, so I won’t repeat myself here. Let me add, though, that I keep learning the lessons I learned at the summit. Don’t make too many prior assumptions about people you don’t know, especially when those assumptions carry the risk of turning into stereotypes and demeaning ones at that.
For me, it’s not just the folks I met at Mercatus. Roughly half of the people in this country will be casting a vote different from mine tomorrow. We disagree deeply about lots of things.
But, I still have to ask myself how I treat them or, heaven forbid, the candidate they vote for should I happen to meet them (not the use of the gender neutral third person singular here).
If I’m true to my beliefs, I have to treat them with warmth, respect, and curiosity. Probably in that order.
Unify America. None of the other stretched me ideologically, but they did open the clichéd door to new opportunities.
That starts with Unify America whom I had never heard of until I went to the pluralism summit and met Abby Ferguson. She actually initiated the contact because it seemed to her that I didn’t know anyone else at the workshop either.
I’m glad she did.
Unify America does not just one, but two really cool things. They run really creative programs on college campuses in which students do the political equivalent of speed dating on controversial issues. And, they have developed tools that help communities build agreement on controversial issues.
What’s even more amazing is their founder anchored Unify America in his own experience as a corporate software and computer game designer—themselves an old combination. I clearly have a lot to learn from them, including how to make our work fun and boil our concepts down so that normal human beings (including online gamers) can understand them.
Denise Blanc and Riverlogic. On the same day that I had follow up calls with Abby and one of her colleagues, I got email from one of my favorite former editors who wanted me to meet Denise Blanc and her company, River Logic; So, I quickly skimmed the book and set a Zoom call with her.
Denise does amazing work blending mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution in ways that also explicitly incorporate her decades of experience as a practicing Buddhist. She had met my friend Linda Ganster because they both have worked with Six Seconds which trains people on emotional intelligence skills more generally.
Denise herself brings an intrigue mix of skills and experience to the clichéd table. Trained as a community mediator, she spent the bulk of her career working in public health, often with large service providers. As a result, she is comfortable introducing fairly unconventional ideas in corporate settings.
But my own lesson here is that the ideas that se raises really aren’t that unconventional any more. Indeed, if, as Patricia Shafer and I are arguing in our book, peacebuilding literally starts at home and requires us to go to scale “inward,” we need to pay more attention to people like Denise.
Once I finish her book (see the final section here to see why I’m delayed), I will get back to her and explore some concrete plans for working together.
The Oberlin orchardist. I have also trained myself to take advantage of chance encounters, but I had one that surprised me. As usual, my wife and I went to the Falls Church Farmer’s Market on Saturday. My job is mostly to carry around the bags once they fill up.
This time, Gretchen and her daughter were spending a lot of time on the phone swapping pictures of apples, trying to decide which ones we should get for Evonne and her family. It was time consuming because the particular orchard grows 77 varieties of apples, most of which seemed to be on display.
So, I stood around at the edge of the stall for what seemed like hours—though it was probably only five minutes. Eventually, the owner decided to ask what was up. She and I had nodded at each other over the years, but never talked.
She said that she assumed I’d rather be somewhere else doing something else. I replied that I was actually taking a break from writing but was, in fact, ready to go home and return to it. She asked me what it was about. I said peacebuilding starts at home which led to a discussion of the college she and the people who ran the stand across the way went to. Since I knew that stand’s owners, I said “Aha, you went to Oberlin.” After a few minutes of probing, we realized that we didn’t know any Obies in common other than the other organic gardeners.
So, we started talking about what it’s like to run an organic orchard covering such topics as finding the markets like ours that reflect her values, her loyalty to her employees, and the ways she deals with nonorganic orchardists.
By the time, Gretchen finished getting her apples, I told my new friend that she was a peacebuilder and went on our way to the mushroom stand.
Next week, I’ll find out her name.
Emily Post. I should end with Dr. Whohasnoname and the way she put our doctor-heal-thyself conversation into context. She has suggested a number of books to me that over the years that reflect her own eclectic reading habits, that include reading Robert Sapolsky for fun. Last week, she outdid herself.
I had said that one of the reasons I don’t like to be called doctor is that I recalled that Emily Post says that the title should only be used for medical doctors. As I said that, I realized that even though I have used that line for fifty years, I can’t imagine that I ever actually read the book. In fact, I have no idea how I came up with that line (it was fifty years ago after all).
Then, Dr. Whohasnoname hit me with a real zinger. She asked me if I had read the centennial edition of Etiquette that was published two years ago and said that she thought I might enjoy it. I had it delivered to my Kindle while I walked home and have been savoring it ever since
It turns out that two of her great grandchildren decided to update the book so that it made sense in the world they live in. Emily Post herself was a staunch member of the upper middle class elite and wrote accordingly. This generation of Posts are hip, cool GenXers (or maybe Millennials) who write about etiquette in the age of email and social media and do so with all of us in mind as their audience.
I’m still reading the book, but by the time I had finished the chapter, I could se why Dr. Whohasnoname thought I should read it. The new edition is all about staying true to a core set of personal beliefs and principles that great grandma held and then applied them to the very different world we live in today.
In other word, the specific things you do to show good manner have changed. But their great grand mother’s principles still apply.
They are the same as the ones I would want to use if I meet the candidate I didn’t vote for—treat them with warmth, dignity, and curiosity. Probably in the same order.
Indeed, before they get to invitations, table manners, titles (it is OK for me to want to be called doctor by the way), and the like, the first chapter reads like a peacebuilding manual masquerading as a book on etiquette.
On p. 5 alone, they update Emily’s notion of Best Society to include us all. More importantly, they claim that members of best society (in other words all of us) today need to be “kind, compassionate, and aware” so that they can “create safe spaces,” be “tenderhearted and fearless all at once” so that their “smiles and laugher can ripple outward, bringing a hopeful and positive attitude.”
See what I mean?
Then, they go on to the things that Emily talked about for the next 400 pages. It’s still not OK to chew with your mouth open, and dress codes are a lot more complicated. So are titles. Or, to go back to where I started, so do warmth, dignity, and curiosity.
I realized that Daniel Post Senning and Lizzie Post and have one thing in common with my apple farmer. They, too, are peacebuilders but don’t know it—yet.
After I finish the book, I’ll reach out to them and see if they are interested in what we are doing with Peacebuilding Starts at Home. They and other family members run the Emily Post Institute which, among other things, trains people in the updated version of an etiquette designed for a very different time and place.
Although Patricia doesn’t know it yet, I’ll want to include them in our book.
And wouldn’t it be cool if I could talk them into being part of Peacebuilding Starts at Home?
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Alliance for Peacebuilding or its members.
