Constraint

–noun

1. limitation or restriction.

2.repression of natural feelings and impulses: to practice constraint.

3. unnatural restraint in manner, conversation, etc.; embarrassment.

I am currently sitting in my economics class during the 11-hour-every-other-Saturday marathon that is my EMBA education. We're talking about government budget constraints and the various factors that contribute to government spending. Boredom sets in as the professor talks about monetary policy, and suddenly I realize that "constraint" is the word that's been eluding me over the past days of exhaustion and building need to express and harmonize my mental notes into a defined chord.

Just before this class, at lunch, I sat with a table full of young Accelerator Program students: undergrads and fresh college grads taking a 3-week every day for 12 hours a day business orientation boot camp here at Vanderbilt. They are relatively fresh-faced and full of energy even after pulling an all-nighter last night in preparation for their strategy presentations to actual businesses this morning. They are hungry to learn more about the opportunities that exist for them out in the "real world," and eager to network for job and internship opportunities with those of us who are out here doing "real jobs."

At first I was bemused once again, lost in thought about how similar my own immediate concerns are to theirs...and then I realized that like me (and the one I love) they are smart, eager, energetic, creative, and unsure of the road ahead of them...but unlike me they (and the one I love) are totally inexperienced with actually making serious decisions which will impact the course of their lives.

I was reminded of a distressing conversation with Doug just this Thursday. After two weeks I discovered that I felt as though he was falling into a pattern of inaction. A pattern I fear. These young accelerator students are, after all, taking tremendously uncomfortable action to fill the space of their own inexperience, which is exciting and inspiring, and which gives those of us with experience something specific to direct our advice towards. Our conversation was constructive, but since then I've sensed that he has so many thoughts he's not sharing with me...and it's making me sad. I can't tell if it's restraint, things that he doesn't want to say to me...or something else. I wish I had more time with him.

But during the past two weeks Doug and I have enjoyed sharing more space, time, meals, exercise, sleep, and conversations than ever, and new constraints have arisen. For nine months we saw each other at most for a couple of hours a night and a few weekends, but our days were similarly filled with action and exhaustion and so our hours together were consistent. Now I leave him asleep at 6:30 or 7 to go to work, come home as soon as I can, get to sleep by midnight, and start all over again the next day. While I'm driving and at work, he's sleeping and at home, and I am exhausted while he's quickly regained energy. My time and energy have become major constraints. I can't even consistently run the trails which were at one point just a warm-up.

Above all things, I know that I need to leave this place, literally, for a climate and a life pace that fit more naturally my personal rhythms and strengths. During the last two weeks I began weekly professional mentoring sessions with resources at Vanderbilt. I am exploring the possible options for my next career move. "Just because I can doesn't mean I should," I repeat to myself, determined that this next step will be the optimal step which maximizes my progress taking consideration of my known and potential constraints.

I was very excited by Wednesday's meeting; it gave me much new information to process. But Thursday's conversation really began to concern me. I want to factor this relationship into my future, but I can't become the one who initiates action around every constraint.

Every way I look, there are limitations, restrictions, repressions. But I am confident that I will find my way. Because I have to. The only other option is to stagnate and die. Like my father. Like Webb. Like the South.

The answer in horsemanship, when a horse can't find the right answer and starts resisting, is always "move your feet." Anything that gets the horse moving and flowing again - any step, any direction, just MOVE - will get him back into progress.

I also remember a truth that I learned long ago: experience and inexperience are both constraints. It's how we respond to our unique constraints that makes the real difference in how we will proceed. If we let our constraints discourage us, if we let them persuade us on every occasion that inaction from uncertainty or resistance because of arrogance is the best course; if we fail to act like water (says the I Ching) and flow humbly over, under, around, and through our constraints, we will stagnate and die.

Forward! Onward! Move!

And through it all, thy will be done.

Direct(ion)

–noun (see root word "direct")
1. the act of directing or the state of being directed
2. management, control, or guidance
3. the work of a stage or film director
4. the course or line along which a person or thing moves, points, or lies
5. the course along which a ship, aircraft, etc, is travelling, expressed as the angle between true or magnetic north and an imaginary line through the main fore-and-aft axis of the vessel
6. the place towards which a person or thing is directed
7. a line of action; course
8. the name and address on a letter, parcel, etc
9. music the process of conducting an orchestra, choir, etc
10. music an instruction in the form of a word or symbol heading or occurring in the body of a passage, movement, or piece to indicate tempo, dynamics, mood, etc
11. ( modifier ) maths a. (of an angle) being any one of the three angles that a line in space makes with the three positive directions of the coordinate axes. Usually given as α, β, and γ with respect to the x-, y-, and z- axes b. (of a cosine) being the cosine of any of the direction angles

The school year that tested the deepest fibers of my strength and sanity is over. The father of one of the Chinese seniors who graduated told his son, "If you can't make your life longer, make it wider."

It's apt, but after this year my questions are, 1) how wide is too freakin' wide and 2) is it possible for a life to be three-or-more-dimensional? Cause I'm trying reeeally hard, and I'm already a third of the way thru my expected lifespan (my female relatives seem to live thru most of their 90's).

Last Friday I watched the class of 2011 complete their first step in the journey, like so many other young men and women all over the country are doing this month. This year I was strangely unmoved, and I wondered why until I remembered that I'm closer to their place in life than I was two, even ten, and certainly fifteen years ago. We are all finding our direction. I can't help but wonder (again) why it's taken me so long to get here.

My niece Lauren graduated last weekend. She was born when I was a junior in high school. During my visit to Tracie's, we were talking about Lauren's college prospects. She got focused and pulled her GPA up at the end of high school, along with stepping up into leadership roles in her church and becoming passionate about agriculture and international development. She looked at Cornell for the first time when I suggested it (I would never have remembered Cornell's Ag program without Doug's influence), and she fell in love. They have exactly the focus that she senses is right for her. In some ways I sense direction is finding her, at the right time.

The cicadas are in full, deafening pulse after 13 years, more years than most of these high schoolers can remember. I am technically old enough to remember three "broods," though I was in Texas when the 1985 "brood" emerged. Doug teases me about having survived the entire decade of the 80's; sadly (?) I didn't simply survive, I remember the entire decade, too. One of my first vivid, entire memories is crying desperately when my Daddy left one night. It had to be 1979 or so.

I started talking when I was 8 months old, according to my sisters and mom. Before I could crawl I was not just babbling, but making astute observations like "Richard is aggravating me," "I want some more beans please" and insisting that the primate in a specific picture was an "orangutan" and not just a monkey. All before the age of 1. They say it was bizarre to hear the talking baby. My sisters were nine and eleven years older than me; they were my extra parents, my teachers, and my best friends. It was a good thing, too, for all of us: for a while I was apparently the inspiration that gave a collapsing supernova family some sense of direction.

My sister Tracie remembered some of this last week during my visit. She also remembers that I was rarely around other children until pre-school age of four or so. By that time I was reading and writing, which probably alienated me further from my potential friends. So at the earliest possible age, I got used to being alone, to finding my own sense of direction. And in many ways, because I rejected (or didn't sense) the time-lines that others my age did, time slowed down for me. In my high school yearbook I said "It seemed like I'd never grow up, and who knows? Maybe I never will!"

Little did I know the promise in those words.

And now I find myself finding that my direction seems to be congruent with someone else who's finding his. It feels wonderful.

It is beginning to come together. To coalesce. All of it.

Maybe we'll never grow up, together.

The Journey

- Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting
Their bad advice -
Though the whole house
Began to tremble
And you felt the old tug
At your ankles.
"Mend my Life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
Though the wind pried
With its stiff fingers
At the very foundations,
Though their melancholy
Was terrible.
It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen
Branches and stones.
But little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice
Which you slowly
Recognized as your own,
That kept you company
As you strode deeper and deeper
Into the world,
Determined to do
The only thing you could do -
Determined to save
The only life you could save.

Education

ed•u•ca•tion

–noun

1. the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.

2. the act or process of imparting or acquiring particular knowledge or skills, as for a profession.

3. a degree, level, or kind of schooling: a university education.

4. the result produced by instruction, training, or study: to show one's education.

5. the science or art of teaching; pedagogics.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/degrees-of-influence/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

Our head of school sent this link yesterday. I typed out my knee-jerk reaction in about 5 minutes, and in re-reading it, thought I'd post it for a keepsake.

Cohan’s opinion is simply inflammatory and leads the ignorant “skimmer” of these kinds of blogs (probably the majority of readers) to reach entirely the wrong conclusion – that college isn’t worth it. The same message can be gotten at a low-end public school full of future factory workers, so why blog about it in the NYT?

The argument that pursuing an education isn’t “worth it” is always frustrating to me. Cohan’s not just talking about elite colleges, he’s talking about all of higher education (2nd to last paragraph).

William D. Cohan graduated from Duke University, and his own skill at justifying an opinion like this, not to mention his very employment by Fortune, the NYT, and Wall Street, is doubtless the product of a decent education.

So many “opinions” today cite statistical outliers like Gates, Zuckerburg, Ellison, Jobs, etc (all of whom dropped out of elite colleges, and therefore had to be smart and educated enough to get in, in the first place) as why college isn’t worth it, not to mention “elite” colleges. “See? You can succeed without it” they say. Statistically, not so likely for the average American.

If you look at the salaries earned by graduates of “elite” colleges, college degrees at “elite” colleges pay themselves back – positive ROI. Not so easy at the for-profit schools and those which don’t make the cut as “elite” schools.

Cohan also refers to how Wall Street was changed by the influx of “calculating MBA’s” that started in the 70s, but is there perhaps also a correlation of Wall Street’s ethics problems with the number of smart, ethical people who pursued service-oriented social work (at the lowest possible pay-scales) rather than college starting in the 1970’s? Or even with those who went to college, but studied and then taught the humanities and sciences (again, at the lowest pay-scales), never even learning the fundamentals of business because of a “values conflict” with the people they knew who wanted to study business?

“Could it be possible that higher education these days is not only a poor investment but also is leading to major fissures in the social compact between those who run Wall Street and the rest of us?”

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. What would happen if smart, ethical, socially-motivated people also invest pieces of their educations into contributing to economic stability? Might we in the past have experienced balanced, ethically monitored growth instead of bubble after bubble? Might we in the future see the “right” decisions being made instead of just the immediately “profitable” ones?

The “46 years between 1930 and 1976” Cohan refers to as some kind of “golden age” (“Goldmann’s age?”), there was so much social corruption that the entire field of sociology (which wasn’t even invented until the 1870’s at Yale University) exploded with studies of social stratification, socio-economic oppression, etc. And yet, even though these scholars were uncovering truths, they had no power to affect decisions because they didn’t have the business education to put their findings into the proper context for the people with power or for the ignorant masses who mindlessly drove the economic bubbles.

All of this is related to my personal justification for being at Vanderbilt right now, so I could be a bit biased.