Don’t wait to lose something to appreciate it
Month: August 2021
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Fight For It
“If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could have won.” -Mumford & Sons
Do you really want it? If so, you should fight for it. Sometimes in my life there have been things that I really wanted but didn’t fight for at the time. Invariably, looking back, I always regret not fighting for what I really wanted. The perspective I was missing at the time is that putting up a good fight for days or weeks or even months is a flash in a pan over the course of your life. You’ll always look back wondering “what if I had fought for it?”
Mom has a wonderful story of how she got into business school by fighting for it.
On a related but different note, you also need to fight for what you believe. If you know something isn’t right, don’t let it go unnoticed. Bring it to light, make everyone aware, and fight for it if it’s that important. With that said, you could also be wrong so you should be firm but always open to changing your mind. History is filled with stories of could-have-been would-have-been great people who mostly got it right but also got it wrong on a few really important points. Instead of adapting and listening, they ignored the reality coming at them and paid the price. The best place to be is to have, as the expression goes, “strong opinions, weakly held.”
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It’s Never Black or White
One quirk of human nature is when we something happens to us or in the world we are so fast to come up with a explanation. This explanation is usually black or white, and usually dramatically oversimplifies the situation. Why did that ship sink? The captain crashed the boat. A more current example: Why did chaos erupt when we left Afghanistan? Because the President abruptly pulled our military presence out.
One interesting thing here is, when something goes wrong, the simplified solution we usually come up with is to blame the person rather than the situation (i.e., fundamental attribution error).
I’ve noticed this to be a universal quirk of human nature. Everyone does it, no matter the background.
But complicated situations or events almost NEVER have simple explanations. The reality is usually incredibly messy and convoluted, with a tremendous number of confounding factors. It’s a mistake to demonize a person or one factor without fully understanding a situation. Defer judgement and keep an open mind. You might be surprised with the reality of the situation, and if you jump to conclusions it will be impossible to understand the root cause.