Kikkan Randall Take Away—Find Joy Everyday

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Condensed from Jim Caple of espnW:

Tuesday was supposed to be more than just a great day for Kikkan Randall, it was also to be a great day for American cross-country skiing, its best day in nearly four decades.

America has won only one Olympic medal in the sport, and that was 38 very long years ago when Bill Koch took the silver medal at the 1976 Innsbruck Games. That’s nearly four decades of endless frustration, disappointment and losses by very large margins. The United States has been such an underdog in the sport that four-time Olympian Kris Freeman compares America beating cross-county powerhouse Norway to a Little League team beating the Yankees.

But Tuesday was going to be oh, so deliciously different.

Randall, the 31-year-old Alaskan skier with pink-streaked hair, won five World Cup races last year and won back-to-back World Cup races last month. She is a two-time world sprint champion. She said the Sochi course was favorable to her style. Everyone . . . picked her to win gold in Tuesday’s sprint free race.

Instead, Randall didn’t even reach the semifinals.

She started off well in the fifth quarterfinal heat, taking the lead by skiing powerfully up the 1.3-kilometer course’s hill. She held the lead as the athletes entered the course stadium and raced toward the finish line.

Then, Germany’s Denise Herrmann passed her. (Because the top two skiers advance from the quarterfinals, Randall still was in good shape, though.)

But then Norway’s Marit Bjoergen passed her.

Because the two skiers with the next two fastest times overall also advance, Randall’s chances still were looking decent.

But then Italy’s Gaia Vuerich passed her just before the finish line.

Randall still had a chance to advance as the second qualifier (aka, a “lucky loser”) if her time had been fast enough, but it wasn’t. After waiting many anxious seconds, she learned she had been too slow.

“That final gear wasn’t quite there and then I fell apart there right before the finish and didn’t get a lunge in,” she said. Official results indicated she was actually five-hundredths behind Vuerich. “I’m sure I’ll be living those moments hundreds of time in my head.”

After a television interview. . . Randall walked down the steps to the mixed zone to speak with reporters. Tears flowing down her cheeks, she leaned against a barrier and buried her head in her arms.

This was only natural, given that she carried the tremendous weight of her country’s hopes for cross-country. Randall didn’t just want a medal for herself, she wanted a medal to boost the sport throughout America. She wants more Americans out on the trail, learning how wonderful and fun her sport is while improving their health and fitness.

“It’s rough, but that’s sport, right?” Randall said of her disappointing day. “You prepare your whole life for something like this and it’s over in 2½ minutes.”

It’s especially rough because of the cross-country system that alternates sprint styles every Olympics. One Olympics, the sprint will be raced classic style; the next it will be free style. The free sprint, Randall’s specialty, will not be held again until the 2022 Olympics, when she is 39.

I admire Randall for going all in on medaling, but wonder if she’ll think it was worth it. “The joy,” some wise person once said, “is in the journey.” I’m sure Randall isn’t feeling too joyful right now, but in time I hope she feels the effort was worthwhile. That she has positive memories from some training sessions; and other victories; and her world travels; and most especially, her friendships with teammates, fellow competitors, trainers and coaches. Despite the bitter disappointment of not achieving her ultimate goal, I hope she feels her life is richer as a result of the attempt.

Sometimes I’m asked if I’m going to do another long distance triathlon. The key question for me is whether I could enjoy the extensive training required. If I do re-up, I will think of the race as just one small part of the larger equation.

Although I get the allure of sporadic, specific instances of accentuated risk/reward like Olympic competition, I prefer stitching together meaningful daily routines that tip the balance towards deeper relationships, better physical health, and greater spiritual enlightenment. Yesterday was a great day not just because it was my birthday, but because of small, simple joys—a longish morning swim workout; a green tea latte; unexpected emails from distant friends; unexpected sunshine; a walk with the wife and labradude; phone conversations with my two fav college students; and dinner out at Gardner’s.

Gardner’s is a bit fancy pants, but Kikkan Randall taught me something today. Don’t live too far in the future. Find joy everyday.

 

The Art of Persuasion

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We’re all trying to persuade one another of things. All the time.

Don’t eat meat. Undo Obamacare. Exercise more. Believe that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Remove Assad. Drink Coke. Teacher unions are obstructionist. Preserve public lands. Save. Invest. Block the Keystone XL pipeline. Lower taxes. Eliminate the Education Department. Legalize marijuana. Live more simply. Quit using poverty as an excuse and close the achievement gap. The Seahawks are the best team in football.

We’re so busy trying to persuade one another to adopt our point of view that we rarely take time to evaluate the relative effectiveness of different strategies to persuade others to think, believe, vote, and live like us.

Hundreds of ways to persuade fall along a continuum. Some write editorials or make documentary films. Others throw rocks through store windows. The strategies that are most near and dear to me rest upon education, which emphasizes the power of ideas. Educators like me use open-ended questions and words, both written and spoken, to inform people about different perspectives. Then, through civil discourse, we try to get students to be more thoughtful about other persons, places, and controversial issues.

Radical activists, rebel fighters, and state sponsored militaries attempt to persuade through physical force. Their tools include kidnappings, suicide bombs, guns, tanks, aircraft, nuclear bombs, and drones.

To be more persuasive the educator works hard to refine her questions, words, and listening skills. To be more persuasive rebel fighters and military soldiers often turn to “overwhelming force”.

Sometimes teachers become ideologues intent on indoctrinating students. And diplomats carefully choose words and policies to prevent wide-scale violence. And many people shout at one another, too impatient to ask questions or listen.

Your most effective form of persuasion is the life you live day-to-day in your home, in your community, in your workplace. A decade or so ago, Betrothed began walking and swimming each week and sometimes cycling around town instead of driving. One sunlit day in the kitchen, she credited me with inspiring her through my example. I hadn’t said a word to her about fitness, hadn’t even thought of it, and was clueless to what was transpiring, until she pointed it out.

Maybe you’re in the impatient majority and therefore believe persuading by personal example is for chumps. Why model values for years and decades when I can just raise my voice and argue my positions more vociferously?

News flash. People’s politics and behaviors are the result of their life experiences. Everyone’s politics almost always make sense in the context of their story; consequently, it’s next to impossible to talk others into thinking, believing, voting, and living like you.

Yet all is not lost.

People tune out your words, your blog (well, except this one), and the bumper stickers on your car, but they pay attention to how you interact with your family and friends, how generous you are with your money, how you deal with defeat, whether you laugh at yourself, and whether you show kindness to strangers.

Think of your personal example as the rock thrown in the middle of Lake Persuasion. The ripple effects are far greater than your more explicit attempts at changing people’s minds.  concentric_circles

Paragraph to Ponder

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From David Denby in the New Yorker

I’m . . . angry about the talk of artists inevitably dying of drug overdoses. Some of this talk may be cant. Fifty years ago the same was said about jazz musicians—they lived out at the edge, baring their souls as well as their craft every time they played, and it took the life out of them, so they had to turn to heroin. Really? But Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie had very long runs, and heroic actors like Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, both in their seventies, are still alive and working very hard. Beethoven did not become an alcoholic, and neither did Picasso nor Matisse. On the other hand, anonymous men die in the street every week from heroin. There’s no necessary connection between artistic talent and drugs and alcohol. We don’t really know what Philip Seymour Hoffman’s demons were, but he was a man acquainted with despair, and now some of us are feeling a little of that, too.

Hoffman’s genius illustrated.

And why Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death is so scary. “Regardless of how much time clean you have, relapsing is always as easy as moving your hand to your mouth.”

Youth Fitness Should Trump Athletic Competition

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“Combined participation in the four most-popular U.S. team sports—basketball, soccer, baseball and football—fell among boys and girls aged 6 through 17 by roughly 4% from 2008 to 2012.” [Wall Street Journal]

Docs and others are worried because “It is much more likely that someone who is active in their childhood is going to remain active into their adulthood.”

Forgotten in this discussion is the fact that there are lots of ways to be active. When it comes to youth, we focus far too narrowly on athletic competition at the expense of fitness.

One common theory for the decline is that social networking, videogames and other technology are drawing children away from sports. And of course football faces a more specific challenge, “growing concern that concussions and other contact injuries can cause lasting physical damage.” The Journal speculates on other causes including increasing costs of participation to excessive pressure on kids in youth sports to cuts in school physical-education programs.

I was intrigued by one student’s story in the article:

Fifteen-year-old Jessica Cronin is the daughter of a former three-sport high-school athlete. But Jessica doesn’t participate in high-school sports, choosing to spend her time outside of class volunteering in her community and going to her temple youth group each Wednesday. “I considered doing track, but it takes up so much time,” said Ms. Cronin, a sophomore at Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar, N.Y.

Since most fifteen year-olds can run 6-7 miles in an hour, I suspect Jessica prefers her community service and youth group activities because they’re based on cooperation more than competition. Most young athletes don’t care about winning as much as their coaches. They’re not anti-competition per se, they just can’t relate to, and therefore resent, many of their coaches “win at all costs” approach.

That’s why a lot of young people gravitate to alternative sports like ultimate frisbee and alternative activities like skateboarding.

Survey youth basketball, soccer, baseball and football coaches about what’s most important to them and their athletes long-term health probably won’t make the list. Too many youth coaches are fixated on scoreboards and win-loss records. School principals, athletic directors, and parents aren’t doing enough to train, hire, and reward coaches who think about team sports as a context for healthier living.

Switching from a competitive team sport orientation to a fitness one should start with wider, better lit roads with generous sidewalks so that most young people can walk, bike, blade, skateboard, or run to and from school. Next physical education classes should emphasize life long activities including walking, running, yoga, swimming, and related activities. Students should be encouraged to compete against their younger selves to walk, run, cycle, and swim farther faster.

When fitness trumps athletic competition physical education classes and team sport practices will be more fun than video games. There should be little to no standing around. I have fond memories of some high school water polo practices where our conditioning consisted of a crazy obstacle course that culminated with a celebratory jump off the three meter board. We improved on the coach’s design by firing balls at one another mid-air. Granted a nose was broken and that was in the Pleistocene Era before the first lawyer emerged from the primordial ooze. Practices would be shorter because the emphasis would be on quality of activity more than quantity.

Who is with me?

 

Finding Purpose Outside of Work

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From Derek Thompson’s short article on the ten fastest-growing jobs and the odds that robots and software eat them:

1) Personal care aides: 74%
2) Registered nurses: 0.9%
3) Retail salespersons: 92%
4) Combined food prep & serving workers: 92%
5) Home health aides: 39%
6) Physician assistant: 9%
7) Secretaries and admin assistants: 96%
8) Customer service representatives: 55%
9) Janitors and cleaners: 66%
10) Construction workers: 71%

So if you want dependable employment, become a registered nurse or physician’s assistant. Demographics will be on your side too with the “graying of America”, but most significantly to me, helping others live as healthily as possible is especially purposeful work.

Once one’s basic needs are met, creating lasting and meaningful purpose in life is people’s single greatest challenge. Those who fail to create purpose don’t contribute much to other people’s lives, they just piece together daily routines that enable them to mindlessly pass time. Ask them how they’re doing and the honest reply would be “existing”.

I’d love to be proven wrong, but Thompson’s list makes me think that jobs of the future may be less meaningful and more monotonous, creating a fork in the road between people’s paychecks and purpose. People will find purpose within their families, their outside-of-work interests, and their civic associations. They’ll come home from work and care for others in and around their own homes; they’ll be photographers, bloggers, and others types of artists; they’ll coach youth sports and volunteer at non-profits to improve their communities; they’ll grow and cook healthy food; and they’ll travel to do similar things further away.

 

I Just Attended the World’s Largest Frat Party

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Community makes life especially sweet. Many will experience it next weekend when the Seahawks win their first Super Bowl. Others by attending religious services or participating in festivals, parades, parties, or running races. The problem with the Super Bowl is now we know the violent hits come with severe health consequences. Another problem is a lot of young people feel they need alcohol and/or drugs to have a good time with others. Exhibit A, the world’s largest frat party that I attended Saturday.

With the NSA hot on my trails, I can’t say where it was exactly, but as alluded to previously, I have recently switched coasts. Suffice to say it’s an annual party, this was the 99th version. It starts with a huge pirate invasion and then continues for hours with beer drinking; floats; beer drinking; thumping music; beer drinking; non-stop bead throwing, catching, and collecting; and beer drinking. There may have been 100k people and 1m beaded necklaces.

Yes, I probably was the oldest person there. And since my green tea latte had worn off an hour beforehand, I was definitely the most sober. It was fun because it was a spectacle and so atypical of me. And it was a window into a different region of the country and into youth culture. About 80% of the people there were in their 20’s. It’s one thing to read a lot about college students abusing alcohol and altogether different to see it up close and personal.

Everyone seemingly had the same philosophy of life—hedonism—if it feels good, do it. I tried to get some discussions going about Stoicism, but was unsuccessful. “Hey, Seneca and Epictetus didn’t need Bud Light to have a good time.” I just walked around self conscious about being old, sober, and alone. Eventually I sat down and leaned back against a palm tree to people watch. Shortly afterwards, a woman sat down right next to me. She was a local who was with four friends whom she pointed out and described to me, including her sister who was a middle school teacher from Miami.

To borrow from an especially outgoing student of mine this fall, my new friend was a “raging extrovert”. Thirty-four, with a tiny nose-ring, she was a very successful hairstylist who enjoyed traveling the world. Here was the most depressing part of our conversation. First, you have to understand that like 90% of the people there, she “started drinking at 7:30a.m.” She wasn’t nearly as drunk as her younger counterparts, but definitely buzzed. (My “friends” will challenge this description. They’ll say the only way she would have voluntarily sat down next to me is if she was over-the-top inebriated. I stand by my description.)

“I just barely know you, but what the fuck. Last year I took two months off and made six figures. I pay for my sister to travel with me. $1,500 fuckin’ bucks for airfare to Dublin. But I don’t mind because I love her.” The hairstylist makes double the school teacher. Fuck. Oh sorry, it’s her fault for setting the bad example.

It would’ve been easy to pre-judge her based on her f-bombs and cigarette smoking, but I liked her. She praised her friend who was drug and alcohol free. And she was critical of the excesses of the event and “fuckin’ embarrassed to admit she was a letter writer”. The city had actually taken some of her (and others I’m sure) suggestions for improving the event to heart and added porta-pots, positioned them better, and provided more police on bicycles.

Sometimes raging introverts like me need raging extroverts. As my mother likes to say, “Diversity is the spice of life.” All of us need community. I prefer Olympia’s Procession of the Species, or a group bike ride, or dinner with a few friends, but the pirate invasion made for a spicy Saturday afternoon indeed.

More proof women dig horses.

More proof women dig horses.

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This was the female uni of choice, kinda short shorts, fishnet, high leather boots.

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Bead throwing and catching. For hours and hours.

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I decided not to take my shirt off or rock the pants down low.

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I didn’t think to bring the dog.

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My daughter says I never smile in selfies. How do you like me now?

How College Changed Me For the Better

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I guess it makes sense given tuition inflation, but today, nearly every “is college worth it” discussion revolves around one consideration—roi—or “return on investment”. More and more people worry whether a college education will lead to more secure, higher paying jobs.

In the last week I’ve been changed for the better by a movie and two books that I probably wouldn’t have seen or read if my curiosity hadn’t been jumpstarted during college.

The movie, Wadja, was an engrossing window into what it’s like to be a woman in Saudi Arabia. Wadja has grossed $1,346,851 as of January 17th. That means few people are curious about what it’s like to be a woman in Saudi Arabia. Had I not attended college, where I learned to like learning about other people, places, and time periods, I doubt I would have sought out Wadja. I’m a more informed global citizen as a result of having watched Wadja.

The books were Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail and The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. Together, Cheryl Strayed and George Packer challenge my assumption that privileged people like me will never truly grasp what it’s like to teeter on the edge of economic destitution. Thanks to their story telling genius I have a much better feel for why some people struggle to feed, shelter, and clothe themselves. And more empathy, an attribute in shorty supply these days, for poor individuals and families.

I may not have been curious enough about the people’s lives in those books if three decades ago I hadn’t studied history in college and became keenly interested in other people, places, and time periods. Thanks to excellent professors, challenging readings, constant writing, and discussions with classmates and roommates, I became more curious, insightful, and empathetic.

How does one place a dollar value on that?

Staying One Step Ahead of the NSA

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I’m hopelessly old fashioned, I still value the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. So much so I’m intentional about staying one step ahead of the NSA. Here are my secrets. Using Snapchat-like technology, this post will disappear in thirty minutes.

First, when I learned the NSA was listening in to Angela Merkel’s phone conversations, I stopped talking on telephones.

Second, I stopped shopping at Target.

Third, like a Third World dictator, I rarely sleep in the same place. Here are some pictures from my current “trip”. I can’t tell you where I am, but see if you can piece it together with these visual clues.

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4. Fourth, I’m bicoastal. By the time the NSA or you figure out what coast I’m on, I’ll be on the other.

5. I never, ever, ever write down my deepest thoughts, they just rattle around in my noggin. Here are some examples from my current trip:

• Baby sheep are adorbs.

• “Little lambs” is more alliterative.

• “Lambs” is more concise.

• The “X” Costco reminded me we are an immigrant nation.

• People who swim outdoors year round probably take it for granted.

• If your opening swim set is long enough, the sun will rise by the end of it.

• After a skittish deer trotted next to me while I cycled then effortlessly elevated and moved sideways over a barbed wire fence without taking her eyes off of me, I concluded deer are more athletic than Richard Sherman.

• The 49er are chokers.

6.  Unlike this store, I never advertise my beliefs.

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In the vast emptiness of my noggin I believe the federal government’s meta data program is wrongheaded, but I will not be making a sign to that effect.

7. I never file federal taxes. 8. I maintain several different identities. 9. I shred whatever comes in the mail without opening it. And 10, I pay for everything with coins.

When Nationality Binds and Blinds

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You know the story. A former NBA player recruits a team of retired professional basketball players to play an exhibition game in front of Kim Jong Un on his birthday. Obviously, the players haven’t spent any of their post NBA lives learning anything about life in North Korea. The whole trip, especially the players clapping adoringly while the team leader serenaded Kim Jong Un with “Happy Birthday”, was almost too surreal to process.

Understandably, the media was quick to criticize the player and his friends. But the national-centric nature of the media’s criticism warrants criticism. And as far as I’m aware, there hasn’t been any. Never mind that 1m North Koreans died during famines in the 90s, that hunger is still a daily reality for most North Koreans, or that state prison camps have doubled in size since Kim Jong Un’s ascension two years ago. Learn more here.

The media’s criticism has focused on only one thing, American missionary Kenneth Bae, whose story is tragic. Bae, who is in declining health, is being held against his will for allegedly cataloging the extent of hunger among North Koreans under the guise of Christian missionary work. Bae’s story deserves media attention, but not at the expense of tens of millions of ordinary North Koreans whose daily lives have always been a living hell.

Our passivity about the plight of ordinary North Koreans explains the myopic media coverage we’ve been subjected to. Interestingly, Bae was born in South Korea and moved to California when he was 17 or 18 years old. Overtime he not only gained citizenship, he secured the one thing that seems to make him far more important than all the North Koreans combined, a U.S. passport.

Our passivity about our media’s national-centrism is an embarrassment. The North Korean media spotlight is in actuality a sporadic lighting of dim, fast burning individual match sticks. Given that, it’s especially important that our first instinct is always to honor the humanity of everyone held captive in North Korea irrespective of their nationality.

We Have Lost the War on Drugs

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So says Vermont’s Governor, Peter Shumlin. And it’s impossible to argue with his conclusion. Last week Shumlin dedicated all 34 minutes of his annual State of the State speech to what he described as Vermont’s “full blown heroin crisis”. Here’s a nine minute long PBS NewsHour segment on Shumlin’s speech. “In every corner of our state,” Shumlin said, “heroin and opiate drug addiction threatens us.” Most of what follows are excerpts from the New York Times coverage of Shumlin’s speech.

Sumlin wants to reframe the public debate to encourage officials to respond to addiction as “a chronic disease, with treatment and support, rather than with only punishment and incarceration.” “The time has come for us to stop quietly averting our eyes from the growing heroin addiction in our front yards,” Governor Shumlin said, “while we fear and fight treatment facilities in our backyards.”

Last year, he said, nearly twice as many Vermonters died from heroin overdoses as the year before. While it may be acute in Vermont, it is not isolated. In the past few years, officials have reported a surge in the use of heroin in New England, with a sharp rise in overdoses and deaths, as well as robberies and other crimes common among addicts. Those same statistics are being replicated across the country. Lawmakers in virtually every state are introducing legislation in response to what is rapidly being perceived as a public health crisis.

“The Centers for Disease Control and most national experts agree there’s an epidemic of drug overdose deaths in America,” Dr. Harry L. Chen, Vermont’s health commissioner, said in an interview. He said the rate of overdose deaths across the country had tripled since 1990.

“Nationwide, more people die of drug overdoses than from motor vehicle crashes,” he said. And nearly 80 percent of inmates in the state are jailed on drug-related charges. The governor made a plea for more money for treatment programs, noting that incarcerating a person for a week costs the state $1,120, while a week of treatment at a state-financed center costs $123.

Mr. Shumlin also wants to encourage discussions on ways to prevent addiction in the first place. He is providing a grant for a team that made a documentary film on heroin addiction titled, “The Hungry Heart”, to visit every high school in the state.

I learned of Shumlin’s bold speech shortly after reading an essay titled, “A Mission Gone Wrong” by Mattathias Schwartz in the January 6, 2014 New Yorker. I highly recommended Schwartz’s piece. He thoughtfully weaves several decades of US drug policy throughout the story of a recent joint US-Honduran drug mission gone horribly wrong. Long story short, it is impossible to limit the global supply of drugs. The only way to minimize their impact is to somehow reduce demand.

Upon finishing Schwartz’s engaging and depressing history lesson, I concluded that our national drug policy isn’t just the least effective of all our government’s domestic and foreign policies, but it has been the least effective for decades. I like to give our government the benefit of the doubt, meaning I assume most government workers are rational; we learn from our mistakes; and consequently, our policies gradually improve over time. None of those assumptions hold when it comes to the War on Drugs. Our policies are irrational and unchanging. As a result, the negative outcomes are totally predictable.