The Thick Green Forest

Occasionally I enjoy watching ABC's Shark Tank, a reality show in which hopeful entrepreneurs try to get billionaires to invest in their businesses. Why is it so popular you ask?

1. Great name. MLK, Washington, Independence, and the greatest birth ever recorded (see Luke 2:1-20) don't even get a full week of holiday. Compare that with Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Seven dazzling days of delight. We are fascinated by sharks. Sharks enjoy people too.

2. Our society seems to have an insatiable interest in money. Who has it, who is losing it, and how they spend it. Whole TV series, documentaries, and movies are created primarily to satiate the public desire to know more about people who have made loads of cash. Even out here in the ocean, the Green Stuff can take center stage.

3. The American Dream, or some mutant form of it, is played out before our eyes. Every episode seems to have at least one success story, where a struggling entrepreneur makes millions because he/she teamed up with one of the business savvy "Sharks".

The story I wanted to share with you begins at 32:50, if you want to see for yourself, with a humble farmer named Jonny. He enters the Shark Tank hoping that one of these investors will use their experience and resources to help him accomplish something good - water conservation.

Seeing this story played out reminded me of a quote by C.S. Lewis.

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking down, you can't see something that's above you.”

As the "Sharks" question Jonny about his profit margins on this product, most of them are baffled as to why he doesn't raise the price to make a better profit. Jonny's simple response to their inquiry is truly beautiful.

"I've never done that, I've always tried to be right."

"Because I'm working with farmers."

Most of these investors couldn't understand why Jonny would leave "money on the table" and keep the price so low. They couldn't see eye to eye with a man whose motivation was a little better, a little higher. Any of these gill-ty business types could certainly write a book on how to set an optimal price point, yet Jonny just taught a lesson that most of today's business world probably couldn't grasp if it was a 100 dollar bill dipped in crazy glue. He was trying to build a business without forgetting to see his customers as real people. (Luke 6:31)

Let's make sure we carve out a sizable piece of this ocean for those good souls who are shark enough to think and act a little more altruistically, rather than to applaud and idolize the typical, rapacious "business sharks" that infest our waters.

D

Kelpless

We've talked plenty about choosing on this blog before, but the concept of choice is broader than the Pacific and deeper than Marianas. I wish I could say that once you choose something it will all feel like the perfect fit, the starfish will align, and you'll know you've entered the Current of Destiny. As is my current experience, circumstance has yet to provide me with any sense of satiating finality. I'm slowly learning that satisfaction is a matter of who you are rather than where you are. I am presently at the beginning of a potentially lifelong career. Having taken it for granted that I would be at peace with achieving this milestone based solely on having achieved it, it's been hard to come to grips with my lack of satisfaction. Is this because I chose the wrong career? Though I often feel that way, and I would like that to be an excuse, I don't believe that's the reason.

It's really tempting to believe that satisfaction is something you can find if you look hard enough and don't make the wrong choices. I'm not sure if it is, in fact, I'm pretty sure it isn't. Don't get me wrong, I believe it is possible to be truly satisfied with your life, but my issue is whether it is accurate/pragmatic/healthy to think of satisfaction objectively as a destination or achievement. It may be like success and happiness from the perspective of Viktor Frankl in this quotation Danny showed me from the book Man's Search For Meaning:

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”

But I always run into the same problem with these "ensuing" qualities. How do I work on something that is undone by any conscious effort?
"I've conquered pride and am now humble! or at least more humble than you."
Does wanting to work on it already doom you to failure? I don't think so. I think the problem is rooted more in why we want to improve ourselves, so if we can somehow go about it in way that is less competitive, selfish, or boastful, then we might be able to see past the mirror, and all the way to Heaven. Let's start with something practicable—

There is a concept in economics known as "satisficing" that has been shown to increase one's sense of satisfaction in the choices one makes. Satisficing is simply the mashing together of the words satisfying and sufficing. Satisficers are satisfied with what suffices. You like satisficers—they demand little of the world, are flexible and easygoing. You can feel safe around a satisficer because s/he doesn't need you to be anymore than you are. The contrast to satisficing is maximizing. Maximizers are the type of people always looking for the very best deal possible. Maybe you know some. Maybe you are one. You admire maximizers—they are ambitious, hardworking, and well-informed. But you probably don't feel very comfortable around them because they want the very best of everything and you might feel like you don't qualify. They're judgmental—They have to be in order to know what the best is so they can get it. The problem with maximizing is that there is only one "best." Not only is it quasi-impossible to achieve the best in anything, but there are so many subjective/ambiguous variables that you can never be sure you truly maximized, therefore, maximizers are seldom satisfied. Satisficers decide what they want, and when they get it, they're satisfied no matter the comparison with other options.

I just bought a car a couple weeks ago, and I had to battle the maximizer in me so I wouldn't regret such a huge purchase. So, after all my habitual, maximizing research, I tried being more satisficing by deciding on a make, model, year, price, condition, and mileage. When I found a car that fit that mold, I bought it. I still have to fight the tendency to be a maximizer ex post facto in comparing my car to others'. Maximizers are expert comparers. They're so good at comparison that all it takes is a better deal that they missed out on to ruin the value of what they have to them. Think of the danger that presents to relationships.

I was surprised at the physical sense of satisfaction I experienced as I tamed the maximizer in me. Interestingly enough, at least in the eyes of comparing maximizers, what maximizers usually end up choosing is qualitatively better than what satisficers get. Not by much, though. in most cases, choosing alone is 99 yards of the field. All your stress and extra effort of maximizing for just the last few feet only makes sense if we see life as the playing field to a goal of happiness instead of a lifelong journey of joy. The most important quality for satisfaction in a car you buy, a career you choose, a school you go to, a person you marry, or a bird in the hand, is that it's yours. Especially satisfying are the things you've chosen that have the volition to choose you back, and literally nothing can compare.

I started this thinking I would write about other things, but sometimes your heart bypasses the brain and goes straight for the fingertips. Sometimes the right choice to make is "let it be," or at least I'm going to let it be.

If you are worried about where you are, just take time to gaze at the stars, or swim in the ocean (at your own risk, of course), ponder on the immensity of the universe and the insignificance of our little world. And, though to us our world is huge, life is long and longer still. Take 3 deep breaths. Tell someone you love how much you appreciate them, and do something nice for someone you don't know. And above all:
Matthew 11:28-30


Love, Alex

A Cry for Kelp

Recently this beautiful ocean (life) has seemed to expand for me.

I concede this change is largely one of gaining new perspectives, rather than anything physical, just as an avid diver has a far different take on the term "depths of the sea" considering their experience.

Since my first week as the greenest freshman on the college campus, I have admired those students who already appeared to have found their passion or career. Seeing their happy, genuine confidence has prodded into existence a question which has dogged my footsteps to this very minute. With persistence and determination surpassing even the best Vivint alarm sales rep, I have long since grown weary of it's routine, circuitous path through my conscious.

I would give my left arm (something a great white would happily arrange) to never again become introspective asking, "what should I do for a career?"

Before I continue one more league, I want to openly recognize the ocean-sized blessing of having the mental and physical faculties, as well as the freedom to choose virtually any profession or career under the sun. (Sun is used intentionally, because working graveyard is NOT a faculty I possess.) Perhaps my friends who occasionally argue for arranged marriages would be less prone to blow the whistle on my ingratitude, as they too have confronted the conundrum of almost unbounded agency.

I see two clear, well-marked paths before me. Neither one evil and both having a distinct appeal. On one hand I could view my career as a means to an end. Should I pursue a career wholly based on it's ability to give me the money and time I want to raise my family and serve others? Or is work the means whereby I render a significant amount of the service I hope to accomplish throughout my life? By following the latter I would predictably come across much broader opportunities to serve, whilst the former affords a more flexible family and personal schedule. Above all I wish to be the worlds greatest Dad. But what if I am capable of being that kind of father and impacting my community on a deeper level too?

Perhaps I am just muddying the waters. Perhaps you see right through the kelp bed to Atlantis herself and my ocean-enlarging perspective could use a second set of goggles. But swimming through this with you may have cleared up the waters a bit already.

D