Live to Work – Work to Live

We probably all know people that just love to work. To them, an eighty-hour work week is a joy. After a fifteen-hour work day, they rush home so they can open their laptop and do more work. They could have retired years ago, but then what would they do? Watch other people work? The purpose of life is to work, dang it.

While I admire their industriousness, I’ve always thought it’s the other way around—the purpose of work is to provide you with a decent life. And how can you have a life if you’re always working?

To make our life work with our work life, we humans are always coming up with creative ways to schedule things. In the U.S., the standard forty-hour work week traditionally includes eight-hour work days for five days, or five-eights. Some have altered that to four-tens. Then there are four-nines with a half-day on Friday. Or eight-nines plus one-eight with every other Friday off. Or three-tens plus two-fives . . . (brain explodes here.)

I once tried to convince my boss to let me work two-twenties but he didn’t go for that. I’ve also tried to introduce the “diminishing work” schedule—one ten-hour day, then a nine-hour day, then an eight, a seven, and a six. That’s forty hours but you sleep one hour more and work one hour less each day. Maybe a better name is the “emerging life” schedule. Seemed pretty nice to me, but that wasn’t approved either.

Of course, people that don’t work in an office—like police officers, firefighters, train drivers, and others—probably laugh at all these attempts to change our schedules. They often work several days straight with little sleep. And the workaholics that put in eighty-hour work weeks scoff at the idea of working any less than that.

This weekend, the U.S. will switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time by moving our clocks back one hour. Everyone gets an extra hour of sleep for one night. It’s wonderful. For a few days next week, people will actually arrive at work on time—and cheerful.

I think we should do this once a month. On the first Sunday of each month, let’s all set our clocks back one hour. For the first week of every month, we’ll all be much more refreshed and relaxed. After twelve months, we’ll all be going to work at 8pm, so at that point, we can just switch the AM and PM around and start over. We’d all get additional sleep and more importantly, perhaps we’d enjoy life more. Sound like a plan?

How to Become a Hero

Or: An Excellent Way to Make the World a Much Worse Place

This post is much different from my usual posts and it took me much longer to write. It's not about a personal experience. Rather, I’m writing about an interesting way we humans use to pursue our own agendas. Plus, I’m not trying to be funny or entertaining this time, and I don’t even have any photos to include, dang it. And please don’t take this post as me trying to be partisan. This is about humans, not about politics.

The maxim I want to present is this—and others have probably put this much more eloquently:

“If you create an enemy, then vilify that enemy, you’ll become the hero.”

This is an idea I’ve thought about for a long time as I see the way people interact with one another. And I think pretty much everyone does this to some extent, from young kids in a schoolyard to coworkers in an office to political figures with a global audience.

I’m not going to list references and include footnotes and all that, but I’ll give some examples of what I’m talking about. Think for a minute of what you might have learned in Sunday School or history class about the life of Jesus Christ. Whether you believe in His life and teachings or not, you know the story: He taught love, tolerance, and charity, and even performed miracles, but He was still persecuted and eventually murdered. Why? Because He was a threat to the livelihood of the politicians and attorneys of His day (among other reasons). And how did those public figures accomplish their goal? They turned Him into an enemy, then vilified Him as an evil usurper of their way of life, then those public figures became the heroes.

Many have used that same pattern throughout history. Anyone remember a young Nazi named Adolf Hitler? He created enemies—the Jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals (the vernacular of the time), and any non-Aryans. He convinced people that these enemies were evil usurpers of their way of life. Then he became the hero and leader of Germany, and millions of people lost their lives.

Mussolini did something similar through his fascist ideas of biological racism. He created a class of inferior people—the Slavs—and vilified them as barbaric, thus making himself the hero. And of course, the history of that period shows how many people were murdered, imprisoned, or killed during the war as a result.

I live in the state of Utah and our history here shows this very thing. The early members of the Mormon church lived in the eastern part of our country where they were persecuted by politicians and mobs that just wanted to pursue their own agendas. Those early members were peaceful, quiet people who had different religious views than other Christians. But mobs and politicians painted them as evil enemies and drove them from town to town and murdered their leader. Finally, the Mormons left the United States and trekked across the plains to the Rocky Mountains. Fifty years later, when the U.S. was more civilized, their territory joined the union as the state of Utah.

In the U.S, in the 1950s, senator Joseph McCarthy used this maxim to great effect with the political philosophy that became known as mccarthyism. In his case, he created a list of enemies that he claimed were communists. He vilified them as traitors disloyal to the American way of life. As a result, he became the hero and won the next senatorial election. But another result was the many people whose lives and careers were destroyed with no real evidence of them having ever done anything wrong.

Let’s not forget Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution in China. In this case the enemies were capitalists and traditional Chinese values and culture. He was so effective in creating a hero cult centered around himself, that children even accused their parents of being anti-revolutionaries and they were sent off to re-education camps. It was a very sad time in Chinese history where many people lost their lives and countless cultural treasures were lost.

I’m sure anyone can come up with more examples, such as the Ku Klux Klan, religious extremists, the subjugation of Native Americans, imperialism during colonial times, racial cleansing during modern times, and the list goes on.

Everyday people, business leaders, and political figures all fall back on this maxim to promote their own agendas. Hate the other party; hate the immigrants; hate anyone that doesn’t speak your language; hate the poor; hate the rich; hate other religions; hate other ethnic groups. As long as people are hating someone else, they’ll ignore your weaknesses and love you.

It’s probably just a simple facet of human nature that we think of those whose opinions we agree with as telling the truth while others are lying hate mongers. It’s also interesting that this is especially noticeable in religion and politics—two areas that potentially touch our lives in very personal ways. The “other guys” are telling lies and spreading acrimony; “my guys” are simply telling the truth.

How is it, though, that people are conned into believing someone is an enemy when they’re really not? Oftentimes the perpetrator uses lies. Other times, they just distort the information for their benefit. But mostly they pander to peoples’ baser emotions of anger, fear, hatred, distrust, paranoia, and similar negative feelings. These emotions are very easy to evoke whereas positive emotions like love and charity are much more difficult.

Using emotion is very effective in many areas. Think of TV advertisements you’ve seen. The frantic car salesman: “Three days only! Hurry! Inventory going fast! You’ll never see prices like this again!” He’s invoking fear of missing out on something, worry, and lost opportunities. Or the opposite with a loving mom lovingly making a lovely casserole out of processed foods for her beloved little loving kids. In this case it’s a positive emotion, but it’s the same idea.

A perfect example of how this works in our modern era is commercial talk shows on radio and television. The purpose of these shows is of course to make money. Many of these hosts make millions of dollars a year and the industry itself makes billions a year. That’s wonderful—I don’t begrudge them the money and I wish I had that kind of income.

But the method they use is not so wonderful. They’ve figured out a great formula, though: portray the other guys as evil—they’re destroying our country and way of life, they’re taking your money, they stole the election—and you evoke those baser feelings of hatred and anger. If someone gets all worked up listening to this today, they’ll be more likely to tune in again tomorrow. And the show continues to bring in millions of dollars. Remember, create an enemy (the other guys), vilify that enemy (They’re Evil! They’re Ruining the Country!), then you become the hero, or in this case, you become rich.

Certainly not all talk shows are like that. Some, including many on nonprofit or community stations, tend to foster more academic discussion and give fair time to all sides of each issue. And even some of the commercial shows invoke one’s intellect and promote the free flow of unbiased information. But most are in existence to make money, and promoting hatred and anger is the easiest way to do that.

How many times in the last decade have you heard someone claim they hate a particular politician? I often wonder, do they really hate that person or just dislike that person’s views? In many cases, it seems they legitimately hate the person, even though they’ve never met before.

Last fall, I read a short essay (written by a talk show host, no less) where the author talked about all the reasons she hated a prominent politician. About half the reasons were lies, many of the rest were gross distortions of the truth, and others were just her opinion. But none of them seemed to be a good reason to hate the person. However, by convincing others to also hate that politician, she was growing her audience and her pocketbook. And we wonder why there is so much divisiveness and anger in politics today. Again, my posting isn’t about politics; I’m just using this as one example.

I’m sure there’s no global solution to stop all the hatred and anger in our world today. I wish I had an answer. I wish I could say I don’t do the very things I’m talking about in this post. The fact is, I find it hard in my own life to avoid these same negative feelings.

But maybe if each person resolved to try to build bridges rather than acrimony, the world would slowly become a better place. Maybe when we sit around the dinner table and discuss the events of the day, we can go out of our way to point out all sides of the issue, not just those we agree with. Maybe first we need to spend time getting to know all sides of the issue. Maybe when we talk with our children and friends about something important to us, we can use less hateful language. Maybe we can make friends with people whose lifestyles are different from our own.

I’ll end this with a quote that reminds us of this very thing. This is from former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at the Utah Women’s Conference in Salt Lake City on October 11, 2013. The following is from an article in the Salt Lake Tribune.* (Oops, it looks like I did include a reference and a footnote after all, sorry.)

“She said it is easy in today’s world to receive news and blogs only from people who share the same views. If you find yourself with company where everyone ‘says amen to everything you say, you need to find new company,’ Rice said. Sticking only with like-minded people will cause you either to lose your ability to defend your views or the ability to see when you are wrong.

“She added that if people never encounter others with whom they disagree, they ‘start to think of them as stupid or venal because you don’t have the chance to exchange views.’”

Amen to that (ha ha).

* Davidson, Lee. “Condoleezza Rice: World needs U.S. to solve shutdown, partisanship.” The Salt Lake Tribune. The Salt Lake Tribune (Media News Group), 11 October, 2013. Accessed 14 October, 2013. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/56988325-90/rice-america-lake-needs.html.csp

How to Impress a Guy—Not!

I'm certainly no expert when it comes to relationships, but I have a good story about what NOT to do. In fact, if you're trying to impress someone, do the opposite of this. Luckily for me, this is a story about someone else—I'm really glad I didn't do it. But it did involve me, sort of.

When my wife and I were still dating, we joined a tour group to southern Taiwan. I lived in the north part of the island at the time, where I taught English and did my best to avoid serious responsibility. This tour group was comprised mainly of single young people, and one of those was a girl I'll call Mei, because I can't remember her real name. She desperately liked another young man on the trip that I'll call Yang, for the same reason. Yang, however, had no interest in Mei. I found out later it was due to Mei's drinking problem. She was only in her early twenties, but had a serious issue with alcohol, which often made it difficult for her to impress anyone. But she definitely tried.

We took large tour buses to a small resort village next to a beautiful gorge in the southern mountains. Several dorm-like hotels sat on the very edge of the gorge. Taiwan has constant earthquakes, so you kind of wonder what the builders were thinking. But luckily, the hotels didn't fall off while we were there. Though I think after the following experience, Mei probably wished they would have. The tour leader assigned the guys to stay in one set of dorms and the girls in another.

In the evening, many in the group sat around talking and joking, with Mei kind of hanging all over Yang while she slowly got plastered. He tried getting rid of her, but she wasn't too good at taking hints. Yang finally got tired of the whole thing, and decided to go to bed. I was sleepy by then too, and the two of us happened to be sharing a room with two other guys, so I accompanied him back to the room.

Our room had two double beds in it, and Yang and I had chosen one. I suppose it seems a little odd for me to be sharing a bed with a guy I'd never met prior to the trip, but hey, life was simpler back then. Not long later, the other two guys came in and the four of us soon fell asleep.

After consuming a case or two of beer, Mei eventually decided Yang must be waiting for her to join him. Why else would he have gone to bed? So she walked into our room—which we had unfortunately forgotten to lock—and climbed in bed with Yang and me. Yang quickly scooted away from her and I scooted away from him. She then scooted closer to him, he scooted away, and so did I. This continued until I was squished against the wall with Yang squished against me and Mei squished against him.

All of our scooting wasn't just from the fact that any nocturnal activity would have been a little awkward (it was a pretty small bed). Rather, it was the fact that beer apparently made Mei sweat a lot. Anyone that says "guys sweat—girls glow" hasn't been around a sweaty drunk girl in a tropical climate. It made for a potent stew.

Yang finally gave up on scooting and climbed over Mei then camped out on the floor. Mei continued scooting until at one point she realized I wasn't Yang. So she sat up, looked around all dopey-eyed, then joined Yang on the floor. He of course quickly joined me in bed. This little dance went on for some time until Mei finally passed out, half on the bed and half off. Yang then pushed her onto the floor and we were all able to sleep. If Yang wasn't impressed with Mei by then, I don't know what more she could have done.

At five the next morning, I found out. She jumped up off the floor, tripped over the chair, and stumbled into the bathroom where she proceeded to impress Yang with the most horrible noises I'd ever heard. I didn't know humans could make those kinds of sounds. She stayed in there about half an hour and only came out because a giant beetle the size of a small bird flew into the bathroom from the open window. She screamed, tripped all over the room, then ran outside. Yang quickly locked the door and we were all very happy to finally have some peace and quiet.

And I can tell you, Yang was definitely impressed. I don't know what happened to the beetle.

Sweet Revenge

I used to work in a small office setting with only a few other employees. Outside our office, at the end of a long, dark hall, sat an old vending machine. It was notorious for taking our money without delivering the goods. It worked about half the time and stole our money the rest. But whenever we were hungry, we'd crawl timidly down the hallway, pay our dues—seventy-five cents for a fruit pie—and had faith that the desired treat would appear. More often than not, our faith was shaken.

One day we discovered that if you put money in it, you'd get nothing back, which was not surprising. But if you just pulled the knob without any money, the treat magically arrived in the bin. It was busted—in the best possible way! As soon as word of this great windfall got out, vengeance day arrived. We stopped all our work and gathered around the machine, swiping all the candy we could. It was payback time at the office.

For better or worse, our consciences soon started feeling bad. Inexplicably, so did our stomachs. We'd already stolen and eaten about half the chocolate bars, fruit pies, Twinkies, and other equally nutritious trash, but maybe it was time to let the owner know about his broken machine. One of us finally called the service number posted near the change slot and reported what was happening.

The vending guy showed up very quickly. He repaired it then stopped in our office to thank us for acting as such outstanding citizens by reporting it. He was a small business and his only source of income was these vending machines he'd set up in offices. We nervously glanced at each other. He only made a few pennies on each sale and even the loss of one piece of candy took many more sales to make up for. All the stolen swag in our stomachs began churning in an odd way. He and his wife spent each day driving around the valley to check on machines and it wasn't an easy way to make a living. I waited for him to tell us about his disabled child and dying mother next.

We kept looking at the floor and rubbing our necks and wishing he'd stop making us feel like The Great Satan. Finally, he pulled out some candy and set it on the table for us.

"Thanks for being such honest people and reporting this to me," he said, then turned and left. As I recall, that candy remained on the table a long time before someone finally ate it.

The Paper Jobber

I swear I'm not making this story up. In fact, all the stories I relate through my blog are true. Mostly.

Have you ever had an experience that you later thought was "just like a Brady Bunch episode," or "just like something from Seinfeld?" I had an experience straight out of The Office. The Office is a hilarious sitcom in the U.S. about a fictional paper supply company. If you've never seen it, and that description seems boring, I defy you to watch an episode without laughing.

Anyway, in my experience, I needed to buy a large roll of cheap paper to cover some banquet tables. It was just one roll of paper, so how difficult could it be? I stopped at a nearby paper company and went in the front door, then up a long stairway to the second floor office.

Inside, the office was just like any other office you've all seen—people busy at desks scattered around the floor. Except this office had a massive cage in the middle of the room housing a huge, green parrot. The parrot saw me and squawked loud enough to hurt my ears. It flapped and blew feathers all over. Nobody at the desks even noticed, except for the receptionist who looked up and very politely asked what I needed.

"Uh, just a roll of butcher paper."

She smiled. "Do you have an account?"

I didn't.

"Then you can just drive around back to the Will Call dock and pick up a roll there."

That seemed easy enough. I thanked her, the parrot squawked at me, and I left.

I drove to the back of the building. A large gentleman wearing a baseball cap backwards greeted me at Will Call. I explained what I needed.

"No problem," he said with a smile. "Just go up these stairs here and pay for it, then we'll get the paper for you."

A tall and narrow flight of stairs stood next to the loading dock and led to a small doorway above the warehouse. I climbed up and walked in. A loud squawk announced my presence—I was in the back of the very office I'd just left.

Thinking I was in the wrong place, I asked someone at the nearest desk where to pay for Will Call items. She pointed me to the front receptionist. I walked back up to her.

"The guy at Will Call sent me back here."

"That's correct," she said. "You need to pay for the paper first."

"Then why didn't you—"

"Hold on a moment," she said. "Let me call up a salesman so you can place your order."

She dialed a number on her phone and another phone on a desk not ten feet away rang. That can't be who she's calling.

Sure enough, an older man sitting there answered the phone. "This is James."

"I have a man up front who needs to order some paper," the receptionist said with a totally straight face.

"I'll be right up." He hung up his phone and walked three steps to the front desk.

For the third time, I explained what I needed. He pulled a large catalog off the receptionist's desk and flipped through it until he found large rolls of butcher paper. "Is this what you need?"

I nodded.

He wrote the item number down on a yellow sticky note and handed it to the receptionist, then returned to his desk as though nothing strange was happening at all.

I turned back to the receptionist. "Couldn't you have just done the same—"

She interrupted again. "Will that be cash or credit card?"

I handed her my credit card, which she ran through her machine and had me sign a receipt.

"You can go back to Will Call now and we'll send the order there."

I carefully avoided the squawking parrot and weaved my way to the back door then walked down to the Will Call guy.

"I paid for the paper," I explained.

"Okey dokey," he said. "We just need to wait for the order to get here so we don't grab the wrong roll for you."

I glanced into his small office where a computer sat on his desk. It appeared the computer wasn't even turned on. How's he going to get the order without his computer on?

He started talking with me about the weather and sports and other important things. I kept looking at his computer, but he didn't seem concerned at all that it wasn't on. Soon, the door above the tall staircase opened. Another young lady walked out—and again I swear I'm not making this up—and she picked up a small basket that was on the stairs, placed a piece of paper in it, and lowered it down using a rope. When the basket reached a table below the door, she rang a small bell.

Mr. Will Call finally perked up. "There's an order now. I'll go see if it's yours."

I looked around and didn't see another customer in the whole warehouse.

He picked up the paper from the basket, tugged on the rope, and the young lady pulled it back up.

He walked back. "Yep, one roll of manila butcher paper, all paid for. Hold on, and we'll get this for you." He detached a walkie talkie from his belt. "Tom, we have a Will Call order."

"10-4," Tom responded through the radio.

Soon, a large forklift arrived with a young man inside. Mr. Will Call showed Tom the order and Tom drove the forklift a total of fifteen feet to the rolls of butcher paper, which happened to be on the very first aisle. He loaded one onto the forklift and drove back. He pulled up right next to the edge of the loading dock, and lowered the forks down to my waiting car.

Mr. Will Call watched the whole thing, then explained, "We always use machinery here, because we don't want to lift anything that might injure our backs."

I guess that included computer mice. I nodded to him, hurried out, and easily lifted up the light roll of paper and placed it in my trunk. Tom and Mr. Will Call waved at me as I drove away.

I think even the U.S. military couldn't come up with a better system than the one used by my local paper jobber.

Barbie vs. Mrs. Pillsbury

I met a real Barbie one day. It wasn't so much how she looked—if she really looked like Barbie, she'd probably have lower back problems and fall over a lot. Rather, it was her lifestyle that brought the comparison. It happened when my older daughter, Miara, needed a ride home from a friend's house. I'd already changed into my pajamas and didn't want to change back, so I put on an old army-style coat that I'd gotten from a friend who wanted to throw it away. I couldn't find my shoes, so I stepped into my winter snow boots. I'm sure I looked right at home—that is, if my home was under a freeway overpass.

I drove up the steep hill, past the country club, to the friend's house. All the houses there were very nice, very big, and each one very unique. They must have had restrictive covenants requiring meticulous landscaping and Range Rovers. The view of all the lights in the valley below was pretty awesome.

I rang the loud, clanging doorbell and Ken and Barbie answered. Barbie had immaculate hair and makeup, even at that late hour. Ken's sporty sweater hadn't a wrinkle on it. They invited me in to the parlor, where I stood on the shiny hardwood floor next to an equally shiny Steinway. Two very well behaved dogs strode in and sat quietly.

By all measures, it was the perfect couple, with a perfect house, in a perfect neighborhood, and perfect dogs. I'll bet they even trained the dogs to use the toilet. Despite how nice it was, I felt extremely uncomfortable and out of place. It wasn't my clothing, but more like I'd stepped into a totally different reality. They told me how much the girls had enjoyed their time down in the theater room all evening. Ken asked what I did for a living. I told him I drove trucks for the landfill.

Luckily Miara soon emerged from the palace basement and rescued me. Once she saw my attire, she said goodbye to her friend and pushed me out the door. After that, she always asked Mom to pick her up.

A few months later, my younger daughter Ro Ro needed a ride home from a friend's house. This neighborhood was the exact opposite of Barbie On The Hill's. It was sandwiched between a freeway, a hotel, and a refinery. The houses in the cul-de-sac were originally all the same, but several sported additional rooms and sheds attached to the main structure. Toys, bikes, lawnmowers, and dogs cluttered the yards. One house had an old muscle car on blocks in the driveway with an engine dangling above it. The sidewalk had some cool skateboard and bike ramps where tree roots had lifted up the concrete slabs.

I parked in the single-car driveway and held the screen door steady so I could knock on it. A half-dozen kids rushed to welcome me in. I gathered that they lived in nearby houses but used this one as their second home. The living room had a mess of toys that the kids were having a great time playing with. A slobbery, crotch-sniffing dog lumbered around and knocked stuff down with his tail.

The mom walked out of the kitchen and my first impression was of Mrs. Pillsbury—Poppie Fresh. She wore a stained apron and carried a spatula. Bobbie pins held her greying hair back. Her bare feet looked used to stepping on Hot Wheels and jacks.

She immediately related how much fun it was to have the kids all there and invited me to stay for dinner. It smelled wonderful, but we had to leave. For those few minutes I was there, though, I felt completely at home. It was like I'd known the family my whole life.

I don't want to force a value judgment on these two families. I'm sure Ken and Barbie were wonderful people that I could have become good friends with—if I had season opera tickets. And I have a lot of respect for someone who's ambitious enough to afford that lifestyle. I'm also sure Poppie Fresh sometimes wished she had a bigger home and someone to cook for her once in a while. But it struck me that Poppie's home was so much more inviting because she wasn't out to prove anything.

Strawberries vs. Juniper Berries

Two of my sisters-in-law are in town for a few weeks from Taiwan. They're both very nice and generous, and have enjoyed traveling many places, particularly in Asia and Europe. During a conversation, they talked about The Strawberry Generation in Taiwan—referring to many young people who can't seem to do anything on their own. The strawberries live with their parents, can't find a decent job, and rely on others for everything. The comparison to strawberries comes from the fact that strawberries go bad after a very short time if not stored in optimal conditions.

Delicate Arch

While they were here, we visited Arches National Park and Dead Horse Point. Anyone who's traveled to Utah's Red Rock Country knows the climate there is hot, dry, high elevation desert. It's beautiful, but extremely inhospitable. We hiked to the iconic Delicate Arch. That trail isn't a particularly long hike, but can be arduous for those not accustomed to hiking, especially in that climate. Our Land Cruiser is well-suited to slick rock four-wheeling so we took it up the relatively mild Gemini Bridges trail and stopped at many of the overlooks and took way too many pictures that we'll probably never look at again. (We didn't take the Cruiser on the Metal Masher trail, because we needed to get back to Salt Lake City in one piece.)

Along with cactus and sagebrush, juniper is very common in Red Rock Country. Junipers (杜鬆屬) are a scrubby evergreen with stringy bark and small green berries. I love junipers—they remind me of many family vacations to Southern Utah in my youth. Junipers can survive the harshest of climes, high and low temperature extremes, deep snow, no water for months at a time, and very poor soil. They're the exact opposite of strawberries.

My daughter Amria and I later talked about our trip and realized that many people fall into these two categories—strawberries and junipers. Some people can't handle the least amount of discomfort or can't function when facing even small adversity. Others, like the mountain bikers we saw on the Gemini Bridges trail, seem to relish hardships. Call it "character building," "learning from experience," "training for the zombie apocalypse," or whatever you want, but perhaps having at least a little adversity in our lives helps prepare us for the big stuff. Like zombies.

Red Rock Country Junipers