NBC’s public service announcements have been running since 1989. The logo has improved from this one, but the objective is basically the same: teach and learn. With more information, you may be able to make better decisions. I say ‘may’ and not ‘will’, because although more data is better than less, sometimes even that increased data is insufficient.
In other words, never assume that you have all the information.
My husband and I slip into an easy argument about people’s motivations versus their actions. He tends to judge people by their actions. I try to puzzle out their motivations for those actions.
For example, imagine this regular scenario: we are all piled in our mini-van at 7:55am on Saturday morning heading to Trader Joe’s for its 8:00am opening. Sandy prepares to dash across a four lane intersection with a median. NPR chatters on about Obamacare, Eliot asks, “What is Obamacare, Dad?,” and while answering Eliot’s question, Sandy simultaneously suggests to Auden that he stop putting stickers on the window. All of this, while his eyes keep darting back and forth gathering information about dozens of cars, bicyclists, pedestrians and other moving vehicles. The man is a multi-tasking, precision, mental machine. The gap on the far side approaches, the gap on our side nears, the cyclists have cleared. He inhales, the tension increases, and just as he is about to take his foot off the break, a middle-aged fellow, one hand tugging a leash with a reluctantly, trailing dog and the other holding his cell phone inches from his face steps into the cross-walk, paying no attention whatsoever to the situation. Even the dog knew not to step forward. On a good day the expletives are minimal, but unquestionably, Sandy is grumbling about the idiot who blew his perfect opportunity. Yet, Sandy settles and prepares to move on. This is where I come in. I pipe up with something like, “I bet he’s reading an email from his wife informing him she wants a divorce, and that’s why he is so engrossed,” or, “I wonder if has to get home quickly because his medication alarm just went off,” or “He probably has to keep his dog moving otherwise he’ll have to pick her up and carry her home.” Then, the steam from Sandy’s ears warms the minivan. For some reason, I insist on guessing people’s motivations, often as I try to dampen Sandy’s agitation. Unfortunately, as he has pointed out repeatedly, that irritates him more than the initial situation.
I wonder why it irritates Sandy to speculate about why someone does what s/he does? This is not peculiar to Sandy. Many folks would rather not know why people do what they do. The action alone is enough to determine judgement. From something stepping into the intersection without looking, to glancing away from a cadger on the street. From holding a grudge over a forgotten ‘thank you’ card to convicting a person of a felony. Every day we either directly or indirectly (through those who represent us) judge those around us.
Of course, I do it, too.
Last week, I spent the week with my parents in mid-central Indiana. I had booked the tickets to bring my 10 and 4 year old boys with me before my pancreas had started throwing a temper-tantrum. Sandy offered to see if he could get a ticket to fly with us, but armed with my hydrocodone, three fully charged and loaded iPads, and a little Diazepam (my first time traveling with valium) for the plane rides, I was certain we could manage. I knew once we got to Indiana my parents would help out with the boys, and I could curl up with a heating pad and endless tea. We flew Southwest through Dallas.
Just a little aside – I love Southwest. I love their sense of humor, I love the staff’s attitude, I love that they still serve snacks, and I love that you can check up to two bags for free. Go Southwest. Mostly, I love the cattle car-seating and that for just a few $ extra, I can guarantee myself a spot in the first corral – or A seating. Given that I usually forget to check in until a couple hours before the flight, it is totally worth the extra money.
Saturday, December 26, we head to Oakland airport. Sandy helps us check-in, and we get through security in record time because my older son is a super-star. We’re A18-A20, so we end up in row 6, and before you can exhale, the boys are strapped in, have their snacks, stuffies, pillows and headsets ready to go. As the rest of the plane loads, I listen to other people’s screaming, coughing, whining children, and I smile at other adults as they walk by, marveling at my well-behaved angels. Except for 10-minutes of extremely, heavy turbulence heading into Dallas, with my 10-year old quietly weeping as he holds a vomit bag to his face and my 4-year-old sobbing and pleading for me to make the plane land (which I suspect more than one adult was silently affirming), the boys flew like champions. I bet that any adult, even those who think that children should not be allowed in airports, let-alone on planes, looked at me and imagined that I was a good parent who disciplined and rewarded her children appropriately and taught them the difference between right and wrong, behaved and misbehaved. Boy, did we every have them fooled. People saw what they wanted to see. What they had no idea about was the amount of bribery, pleading and threats that were involved in obtaining the boys’ allegiance. Nor did anyone have any idea that I was loaded on anti-depressants, valium and codeine to manage severe depression, anxiety and pain.
Would it have made a difference, the more that they might know? I can’t say.
Our flights on New Year’s Day from IND-DAL-OAK, I was in an equally and thankfully, altered state. Both boys had hit their patience-for-each-other threshold about 36 hours earlier, and my job was keeping them as far on either side of me as I could. We arrived at IND a few hours before our flight. At first this seemed fortunate. At the security line bins, as I pile my boots and jacket into a bin, pull out my brand new massive iPadPro into another bin, and, then turn to Auden (my little guy) to help him get his stuffy into bin. Eliot meanwhile is getting his jacket and his stuffy binned. The security guy comes over and helpfully tells Eliot he doesn’t need to take off his shoes, so Eliot starts putting stuff back on. Auden is still messing with his stuffy making sure that he is fully covered with a blanket before putting it through the x-ray reader. Mercifully, there is another scanner that people are able to go to during our antics, but I’ve already encouraged one lady to go ahead of me. Now, I think we’re ready to go, and I go over our bins and notice there is no iPad anymore.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the beauty of valium for anxiety. Rather than melting on the floor, wracked with sobs, I breathe in, look around, gauge how many people have gone by us in the interim. I stop the lady in front of us and ask her to check her bins. I go over to the other line and ask the folks if they grabbed bins from our line. I ask Eliot to look around. I am just about to turn to the security guy to have him sound off the alarms, because under no circumstances am I leaving this airport without my new iPadPro. Almost as an afterthought, I pick up one of the empty bins, and everyone around me exhales, because there is my iPadPro. Eliot had accidentally placed another bin on top of it. Ok, we’re ready to go. I start moving our bins into place, when the security guy says, ‘Oh, that’s an iPad, you can put that in your backpack.’ Definitely a moment when I needed a desk to drop my head to. I put the iPad back into my backpack, whose seams are bursting because of the sheer number of electronics (a Kindle, two phones, multiple cables, chargers, adapters, headsets and now 2 iPads), changes of clothes for my potty training little guy, snacks enough to feed four or five aisles of passengers, one blanket, two scarves, one inhaler, a quart size baggie of medicines, and the assorted items you would normally find in a purse. We put everything through the conveyer, Auden controls his whimpering as Spot the dog gets x-rayed, and I am ready to move on.
So, as it turns out, the iPadPro probably should have stayed in the bin. To one security guard it is a harmless but expensive entertainment device, to the security guard getting his x-ray training, it is a threat to national security. This is not to say that we are tackled, but we are pulled aside and my tetris-like packed backpack is emptied and each device tested for explosive residue. Normally, I don’t mind this sort of thing. I applaud people for not racial and type profiling. Again, the more you know, right? And truly all of the five security folks involved – at least three of whom were over 6’3″ could not have been nicer. Once we clear security, with an hour and a half before our flight takes off, we settle into a comfortable set of chairs at our gate with easy access to outlets and usb ports. I pop another quarter tab of Diazepam.
Fortunately, the iPads were overloaded with shows and videos because our plane arrived late. With an already tight layover (45 minutes) in DAL, I begin furiously texting with Sandy to investigate alternative arrangements for us should we miss our flight. Finally, our plane arrives, we’re seated (again, I love Southwest Earlybird check-in) in the first few rows, and I am already coaching the boys how to madly dash across the DAL airport when we land. Two relatively uneventful hours later, multiple passengers have asked the flight attendants about transfers. As it turns out, there are several passengers hoping to make the OAK transfer. We land at 4:05pm. Our flight to OAK departs at 4:10pm. Some airlines will ask everyone to stay seated so that the folks who need to make a transfer can get off first. Southwest does things just a little differently. First, a flight attendant asks everyone to stay seated. She does want to let someone off first: a soldier passenger. She invites him to depart, and sheepishly, he does. My faith in humanity blooms a bit, when people applaud him on his departure. But after he leaves, it opens to standard departure, and I deflate. A lady sitting across from us making the same transfer, waits impatiently with us until our row exits. We follow her out, and I thank her as she verifies on the board, what my phone had already informed me. We have to get clear across the terminal.
I pick up my truculent four-year old, grab his backpack, my own and give myself a little pat on the back for having done Pilates for two years as well as running, because otherwise, I would never have made that sprint.
When we get to Gate 4, there is no one at the gate check. I am about to lose hope, but arlier I said, Southwest does things a little differently from other airlines. Our fellow transferee, and apparently seasoned Southwest flier walks to the gate like she knows something I do not, and sure enough a Southwest employee comes up the gateway and invites us on board. Southwest had held the plane. Did I already say, I love Southwest?
Now, we did lose our early-bird seating, but after some pleading with apparently wild-eyed desperation, some folks shuffled around and relinquished their various seats so that the three of us could sit in a single row at the back of the plane. Being at the back certainly proved to be useful given we had not had a potty break between flights, and Auden had insisted on wearing underwear not pull-ups on the plane. So we settle in, and I thank the heavens above for Southwest, my generally well-behaved children (or at least their ability to be hypnotized by small portable screens), and mind-altering drugs. I am certain that nothing could phase me at this point.
I am a fairly seasoned traveler – not enough to have serious miles or upgrades, but I fly a few times a year. I have weathered all of the infamous joys of flying from jostling weather to rude staff, from being seated in the middle seat between large unwashed travelers to sitting behind squalling infants and little Damien toddlers. What I have never experienced, however, is sitting in front of a young evangelist afraid of flying who alternately prayed, preached, and testified in a resonant voice usually reserved for sermons in a cathedral. For three and a half hours. Without stopping. Did I mention she was young? Maybe 20ish. I share that bit because there are really no circumstances in which I would voluntarily subject myself to 210 minutes of sermonizing, but given any choice whatsoever in the matter, I would choose someone who had more experiences from which to weave and exemplify her story. By the time the flight landed, at least three people in the surrounding aisles begged her to speak more quietly. Her response: “I will not be silenced; I have been silent for too long.” It’s really no surprise at all that as we got off the plane, her co-seaters who had been head-phoned the duration, were now completely sloshed from the cocktails they had consumed.
Now this is an extremely long post that began with me suggesting that the more you know, the better you may be able to make decisions. I admonished in the beginning that you should never assume that you have all of the information. You never know if the person who grimaced at you which made you feel bad about your style choices for the day had actually had an ill-timed back spasm, or if the gentlemen on the phone calling to get you a great deal on new windows just lost his father. The backstory on people impacts their every decision and their actions. Memes abound on this topic.
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I admit, the evangelizing girl’s motivations completely eluded me, and her actions were frustrating enough that I had absolutely no desire to empathize and exonerate her. I chose to do my best to simply ignore her. And in this situation that was enough.
My husband is a programmer. Programming is at it’s essence problem-solving. Sometimes it is proactive – planning and creating a program to meet a need that has not yet been met. Other times it is reactive – investigating something that fails to work and tweaking the code until you get rid of the bug. My husband revels in the rational. The irrational that I and our children bring to our relationship and his world tries him everyday.
The rational is what you know. The more you know, the more you can make rational decisions and judgements. The irrational is what you do not know, what sometimes you cannot even possibly imagine. It is the bug in the system that you have not yet tracked down.
Even if you cannot take the time to investigate and determine the reasoning, please take time to consider that there always is more to know.