"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony is if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." 

Somerset Maugham, 1941. As relevant and poignant today as 80 years ago.  

To which I would append,

Freedom means freedom and opportunity for all. And with freedom --indeed  making freedom possible--comes responsibility. 

A Trip of A Lifetime with My Son, John--As Recorded by Him--Too Precious Not to Share

 

Zen and the Art of Changing a Windshield Wiper

BY  JOHN PEPPER · PUBLISHED  JANUARY 6, 2022  · UPDATED  JANUARY 7, 2022

They tell us to enjoy the journey, not to focus solely on the destination. For too many years of my life, despite having heard that advice and even believing it, I wasn’t able to pull it off. I was always looking for more, for better, for what lay ahead. Unknowingly dismissing what was happening in the moment as not good enough or worthy of gratitude.

A few weeks ago, my 83-year old Dad and I took a 3-day road trip from Cincinnati to Vero Beach, Florida. Our tangible objective was to safely transport my mom’s 2000 VW Bug to its new home where my parents and our family gather at times during winter months. It wasn’t being used in Cincinnati, and instead of selling it or giving it away, we decided to make a journey out of it.

OK – so attempting to compare our trek in a red bug to Robert Pirsig’s epic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance might be a stretch. However, in the days leading up to our departure we nearly canceled our plans not less than three times. Who has time to sit in a car for 3 days? What about work, kids, commitments, and wouldn’t we see each other on the beach a few days later anyway? I knew I would end up doing all the driving… and also figured Dad would be asleep within minutes. But somehow we kept it on the books. Too often, when we face something that isn’t productive in the eyes of today’s fast-moving, success-at-all-costs society, it’s easy to fall into the trap of moving such distractions aside. This one would have been an easy discard; hire a guy to drive the bug to Florida, we all fly down a few days later, as originally scheduled, and voila, vacation begins. 

That’s not what happened.

On Sunday morning I woke early to catch the Dartmouth Coach from Hanover, NH to Boston. The bus plowed through fresh snow on I-89 and arrived at Logan airport on time. It takes a lot of weather to stop those buses from running. A few inches of snow and sleet and ice put a few cars off the side of the road but not the Dartmouth Coach.

The flight to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport was smooth until we landed just before 1pm and had to wait 40 minutes for the understaffed ground crew to get us parked at the gate. Another 30 minutes for the bags to get to the carousel.  And we were off.

Since I’m not Robert Pirsig, I should probably stop here. In fact, our in-the-moment pictures tell the story more eloquently than I ever could… pictures really are worth 1,000 words and often more. I’ll give it a shot anyway.

Our first stop was a Starbucks in Walton, KY. Our next stop was a Starbucks in London, KY. The only reason these are noteworthy is because there are Starbucks in towns most of us have never even heard of. It seems like yesterday that I would drive up to Burlington, VT – 80 miles from our old home in Norwich – to get a cup of Starbucks brew. Getting to a Starbucks on a road trip meant deviating from your normal route. Today, it’s almost like McDonalds. All drivethrus. And even though the lines are devastatingly long and slow, people seem to keep sitting in them for 20 minutes or more to get their special blended beverage.

I grew up on Frisch’s Big Boys, so that was our first real stop. It didn’t disappoint. It was exactly as I remembered – that was also in London, KY.

Soon after we crossed into Tennessee. I rowed at Oak Ridge while on the Crew team in high school. I don’t think I’ve been to Tennessee since. It was dark so we didn’t see much. As we passed by Knoxville and night had settled in, we both agreed were it not for our goal of making it to my sister’s home about an hour outside of Ashville, NC, we would have stopped for the night at that point. Finally around 9pm we pulled into their small farm in the small town of Cullowhee, NC – home of Western Carolina University. 

After a good night’s sleep, Dad getting to catch up with 2 of the youngest of his 10 grandchildren (who went to school late to spend time with him), we were on our way again. Today we decided to avoid the interstates (and the Starbucks) and take the scenic route. We were in no hurry after all. Nobody was waiting for us on the other end.

Our first stop was in Cashiers, NC where we found a cozy little coffee shop called, ironically, Bucks. We continued on into South Carolina and made our way towards Augusta, Georgia where we thought we’d do a quick drop-in on the Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters. Going from beautiful rural scenery to a sea of fast food chains on an endless slab of concrete was disconcerting on its own, but seeing that the golf course was completely shut off from viewing let alone entry was another eye opener. We did a quick tour around the edges hoping to find a break in the vinyl that covered the perimeter fences before giving up and moving on. We won’t try that again.

We skirted the border of SC and GA for the next few hours, stopping in Estill, SC for gas. For the evening we stopped at a beautiful hotel in Savannah called Perry Lane. 

We were defaulting to the fancier restaurant in the hotel until Dad spied a dive bar across the street and wanted to check it out. The signs on the entry door made me almost certain that Dad would not want to continue on, but he opened the door undeterred. I took off my button-down shirt leaving my t-shirt to make sure we didn’t stand out too much. The food was good, the service super friendly, and I’m not sure they would have allowed us to wear masks if we had wanted to. Neither of us got Covid (we tested every few days in Florida) – I can imagine it would be in just such a place one would catch Covid. (In the weeks that have passed since, of course, it turns out everyone can get Covid anywhere, anytime, masked or unmasked.)

The final stretch on Tuesday started in heavy rain before sunrise. That’s when we figured out the hard way that the proving-to-be trusty 2000 VW bug did not have working windshield wipers. They went back and forth just fine, but nothing really happened to the water and streaks on the windshield.

I stopped at a Love’s Truck Stop just outside of Savannah, measured the wipers we had, and went in and purchased slightly smaller ones so that the slapping sound we were never going to get used to might lessen just a bit. Changing a windshield wiper is pretty straightforward, but you still need to know just a little bit about it to not look like a complete incompetent. So I pulled up a quick YouTube video while waiting in line to purchase the blades.

When I got back to the car it was still raining, but I was able to fairly quickly install the new wipers. I was quietly impressed with myself, and I realize how pathetic that sounds to many. But better than that, my Dad was there staring at me from the passenger seat literally blown away at my automotive maintenance and repair expertise. Not only did he take a picture, but he proceeded to bring it up with other family members on many occasions in the days that followed, perhaps to provide evidence that he had raised a good son. Who knew that changing windshield wipers at a Truck Stop in Georgia could help my personal stock increase so fast and quickly?!

We did resume our Starbucks stops for the 6 hours that remained of our drive. And we caved and I got Dad to try Chick-Fil-A for the first time. 

Sidebar: Ironically today – literally – Chick-Fil-A opened their first location in the city of Boston in our old Copley Square Boloco location… bittersweet. There’s nothing wrong with the Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwich, but there’s nothing super special about it either. It’s always good. It’s always the same. It never makes me feel like shit, and I guess that’s a big win for fast food. The Chick-Fil-A founding family’s anti-gay marriage stance really upset Mayor Menino ten years ago and he essentially blocked them from opening in the city… but in the end, it’s not morals or politics that wins. It’s a decent chicken sandwich with a pickle on top and a lot of marketing to offset the controversies that have been relegated to many years ago (like way back in 2019).

We arrived in Vero Beach with another 24 hours to ourselves before Mom and her sister helen showed up and a few days later my brothers and their families. It was a wonderful time to be with family over the holidays, but the time in the car with my Dad from Cinci to Vero will never be forgotten.  We talked about everything and nothing, we laughed, we solved problems the world over, we got a little tense on some past Boloco challenges where he and I disagreed, we laughed more. I don’t think he ever slept while we drove, and that’s a first. And I never got tired. We tried to listen to a few podcasts and music, but realized quickly we were better off just the two of us either in silence or speaking or listening. It was perfect.

Knowing the chances were slim we’d do something like that again, I came up with a great idea the other day and ran it by him. “Dad, I’ve got to do something with this Airstream. I’ll drive to Cinci, pick you up, and let’s do it all over again.” He was busy doing something and had to go. My 1981 Airstream Excella – the RV type, not the trailer type – is getting destroyed up here in New England. At least if it was in Florida I would have thousands of buyers if I chose to sell it. No brainer, right? Life is short. Or maybe not.

When I asked him about it this morning, he said “that might be problematic. Why would we drive that thing down there when we could just fly?”  I smiled. We don’t change easily. 

But maybe after he reads this he’ll agree that we have another trip in us. Maybe.

Ethical Leadership Based on Principled Pluralism

 In a searing column by Thomas Friedman titled Have We Reshaped Middle East Politics or Started to Mimic It?,  Friedman asserts that we in America are displaying the sort of political tribalism that we once tried to quell.  Middle Easterners may call their big tribes “Shiites” and “Sunnis”, More and more, Americans call theirs “Democrats” and “Republicans.”  Or "vaccers" or "anti-vaccers". I hardly need to extend the schisms which separate us. 

Tellingly, Friedman identifies an exception to this divisive tribalism--the military.  There is no institution in American life that has worked harder than the military, though admittedly imperfectly and often belatedly,  to inoculate America from the virus of tribalism, while enriching and exemplifying an ethic of pluralism.  Friedman has observed this on his trips to the Middle East.  Colin Powell observed the same thing decades ago.  Men and women, different in their ethnicities and race, committed to achieve a common worthy goal  which they view as. bigger than themselves.

 

Friedman goes on to observe  “Leadership matters; the American population has diversity similar to the U.S.’ military but the ethic of pluralism and teamwork shown by many of our men and women in uniform reduces the tribal divisions within the armed forces.  It’s not perfect, but it’s real.  Ethical leadership based on principled pluralism matters.  That is why our military is our last great carrier of pluralism at a time when more and more civilian politicians are opting for cheap tribalism.”

 

This brings me to a broader observation on the importance of leadership and an organizational Purpose viewed by its members as deserving and requiring their very best efforts.   Procter & Gamble and a few other organizations like it --organizations pursuing shared, Purposeful goals --can be and for the most part are repositories and exemplars of ethical leadership based on principled pluralism. 

Reminder Thoughts for 2022

 I just finished reading a mind-opening book, Think Again by Adam Grant.  It got me thinking again on many subjects. Here I will highlight a few:

 

1.     Choose “task conflict”; not "relationship conflict".  To avoid that it’s essential we develop trust-based relationships.  We have to know one another.   Find common bonds.  That’s the place to start.  I haven’t done that as well as I should have, looking back, in some instances.  This doesn’t mean we just surround ourselves with “agreeable people.” 

 

 It is vital to avoid defend-attack spirals.  Need to focus on the substance of the disagreement. 

 

2.     The most likely person to change your point of view is you.  That’s most likely to happen when you’re asking questions, raising things you would like to jointly consider with another person. 

 

It’s important to view argument not as a war but as a choreograph, a dance. 

 

It’s vital to have these conversations in person.

 

3.  The importance of influential listening.  Approaching the other person with a confident humility and appropriate sense of doubt. 

 

 I like what E.M. Forster wrote, “How can I tell what I think till I see what I say.”  As one of his biographers wrote:  “To speak with him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest and best self.”

 

4.     We need to avoid the binary bias.  On almost every issue, we act like there are just two sides:  believers and non-believers.  This applies to abortion, gun regulations, immigration.  We should come to recognize complexity as a sign of credibility.

 

5.     One of the best ways to learn is to teach.

 

6.     There is no way of overestimating the importance of revising our drafts and skills to achieve deep learning.

 

7.     In a study distinguishing high performance teams, the most important differentiator wasn’t who was on the team or even how meaningful their work was.  What mattered most was psychological safety.  That’s not a matter of relaxing standards or making people comfortable or being nice and agreeable or giving unconditional praise.  It grew from a climate of respect, trust and openness in which people can raise concerns and make suggestions without fear of reprisal.  It’s the foundation of a learning culture.  

These are the same characteristics I’ve always attached to having a positive “smell of the place.” 

 Creating psychological safety starts with modeling the values we want to promote, identifying and praising others who exemplify them, and building a coalition of colleagues who are committed to making the change.

 

8.     Admitting one’s own imperfections out loud normalizes vulnerability and makes teams more comfortable opening up about their own struggles.  It takes confident humility to admit that we are a work in progress.

 

9.     We have to be wary of falling victim to what psychologists call identity foreclosure.  I have had that for better and, yes, in some ways for worse throughout my life.  I probably still do now.

 

10.  Pursuing happiness for its own sake is a blind alley.  As John Stuart Mill wrote, “Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of the others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end.  Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way.”  

 I have lived my life in accord with this counsel:  “At work and in life, the best we can do is plan for what we want to learn and contribute over the next year or two and stay open to what might come next.”  Adapting an analogy from E.L. Doctorow, writing out a plan for your life “is like driving at night in a fog.  You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

 

Balancing "Real Politic" and Moral Vision as Guides to Foreign Affairs

 There are very few books which I have read that provide more intellectual stimulation and challenge than Barry Gewen’s The Inevitability of Tragedy:  Henry Kissinger and His World.  In a carefully researched and deeply insightful manner, Gewen develops the historical foundation for Kissinger’s “Real Politic” approach to diplomacy and positions it in the context of the history which Kissinger lived, beginning with the formative period of the demise of the Weimar government (showing that democracy does not inevitably win versus a populist tyrant Hitler).  Then on through the overthrow of Allende in Chile, the Cold War, Vietnam and so on.  He grounds Kissinger’s beliefs in the prior work of Hans Morgenthau, Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss. 

 

Foundational to Kissinger’s philosophy of foreign affairs is the conviction that power and power relationships among nations are of inexorable importance.  Discount them at your own peril.  Allow unbridled idealism, manifest for example in the Wilsonian school of diplomacy; or allow an unfettered application of moralism to drive diplomatic decisions and you’re on your way to pernicious outcomes.  Witness the belief, which I shared for many years,  that the demise of the Soviet Union would lead to the adoption of some form of democracy, even if one different from the U.S., in the previous Soviet Union.  Or, similarly, my belief that the economic development of China would lead to greater democratization. 

 

The recognition of power and the irreducible importance of national interests, formed through history and individual circumstances (e.g. the historic need for control and security in China; the exceptional circumstance of the U.S. being protected by two oceans, having a virtually unlimited expanse of land to expand into, and having friendly neighbors to the north and south)—realities like these must be recognized in the formation of any rational, effective diplomatic policy.

 

We have to be willing and able to view the world as other major powers do, with open eyes and understanding, even as we pursue different values and interests.  For example, it’s entirely appropriate and indeed inevitable that the U.S. will advance the belief in the importance of individual freedom and human rights; but to make this the ultimate litmus test to decide what countries we will work with and how we will do it would be a terrible mistake.  We didn’t do this as we allied with the Soviet Union to combat Nazi Germany because we knew that doing so was in the national interest of the U.S. and the entire world as we could conceive of what would be in our interest.  Similarly today, with regard to our relationships with China, we have every right to advance the importance of human rights but it will be a fool’s errand if we make the top priority of our diplomacy to be changing the way that China operates today with regard to all human rights.  We need to recognize that change takes time and that our overall relationships with China must be based on a rational, pragmatic determination of what will be in the interests of the U.S. and the world,  for example, one that deals with the reality of climate change and the need to avoid nuclear destruction. 

 

Having said all this, he flaw I see in a tightly drawn Real Politik approach to diplomacy is that it itself is too messianic.  By that I mean, it excludes something that Kissinger himself often invokes, and that is the importance of wisdom and intuition.  It took wisdom and intuition to conceive and advance the Marshall Plan.  It might have been argued, incorrectly as it turns out, that this expenditure was not strictly speaking in accord with maximizing America’s national interest. 

 

The creation of the European Community was another act of intuition and foresight.  Those that argued, as many did, that this was contrary to the historical enmity which existed between Germany and France would have missed this opportunity and the elimination of the threat of war that it has enabled.

 

I am reinforced in reading this book that we must hold fast in our commitment to what I regard as universal truths:  the dignity of individual life, the importance of seeking truth, the humility that arises from knowing we will never reach perfection and that we can and must continue to learn from personal relationships founded on mutual empathy, understanding and the commitment to help one another in this passage of life. 

 

It also reinforces the belief I’ve always had about Procter & Gamble and any great institution and that is our responsibility to sustain it for the future in accord with the values and principles which we believe to be correct without ever losing sight of what we need to do, practically, to achieve this outcome of sustainability.

 

Being Patient With One Another

 

 “Being patient with one another.  Being kind.”

 

This reflection hit me as I think about things I need to do better in 2022.

I have to learn and be reminded of the need to be patient with other people. To be kind.

I have to recognize that we all have our quirks and habits which we observe and feel to one degree or another:  “It shouldn’t be this way.  I wish you weren’t doing that.”  There can be times when such a feeling or observation requires us to say something to the other person.  That would be true if we thought that it was perfectly clear it would be to their significant benefit.  But it may not be.  We need to consider that it may be something they’re doing because it represents happiness or brings them satisfaction on their own terms.

 

I pause and reflect.  I have habits or quirks that it would not be unreasonable for another person to look at and say, “That’s not the best use of his time.  I think he should be doing something differently.”  And perhaps I should.  But maybe, it’s something I’m drawing satisfaction from on my terms which the other person, maybe even a family member, doesn’t appreciate.

 

It could be something as simple as my taking the time to dictate this thought and my assistants' time to record it. It may be that I’m watching a movie for the third or fourth time.  Who knows? 

 

The point is this.  I must be conscious of a person’s doing something that may turn me off and be willing to pause.  Is this something that represents their gaining satisfaction on their own terms which I don't fully understand?  I have learned again and again, this can be precisely the case--which will make it a time when my response should simply be--"be patient". 

 

The Joy of Reading and Challenge of Good Writing--Luminous Thoughts from George Saunders

 A Swim in A Pond In The Rain, by George Saunders.

 

I found this a humbling and mind-opening book.  Humbling in realizing even more that I should have spent more time editing everything I have written.  Honing every sentence, deleting the extraneous and the expected.  It was humbling, too, in the intricacy of the Russian short stories which Saunders analyzes.  There is so much more to these stories by Chekhov and Tolstoy and Gogol than I appreciated on the first reading Saunders loved writing this book; that is clear.  He loves reading, too.  Don’t we all?  We write, we read, because we love doing it.  That is how I feel even as I read more slowly, forget more of what I read and write more verbosely.  

 

Saunders practices good writing in this book with great care.  His ability to do that leaps off the page again and again.  “The focus of my artistic life has been trying to learn to write emotionally moving stories that a reader feels compelled to finish.  I consider myself more vaudevillian than scholar.”

 

I identify with his assertion that there is a “vast underground network for goodness in the world”.

 

 He identifies in the book clubs he has known and participated in:  “a web of people who put reading at the center of their lives because they’d often experience that reading makes them more expansive, generous people and makes their lives more interesting.”  That says it.  No more, no less.

 

A new perspective I emerge with: “a story is a linear, temporal phenomenon.  It proceeds, and charms us (or it doesn’t), a line at a time.  We have to keep being pulled into a story in order of it to do anything to us.”

 

Saunders follows in Einstein’s footsteps:  “No worthy problem is ever solved in a plane of its original conception.” 

 

 I believe Saunders is right in writing, “all art begins in that instance of intuitive preference.”  The artist just comes to like it better that way, for reasons he couldn’t articulate, and before he had the time or inclination to articulate them.  It just feels right.  It is appropriate.”  When Saunders is writing well, he says, “There is almost no intellectual/analytical thinking going on.”  He is trying different orders of words, looking for the perfect sentence, but mostly the artist “tweaks that which he has already done.  There are those moments when we sit before a blank page, but mostly we are adjusting what is already there.  A story is frank, intimate conversation between equals.  We keep reading it because we continue to feel respected by the writer. 

 

When it comes to Saunders universal laws of fiction—“Be specific!  Honor efficiency!, always be escalating.  That is all a story is really:  a continuing system of escalation.”

 

What will keep a reader reading?  The only method, Saunders asserts “is to read what we have written on the assumption that our reader reads pretty much the way we do.  What bores us will bore her.  What gives us a little burst of pleasure will light her up, too.” 

 

He suggests reading the prose in front of us, the prose we have already read a million times, as if it is new to us.  How do we react?  In writing fiction, “we are in conversation with our reader, but with this great advantage:  we get to improve the conversation over and over with every pass.  We get to ‘be there’ more attentively.”

 

Saunders distinguishes those talented writers who go on to publish from those who don’t.  “First, a holiness to revise.  Second, the extent to which the writer has learned to make causality.”  That may not seem sexy, Saunders writes, but it is the hardest thing to learn.  “It doesn’t come naturally, but a story is a series of things that happen in sequence, in which we can discern a pattern of causality.”  “Causality is to the writer what melody is to the songwriter:  a superpower that the audience feels as the crux of the matter; the thing that audience actually shows up for.”

 

Of all the short stories, I found Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov and Saunders’ comments on it and Chekhov to be the most mind-opening. The story is very short, only ten pages.  It is a complex, insightful and ironic story.  It appears to be asking “is it right to seek happiness, knowing that it is ephemeral and he cannot have much of it at all.  His life can be lived for pleasure or duty.  How much belief is too much?  Is life a burden or a joy?”

 

The story cautions against being too judgmental.  Too fixed in our views.  It encourages open-mindedness, for seeing two sides of questions.  “Every human position has a problem with it.  Believed in too much, it slides into error.  It is not that no position is correct; it is that no position is correct for long” (or I would say guaranteed to be correct forever).  “We are perpetually slipping out of absolute virtue and failing to notice, blinded by our desire to settle in—to finally stop fretting about things and relax forever and just be correct; to find an agenda and stick with it.”

 

Chekhov was open to criticism on this point.  Tolstoy accused him of having a “very good heart, but thus far it does not seem to have any very definite attitude toward life.”  But this quality, Saunders avers, is what we love him for now.  In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious).

 

Through Chekhov’s short life, he lived to be only 44, he seemed glad to be alive, he tried to be kind.  “His feeling of fondness for the world takes the form, in his stories, of a constant state of reexamination.  Reconsideration is hard; it takes courage.  We have to deny ourselves the comfort of always being a certain person, one who arrived at an answer some time ago that has never had any reason to doubt it.  In other words, we have to stay open in the face of actual grinding, terrifying life.”  And I would add,  new emerging facts.

 

Back to the joy and satisfaction from reading and writing.  “These days, it is easy to feel that we have fallen out of connection with one another and with the earth and with reason and with love.  I mean:  we have.  But to read, to write, is that we still believe in, at least the possibility of connection.”

 

At the end, Saunders calls on himself to address the question:  How are we altered by reading?  He gave it a try: 

 

 “I’m reminded that my mind is not the only mind.  

 

I feel an increased confidence in my ability to imagine the experiences of other people and accept these as valid.

 

I feel I exist on a continuum with other people:  what is in them is in me and vice versa.

 

My capacity for language is reenergized.  My internal language, the language in which I think, gets richer, more specific and adroit.  I find myself liking the world more, taking more loving notice of it.

 

I feel lucky to be here and more aware that someday I won’t be.  

 

I feel more aware of the things of the world and more interested in them.

 

That is all pretty good,” Saunders concludes.

 

That is one fine summary.