Guidepost Six: The Power of Process and Growth (Aka Episode 50)

A Whackadoodle lesson in which my student and I come to an understanding about a process for setting boundaries called three-strikes-you-start-paying; not in money or blood, just in a little sweat.

Photo by Dmitry Grigoriev on Unsplash

“Whacha dooin’?” She’d snuck up behind me, and I jumped.

“I hate when you do that,” I snapped.

“Too bad,” she laughed and moved around the table to toss her backpack on the table. “I think it’s funny when you jump.”

“Funny is as funny does.”

“Who said that?”

“Me, just now. You’re twenty minutes late, so I got started on my own,” I said grimly and went back to my reading.

She sat for a while before asking, “How can you start tutoring me without me?”

“I can decide how to start the lesson,” I replied then turned the book around for her to read the page I was on:

In the end, it is important to remember that 
we cannot become what we need to be 
by remaining what we are.
                           Max Depree, Leadership is an Art 

Rule (Guidepost) Seven: 
Rivers carve canyons one rock at a time.
The Power of Process and Growth

A wise old man spent each morning walking along the river’s edge. Every few feet, he would stoop down, scoop up some water, and then softly pour the contents of his hand onto a rock near the shore. Curious at the old man’s odd behavior, a youth rowed over to the man one day and asked what he was doing. 

“I’m saving lives,” the old man answered. “The wind blows many living things into the river and unless they can dry their wings they will die."

“This river goes on forever,” the young man laughed. “There must be a thousand insects falling into it every time you catch a breath. You can’t think that you’re making a difference.” 

In answer, the old man simply stooped down and scooped a small honeybee into his hand. Gently, he placed the honeybee on a warm, dry stone. “I just made a difference to that life, didn’t I?”

The only significant differences that humans have ever made on this planet, have always begun with the small, consistent efforts of an individual who is willing to work as long as it takes to make that difference.

“Okay,” she sighed after glancing a the page. “I’m sorry I was late. So what’s the point of your lesson?”

“It’s about how small mistakes made every day, without accountability, can lead to resentment, and that resentment held back can lead to anger. Small things matter. Small thinks build up. Small things can carve beautiful canyons over time. Small things can also explode like volcanos.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Why do I not believe you?” I held my hand up to forestall her answer, “I know. I know. It might be because it keeps happening. You always say you’re sorry, and yet it keeps happening; which means, to my thinking, you aren’t really sorry. It actually makes me think that sorry is just a word you toss around to get yourself out of trouble, and nobody has actually taught you what sorry means. And don’t tell me that you couldn’t have let me know you were running late again because I know how far that iPhone gets from your face.”

“You really are angry,” she concluded at last. “I didn’t realize it was so important to you.”

“Why wouldn’t my time be important to me?” I replied with a final glare, then took a deep breath and added. “But I’m not as angry as you think. While I’ve been sitting here waiting, it has occurred to me that I talk a big game about how to delegate and how to set boundaries, but I rarely set any of my own. I was taught at a young age to always play nice, and my choleric personality makes me disinclined to delegate. That is why for all these years, I’ve just let your disrespect of my time go unmentioned, and I never hold you to account.”

“So?” she asked nervously. “You want to start holding me to account?”

“I think I might just be exercising an unused muscle. Do you remember how three strikes works?”

“Yeah.”

“Prove it.”

“Strike one, you tell me that something is not acceptable. Strike two, you remind me of my first strike, and let me know the consequences if I do it again. Third strike, you enforce and I accept the consequences.”

“Good,” I nodded. “Consider this your second strike. Now, it’s time for us to decide upon the consequences of you doing it again.”

“What do you mean by consequences?”

“The thing that I can and will make happen if you are late without warning me again.”

“What!? You gonna start punishing me when I’m late?”

“If you’re late without warning me with a phone call, yes. I call that being respectful of another person’s time.”

“So how you gonna punish me?”

“That’s what we have to decide.”

“You’re not gonna stop tutoring me! I have finals coming up.”

“That will be up to you. Will you accept my boundary? Will you accept the consequences of your actions?”

“Depends on what the consequences are.'“ she admitted.

“What do you suggest they be?”

She didn’t take much time to answer. “Why don’t you just charge me from the time I was supposed to get here, rather than from the time I arrive? Then your time isn’t wasted,” she shrugged. “You’ll just get paid more.”

I couldn’t help but snort out loud. “That just punishes your father. It doesn’t teach you anything.”

“How so?”

“Who pays me to tutor you?”

“Oh,” she said looking down.

“No, accountability must be between you and me.” A number of ideas ran through my head, but none felt right until I glanced outside and remembered my jungle of a yard. The leaves from the last few wind storms laid like a carpet on the lawn. “How about this,” I offered. “From now on, I will keep a record of the minutes you keep me waiting, and you will owe me those minutes in yard work before that tutoring session.”

“You want me to clean your yard!?”

“No, I want you to understand the value of time, and how rude it is when you waste someone else’s. If you stop being late and disrespecting my time, you will never set foot my yard. If you continue acting as you have, my yard and I will start looking forward to your being late instead of getting irritated by it. Sound fair?”

She looked out at my yard. I could see her counting the weeds and leaves, judging the fairness. “Did you want me to start now?”

“No, it would be wrong for me to force consequences upon you without warning you before hand. This agreement would start from now on. So, do you think it’s fair?”

She nodded slowly, “It seems fair.”

“Good, let’s shake on it,” I held out my hand, and we shook. “Now, show me what you have today.”

We worked on her homework for a little over an hour, and she was packing up when she asked, “Do you really think that I get away with things because of my Dad’s money?”

“I think that people with money, influence, and power can get away with a lot more than people without money, influence, or power,” I answered. “But, I haven’t actually thought to include you in either group…”

She looked up from reading, “I like where it’s going, but I don’t know why you wrote about me as if I were a stupid spoiled brat who keeps arriving late.”

“Somebody had to do something wrong in order to introduce the whole concept of setting boundaries,” I explained.

“So you decided that I should be the bad guy. Figures. Why haven’t you posted it yet?”

“Because I’m sort of stuck,” I confessed. “I was trying to transition into a more extreme version of what happens when people fail to set and keep boundaries. I was thinking about that ‘certain citizen’ whose name you refuse to use. How his father protected him his whole life. Found a way to keep him out of Vietnam. Bank rolled him whenever he went bankrupt. How even now, he keeps managing to avoid accountability. And he’s proud of it. He actually thinks that rigging the system for his own benefit makes him smarter than the rest of us.”

“I would have transitioned to what’s happening in Israel,” she informed me. “We keep giving them unconditional military support, even though we don’t approve of how their government is handling Gaza. I mean, isn’t providing conditions kind of like setting boundaries?”

“I would say that it’s exactly like setting boundaries.”

“So why do you think people don’t?”

“Don’t set boundaries?” I asked. She nodded, so I added, “I think it has something to do with social conditioning.”

“Huh?”

“We are all so conditioned by the cultures in which we live. What we find acceptable and what we don’t. Conditioning is a process. Unquestioned ideas repeated over and over by the people around us until we believe without question. In some cultures, women must dress in burkas that cover every part of their bodies. In other cultures, women go topless their entire lives. In America, women are allowed to wear sport bras, but topless is considered indecent. It’s all a part of our conditioning.”

“What has that to do with setting boundaries?”

“I’m not really sure, and that is why I sort of got stuck. I’ve been thinking about how some people have been conditioned to accept leaders who lie, violence as a political option, that voting is rigged, that slim means healthy, and that their beliefs are the only right ones. They see something on social media, and they don’t question it. I mean, how does one set boundaries on that? How does one break through the process of social conditioning?”

“I know why you’re stuck,” she sat back with a grin. “You don’t like asking questions when you can’t provide an answer, but you’ve already did provide the answer.”

It was my turn to say, “What?”

“It’s right there in what you wrote before, ‘Accountability must be between you and me.’ Accountability goes both ways, right? I set my boundaries, and I hold people accountable. Everything else is beyond my control.”

“In other words, ‘I worry too much?’” I laughed.

“In other words, it’s time to post this article,” she declared, and posted it.