Navigating a Whackadoodle World: Episode 28, or What to do when you come to the end of a story.
A Whackadoodle discussion about Indirect Effort, in which my student and I discuss what our efforts have achieved, and I do some venting.
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“Why did you call your last rule Indirect Effort when it’s really about understanding things in their context?”
“I believe that I answered that question in my second book when I decided to ask myself the same question. In fact, I believe that the character speaking for Indirect Effort yelled at me for naming her wrong, claiming that I only included her because thirteen is an unlucky number, and I needed one more rule to finish my book to make it a lucky fourteen. Turns out, she was one of my most important rules.”
“Wasn’t that character you when you where ten years old?”
“I think she was twelve, but she was already smarter than I am.”
“But she’s you. You created her.”
“Yes, I created her. I created her to be smarter than me. I let her point out that words like ‘Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as can and should be, and he will become what what he can and should be,’ may look great on a poster, but are meaningless without context.”
She started to giggle, “Didn’t she also point out that you had gotten the original quote wrong in your first book?”
“Yes she did,” I acknowledged. “Because in the years between my first book and my second book, I learned that even when you are quoting from a best selling author, you had better check their sources yourself because they might not have done so.”
She was still giggling. “Then she made you read the real quote and put the quote into context, taking you all the way back to the century when Goethe wrote it and the book he wrote it in.”
“Yes she did, and I’m glad she did. It was the best way I knew to explain why context is so important.”
“But why do you still call the rule Indirect Effort instead of renaming it Context?”
“Because the idea of context came to me indirectly. I’d ask my character a question then go wash the dishes. In the middle of rinsing, her answer would suddenly come to me, and I’d run back to my computer to type it down. In a weird way, it was effortless. It was sort of an indirect effort.”
“You talk about her as if she was real.”
“When writers write, all of their characters become real. I’ve made you real enough, haven’t I.”
“Sometime you make me say stupid stuff,” she felt obliged to point out.
“My apologizes. I only do it to move the story forward. If it’s any consolation, I have also allowed myself to say stupid stuff.”
She shrugged and asked, “So where are we going now? Indirect Effort is the last of your fourteen rules. We’ve cycled through them twice. Are we going to cycle through them again, or are you going to leave me on this page?”
“To be honest, I haven’t decided. I don’t think I can ever leave you. You’ve made my writing so much more enjoyable. You’re the main character in three of my books, and nearly all of my posts. I like what we have together, but I am not sure if I want to cycle though the rules again. If we haven’t explained them already, I’m not sure if we can explain them any better next time.”
She began to silently pack up her books. It was nice to see that her school actually sent her home with books. Many of the other kids that I tutor are sent home with worksheets and computer apps…I found my thoughts wandering…
I couldn’t help but think of the nonprofit afterschool program that I ran for over ten years. Those kids didn’t have computers at home, and they certainly didn’t have internet access. They would come into my room and ask to use one of my donated computers to do their homework. We had three. One of the computers would freeze without notice, but we were grateful the other two worked.
I thought back to that magic room, where after doing their homework, they were free to use all of my donated resources to follow their own interests. No planned activities, just lots of cool things to play with and learn from.
One kid (age 6) wanted to build a solar system, so I encouraged him to create all the planets and asteroids to display on our wall. I threw open my craft area. He worked on his chosen project for weeks and had all the planets and asteroids ready, but he refused to put them on the wall. I asked him why, and he said, “The sun is not big enough.” He was very into proportions. I got the largest piece of cardboard I could find and cut out a circle with a radius half his height. I also got out the donated paint supplies. The kids had a great deal of fun painting his new sun with reds, yellows and oranges. After the paint dried, we all put his galaxy on the wall with a great deal of ceremony and a great deal of measuring. Did I mention he was very into proportions?
I had another kid (age 7) interested in flags. I put a world map on the cork board, and over the next few weeks, he carefully researched and drew the flags of all 195 countries, then pined them to the map. Some of the other kids got interested in his activity, and planted a few flags of their own.
I remembered the day My Kids Took Me to Court, and the day they Demanded to Impeach their own president.
I remembered a girl (age 9) who loved to write picture books. Every day, after homework, I would ask her how many pages she needed. She’d watch as I took out the paper, folded it, stapled it, then handed it to her. It was a book of empty pages that she wanted to fill. Her books were so charming, and her drawings so funny, that I gave them a special section in our ‘library.’ Her books became the most popular books in our ‘library’. She inspired some of the other kids to write books of their own. Their books are still in that magic room that I will never be allowed in again. Someone will probably throw them away without knowing their worth, without understanding their context.
Not every kid needs a sports program…
“You are about to vent,” she interrupted my thoughts as she pulled her backpack over her shoulder. “Venting might feel good for you, but it doesn’t really help your reader.”
I took a deep breath, hoping for once to be heard, “The new CEO offered me my job back when they reopened after the pandemic, but he wanted me to do the same thing without a wall to put up a map, or a wall to measure the galaxy, or a library where kids could keep their own books. He had plans for my magic room, and they didn’t include me. He was going to break down the walls of a historic building and change the ‘Palama Way.’ If I wanted to accept his offer, I could run my afterschool program out on the Lani’s picknick tables with no walls, no library, no journals, no whiteboards, no craft or reading area, unless I wanted to carry them in and out each day from some uncertain storage like a turtle. His idea of an afterschool program was twelve picnic tables on a patio with enough room for thirty plus kids to run around and one adult to supervise. I wanted to run a great afterschool program, not monitor recess.”
“And all your skills at persuasion couldn’t wake his ‘dogmatic mind out of its intellectual slumber’ into accepting that you couldn’t run an effective after school program without a dedicated room. He is one of the twenty percent who are not persuadable, yada, yada, yada. Are you done venting now?” she asked drily.
I took another deep breath and said, “I think so. That felt good, so thank you.”
She stared at me. I could see without her speaking what she was thinking. “Should I come back next week?”
“Do you think venting is a kind of Indirect Effort?” I asked her suddenly.
“What? Am I now the teacher? I don’t even know what you mean by Indirect Effort.”
“Indirect effort,” I said again. “The fact that so much of what we get from life comes to us indirectly. So much of what we do and believe comes to us indirectly.”
“Let’s be honest,” she sat down abruptly. “You have a rule here that even you don’t know how to describe. But you still keep it. Why? Are you afraid of the number thirteen?”
“No!” I countered then took a breath. “I can explain it. In fact, you explained it last time better than I even could.”
“I did?” That made her sit back.
“Yes you did. Do you need me to quote you, or just send you a link?”
“A few quotes might be nice,” she said suddenly shy. “I’ve never been quoted before.”
I pulled out my iPad to oblige her. “How about this one,” I suggested after a few clicks. “It begins with you saying…
"I also found this other quote by Viktor Frankl. I think it's appropriate and would like to add it."
"By all means," I told her. She looked down at her cards, and continued reading.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, 1945
"Nice," I admitted. "Did you actually go out and read his book?"
"No, I just found this Goodreads website with a lot of his quotes," she confessed. "But do I think that I would like to read at least one of Viktor Frankl’s books. His thoughts are really deep, and he lived through so much. Anyway," she continued, while stashing the cards away. "You essentially say in rule fourteen that we can't change others, we can only change ourselves; however, the moment we change ourselves, our relationships and circumstances change indirectly."
"Sounds about right," I acknowledged.
"Okay," she took a deep breath. "So that brings us to part two of rule fourteen, and how you explain it in your second book, Turbulent Tides. In that book, you give us an actual technique for accomplishing part one of the rule; a tool for examining, even changing, perceptions and relationships. It all has to do with placing people and situations into context. When we put everything into context, we tend to indirectly change our feelings and actions regarding our circumstances."
Navigating a Whackadoodle World: Episode Fourteen (substack.com)
“I remember that episode,” she actually smiled. “I went on to tell you how well the technique worked because I was using the rest of the rules to put my problems into their context, and it was changing my relationship to my problems.”
“I thought that we had decided to stop calling them rules, and start calling them guideposts. Like the posts people set along rivers that say, ‘Warning: Rough Current Ahead.'”
“Sorry, you’ve call them rules so long, I keep forgetting.”
“Not to worry, I sometimes forget myself,” I assured her. We sat for a moment in contemplation, until I felt compelled to ask, “Do you think we have accomplished anything with our weekly episodes?”
“I suppose it depends on who’ve we reached,” came her immediate reply. “I know our episodes have helped me.”
“So I guess they have been a good thing.”
She had her backpack on her shoulders, but she wasn’t leaving. She just sat there silently waiting for my verdict. Should she come back next week? Do we write another cycle? “You know,” I said eventually. “We have a lot more to talk about than just our guideposts.”
She perked up immediately. “That’s right. In your first book about me, we talked about logic and logical fallacies.”
“And in my second book about you?”
“We talked about all kinds of stuff: history, civics, and how to stay afloat.” she looked up confused. “So do you want to stop talking about the guideposts?”
“No, the guideposts will always be there, and we will talk about them whenever we want, but we won’t limit ourselves to the whole one guidepost per week anymore. Next week, you can ask anything you want, and if I don’t have an answer, I will try to help you find one.”
“So you want me to come back next week?”
“Absolutely,” I assured her. “You always make my writing better.”
“You mean funer to read,” she laughed. “And don’t bother telling me that funer is not a real word. It’s a real word if I use it.”
“It’s as real as you are,” I acknowledged.
She stood up with confidence and headed towards the door, leaving me with a final warning, “Be careful what you wish for. Next week, I might ask you to explain what causes our congress to be so dysfunctional that it’s willing to shut the government down.”
I watched her pony tail bounce jauntily as she swung out the door. I smiled and began planning my answer.