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Don’t bring up the past of a person who is trying to improve their future

Please, do not stop people from reaching a good place in life because of things they cannot take back. It is so painful.

—-

via poesy

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When I saw this posted on a tumblr site it certainly made me think about how often we remind people of their past as a comparison to the good place they may be at today.

For some reason we must feel like the comparison makes the achievement more significant.

For some reason we must feel like we have to show a ‘from there to here’ journey in order to emphasize how far we believe someone has come.

For some reason we must feel like … well … talking about the past in order to emphasize something in the present.

But why?

The person certainly knows all this already.

The person most likely has no desire to revisit the past.

The person certainly reflects on the energy and commitment it took to where they are today.

I am sure we do it with the best intentions. But maybe those intentions are misguided.

I never really thought much about this until I read the opening thought and now I cannot stop thinking about it.

“Look how far you’ve come”

“Remember when you did <insert something>?

Wow.

Realistically, those are pretty shitty things to say to someone who has already put in the work, the effort, the mental fortitude to get to the good place they are in the here & now.

Why can’t we just enjoy the present as it is?

Why can’t we just celebrate what exists in the here & now?

Why can’t we just be happy with the person they are today without having to reflect on who they may have been?

The more I think about this the crappier it sounds.

I know I do it.

I know I often feel like offering perspective is an easy way to showcase the extent of some change I see.

I know I do so with good intentions.

And maybe that is a good and effective thing to do … maybe 80% of the time. Okay. Maybe 90% of the time.

But maybe that means 10% of the time I, and we, should ignore perspective and simply highlight the beauty of what is. And, frankly, accept that what is has value in and of itself.

I say that because a person who is trying to improve their future wants to feel joy and not pain. Or maybe better said … doesn’t need to be reminded of pain to feel joy.

So. Here is a thought.

The next time you run into someone you know is moving on to something better and is working really hard to improve their future treat the moment, the interaction, as a new place you have never visited before and explore it with the wonder of exploration and discovery.

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“Each moment is a place you’ve never been.”

Mark Strand

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If you do this maybe you not only ignore the past but also will not confuse the moment with those silly semi-positive support-like platitudes like “keep going” or “the future you desire is now within your grasp.”

And maybe you help them reach a good place by simply enjoying the moment and enjoying who and what they are in that time and place.

All I know for sure is that having seen the opening quote and taking some time to think about it I will interact with someone who is trying to improve their future a little differently from this point on.

And I will certainly think long and hard before I bring up the past because, well, about the only thing it really does is bring up things left behind. I should assume if it has been left behind it is no longer needed.

—–

“We have to invent boundaries for clarity and sanity; and boundaries can produce problems when we forget that we’ve artificially created them.”

Donella Meadows

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“Nobody’s lives just fit together. Fitting together is something you work at. It’s something you make happen – because you love each other.”

Rainbow Rowell

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It is popular ‘wisdom’ to suggest “context matters.” Heck. I say it all the time. In retrospect I wish I discussed some nuance a bit more in my rush to get people to pay more attention to the uniqueness of one moment versus another.

Now. The problem we try and solve when stating context matters is to push back on simplistic replication. We use it against best practices and anything that could be construed as ‘using what has been successful in the past.” In doing that the other end of the pendulum swung around and, all of a sudden, we began suggesting doing everything new in every moment is the most effective thing to do. That is absurd. Variations, are specific variants, between contexts is more important than simply suggesting context matters.

This is important because systems with similar feedback structures produce similar dynamic behaviors. And this is important because while we speak of context mattering, it does and it doesn’t. Completely different contexts can generate the same, or similar, dynamics, therefore, simply because a context is different does not mean something done in the past – or something very similar to what has been done in the past – will not work within this context. In fact, it just may well work.

And this becomes important for a number of reasons, but let me begin with sanity. I believe we make something like 30,000 decisions a day. Asking everyone to assess the context so all 30000 decisions can be customized is absurd. The truth is that within the 30000 there are ‘our rituals’, our heuristics, our defaults and, well, our certainty and stability. Everyone’s are a bit different <albeit there will be general commonalities> so the trick is to match up the best replicable aspects to the individual, the business itself, the customer and ultimately, the world/society AND provide the space for emergent/contextual change and adaptation, big or small, to sync up to shift things slightly into the ‘better’ category.

That’s kind of the holy grail of impact as well as ‘best practice’ as well as value creation.

What that means is there is no plug ‘n play best practice, however, it is a mistake to not assess practices and borrow what is applicable, and replicable, to you.

Which brings me back to context. Your context will demand some variations to create your own replicable aspects. Assessing someone else’s best practices is not a bad thing, but blindly applying someone else’s best practice is stupid. That said. I applaud the intent. I do so because the intent is to find the replicable things which create a foundation for value (quality and efficiency). And, lets be clear, all viable successful businesses have a solid foundation of replicable activity.

Which leads me to “and.”

Let me explain. “Ands” are the connections within a system. In order to understand <as well as one can> a system one has to explore the mechanisms/things/connections that makes things happen – the “ands.”.  This begins by simply watching how the system behaves. And, yet, even this is tricky. “You think that because you understand ‘one’ that you must therefore understand ‘two’ because one and one make two. But you forget you must also understand ‘and’” (Meadows Thinking in Systems). It is in interconnection <the ‘ands’> which may actually make one and one equal something other than two. That makes most people’s heads explode, yet, it shouldn’t because it explains velocity, scale and a variety of other exponential growth/progress ideas. Similarly, if you grasp the concept, now you must also accept that, in this case, one and one maybe actually equate to something less than two.

Which leads me to resilience.

If you seek to understand a business’s resilience you have to understand the connections <complexity science suggests ‘fractals’>. I say that because resilience is a measure of a system’s ability to survive and persist within a dynamic environment. It has elasticity embedded within in, not constancy. Resilience is restorative from conditions encountered. Its stability, not just static. All that said. Obviously, there are always limits to resilience but elasticity is found in the conversations, the connections, the “ands” and the ability to juggle, and find the appropriate equilibrium, of replicable and emergent. All that to say, all situations demand some level of replicable aspects to have some value creation resilience.

Anyway.

Here are some truths about context.

Most of your business, over time, will find many situations/contexts will have similar characteristics, common challenges and repetitive resource needs. There will always be similarities just as there will be variations. Situational effectiveness will be defined just as much on how you assess similarities as you do variances. Ponder.

Many of your defaults, over time, offer some useful boundaries, often subconscious boundaries, with a downside creating some bounded rationality. Overall, these defaults serve to formalize the world as it is engaged, even formalizing complexity in some ways, with the intent to effectively navigate and release the positive aspects of complexity. Defaults have incredible power over people and systems <they actually control many connections>. In fact, I would guess 80%+ of our daily decisions ease into our default mode. This is not necessarily bad, but it certainly has consequences. Ponder.

Majority of your strategies, and strategic thinking, will become dependent upon constantly applying ongoing learning. In the past context was defined and strategies developed against that context assessment. In other words, strategies used and applied strategy against that learning. In the future (and hopefully in the present), strategies will constantly incorporate learning. In other words, organizations will need constant learning and have the ability to use that information to constantly reframe perspectives in which strategies exist. Ponder.

What this means is that the majority of context management is actually quest management.

“Quests are anti-default.”

Dr. Jason Fox

How to Lead a Quest, Dr. Jason Fox

Quests are journeys and they demand looking at a system in its entirety, and understand it well enough to dance with it. This is not easy. It’s hard because many of the interactions are unseen or buried within a complex weave of connections and conversations. This difficulty gets compounded by time and space. What I mean by that is most systems don’t create immediate consequences <sometimes months and years away>. That’s why cooperation matters. Everyone needs to be focused on working together to optimize the system as a whole and minimize the random interactions which can create unsolvable – within acceptable timeframes – variations. Quests cannot be completed by optimizing individual pieces and parts of the system. Successful quests demand maximizing the replicable aspects as well as the agility aspects. in other words, business people will need to optimize both replicable aspects and emergent aspects by effective assessments of contexts. Ponder.

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“This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time, no one knew what was coming.”

Haruki Murakami

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Well. “Looking back” <or ‘looking backwards’> is a timeless tradition in second guessing and seeking blame as well as even some forward thinking as we try and extrapolate from past learning some speculative future..

All that said;  “at that time no one knew what was coming.”

Yup.

Think about it.

You can be pessimistic <and be proven right … or wrong>.

You can be optimistic <and be proven right … or wrong>.

You can plan incessantly and smartly <and the plans can work perfectly … or go awry>.

You can make it up as you go <and it works perfectly … or all goes wrong>.

In general you are guessing, or, dealing in probabilities rather than certainties.

Sure.

You can make an educated guess and the odds may be higher or lower based on what you decide to do, but someone is lying if they say “I knew it was going to end up that way.”

They did not know.

They guessed <and possibly guessed well>.

Here is a ponderable factoid.

‘History teaches by analogy, not identity.’

<Hank Kissinger>

Analogy is not a blueprint of what will be. People tend to mistake a study of history, or a historical moment, for proof of what is to come. They are often sorely proven wrong.  And, in fact, those proven right have the benefit of going backwards and connecting dots <even when the connection is tenuous at best> to prove why they were right.

Hmmmm … once again. A reminder. “No one knew what was coming.” <corollary?: sure is easier to know what came>

Regardless <here is the entire thought from Kissinger>.

—

History teaches by analogy, not identity.

This means that the lessons of history are never automatic, that they can be apprehended only by a standard which admits the significance of a range of experience, that the answers we obtain will never be better than the questions we pose.

No profound conclusions were drawn in the natural sciences before the significance of sensory experience was admitted by what was essentially a moral act.

No significant conclusions are possible … without an awareness of the historical context. For societies exist in time more than in space. At any given moment a state is but a collection of individuals, as positivist scholars have never wearied of pointing out.

But it achieves identity through the consciousness of a common history. This is the only “experience” nations have, their only possibility of learning from themselves.

History is the memory of states. To be sure, states tend to be forgetful.

It is not often that nations learn from the past, even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it. For the lessons of historical experience, as of personal experience, are contingent.

They teach the consequences of certain actions, but they cannot force recognition of comparable situations. 

Henry Kissinger <Diplomacy>

—

What a powerful thought.

… teach the consequences of certain actions, but they cannot force recognition of comparable situations.

Once again: cannot force recognition of comparable situations.

I love it. So often we suggest ‘this has happened before’ and … well … yeah … kind of.

Maybe it is just ‘close’.

But close only counts with hand grenades <and horse shoes>.

Ultimately you are, well, simply assessing the echoes of history.

You may listen to the echoes of history, but until they walk in to your life you will not truly recognize who and what they are.

—

“I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and into our lives.”

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 —

Studying history is just like Dickens says.

You are inevitably sitting alone listening, listening to the echoes of the footsteps of those who have walked before and envisioning, from those echoes, who may be coming into your life.

That is it.

No more. No less.

In the end.

I believe all of us would probably like to have a better sense of how to plan for the future. To better understand the best and proper actions to take to maximize the future in some form or fashion. To be better at assessing probabilities so that cross rods type decisions become more ‘different paths’ rather than ‘crossroads.’

Most of us, trying to do the best we can, most often start by examining the past to assess actions which we believe are a reflection of things affecting the future. In other words, trying to understand consequences for our decisions yet to be made.

The intent is good … and true.

However. Misguided.

We should never confuse honest good intent with ‘what is right’ or even worse ‘what will be’. i.e., certainty. Intentions are simply that — a reflection of intent. Sometimes intent begets some outcome, sometimes not. And intent doesn’t guarantee a good outcome.

Anyway.

The echoes of footsteps are context. But they are simply echoes.

And as for the future?

We simply hear the echoes of footsteps but never meet their owners until they actually enter our lives. And, frankly, you cannot control all that ‘are coming by and by into our lives.’

Oh.

And at each point in time … no one knew what was coming.

A sobering Life truth for all to remember. It is a reminder that uncertainty looms ahead of every one of us.