I’ve thought and talked a lot recently about ‘considerateness’, not just in the soft interpersonal way the word implies, but in terms of literally considering things. Of being thoughtful in decisions, being intentional with choices. There is of course a lot to be said about the value and goodness of spontaneity and action, but well, I haven’t been thinking about that. 

In martial arts

In almost all martial arts one of the first things you train without knowing about it is to make the fight or flight instinct a decision, rather than a panic response. When you’re faced with a scary situation, if you’re untrained, you’re likely to go into an adrenaline-fuelled state and end up just doing something: fight, flee, or sometimes unfortunately, freeze. 

But to panic is almost never the best thing to do. In an ideal world you’d stop time and assess the situation (well actually in an ideal world you’d not be fighting at all but that doesn’t help make my point).

The best thing to do when a fight is about to start is to run. Run away as fast as you can. But, which way should you run? Are you likely to be faster or slower than the aggressor? How far are you going to have to run so you can pace yourself? If you’re slower, is there something you can do to slow them down? Is there someone near by who could help? Should you scream and run or would that make things worse? Is running the best thing to do at all? etc. 

In those moments there is no time to think. So in martial arts, at least for self defense, you train those instincts. You practice so that the panic response doesn’t take over and instead your brain can work on what to do next, rather than just saying, ‘ahhhhhhhhhhh’.

For the briefest of moments you need to not do something, instead, just stand there. 

That’s quite a bad example because really the last thing you should do in a fight is literally stand there, but it highlights the value of being intentional, especially in difficult situations.

You can apply the same logic to most any difficult situation, did you cut yourself while cooking? Are you feeling exhausted after work? Did your friend cancel plans on you again? Did you fall off your bike? Did something awful happen?

Don’t just do something, stand there. 

Take a few moments to think about the situation, put yourself in someone else’s shoes, consider what else might be affecting the situation, whatever. Be intentional with your next steps. 

Standing there for someone else

Oftentimes not just doing something, but in fact standing there, isn’t only good for you but for other people too. Recently a friend of mine had something awful happen. It turned them around and broke them down. When they were talking about it they mentioned God’s plan, and all the things they blamed themselves for, and how hard it has been. 

Do I believe in God’s plan? No. Do I think my friend or God was to blame for what happened? Definitely not. Do I know how hard it has been for them? No. But that doesn’t matter, what right do I have to discount their feelings or their experience? Should I assume I know what’s best and do something? No. Instead I listened, I hugged them, and I reassured them that there was hope, and that they’d be okay. There was nothing more to be done. 

One of the best things you can do for another person is to listen. To let them talk and talk and get whatever is on their mind out of it.

Don’t just do something, stand there. 

This phrase ‘don’t just do something, stand there’ is one I first heard and then stole from John Green, in a  video essay on the topic which is quite lovely but I’ve had similar thoughts and beliefs along this line for a decade or so. That if you stop and think about something you can make better, more considered decisions, based out of values and beliefs, not out of instinct or your environment.

The ‘How I Met Your Mother’ philosophy

There’s a scene in the final season of How I Met Your Mother that I love very much. The titular mother is in her apartment with ‘the naked man’ (if you don’t know what that means watch season 4 episodes 9 and season 9 episode 16 for the episode I’m talking about).

He asks her something along the lines of, ‘If you could do anything, what would you want to do with your life?’ And she says, ‘I want to end world poverty.’ And he says, ‘great. Then make every decision you make from here on out in service of that.’ And she does. And she changes her life. 

Now this is a fiction of course, for her, getting an economics degree and changing her entire focus was as simple as a few lines in a script, but I like the lesson. If you know what you want to do, if you know what you want to achieve, you can orient yourself so the decisions you make are in service of that aim. And you don’t even need to know what you want.  A lot of people don’t know what they want, you just need to know what’s important to you.

Parallels in building things 

When you’re building something, be it a product, a website, or a a blog, there is a good practice to follow before you actually start working.

First, you want to understand your vision, what you want the world to look like when you’re done. Then your target audience, the problems you want to solve or address, and your goals. In product development, like in the HIMYM example, the why needs to come before the what. 

So if you don’t know what you want to do, roll it back, what problem do you want to solve? Or, if you don’t know that either, what is most important to you? What do you value the most? Most people, if pressed, can figure that out.

Determine your values and make the decisions that follow in service of them. Use them like a compass to direct you. When you’re making decisions grounded in what you value, you can be more sure of the decisions you’re making. 

Value in values

This is a concept I find the modern world is forgetting. One of the things religions and historical ‘codes of honour’ do well is they give people a base. They gave people values or ideals to adhere to, to chase, or at least to use as a wall to bounce ideas off of. They gave people a standard to uphold. This did the very helpful thing of relieving cognitive load by limiting your options, it meant that people were making decisions in service of greater values. 

Now a-days this is starting to fade, at least in the western world that I know. In part because these values and ideals have been abused and used against people rather than for oneself. In part because the number of people and the amount of access people have to new information has increased exponentially and so communicating the value of this kind of thinking is easily lost. And in part because our governing structures and leaders seem to lead by bad example. 

Outro

But I digress. The point is to be thoughtful, considered. Not just doing something, but standing there. It can serve you the way a monk can feel enlightened or the way a knight was sure of her honour. It can be a base.

I write all of this really as a preamble for the article I’m going to publish tomorrow. So, yea, if you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading, now you’re ready for tomorrow.