DRAFT — For Review
All right, hey everybody. None of you give a shit about what I have to say. That is OK. Nonetheless, I have a big ego, so I'm gonna make this about me.
I got some of you to pay attention with that. It's only part of it, and here's what I want to convey in the beginning, because this is the only time you're gonna listen—and that's the difference. Some of you weren't listening at all. That's OK. I remember mine. I was convinced at my commencement that there was a higher concentration of people not paying attention than not. So many of you will not be able to hear this, and that's not your fault. It's a tick of humans. So often the difference between wisdom and experience is exactly that—experience.
So here is, unfortunately, why you will not be able to hear me: because you have to experience this.
When I was a child, I took my grandfather's life on accident.
Put those phones down. It's fucked up.
Now I have some other people's attention. More people are listening. Why are more people listening? More people are listening because we as humans give greater credibility to people that have experienced the things about which they speak—or, with more of a Midwest tinge from where I am from, we give credibility to people with fucked-up lives.
That's what I share. I withheld this for a really long time, and not necessarily because of shame—mostly because of pity. You tell someone that this happened in your life and there's this conundrum: I don't remember it. That doesn't make me any less culpable. Most people say, "It's not your fault," and there's a spiral. There's this conversation about a thing that I can't recall that is material to me, but is material in a way that I can't touch. That's frustrating.
Why is it pertinent to you, though? We're not here to talk about me. But I'm gonna offer you some things that, frankly, you can't hear because you can't experience them. However, if you can just take the residue of these ideas and keep them with you—my favorite commencement speech says that when you get slapped in the fucking face by life, and I promise you that you will, you'll respond a little bit better. Don't get me wrong—you are still gonna fall flat on your ass. But falling is better than dying, and I've had a little bit of contact with both.
So I come from that, and I'm wild—which may seem like a paradox. I was born into a family of addicts. Most of my family—there are more people from my family who have gone to jail than not. If you have not gone to jail, it's actually the anomaly. Similarly, if you do not have an addiction, you are the outlier.
Now let me be clear here. These are descriptions. They are verbs. They're not nouns.
In my family, we have people that have molested. We have people that have driven drunk. We have people that have killed. Those are not nouns. If you take nothing else from today: human beings are verbs. Our ability to change is inherent in the act rather than in the object. When we forfeit that—it seems a little dramatic. It is. Go to a liberal arts school.
So this is where the story should get rosy. It's not. It's not at all. I was born to the outlier—or at least the person who was able to curb her surroundings—and she sacrificed for me. She worked three jobs so that I could just focus on being a child, which meant I had to grow up a little bit faster than others.
And for those of you who are recording, and/or want to be recorded, recognize that I am a dismissive avoidant. I'm sharing that with you because some of you are going to be dismissive avoidants, and/or fall in love with one.
I threw myself into accomplishment because, goddamnit, if I could be told I was special, I think that would make my mother happy. That would make her sacrifice worth it. Or else—I don't know. I believe it's probably 40% bullshit.
The ability to tell yourself a story is one of the greatest gifts we have. And so if humans are verbs and not nouns, then one of our great superpowers is our storytelling ability. So I told myself a story, and I kept telling myself a story until I got where the fuck I was going. I just had no idea where that was.
I know that along the way, my mother's sacrifice allowed me to play some pretty subpar college football, and I used that to con my way into going to places like Oxford and working in places like credit cooperatives in Ghana, where I got to meet people who are of a greater moral caliber than I could ever hope to be. I mean that. There's no false modesty. These are people that I look up to. You don't know their names, and you never will.
And so if humans, when we are at our best, are verbs and not nouns—are not contained or shackled by this idea that we have to be objects—and we do that by telling stories, then another thing we should never confuse is this idea of accomplishment with merit.
Don't get me wrong. This is not me trying to tear down capitalism. I think markets can be wildly effective, and if you would like to argue I'm wrong, I am happy to have that conversation.
All I mean by that is: survivorship bias should never be the yardstick that we use. And by merit, I don't mean accomplishments. I don't mean outcome-biased thinking. I don't mean the things that show up on a resume. When we are at our best, I mean the people of great moral character—the fiber and being of those things that we seek to emulate. David Brooks calls them the eulogy virtues. Those are things that will never show up on your résumé, nor will they ever likely make you rich and famous.
Why? Well, I don't have a good answer for that. If I had a good answer for that, the shit I said would actually be profound and not just—that's my Psychology 101 dig at the fact that I have no idea what I'm talking about.
All I mean by that is: the things that have the flash are often not highly correlated with the substance. Not always—not always—but often those are strongly decoupled.
Now I'm doing the thing. I was a wannabe speechwriter who ended up just becoming a campaign manager, and was wildly effective at operations. That's how I've gotten to where I am in life—because if you're able to order reality, or at least pretend to, even though the world is complex and X doesn't always equal Y in the way that we think—you know what? People like a system, even if that system is giving them outcomes they could get otherwise. Because what do we like? We like when we force-fit a framework onto a situation because that makes us feel in control.
I tell you this because if humans, when we are at our best, are verbs not nouns, and one of our greatest powers is storytelling, and we know that success is not always tightly coupled with merit—then we must remember: the map is not the territory.
And if at this point you can follow along, good—because I can't.
What do I mean by that? I mean that this thing we require—language—this thing that is effectively one of the greatest tools that humans have ever invented, is ultimately subpar. There are neural impulses in your mind that you are going to try to communicate. You're gonna have the greatest conviction ever when you say "I love you," and you just hope that that general-ass map connects with the territory of feeling that you have created with somebody—such that they can trust it, even though they have no goddamn idea what that word is supposed to mean. But they can feel it.
The map is not the territory is a fundamental principle I believe in, which is why this comes full circle: words will always fail us. However, humans don't have to fail us, because ultimately the difference between lip service and sweat equity—these buzzwords that we use—is how someone shows up.
So I got to college, and I thought, man, I am outshooting my coverage, baby. Everything is free chicken at this point. And then I made best friends with a motherfucker that goes and gets colon cancer.
Remember: success—your fate, however it is bestowed in this life—is not always highly coupled to deserving. Not to character.
And so Andrew—what did Andrew teach me? Did he tell me to get checked for a colonoscopy at age 21? No, he didn't teach me that, because that's silly and you shouldn't do that. He did teach me gallows humor. He cemented gallows humor in me. Maybe that's how I knew I would end up joining the military.
What did Andrew actually teach me? There are angels on earth. They're not perfect. They're not there to grant wishes. They're just there to remind you, through their example, that it is possible to live a worthy life—one that seems unremarkable in any given moment. However, when looked at as a collective, it's the most remarkable thing you can ever behold.
We are verbs, not nouns. We are endowed with the ability to tell stories. We must never forget that success is not the same as merit. And let me tell you this: the greatest gift you can give to somebody is to model the way to live a worthy life.
If there's anything in this world that is angelic, it is that—because that gets back to this idea that the map is not the territory. And so what is the strongest, most potent force in the world? It is a model of action—one that does not need any description to be its own evidence.