From this week’s This American Life, an inner-city kid explains how he’s come to understand his new coach who is an ex-con.
Boy: “When he told me that he had come from prison and he got shot in his neck, I thought he was just another one of them people who like to talk about their life and didn't get over it. But I learned to understand him.”
Katie Davis: “How do you understand him?”
Boy: “He don't want no trouble. He just wants us to listen to him. But I guess as you grow into people, you start to have more patience.”
Katie Davis: “As you roll into people?”
Boy: “Grow. Start to have more patience, and I think that's what's happening.”
That’s an emotionally intelligent kid. Moreover, he is brave. He is a child of the inner city showing respect and love for a male role model. He isn’t filtering.
We often employ “having no filter” when someone says something inappropriate. Children often exemplify the positive possibility of filterless truth: their thoughts start and end without passing through socially constructed filters of consideration, bias, and repression.
When I was about six, my mother and I went to a movie. The concession attended was a beautiful teenage girl, whom I told, “you have pretty vampire teeth” (her cuspids were prominently pointed).
Despite my mother’s chagrin, my remarks were sincere, unadulterated by thoughts of social appropriateness, free of filters.
Undoubtedly, certain filters benefit society (not to be discussed here). Even with that in mind, the purity of children’s lack of pretense offers insight into the basics of our morality. If we are self-censoring, what are we doing with the unspoken?Why did we bite our tongue? Where do those words go? What do we make of them? How does withholding them change us?
Great power exists in lessening the gap between what we mean and what we say. Likewise, the alignment of word and deed offers the abolishment of guilt and the richness of a conscious unbothered by past discrepancies and ongoing lived lies.
Leadership requires living your word. Intent means nothing when you fail to follow through.
Well, “it’s not that easy.” I don’t doubt the validity of the excuse.
Look for a follow-up email today regarding the validity and legitimacy of excuses.
Until then, respect to that little kid; I strive to emulate his candor.