If you’ve had a long conversation with me, you’ve no doubt heard me say, “I need to write them down, but I have a few core tenets and this is one of them…”. This is often followed by prattling about how the current situation exemplifies how or why a value I hold is worthwhile. Though it is already said in the title, it should go without saying that this list is tentative. I’m still young, so I doubt my values are calcified yet. All the same, the following is my list of core tenets.

Empathy

A little empathy goes a long way. Day after day, time after time: I find that empathy is what deepens and enriches my relationships with others. Really trying to get what another person is going through often brings you closer to that person. Emotions are human, and it is a truly human link that you can form with someone trying to feel what they feel.

This isn’t to say that you have to agree with everyone and have a constantly bleeding heart. Empathy isn’t sympathy. However, leading with grace and understanding with make you a kinder person.

Talk shit get hit

If you run your mouth, you are implicitly consenting to the consequences. This is not to stifle the running of one’s mouth; bragging and displays of strength are a part of us. This is also not to encourage only piping up when you have a water tight boast.

This is meant to encourage the due humility of process. This is meant to encourage the mutual reverence that colleagues should have for one another. This is meant to highlight the sword of Damocles dangling over the heads of all who brag. There is always someone better at something than you, so be humble.

The love of the game

What is the game? The game is everything. Better put, everything is a game. And I love it. I’m very interested in the meta-aspects of things. Forget the chess pieces, I want to know how their movements evolve into limitations and strategy that the players can wield against one another. I don’t care at all about sports, but a great friend of mine can break down why baseball is interesting to me.

My love of the game is the love of all games. From tsumego to middle management skills, the things that humans can strategize around always interest me. My boss (at the time of writing) and I will talk for hours (he often humors me) about how he manages our office. I find it interesting how he understands his troops and their strengths and weaknesses. My partner is a photographer. While I have my own hobbies, I’m by no means an artist. All the same, I love to hear her talk about how she teases a photo out of a subject. How lighting, angles, and composition all need and fight each other in the process.

I love people who love their game. It means they understand something about it that gets them going. It means I can glean that thing from them and roll it into my excitement for life.

Game recognizes game

While, I don’t wish to convey myself as quirky – I’m certainly a little eccentric. However, I find that often people see through the “not wearing shoes at his desk” and find a (hopefully) good engineer/man/person. I too find that I have no problem offering people piecemeal appreciation. I might not care for your politics, but you could be a great shoe cobbler.

“Game recognizing game” is about some intrinsic bond between people of dedication. And at that not necessarily of the same guild. I’d prefer to talk to an artist whose fingers ache from the 100th iteration of a painting than a programmer who only knows one language.

It will all workout because it has to

I worry allot – like a diagnosable amount. Woefully, I don’t always practice what I preach. But, from me to you, wherever you are: It will be okay.

It has always worked out. The stock market goes up. The population rises. Even if we all get wiped out like the dinosaurs, something will take our place like we did to them. Time is a big thing; enjoy these winds in your sails.

Kindness is Pog

Leading with kindness has never made mine or someone else’s day worse. I’ve been making bread recently and giving it to friends. The joy on people’s faces is always worth it. Be kind.

The following subsections further explore kindness.

You never know the situations that have brought a person to you so be kind

Hopefully, this one explains itself. From the ideas of empathy and kindness, think of all the hard days you’ve had and how a titch of kindness would have made it better. Perhaps this is the just a riff on the golden rule. All the same, before you are mean to a person fathom what could have brought them to you and be kind instead.

Everyone deserves a friend

Life can be lonely, very lonely. I’ve been lonely, and I’d bet that you have been before as well. Even the deepest hermit of an introvert wants the presence of another even periodically. Loneliness can also do awful things to a person. Isolation is a deep pit.

So I really think everyone deserves a friend. Everyone should have someone who wants to be around them and enjoy them. Even if the person is annoying – taking sometime out of your day to give them could change their life.

In everything said, there is something to be heard

There are many kinds of people in life. These people can be annoying, imposing, upsetting, or any other kind of unsavory. It is hard to give these people the time of day. Worse yet, people can be upset with you and expressing it very poorly.

Another human talking to you is always trying to express something. It is why they are communicating. However challenging, it is worth trying to understand their communication.

If a person talks for hours on end, they could be using the conversation with you as escape. A person expressing odd anger with a situation might have a hard time opening up or talking about something. An annoying child could just need a friend. Truly taking the time to understand someone affords them their humanity. It is something that I’ve always found worth it.

Own your mistakes

Failure can be a complex thing. It is often so easy to explain why something isn’t our fault. It takes strength to admit our fault in something. This strength is one that will allow us to grow. Don’t shirk the responsibility of making a mistake, grow from the event.

No conditional apologies

The point of an apology is to show remorse for an action, remorse for an outcome has no ownership

let remorse = if offended.is_upset() {
    offense.gravity
} else {
    0
};

offender.grow_from(remorse);

Maybe this comes from being a programmer or from having had a partner for a long time, but conditional apologies are hollow. To paraphrase my partner: a conditional apology doesn’t mean you feel bad for having done the action, it means that you feel bad for how the offended party’s reaction made you feel. In line with the previous tenet, apologize for your actions not the results in order to grow from them.

Make community wherever you go

I’m out of college (and school entirely) now. I’m not a huge church goer. My current job isn’t the sort where we get Friday beers. Between myself, my partner, and my two cats, it can get rather lonely.

I worked fully remote for two years. It’s a rather inhuman thing – to sit inside talking to no one for days on end. It is, in the best case, too much of a good thing. Alone time is nice and allows for great deep work. Slowly, you relax into the vibe of no one watching you. You recognize the value in that eagerness to be alone that being pull into meetings gives you. Then you miss talking to people; you stay on after meetings to see what teammates you “hate” are up to.

Humans are social creatures and we need each other. In a combat of this fall from my nature, I’ve began to try to make community wherever I go. At the climbing I frequent, I make sure I have a tight cohort of people that I can talk to and hang out with. At the coffee shops I got, I endeavor (without being annoying) to be a “regular”. I started a book club to give people a reason to gather.

Loneliness is a modern epidemic. We can only fight it together. Make community.

You could probably use more fiber (in diet and media)

Food and media is so refined. It distills more and more each day. You can make rockets from candy. Wonder bread tastes like sugar. The same goes for media: you can watch the 500 most tantalizing scenes from The Sopranos on TikTok right now.

How does all this refined consumption make you feel. It makes me feel awful. I’ve found that to feel okay, to feel human, I need some fiber in my diet.

Whether it is a can of black beans (food) or a nice slow book (media), some fiber is a necessary slow down for my metabolism(s). The parts of our bodies that were designed to find deliciously sweet foods and shockingly surprising media weren’t meant for every bite of beat to be the thing we were looking for. Without tension there is no resolve. Without bland there is no sweet.

So, please have some fiber.

Say what is on your mind, if it ends the relationship it was going to happen

“Oh but Mr. Empathy,” I hear you say, “I bet you get walked all over trying to please everyone all the time.” Full disclosure – certainly sometimes. My partner says I have no boundaries, and it is to my detriment. The darker side of touting empathy as a value is a reflexive habit (if not defense mechanism) of knowing what the other person wants to hear. This can make for a happy person in the short term, but it invariably ends in the peril of both parties.

So, I’ve found it best to speak my mind. But anxiety, I hear you say – which is quite right. The way I rationalize my way into speaking my mind is the end of this tenet. If you speaking your mind ends a relationship, the pair of you likely weren’t compatible.

Caveat: Do have tact. Yelling angry things at your friend isn’t what this tenet encourages.

Everything is the same

A point that naturally follows a previous header, everything is the same. The nebulous line I often proffer is, “everything is the same, and it is those who know how things are the same and how they are different that will be successful”. What I mean by that – when boiled down, so many things are the very same.

In a conversation with a friend recently, I talked about how all problems in the corporate world are human problems. In other words, once the product a company is trying to sell is conceived the actual creating of the product is just a human problem. He works in microelectronics. They type of device he was working on has been made 100 times over; this time with a little jeuje. So, why was the cross country amalgamation of teams struggling to get it fabbed? Humans.

The hubris team can’t swallow their pride to accept the new process. The obstinate team wants to adhere to the new flow from corporate. The people in between just want a chance to put their name on something they were passionate about in college. In none of this paragraph have I mentioned a single problem involving silicon. It’s a human problem.

Watching my partner edit photos is interesting. She can whiz around Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. with a learned grace, but it is a very different grace than the one that I use a computer with. I edited this whole blog entry in vim; I haven’t touched my mouse once. I’d have it no other way. Yet, she isn’t impeded. Moreover, we can talk about workflows and tools. Because beyond the pride I have of my terminal based workflow, we are both just using tools. How she uses her tools can well inform me of a better way I could be using mine.

So when moving through your life, take heed of the things that are the same. There’s probably more than you think.

You have to fight for your right to party

Life is pain and suffering; that’s just about the cut of it. However, we can enjoy it. Moreover, we can make it enjoyable. We can shelter each other from negativity and boost one another. We can tend to our sick and weak when they need us. We can likewise lean on our companions to shoulder us in our personal storms.

Through all this, it is incumbent upon you to afford your quarter in the revelry of life. No one at work is going to make sure the culture is one that suits you. No one is going to make sure you are having a good time. Of course you aren’t lost at sea – people will help you. But if you come to expect to be carried along to a good time, you will find yourself marooned on a less than happy island.

This is because you have to fight for your right to party. We are all afford the right to the pursuit of happiness as one of our founding fathers Will Smith taught us. So, you have to pursue it. If for no other reason than to be allowed to complain without remorse about having not made your quarry.