Proportionality

There are perfectly normal, reasonable people who, when they get angry, will give you a stern talking to.

There are perfectly normal, reasonable people who, when they get angry, will punch you in the face.

And there are perfectly normal, reasonable people who, when they get angry, will blow up your house.

Proportionality is one of the least considered traits in the human realm. It's assumed to be part of the standard human basket of rational normality. Nice people don't blow up houses. Or so you'd think.

Nice people might be sloppy, or bad at sports, or tone-deaf, or cowardly, or color blind, or lazy, or have a nasty temper or poor taste. Nice people can be flawed in any number of ways, but proportionality doesn't seem like any separate thing. It seems like it should be baked into basic "niceness and normalcy," though it absolutely is not.

My father gave me this useful advice: "Somebody who kills a bunch of people? You can be friends with him. But somebody who suddenly kills his wife after 35 years of happy marriage; that guy you need to watch out for." Years later, I brewed up this corollary: "There's no reason to be scared of a hitman. A hitman is as unlikely to randomly kill you as an accountant is to randomly do your taxes."

For me, proportionality is even more insidious (though of course there's overlap in the Venn diagram). You might be able to get along with a murderer, but someone who lacks proportionality must never ever be your friend.

How can you know? The usual move is to evaluate a person as a whole, and, if they seem normal, reasonable and nice, feel assured that "they would never [etc]". But proportionality is not instantly observable, nor does it always accompany an appearance of normalcy.

Do you have any normal and reasonable friends who are oddly hawkish in their foreign policy opinions? That's not a political quirk. That's disproportionality. A girlfriend once told me how she'd sent an unspeakable package to someone who'd wronged her. I stuck with her, because, hey, it was just a story, and she seemed so normal and reasonable. She "would never" do the sort of thing she'd openly confessed to doing! She seemed proportional, though, Jesus Lord, she certainly was not.

Proportionality is something to watch for, and not let oneself be swayed by other aspects. People can lack it, while seeming perfectly nice...and rational...and normal.


Spitefulness is another under-feared quality. It's hard to define, but usually involves disproportionality. When spiteful people get a little mad, they might take a big bite out of someone. And remain faithful in their malice for some time. Yeesh.

Sorry, Manny

I'd like to apologize to my late cousin Manny.

Manny would always drive to a destination the day before an appointment, just to orient himself. Even if it was an hour or two away—in fact, especially if it was an hour or two away. I thought he was neurotic. No, he was right.

I've had innumerable restaurants on my check-out lists for years which, upon serendipitously passing en route to some other destination, suddenly became "available" to me in a way I can't account for. Intellectually knowing where they were was completely different from experiencing where they were. "Knowing" is a map, while experiencing is ownership. At that point, it was never more than a week or two before I'd go and try it.


An unboxed rice cooker has sat on my kitchen counter for a solid month. I'd love to tell a colorfully self-deprecatory story about how it terrified me; about how I was doing a Jed Clampett, confused by the microwave in his fancy new kitchen. But, no. I just lacked the inertia. I've actually craved rice over the intervening weeks, but my craving couldn't quite overcome the inertia.

Yesterday I tore the thing out of its box, tried to make sense of the instructions, examined the hackish packing materials (questioning, for the nth time, whether manufacturers flow returned items back into stock pool). I felt micro-disappointment at the flimsiness of the rice paddle, the imperfect size of the unit, and its disappointingly short power cord. And an ambiguity in the set-up instructions forced me to look to YouTube for clarification. Were any of these snags truly upsetting? God, no. I have bigger problems than short power cords. But, still, it was kinda short, and the snag was clocked.

So finally I actually own a rice cooker, and will happily cook rice upon momentary whim.

Serendipity

According to Murphy's law, with sufficient iterations things will screw up every possible way—and also some ways that seemed impossible. But Murphy also says that a zillion typing monkeys will produce Hamlet, however serendipitously. The key is spotting the serendipity.

This is not a small point.

Serendipity is not a great result, à la “Oh, look what happened!” Serendipity is in the noticing and valuing, and in the follow-up. You need wide-open receptivity to great results that aren't exactly what was expected. It's what pessimists call “optimism” and sane people call clarity. Serendipity is in the interpretation. The framing!

Even errors can inspire. A person who's made herself a sensitive receiver can tune serendipity from failure. This is the machinery behind the old platitude about making lemonade from lemons. It's not about blind persistence; it's about paying attention. The more attuned you are to serendipity, the more detection blurs into creation. You start getting lucky a lot.

So here's the pragmatic upshot: when catastrophe strikes, I take a beat, then flip myself into future past tense:

"Little did I know at the time that this seeming catastrophe created the conditions for something great to happen!"

I proceed straight toward that with nary a sigh. Who's got time to waste on drama? It's entirely a matter of serendipity detection/creation. When I remain wide open and deeply attuned (maybe adding eager joy to my mix, despite the recent catastrophe), serendipity starts popping up like mushrooms.

This sounds so blessedly easy! Why isn't it usually so simple? Readers hypnotized by the cartoon-like ease I've described may struggle to place their fingers on the frustrating part. Relax. Let me help you.

Here it is: None of this is available while histrionically lamenting the catastrophe.

We think we have a part to play; a dramatic obligation we've seen portrayed a thousand times in movies. Catastrophe means we grasp our head in pain and groan and furiously sweep all the papers off our desk and drink to excess and shrink into dejected shadows of our former selves. Time out for tantrums!

The lamentation trope is how we make it worse. We dump wet, gloppy cement over the scenario and patiently wait for our feet to be solidly stuck...just because it's what people do.

Calm is the prerequisite, catastrophe is the hinge.

The essential question is this: How fast can you calm the fuck down when the expected yumyum doesn't careen down the chute into your waiting maw? How soon can you pivot to the path that might later make you recall "Strangely enough, it turned out for the best!"? How much time will you waste playing the scene to its ridiculous hilt, perhaps wrecking absolutely everything just to flaunt how wrecked you felt?

Since we take our agony cues from movies, here's a classic movie moment that might de-program some unnecessary angst.



see also "Resilience Means Giving Serendipity a Chance"

Hat Trick

I often try to offer a bright reframing for the holiday season. Here's the 2025 offering.


When people seem unkind, unsympathetic, selfish, unpleasant, inconsiderate, nasty, and/or awful, there's a very helpful reframing you can pull out of your hat, on-demand. In case of emergency, BREAK HAT:

Most days, you can walk down the street without being punched in the face.

I know what you're thinking. That's an awfully low bar. If that's a blessing we're supposed to count—a "lucky star" to thank—then we've fallen mightily. But that's wrong. Think 150 years ago. Think 1,500 years ago. Think 10,500 years ago. Not-getting-punched-in-the-face is an amazing upgrade to the human operating system.

Even in my short life, I remember when it was acceptable to punch people in the face. If someone was a wise guy, or gave offense or disrespect, or looked at you funny, we'd punch that person in the face without regret or censure. We were a punching people.

And it wasn't some particular spike of violence peaking in the early 1970s. No, this was the trailing edge of human normalcy stretching back eons. Putting an end to that is new. Shocking, even. It is very much a blessing to count and a lucky star to thank. And that rumbling you hear is your ancestors shaking their fists at you for failing to appreciate it.

But forget the explanation and focus on the upshot: you can deem people awful, and human society fallen, but it's exceedingly unlikely that you'll be punched in the face today.

Another: there are places where if you use an iPhone conspicuously, there will be a small chance it will be stolen. But they will almost certainly not shoot you to get it, even though it's worth $1,000. No one will chop your hand off to acquire the extravagant bauble you're flashing publicly. And $1,000 is real money. There was a time when a woman needed bodyguards to hit the town wearing a diamond ring worth that much. But now one can safely flash a thousand bucks in most places. And in the rest, it might be surreptitiously grabbed. But with hardly anyone getting all choppy with you.

I won't flood you with myriad missed blessings. I've already done that a couple of times, (like here). But let me add one more mitigating observation about this brutal hell in which we frame ourselves.

If you get sick and must be rushed to the hospital, a special truck will come and pick you up in a jiffy, and everyone - every single person - will pull to the side of the road to let you by. Including important people and wealthy people. Including the many toxic, selfish people you deem barely human.

None of them will punch you in the face, nor smash your head in for a great big wad of cash, and they'll even pull their car aside to let you pass should you ever find yourself in extremis.

Oh, and one more thing (Columbo-style).

Why would these heady luxuries strike you as puny? Why would you feel pathetic taking consolation from them?

Is it possible—is it at all possible—that this indicates you are very, very, very, very spoiled and entitled, and that a nice bracing Ebeneezer Scrooge reframe (or Grinch heart-swelling) might restore you to sanity?

Merry Christmas everybody!