Midwest Nice
Columbus, OH
September 13, 2019
Today, like a New England pond on a crisp fall day, we have a moment to reflect.
Most of you, assuming you actually stoop to read this drivel…must wonder why I bother to write it.
Let’s consider potential motives.
Perhaps as an escape from stale hotel lobbies, noisy airport lounges, or crowded flights? That I usually book the window seat doesn’t help. Gazing over clouds and across horizons can make one feel as if he is in a motivational poster, inspiring dumb, reckless behavior.
Such as…
Organizing and recording passing thoughts on the relatively inconsequential things I happen to see, read, and do. And then subpoenaing unsuspecting inboxes…like witnesses at an accident scene…to receive and endure my testimony.
Conscripting innocent bystanders forces me to give a modicum of thought to what and how (and if) I should write, with the fringe benefit of maintaining vicarious conversation with people I see far too infrequently.
I suppose I could jot my musings in a private diary and stick them in a drawer. But when, years later, they are inevitably discovered, I’d feel as if I were caught muttering to myself…looking as deranged as a business traveler with a Bluetooth earpiece. If nothing else, these missives make it clear that I actually am talking to other people.
Otherwise, I’d appear a bit like someone in the distance walking into an unseen spider web or trying to evade a persistent bee. He’d have good reasons for his odd flailing about, but without context he’d seem to be little more than a pitiable half-wit.
Since that analogy hits a little too close to home, let’s drift a little further from shore, seeking additional clues. There, like a shark sighting in Lake Michigan, we detect an unanticipated inspiration that we may discreetly evaluate…and then quietly discard.
Pride.
CS Lewis referred to Pride as the source, and therefore the worst, of all the deadly sins. But, for the sake of argument, let’s follow the ominous shadow swimming beneath the surface.
Perhaps my ego, like a deer darting onto a winding mountain road, is getting in the way. Maybe I am so important…and for that reason my day-to-day activities so compelling…that readers crave my scattered cogitations. I am doing them a favor, which they’ve come to expect from such a commendable human being.
If anything, they owe me for sprinkling…like holy water at Easter Mass…these blessings on their benighted inboxes. These notes are their literary vegetables. Readers need them, even if they usually dispose of them without taken a single bite. But when they do take a moment to peruse them, they are better for it. After all, who wouldn’t be?
But, like the bottom of a collender or back of a duck, that explanation doesn’t hold water. Pride can’t be the explanation. Not in my case.
Humility…Pride’s alter ego…is the most underrated of man’s virtues, and one I possess in abundance. I defy anyone to be more modest than I, a man abounding reticence and an enviable lack of pretension. I despise boasting of my many fine qualities, if for no other reason than that it takes far too much time. So it can’t be ego. I’m just too damn unassuming.
Maybe it’s something deeper, more enduring. A need…like a stray dog by a neighborhood tree or a child’s hands over wet cement…to leave a mark.
As Jefferson put it, the letters of a person form the only true and genuine journal of his life. Unlike Jefferson, and despite how recipients of these notes must feel, I could not possibly fill 25,000 handwritten letters.
Of course, Jefferson did not have at his disposal what might be the greatest double-edged sword and two-sided coin among all man’s inventions.
The cell phone is remarkable. It eases communication with people around the world, but somehow inhibits interaction with those right in front of your face. A labor-saving device that erodes leisure, it facilitates remarkable efficiency, and creates a superfund of wasted time.
I don’t know if Jefferson would have been on Facebook or Twitter. I’m not. Which may be another reason for these epistles. Most people just post photos, and move on. I do this, and stick around…like worn-out luggage, left-over turkey, or visiting family members.
I take textual selfies, and hope they might persist as reminders not so much of the big things that I’d remember anyway, but of the relatively inconsequential events that would otherwise pass unnoticed today, and un-recalled tomorrow.
Behind me in today’s picture is the city of Columbus. The visit has certainly not gone unnoticed today. Whether it will be recalled tomorrow remains to be seen.
This is my second trip to discuss becoming Director of Strategic Pricing for Cardinal Health, and I have held several other discussions by phone.
I have been impressed by the company and thoroughly enjoyed the people I have met. More than one has described the culture as “Midwest Nice”, which they seemed to have meant as cautionary.
Apparently, people can sometimes be too polite, or cognizant of others’ feelings, to say what needs to be said. I can appreciate that. But at least they aren’t saying things that don’t need to be said. Or that shouldn’t be.
Where you stand depends on where you sit. And, as one still overcoming a bit of professional PTSD from my last job, I welcomed this “warning” as General Pickett might have received last-minute word that he was unexpectedly needed in Richmond.
That midwesterners are pleasant is no secret. Most are reluctant to publicly refer to anyone as, for instance, a “bonehead”, or a country as a “sh*thole”, even (or especially) if they really are.
Not that corn farmers, auto workers, hog butchers, and dairy churners are above thinking such things about others, or being tempted to shout them, but their innate disposition and good manners preclude it.
Being Midwest Nice, they spare their harsh words, and the feelings of those to whom they’d be directed. They are fore-bearing, patient, and tolerant.
Not unlike recipients of these notes.
JD
