The Things We Forget to Remember

A friend showed me some old family photos a couple weeks ago.

An uncle of his is getting older and had given him a collection of family photos and other memorabilia he’d accumulated over the years. He knew some stories, and his uncle had told him even more stories about the people in those photos.

We turned a few of them over, hoping someone had written a name or a date on the back.

Nothing.

My friend knew these were his people. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, maybe great-uncles. He knew some remarkable family stories, including stories from World War II.

But we couldn’t connect the people in the pictures with the stories.

Somewhere along the way, the thread between the stories and the photos had disappeared.

I’ve been thinking lately about my grandpa on my dad’s side.

I know a few things about his history.

He was in World War II. He was stationed in England for at least part of the war. My grandma was English (Welsh actually) and worked as an infectious disease nurse. Apparently, Grandpa was allergic to everything and had to report for treatment regularly.

Somewhere in there, they fell in love. Grandma told me some stories about their time in England. She told me about her trip over to the US after the war on the Queen Mary, alone with her first child, my aunt. She’d eventually meet back up with Grandpa when she got stateside, since he came home via some sort of military transport.

That’s a pretty good beginning to a family story.

My dad was born in Michigan, but I don’t know what brought them to Michigan.

Then there’s a blank section of the story.

At some point they moved to Southern California, where they spent the rest of their lives.

Why did they move? I don’t know.

Grandpa was an operating engineer, operating heavy equipment.

What kind?

Bulldozers? Cranes? Graders?

What sort of projects did he work on?

Roads? Buildings? Dams?

Did he like his work? Was he good at it?

Did he ever come home and tell my dad about something interesting that happened that day?

I have no idea.

There was a time when I could have asked one of them.

My parents and grandparents are gone now. So are all the other people I can think of who might have known.

Lots of memories survive.

Wars. Marriages. A child’s birth.

England survives. Michigan. California.

But a regular Tuesday afternoon disappears.

I’ve caught myself wondering what Grandpa’s mornings were like.

What time did he get up? Did he drink coffee?

Did he pack a lunch? Did he have a thermos?

What kind of truck did he drive?

What did he do on his days off?

Was moving to California some big adventure, or did he simply hear about a job and say, “Let’s go”?

I don’t actually need to know that Grandpa drank coffee in the morning. What I’d want is the coffee itself. The smell of it in a kitchen at five-thirty in the morning before anyone else was up. Their dog trying to get attention in the quiet of their house right before his workday started. Nobody thought to write any of that down, because why would they. It was just another day.

We’ve never had more ways to record our lives than we do now.

I have thousands of photos on my phone. So does almost everyone I know.

We post pictures. Send them through family group texts. Put them in shared albums. Our phones occasionally remind us what we were doing eight years ago today.

We may be the most photographed generation in human history.

I’m not sure that means anyone will know us particularly well in the future.

Someone could someday inherit 14,000 photographs of us and wonder what we were like.

I think you get to know someone differently when you stay at their house for a few days.

You wake up when they wake up. You have more time to hear what’s really happening in their lives. You learn which chair they always sit in. You find out that somebody who seems perfectly organized can’t find their keys three mornings in a row.

Traveling with someone does the same thing, only faster.

Someone is always hungry. Someone needs the bathroom fifteen minutes after you stop. Flights get delayed. Reservations disappear. It rains. You get lost. The restaurant is closed.

People reveal themselves quickly in these situations.

Thinking about all of this makes me think of something very particular about my dad.

When I was a kid, we camped a lot. We went to Lake Havasu with our boat. We went to off-road races.

Dad was meticulous about preparation.

If a trip was four weeks away, he’d point out that he didn’t really have four weeks to get ready.

He worked six days a week. That meant he only had four Sundays.

That was how he thought about it. Four Sundays to get ready.

As the trip got closer, gear began appearing.

Camping equipment. Tools. Boxes. Supplies. Spare parts for the boat. Motorcycle parts, and tools.

He was methodical about storing everything so it could be staged in modules.

For weeks, there’d be a growing pile of gear waiting to go…ready to be packed into the truck.

Dad liked being ready.

Then there was departure time.

If our plan was to leave early Friday morning, there was a very good chance that sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday, Dad would begin reconsidering the wisdom of this plan.

Why wait until Friday morning? I’m already taking Friday off. We could leave the night before. I could cut out of work early on Thursday so we can get a jump on our trip.

Who knew what might go wrong along the way? If something did, we’d have extra time.

And if nothing went wrong, we’d arrive early. Being early was useful.

You get your choice of campsites.

You weren’t rushing. We could be fully set up when everyone else arrives.

It made complete sense to him.

Mom didn’t see the genius of this plan in quite the same way.

Dad had the truck and equipment ready.

Mom had the food. And clothes. And two boys. And all the domestic stuff (Mom and Dad used to talk about Mom being in charge of domestics) to get ready.

For Mom, leaving Thursday night mostly meant she’d just lost twelve hours of prep time.

There was no father-son conversation where he explained the importance of preparation and leaving early.

I just watched (and usually helped) him get everything ready.

And now I like getting up early. I like arriving before other people. I like being prepared.

Once in a while, I find myself thinking that maybe we should leave tonight instead of tomorrow morning.

We probably inherit all kinds of things this way.

Ways of preparing. Ways of worrying. Little phrases. Expectations.

The way we organize our garage.

The way we react when we’re running late.

Nobody announces that these things are being handed down. Years later, we discover them in ourselves.

I wonder what I inherited from my grandfather without knowing it.

Maybe that’s why the missing details about him intrigue me.

I’d like to know how he thought long before I came along.

I’d like to know what he did when a trip was four weeks away.

I recently heard about another kind of writing that seems almost unrelated. Writing about grief or trauma. The basic idea is that putting painful experiences into words can help us process them.

I don’t pretend to understand all the neuroscience involved, and I’m suspicious of explanations that make our brains sound like a filing cabinet where we simply move an experience from one drawer to another. But the idea itself interests me.

Something happens.

It’s overwhelming.

Eventually we sit down and try to describe it…to ourselves.

What happened? What did I feel? What am I still feeling?

Even if nobody ever reads it.

Writing like this can give shape to something that didn’t have much shape before.

It’s almost the reverse of what I’ve been thinking about Grandpa’s mornings. There, I wanted someone to have written down the feeling of an ordinary day before it disappeared entirely. Here, writing takes something that’s still painfully vivid and makes it a little easier to understand.

I’ve written for years now.

Most of what I write begins with whatever captured my attention at that moment.

Something I read. Something that happened at work. Something one of my grandkids did.

Something I’m building.

Something that annoyed me.

Something I suddenly understand differently than I did before.

I don’t usually think of it as preserving history.

I’m just enjoying writing things down.

Sometimes I wonder what someone in my family might find in all my writing fifty or a hundred years from now.

Not because my writing is important.

Because the little things in it might be.

A future member of my family can probably find my birth date.

They may know where I lived and what I did for work…maybe as little as I know about my own grandparents.

They’ll almost certainly have photos. A ridiculous number of them.

But something I wrote about pouring concrete with my grandkids may tell them something the photos don’t.

Or building a campsite. Or struggling with some idea that’s stuck in my head.

Or remembering my dad getting ready for a trip.

They might get a glimpse of what caught my attention on a particular Thursday.

I’ve heard people talk romantically about ancient societies gathering around fire pits at night listening to the elders tell stories about their ancestors.

Fireside stories notwithstanding, I suspect a lot of human history has always been lost.

Someone dies unexpectedly. Nobody ever thought to ask.

The grandchildren weren’t paying attention. The one person who knew the story assumed everyone else knew it too.

A photo gets put in a box. Fifty years later, somebody turns it over.

Blank.

We tend to think of history as big events.

The things printed in books.

But I’m more interested lately in the smaller history.

Why Michigan? Why California?

Who’s the man standing on the left side of that picture?

And what was everybody laughing about?

We’re surrounded by history while it still looks like ordinary life. It’s so easy to miss.

I keep thinking about those old photos my friend and I turned over.

Someone took them. Someone kept them. Someone else kept them after that.

Eventually an aging uncle carefully hands them to my friend because he wants someone in the family to have them.

Unfortunately, most of the stories didn’t make the trip.

Photo by Fiona Murray-deGraaff on Unsplash

What Freedom is For

In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman questions the idea that freedom means having complete control over our time.

He points out that many of the things that make life worthwhile require us to share our time with other people and coordinate our lives with theirs.

That suggests true freedom isn’t having an empty calendar. It’s choosing who we’re willing to give our time to.

Think of a friend we can always count on, a volunteer who keeps showing up for others, or a leader who accepts responsibility for other people. These commitments limit their freedom in one sense, but also create depth, trust, and belonging.

Choosing who we’ll give our time to is only the beginning. The attention we give them is what makes that time meaningful.

Being present. Making time. Listening well. Giving someone our full attention. These are the ways we turn a commitment into something lived rather than merely chosen.

Commitment gives others a claim on our freedom. Attention is how we honor it.

Photo by Troy Spoelma on Unsplash – I gotchu, bro.

Stop Expecting Less…

From yourself. Expect to learn, grow, contribute, follow through, and occasionally surprise yourself.

From your relationships. Cultivate depth, honesty, presence, and care. Treasure the people who know you well, but don’t let your full life become a closed circle.

From your curiosity. Keep asking questions. Keep learning things you don’t understand. Stay willing to be a beginner.

From your body. Expect your body to do what it reasonably can, but don’t be afraid to push against its limits. Protect your strength, mobility, endurance, and ability to do things for yourself.

From your work. The things you choose to work on should be useful, meaningful, interesting, and worth doing well.

From your courage. Admit when you’re wrong, try things you might fail at, and choose the less comfortable path when it’s the right one.

From your attention. Decide what deserves your attention instead of surrendering it to whatever is loudest, newest, or easiest.

From your ability to contribute. Always look for ways to be useful. Teach, encourage, help, listen, solve a problem, share what you know, give your time, or carry part of the load.

From what’s still ahead. Don’t assume the most interesting parts of life have already happened. Leave room for new work, new friendships, new places, new ideas, and versions of yourself you haven’t met yet.

From your standards. Don’t let convenience or laziness redefine what you consider good enough, especially in the areas you care about most.

From your sense of wonder. Keep noticing beauty, craftsmanship, nature, music, ideas, people. Familiarity can make remarkable things seem ordinary if you let it.

From your sense of possibility. Don’t become too quick to decide what can’t happen, what won’t work, or what’s no longer for you. Some doors close. Others are easy to overlook because you’ve stopped checking them.

From the life you have now. Don’t wait for everything to be settled before you fully engage with your life. There will always be another problem to solve. Problems aren’t interruptions to the life you’re trying to get to. They’re part of the life you’re living.

Photo by Austin Ramsey on Unsplash – With every revolution, something new is revealed.

What Would Make This Fail?

Years ago, I led a company with a large team in India.

Our conference calls included some exceptionally smart technologists and business leaders.

But most of them rarely spoke.

Usually, the most senior person on their side did the talking. Everyone else listened.

I’d stop and ask.

“What do you think?”

“Are we missing something?”

“Does anyone see this differently?”

Silence.

Then I got to know them.

I visited them in person. We spent time together outside the formal meetings.

They had strong opinions.

They saw risks we hadn’t discussed. They questioned decisions we’d made. Sometimes they were frustrated with the direction we’d chosen.

They just hadn’t said so when we were making the decisions.

I assumed some of this was cultural. Age, seniority, and respect for authority.

But I’ve seen the same pattern plenty of times in American organizations too. Smart people with something to say staying quiet for all kinds of reasons.

I eventually realized I had something to learn.

Telling people they’re free to speak isn’t the same as creating a setting where they will.

Consider the question, “Does anyone disagree?”

To answer yes, someone has to challenge the idea already sitting on the table. And depending on who put it there, they may feel like they’re challenging that person too.

Try another question.

What would make this fail?

Now disagreement is part of the assignment.

Find the weakness. Challenge an assumption. Spot the risk.

We aren’t deciding who’s right. We’re trying to make the plan better.

That’s a different conversation.

The next time I was on a call with that same team, I didn’t ask if they disagreed. I asked what would make the plan fail.

Someone I’d rarely heard speak chimed in.

Then someone else did.

A small shift in the question opened the conversation to ideas and perspectives we hadn’t heard before.

Leaders should design for agency.

Ask what would make the plan fail six months from now.

Ask for the strongest argument against your own idea.

Then listen, especially when the answers are uncomfortable.

People learn quickly if you really value their input.

The goal is better thinking and a stronger plan. That requires the leader to make disagreement part of the work.

Don’t just give people permission to think independently.

Give them an assignment that requires it.

Start with a question.

What would make this fail?

Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash – A better route starts with a better question.

Friction, A Cure for Premature Confidence

You can watch someone prepare and pour a concrete slab.

You can see how they set the forms, grade the dirt, calculate the concrete they’ll need, screed it, float it, edge it, and apply a perfect broom finish. You can study the tools. Watch videos explaining every step.

That’s still a long way from doing it yourself.

Doing it requires moving every shovel of dirt by hand. You have to decide how the grade should run and where the water will drain. You wonder if the forms are strong enough, if the slope is right, and whether the finished slab will look terrible.

Then the truck arrives. The clock starts.

Tools that looked simple in someone else’s hands feel entirely different in your own. The concrete is heavy. It pushes back. Your shoulders hurt. Your back aches. The clock is ticking.

You begin to see things you couldn’t see before. Low spots. Ridges. Edges that need attention. Sections that are ready for the next step and others that need to be left alone.

Maybe the slab turns out great. Maybe it’ll suck.

Either way, you’ll know a lot more at the end of the day than you knew that morning. The work changes your eye, your hands, and your judgment.

An AI tool can help you prepare. It can list the materials, calculate the volume, explain the tools, identify common mistakes, and suggest videos.

But it can’t simulate the way the trowel feels moving across the concrete. It can’t tell you when you’ve worked it enough and it’s ready to broom.

I’ve been thinking about that distinction after reading a piece by Shawn Smucker that Tim Ferriss highlighted in his Friday email.

Smucker wrote about what we may lose when we turn to AI too quickly. Instead of calling a friend who knows how to cook, camp, fix something, or solve a problem, we can ask an AI tool and have an answer in seconds.

The answer may be good. It might even be clearer than what our friend would’ve told us. But the answer is probably the least valuable part. Calling our friend could lead to a story, an old memory, some unexpected advice, or a forty-five-minute conversation about what’s happening in their life.

Ferriss also shared Kurt Vonnegut’s story about going out to buy one envelope rather than ordering a hundred online. Vonnegut wanted the trip. He wanted to see people, notice things, and have whatever little encounters came with buying that one envelope. The inefficiency was part of the experience.

We spend a lot of time trying to remove friction in the pursuit of efficiency, especially the friction that drains us. Repetitive paperwork. Unnecessary steps. Work that adds very little value.

But some friction asks more of us. Forcing us to pay attention, make new decisions, correct our mistakes, and develop judgment we didn’t have before.

The tricky thing is that both types of friction feel exhausting while we’re experiencing them.

AI is great at removing friction. It can research an unfamiliar topic, organize an idea, compare alternatives, create a first draft, write code, build a prototype, or break a daunting project into manageable steps.

That’s good stuff.

But AI can also produce polished-looking work long before the person using it can see what’s missing. That polish can create confidence the work hasn’t fully earned.

A lot of what we recognize as “AI slop” grows out of that premature confidence.

Friction develops the eye that can see past the polish. When we’ve felt low spots under a trowel, we can see them in someone else’s slab. When we’ve fought a stubborn argument into shape on the page, we can see the soft spot in someone else’s paragraph.

Skip that resistance and we skip more than the difficulty. We skip the experience that teaches us how to judge the work.

A working software prototype is a long way from a dependable product. A quick draft is a long way from a finished piece of writing. The distance between them is filled with the kind of friction AI helps us postpone but can’t remove entirely.

Remember wax on, wax off?

Daniel LaRusso thought he was doing random chores. Mr. Miyagi knew the repetition was developing movements and instincts Daniel would need later.

A lot of formative work is like that. We understand what it was building in us only after we’ve stayed with it long enough to grow.

Friction builds more than the finished product.

It builds the person who can tell when the product is finished.

Photo – My four grandsons were my crew for this job. This was their first concrete project. The two older boys got their first chance to finish concrete, while their younger brothers are already looking forward to taking a turn on the next one. That was a fun day and that little sidewalk turned out great!

Who Will Own the Decision?

Picture a committee meeting.

Some people are sitting together in a conference room. Others are joining remotely. Some cameras are on, some are off. Microphones are muted. A few people are listening closely. Others are answering email, reading messages, or looking at whatever happens to be open on another screen.

A simple question comes before the group. It has little strategic importance. No customer will ever know what this group decides.

The committee simply needs to agree on how to handle a small part of a recurring process.

The discussion that follows is an amalgam drawn from years of committee meetings, planning sessions, governance discussions, and executive conversations. The details change, but the dynamics are remarkably consistent.

Someone introduces the question.

Someone else asks whether an existing procedure covers it.

A person lower in the organization looks around to see what a person higher in the organization thinks.

Nobody wants to get too far ahead of the room. People qualify their statements. Suggestions are floated as questions, offered softly enough to be withdrawn later.

The senior person tries to avoid dominating the conversation. They ask what others think. They may even be hoping someone on the team will step forward, offer a recommendation, and take ownership of the next step.

Some stay on mute as if they’re watching a livestream podcast.

Eventually, the opinion of the most senior person becomes clear, and the room begins moving toward agreement.

The decision is made.

Even then, it isn’t firm. We may change it at our next meeting.

When I’m in this type of meeting, I wonder what would happen if this same group had to make a decision that actually mattered. One that determined the future of their company.

This isn’t just a corporate thing. It’s a human thing.

Get a group of friends together and ask where they want to go for dinner.

Everyone says they’re flexible. One person suggests Mexican food. Someone else had Mexican food yesterday.

Another person suggests barbecue. Someone is trying to eat healthier, so that’s out. Italian sounds good, but the good Italian place will probably be crowded.

Someone says, “I really don’t care. Whatever everyone else wants.”

Of course, that person will usually care quite a bit once the choice has been made.

No one is willing to own the choice. They’d rather evaluate a decision someone else makes than be the one making it.

Organizations take this ordinary human tendency and surround it with hierarchy, titles, politics, performance reviews, and memories of what happened the last time someone took a risk.

Sometimes people hesitate because their organization conditioned them to hesitate. A manager tells people to take ownership, then second-guesses every choice they make. Work is delegated, but authority remains at the top.

After a while, the team learns the rules.

Don’t decide too quickly.

Sound out the boss first.

Find out what the boss’s boss thinks.

Ask for more information. Schedule another discussion.

Use words like alignment, validation, and further review.

Above all, avoid being the person whose fingerprints appear on a decision the senior leaders might dislike.

That explains a lot of the hesitation. But it doesn’t explain all of it.

Sometimes the authority is available. The decision boundaries are clear. The organization genuinely wants people to think, act, and lead.

People still hesitate.

Avoiding embarrassment becomes more important than the decision. Their recommendation might be challenged. Their strategy may fail. The plan they present might expose their incomplete thinking. They may be criticized.

It feels safer to ask another question or merely stay on mute.

Committees bring together experience, technical knowledge, and organizational perspective that one person might overlook. All of us are smarter than one of us, as the saying goes.

But shared deliberation can quietly become distributed ownership.

Everyone contributes a sentence. Nobody owns the paragraph.

If the outcome is good, the committee made a wise choice. If it goes badly, the decision belongs to the process, or to the group as a whole.

There’s an opportunity hidden within all this hesitation.

When a room is circling a decision, watching the hierarchy, qualifying every opinion, and searching for ways to avoid ownership, one clear voice can change the conversation.

That person doesn’t have to be the most senior person in the room. They don’t need to dominate the discussion or pretend uncertainty has disappeared.

They need to listen, understand what’s being debated, and separate the important concerns from the noise surrounding them.

Then they can say something like:

“Here’s what I’m hearing. Here’s the decision we’re trying to make. Here’s the path I recommend, and here’s why.”

That’s leadership.

The willingness to place a reasoned judgment before the group when everyone else is waiting to see where the room will go.

Your recommendation may be challenged. The group may improve it or choose another path. Either outcome moves the group forward. All of it was made possible by one small act of leadership.

Leadership helps people move from uncertainty toward clarity, and from discussion to action.

In rooms filled with capable and experienced people, ownership and leadership are often the scarce resources.

The next time a decision is dancing around the room, pay attention. What looks like a search for more information is usually a search for someone willing to accept ownership.

The group is waiting for someone to lead them.

That someone may be you.

Photo by Marc Wieland on Unsplash – This post has nothing to do with sailing, but I love this image. A clear view ahead begins with someone willing to take ownership, chart the course, and help others see the way forward.

The Stories Behind the Results

A few days ago, someone posted a results sheet from the November 1976 Baja 1000.

The page was filled with names I recognized. Many went on to become legends in off-road racing. But two names, in particular, caught my attention.

Lee Hamby and Denby Dailey.

Denby is my uncle, and Lee was his co-rider. Together, they finished fourth in the Open motorcycle class on a Yamaha…a TT 500.

The result is clean and simple.

Two names. A motorcycle. A finishing position.

Fifty years later, that’s what remains on the page.

But I know some of the stories behind that result.

The week of the race, torrential rains hit Baja. Ensenada flooded. At the time, race vehicles were placed in an impound area after tech inspection so teams couldn’t make further modifications before the start.

That year, the impound area flooded.

Riders and crews had to wade into the water, pull out their motorcycles, assess the damage, and get them running again. Before the race had even begun, they were already rescuing their equipment and solving problems they could never have anticipated.

And the flooded impound yard was only the beginning.

My parents were there as part of the support team for Denby and Lee. They spent the race trying to reach pit areas, carrying fuel and supplies, and trying to be ready when the motorcycle arrived.

Their stories were filled with floods, pouring rain, mud, washed-out roads, close calls, and long hours trying to move through Baja while the race continued around them.

I heard the stories many times growing up.

We traveled to Baja to support other races through the late 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. Every now and then, while driving one of those roads or waiting at a pit, a story from the ’76 race would come up.

One person would talk about the rain.

Someone else would remember pulling out that van that had flopped over on its side, blocking the only way in and out of a pit area.

Another would remember a river crossing, a mechanical problem, or a moment when it seemed unlikely that anyone would make it to the next pit.

That’s the thing about a race like the Baja 1000. There’s never just one story.

The racers are focused on the course in front of them. They’re watching the terrain, listening to the motorcycle, managing fatigue, and trying to complete their part of the race.

Meanwhile, the pit crew is living a completely different race.

They’re navigating highways and back roads, hauling tools and fuel, finding remote locations, improvising when plans fall apart, and trying to arrive before the racers.

The riders rarely know what the pit crew is going through. The pit crew rarely knows what’s happening to the riders.

Yet they’re all part of the same team, working toward the same goal.

Each person is carrying a different piece of the effort. Each is solving problems the others may never see. Each is building a collection of memories while remaining focused on their next task.

Only afterward does the full story begin to emerge.

The racers finish. The crew gathers. The urgency fades.

Someone finds a shower. The grime starts to wash away. Cuts and bruises are finally noticed. A meal appears. Many beverages are opened.

Then the stories begin.

Did you make it past that washed-out road before they closed it?

How did you get the bike running?

What happened at that river crossing?

You did what?

Only then can everyone begin to understand what the others endured. Only then can the team see the full depth of what they accomplished together.

And if they’re lucky, the racers may receive a trophy and a small check that hardly covers the cost of the fuel burned during the race.

The official result still looks simple. Fourth place.

It says nothing about the mud, the darkness, the fatigue, or the danger.

Nothing about the parents, spouses, friends, mechanics, and volunteers racing from one remote pit to another.

Nothing about the separate struggles that came together to produce that one clean line on a page.

Seeing that results sheet nearly fifty years later brought back more than a racing memory.

My parents have passed away. My Uncle Denby died last year. Lee is still with us, but I haven’t seen or spoken with him in more than a decade.

The people who lived that story are slowly disappearing.

But their story remains.

It remains in the photo Lee’s son, Scott, shared. Racers in their prime, doing what they loved and doing it well.

They couldn’t have known that half a century later, someone would look at those images alongside a yellowed results sheet and remember everything that page could never contain.

We spend much of our lives pursuing results that may someday look just as simple.

A name. A date. A title.

A finished project. A successful deal. A race result.

The record preserves the outcome, but it misses most of the story.

It leaves out the people carrying unseen burdens. The problems that were solved against all odds. The risks taken without fully realizing them. The exhaustion, improvisation, fear, laughter, camaraderie, and relief.

Fifty years later, the results fit neatly on a single page.

But oh, the stories they could tell.

That’s Uncle Denby at a water crossing, probably before sunrise. Notice the small headlight, maybe 8 inches of travel in the shocks, and a battery-powered headlamp on his helmet. I think that was powered by a big cube-shaped lantern battery in his backpack.

That’s Lee looking smooth!

Steve Jobs, Aristotle, and the Questions AI Can’t Answer for Us

In 1985, Steve Jobs imagined a day when a student could do more than read Aristotle.

Jobs was speaking at Lund University in Sweden, long before smartphones, search engines, or the AI tools we use every day. His hope was that someday we might capture the underlying worldview of a great thinker like Aristotle within a computer, so a future student could ask him questions and get answers.

It sounded futuristic then, but that future is here today.

We can open an AI tool and ask it to explain Aristotle, compare him to another thinker, or respond in a way that tries to reflect his philosophy.

That doesn’t mean we’re talking to Aristotle. We’re talking to a machine-generated synthesis, built from writings, interpretations, and patterns available to the model. Worth remembering, especially in a minute.

Jobs saw computers becoming more than storage devices. He saw interactive learning companions that could move us from consuming information to questioning it, testing our understanding, and entering into a dialogue with the past.

So, I ran a little experiment. I asked an AI tool to respond as if it were Aristotle, drawing on his known writings and philosophy, then I asked three questions…two about leadership, one about relationships.

Here’s what I learned, before you even read the answers. The AI handed me answers that sounded wise. It couldn’t do anything with what the answers asked of me. That work stayed mine, every time. Keep that in mind as you read the three exchanges below. Each quote is the AI’s synthesis, in Aristotle’s voice, not a historical record of what he actually said:

Question 1: Aristotle, what makes someone a good leader?

A good leader must first be governed within himself. He cannot guide others well if his own desires, fears, and ambitions are disordered.

Leadership is not merely a matter of authority or skill. It is a matter of virtue. A leader needs practical wisdom to judge what should be done, courage to do it, justice to give others what they are due, and temperance to restrain his own appetite for power, praise, or comfort.

The good leader does not seek the good of himself alone. He seeks the good of the community entrusted to him.

That answer sounds about right. Confidence, drive, decisiveness, and the ability to win can carry a person a long way. But without character or virtue, those same strengths eventually start working against the people they’re supposed to serve.

Whether it’s true of me is a separate question.

Question 2: Aristotle, how should a leader make decisions when the right answer isn’t obvious?

In uncertain matters, the leader needs prudence. No rule can fully replace wise judgment, because human affairs are too varied and particular.

The prudent person considers the purpose of the decision, the facts of the situation, the people affected, and the likely consequences. He also considers his own motives. A decision can appear reasonable while still being driven by pride, fear, anger, or vanity.

Good judgment is formed over time. It comes through experience, reflection, correction, and the habit of choosing what is noble rather than merely what is easy.

Most leaders want clarity. We want the right answer to announce itself. The spreadsheet, the policy, the consultant, the precedent that makes the decision obvious.

Unfortunately, difficult decisions usually live where the information is incomplete, the tradeoffs are real, and the consequences land on people who are more than names on an org chart.

But, he asks an even harder question. What’s happening inside me as I make this call? Am I deciding from courage or fear? Justice or favoritism? Humility, or the need to be seen being right?

AI can organize the options. It can summarize the arguments. It can show me possibilities I might have missed.

But it won’t clean up my motives. That responsibility remains with me.

Question 3: Aristotle, what makes a friendship or relationship worthy of trust?

The highest friendship is rooted in virtue. Some relationships exist for usefulness. Others exist for pleasure. These are not necessarily bad, but they are fragile because they depend on what the other person provides.

A deeper friendship is different. It is based on willing the good of the other person. Such a relationship is steady because it rests on character, not convenience.

To be worthy of trust, a person must be truthful, faithful, and committed to the good of the other. A trustworthy relationship helps both people become better than they would be alone.

We understand relationships of usefulness. Work relationships, customer relationships, networking relationships, even friendships that lean heavily on shared convenience.

But, are we willing the good of the other person? Do we want what’s good for them, or only what’s useful to us? Do we want them to become better, or only to make our life easier?

Seeing this short exercise, I think Mr. Jobs would celebrate how close we’ve come to his 1985 vision. We have more access to information than any generation before us. We can retrieve facts instantly, summarize books in seconds, compare ideas across centuries before lunch.

That’s amazing!

Yet the more powerful the tool gets, the more responsibility shifts back to the person using it.

Ask Aristotle about leadership, and I have to ask whether I can govern myself.

Ask him about prudence, and I must examine my own motives before I decide.

Ask him about friendship, and the real question is whether I’m willing the good of the other person or just protecting what’s useful to me.

AI tools can generate answers. Wisdom starts when we let those answers question us back.

The machine can help us ask Aristotle a question.

It can’t make us become the kind of person who can live the answer.

Photo by Bernard Gotfryd, circa 1984

Hand in Hand in Gonzaga Bay

It was 1985.

We were driving south in my parents’ Toyota 4×4, following them along the bumpy, rocky dirt roads of Baja toward Gonzaga Bay.

The girl who would become the love of my life was sitting beside me. She’d known me for only about six weeks. Still, she said yes.

Yes to Baja. Yes to the road less traveled. Yes to the unknown

Always a quiet adventurer.

Dust hung in the air. Our windows were down. The Beach Boys played on the stereo as the long road unfolded mile after mile.

We warmed ourselves in the sand and swayed together in our neighbor’s hammock. We snorkeled just offshore and rode the small swells that rolled into the bay most afternoons.

Time felt generous.

Under the moonlight, we walked hand in hand, just the two of us and that beautiful bay.

I knew then what I know today.

She is the woman of my dreams.

I’ve been blessed to live this dream with her every day since.

She’s my loving wife, the mother of our two beautiful and caring daughters, and Grandma to our nine amazing grandchildren.

And always, The Finest Gift.

Some places hold a moment from your life. Others hold a truth you’ll carry forever.

Tomorrow, we’ll celebrate thirty-eight years of marriage.

Through every challenge we’ve faced and every joy we’ve shared, our lives have been joined as one.

The life we’ve built, the family we love, and the road we’re still traveling have become our shared story, woven together and sustained by the grace of God.

This memory came rushing back as I listened to Dennis Doyle sing “Connemara Bay.” He was singing about a place in Ireland, but I was transported to Gonzaga Bay.

Photo by Mks Mkss on Unsplash

Create Anyway

There’s a big difference between having an opinion about what’s broken and taking responsibility for making something better.

We live in a time when commentary is easy.

We can criticize from the sidelines. We can point out what’s wrong. We can explain why the system is broken, why the leaders failed, why the plan won’t work, or why the people in charge should have known better.

And much of that criticism may be true.

Something really may be broken. People may have failed. The system may need to change.

But is criticism going to be our only contribution?

Creating rather than complaining is an act of disciplined hope. It says I can see what’s wrong, but I’m still willing to work.

Complaining usually says, “Someone should fix this.”

Creating says, “I can improve one piece of this.”

That shift moves us from the sidelines onto the field.

Some problems aren’t ours to carry. We shouldn’t excuse the people who caused them. We don’t pretend the risks aren’t real or the damage doesn’t exist.

But we refuse to stop at frustration.

We must ask better questions.

What can I build? What can I repair? What can I encourage? What can I organize? What can I make clearer, stronger, more honest, more useful, more human?

And what can I do even if I didn’t create the problem?

That’s leadership.

Leadership isn’t only authority or title, position, budget, or permission.

Leadership is seeing a gap and stepping into it.

It’s making the call no one wants to make. Writing the note. Cleaning up the mess. Telling the truth. Taking the first small step.

We don’t have to fix everything to make something better.

That’s important to understand, because the size of the problem can become an excuse for doing nothing.

If I can’t fix the whole system, why bother? If I can’t change the whole culture, why try?

But that’s spectator thinking.

Builders think differently. Builders understand that every useful thing starts smaller than the problem it hopes to address.

A bridge starts with a first beam. A book starts with a first sentence.

A movement starts with a first conversation.

A better future starts when someone decides their contribution will be more than complaint.

It says I may not be responsible for the whole problem, but I am responsible for what I do next.

It says tomorrow can be better than today, and I’m willing to put something in motion.

The invitation is simple.

Don’t let your only contribution be commentary.

Find one thing you can improve.

One process. One relationship. One decision. One conversation. One neglected corner of the work.

Start there. Build there. Serve there.

The system may still be broken. The leaders may still have failed.

But the future belongs to the ones who choose to create anyway.

Photo by Alex Gruber on Unsplash – The future is shaped by people willing to begin.