Introduction

Homer

On Sundays at my house, growing up in Southeast Idaho, my mom — a small, thin woman with light skin but dark eyes and short dark hair — would get out of bed at 5:00 a.m. At that hour she prepared roast and potatoes for Sunday dinner. Not a big surprise when you have dairy cows and potato fields, but a luxury we were not allowed to take for granted.

After three hours of church, and before the cows had to be milked again, I would sit around the dark wood table on big wooden chairs with my two sisters, my brother, and mom. My dad, at the head of the table, would ask each of us what we learned at church that day. It was at those times that he often attempted to impart words of fatherly wisdom to his progeny.

One day, as we sat around that table in the house on the bend in the road, with the rust-colored linoleum beneath our feet, he told of a small swallow he had seen earlier that week ferociously defending her nest from a red-tailed hawk. I stared out the big dining room window across the field with hay laying in neat rows. I lost track of the story as I watched birds of all sizes discovering rodents, bugs, and other feasts newly exposed by the freshly cut crop.

His story complete, he paused.

The quiet pulled me from my daydream. I had missed the point of the tale. I suppose the moral of that particular story was less important than what he shared next. He looked past me sitting at the foot of the table across from him, past the golden Formica countertops behind me, past the classic gold refrigerator of that late-70s home, through the door, through the carport, and out into the pastures beyond. Then he encouraged us all to look for life lessons in everyday things.

It seemed pretty simple for such dramatic effect. Intrigued, and always looking to please or impress my father, I watched for months but saw nothing.

I tried to come up with things at random…

This banana peel is like when you… get… old… or… brown spots… that… or… even throw it away…

I got nothing.

I figured I just didn't see things the way my dad did. Discouraged, I almost gave up entirely. Then one night I went to see a symphony and concert at the Assembly Hall in Salt Lake City. Despite growing up on a small rural farm, my parents felt it important for us to be exposed to culture and the arts. Most of the events we attended were free, but culture-building none the less.

As I sat in that old historic building, the stained-glass windows impressed me. In the light of the sunset, with the music as a backdrop, the windows came alive for me. My attention turned to the program long enough that when I looked back, the sun had set and the windows were dark and dull. I thought how love and kindness shining through us makes us bright, happy, and attractive like the sun shining through those windows — but if that light goes dim, and we become selfish and self-centered, our countenance is dulled.

In honesty, I do not now recall the exact analogy I made as a teenager looking out at a darkened stained-glass window, but I remember the elation I felt as the comparison came alive for me. I had done it. I found a life lesson in a mundane, ordinary, everyday thing.

I continue to draw life lessons from everyday events. That is the majority of what you will read in this book: life events underscored by lessons learned, sometimes validated by other authors and professionals. Like Aesop and his famous fables, I feel compelled to point out the moral I extrapolate from these stories and experiences.

There are, of course, innumerable potential parallels and lessons to be learned. Please do not constrain yourself by my limited experience and imagination. The point and intent is that these events might inspire, encourage, motivate, or resonate in some way — whatever that is for you.

I also encourage readers to look for the encouraging, enlightening lessons in the challenging and mundane of your own lives. Like your own modern parables, it makes for more interesting speeches and books. And it makes for a richer and more meaningful life.

Charlie

Dad's ability to pull wisdom from the mundane has always amazed me, and like my brother, over time it worked its way into how I process and view the world. I even categorize metaphors in my head as Red-Tailed Hawks.

Except where Scott was painfully aware of his analogies falling short, I fancied every vague connection I came across an allegorical tapestry of wisdom. I'm not even sure the sentence before this is the proper use of all those words, but if not, all the better to illustrate my point.

It's possible this is a personality flaw, but it's not something I'm alone in. German psychiatrist Klaus Conrad called it apophenia — the ability to perceive meaningful connections in random data — or its friendlier cousin pareidolia, which is things like seeing faces in clouds, animals in wood grain, or an even sadder version of Marvin the depressed robot from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the back of a family SUV.

No seriously. Now that I've put that in your head, keep an eye out and you'll see the one I'm referring to.

What's really cool is that you can actually see those ah-ha moments on a brain scan as the brain lights up, connections are made, and we feel that sense of elation.

I've spent most of my life, since I was old enough to contribute anything, chasing that feeling — primarily as a troubleshooter and team lead, and over time also as a data analyst, which is either the perfect job for a soft-hearted pattern-hunter or a deeply ironic form of poetic meanness.

Because data does not care about my feelings.

One of the ways this shows up is in the old line that correlation does not equal causation. In other words, you can have a true pattern and a false explanation at the same time. The line on the chart can be real, and the story you tell about it can be nonsense. In business this often means entire meetings are basically professional storytelling with charts.

Am I making that sound like a bad thing? It's not. We're storytelling machines. It's how we're wired.

But it's important that the patterns we're looking for don't just track logically. They have to contain useful truths that make us better in some way.

Here is our invitation, in the spirit of Dad's challenge:

Look for lessons in everyday things.
Then, when you find one, hold it up to the light.
Ask if it makes you kinder.
Ask if it makes you more honest.
Ask if it makes you more capable.
Ask if it actually matches reality, or if it just happens to rhyme with a fear you already had.

Stories can save us. They can also trap us. The difference is not whether we make meaning. The difference is whether we make good meaning.