The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Today was one of those days, where you regret getting out of bed and every time you think it can't get any worse, it does.  The only thing good about today was reaching the end, and knowing tomorrow has to be better.

It started, of course, looking like a pretty good day.  That's how they get you.  If you were expecting a bad day, it would just confirm your worries, but by teasing you with a glimmer of hope, it can crush you completely.  That glimmer was that I had a fairly light day -- normally I'm in meetings five hours of the day, and then trying to pack eight hours of work into what remains.  Today I only had two meetings -- one at 10:30am and one at 1:30pm.  I had scheduled a dentist appointment in the morning and was meeting my partner and a friend for lunch at noon.  I even thought I might be home on time for once.

My bike was in the shop so I had the car; thankfully my partner didn't need it that day.  The dentist appointment ran late, but I didn't have any cavities, so I was happy right until I got back to the car, when I saw three messages on my phone:
1. A meeting with senior leadership had been scheduled for today at 9am.  It was now 9:20am.
2. My partner, it turned out, needed the car to get to a school meeting at 2:30pm.  (The child in question had sworn it was on Thursday, but thankfully my partner checked and it was today.)
3. The bike shop sent a text saying the bike was ready.

At this point, I should have driven straight to work to salvage what was left of the meeting.  It turned out the meeting invite was accidentally sent to my co-worker.  Yesterday at 4pm he realised it was for me and so forwarded it without telling me I had to be there at 9am, and of course I didn't check my email after 4pm so I had no idea.

However, I made the (unwise) decision to go pick up my bike instead.  My logic was this: Parking around the office is a nightmare, so by the time I got in I would have missed most of the meeting, and then I would have still had to sort out the car for the afternoon.  Better to cut my losses and cycle in.

I got to the bike shop to find my bike on the rack, being worked on.  I said I'd gotten a text saying it was finished and the tech told me he'd lost one of the nuts so he'd jimmied something together, but he just found the nut so he was putting it back on.  That was slightly disconcerting, since the nut in question held on the derailleur, and I wondered if he'd planned on telling me about his makeshift repair, but I decided it wasn't worth making a fuss about it and waiting for him to finish.  He took ten minutes.

Now it was closing on 10am and I was getting worried I'd be late for my 10:30 meeting as well!  I then made the (unwise) decision to drive in after all, and pray to the parking gods to have mercy on me.  Except the new car doesn't have a bicycle rack and the bicycle takes up the entire back seat, so I couldn't leave it in. I drove home, left it in the hallway (I could have just as easily put it in the garage) and raced off to work.  The parking gods were smiling, but at me rather than on me,  In fact, they were practically crying with laughter.  After driving around for 10 minutes I ended up parking 15 minutes from work, in a 2-hour zone.  (Cycling would have taken less than 20 minutes.)  And it started to rain. I was in a suit with no raincoat or umbrella.

I arrived for the 10:30 meeting panting, wet and in agony because Sunday I'd just bought a brand new pair of leather work shoes, and today was my first day wearing them.  In the shop they'd been really comfortable, but today they were rubbing me in all the wrong places.  Of course, having walked on the pavement for 15 minutes, they are now mine to keep.  (Hopefully I'll break them in eventually.)

After getting my knuckles rapped for missing the 9am meeting, the rest of the meeting went fine, but only because my boss had forgotten about the three things he assigned me two weeks ago which I still haven't finished.  (See "5 hours of meetings per day," above.)  I got out of that meeting and had half an hour to respond to my emails before running off to meet my partner and friend for lunch.

We were meeting at my partner's work, which is only a ten minute walk from my work, but I had to move the car before the 2 hour window expired, and it was in the opposite direction.  I texted my friend and partner to start lunch without me.  Of course, I tried to move the car closer to my wife's work, but again the parking gods were pissing themselves with laughter, and after 15 minutes of circling I ended up parking even further away than where I started.  I walked to our designated rendezvous point, texting my partner and wondering why she wasn't texting me back.  It turned out she'd gotten stuck in a meeting, so our friend had just been wandering around for 20 minutes looking for either of us!!

We finally met up, and my partner joined us a few minutes later, but by then our friend had to leave, and I had to get back for my 1pm meeting.  We tried to get some food but both cafes had a long queue so I gave my partner the car keys, took her bike and left without eating.  As soon as I started cycling, it started raining again.

The 1pm meeting was very frustrating because it was with a user who believed the IT department was only there to make her job easier.  If you are still under such illusions, let me tell you: The IT department is there to make your job go away, period.  Last week I was in a meeting with a different group who were arguing that spending $30,000 on a new system would be cost-effective because it would save their team 10 hours per month in manually preparing reports.  I first pointed out that even by their calculations, it would take 2.5 years to see a return on the investment, and then I pointed out that unless someone was being fired, there was no actual cost savings.  They didn't get it.

So this user had the same attitude: I don't want to look in two systems for this information, so copy all the data from one system into the other system, and then keep it in sync.  I politely pointed out three times that she had no business case to justify this, but she was firmly of the opinion that I was just there to do whatever she asked.  Thankfully, after the meeting I had a good idea: I sent a message to senior management pointing out that they wanted this system right away, but if I did what she asked it would delay implementation by at least three months, so we should put that into "phase 2."  They immediately agreed, and I'll be sure to kill any "phase 2."

That high lasted all of 5 minutes, when my boss decided to share his vision of the future.  He passed me a sheaf of documents which he'd been quietly running past the CEO, and he felt the seeds were starting to take root.  Unfortunately, I looked at the papers and realised it was a stupid idea.

Trying to be as polite as possible, I pointed out he was shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted. His plan to create a "data czar" was fine, but about 15 years too late.  Data was already replicated and duplicated across the enterprise, and it was tied directly to the applications, so you couldn't just magically declare the data was "controlled." First, you need to physically put something between the app and the data, then you can start to claw back the data.  I'd already started to put plans together to do just that, but it was at least a two year project, and there was no point in brining someone on board before then.

My co-worker also pointed out that he'd had a data architect, whom nobody liked so he got rid of him earlier this year.  However, instead of firing him, he'd made him redundant, and under NZ law if you make someone redundant you can't create a similar position for at least a year! (I did not know that.)  On top of that, there is already a team in charge of "data services" so this new role would be a direct challenge to them.  So this plan was just a disaster waiting to happen.  Of course he didn't listen to us.

When confronted with ignorance, I always turn to pictures.  The aforementioned data architect had tried to make some system flow diagrams, but he'd managed to make them so overly complex that they were completely useless, and I had to start from scratch.  I drew up the "current environment" and the "future state" and just capturing the number of systems and data feeds I was aware of, it took six hours.  (It also highlighted how little I still know of all the systems and data feeds.)

It was now 11pm, and I still had to bike home, in the dark, wearing a suit and uncomfortable shoes, without a jacket.  (Did I mention it's winter in New Zealand?)  I texted my partner hoping she'd take mercy, but she'd already gone to bed, I normally wear a hi-vis vest but of course I didn't have that, either, but someone had left a bright green towel hanging outside, so I wrapped it around my shoulders.  I'm very grateful I did that because as soon as I struck out, it started raining.  Then it started pouring.  Then it got very windy.

I was soaked like a rat.  My glasses were covered in raindrops and I couldn't see a thing.  The towel miraculously stayed on even in the blowing wind.  (I had visions of it flying off and landing in a puddle, but because it was someone else's towel I would have had to stop and get it and carry it home!)  Thankfully there were very few cars out, but surprisingly there were several people.  I'm sure they will all be telling stories tomorrow about the guy in a suit with a green cape cycling in the rain at 11pm the night before.

I was so grateful when I got home, but it was clear I was the only one who felt that way: The porch light was turned off, the table was cleared except for my dinner dishes, and the remnants of dinner were sitting, ice cold, on the countertop.  It was quite depressing.  I left my partner's bike in the hallway (it would have been just as easy for me to put in the garage as well) so the kids will have fun maneuvering around two bikes tomorrow.  I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tea, and then wrote this as a form of catharsis, to let the day go.  Of course, it's now 1:30am, I have to be up in six hours, and I get to do it all again tomorrow...

Parashat Eikev

In today’s portion, Moses continues his speech to the Israelites, reminding them to keep God's commandments when they enter the land of Israel.  This year’s triennial begins with Devarim 9.4: “And when the LORD your God has thrust them from your path, say not to yourselves, ‘The LORD has enabled us to possess this land because of our virtues’.”  As a rallying cry for battle, it sucks, but as an eternal truth, it’s perfect.

It is human nature to believe that when things go well, it is because of ourselves, and when things go poorly it is because of others.  The axiom, “Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan” actually goes back to the 1st century CE, when the Roman Tacitus wrote: “This is an unfair thing about war: victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone.”

However, so much of our success is the result of circumstance, timing, our families, our schools and teachers, the people we know and those who went before us, and a large dose of luck.  Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” His first commercial success was in 1870, when he made a stock ticker based on the telegraph. Forty years earlier, Samuel Morse had patented the telegraph, but adoption was hampered by the cost of land rights to run the cables. In 1851, railroads allowed the cables to be run alongside the tracks, so telegraph operators were located at the stations.  In 1860, a 13-year-old Edison got a job selling newspapers at the local station. The station agent befriended him and taught him how to operate the telegraph, and he was an operator for 7 years before creating the stock ticker, which earned him $40,000 (about $750,000 US in today’s money) and allowed him to become a full-time inventor. If any one of those hadn’t occurred, we wouldn’t be discussing Edison right now.  He should have said genius is one percent inspiration, five percent perspiration and 94 percent happy circumstance, although admittedly that’s not as catchy.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with taking pride in our efforts, accomplishments, children, etc. The problem comes when we believe our success is solely due to our own actions, because we then must also believe other people’s failures are solely due to their actions.  If we are successful because of our hard work, then less successful people must be lazy.  If we are wealthy because we are careful with money, then poor people shouldn’t be trusted with money.  When our children do well at school because we are good parents, then children who don’t do as well must have bad parents.

Rabbi Shira Milgrom writes, “We forget that in the web of the universe, we are all connected. We forget that our successes depend on the successes and sacrifices of countless others, we forget how dependent we are on a larger society, on the planet and its health. We forget our obligations to others—and, we forget that with all this material wealth, we will not be happy or even satisfied without gratitude.”1

Moses was warning us that when we take our success for granted, and assume it is because of our virtues, we cut ourselves off from G-d, our community and the rest of the world.  Rabbi Paula Feldstein wrote: “The family into which we are born, the schools we attend, and the communities in which we are raised all play a major role in who we become and how we succeed… We should respond to our prosperity with recognition of the factors that lead to our success and with humility before God.”2

The term ‘humility’ has gotten a bad rap; after all, it has the same root as ‘humiliation,’ from the Latin humus (“soil”).  Dictionaries define humility as a low self-regard and sense of unworthiness.  When someone said Clement Attlee was a humble man, Winston Churchill said “he has plenty to be humble about.”

However, that is not the original definition.  Rabbi Louis Jacobs, founder of the Masorti movement in the UK, wrote, “In the Jewish tradition, humility is among the greatest of the virtues, as its opposite, pride, is among the worst of the vices. Moses, the greatest of men, is described as the most humble: In Numbers 12:3, ‘Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were on the face of the earth.’ In Genesis 18:27, the patriarch Abraham protests to God: ‘Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes.’ Greatness and humility, in the Jewish tradition, are not incompatible.”3

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “Humility — true humility — is one of the most expansive and life-enhancing of all virtues. It does not mean undervaluing yourself. It means valuing other people. It signals a certain openness to life's grandeur and the willingness to be surprised, uplifted, by goodness wherever one finds it."4

C.S Lewis wrote, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”

So being humble does not mean feeling bad about yourself, or debasing your own efforts and contributions; it only means acknowledging all of the contributors to your success.  Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”  Every week, as we recount the stories of our ancestors, we remind ourselves we stand on the shoulders of giants. Humility frees us from judgment and allows us to connect with one another, to lift up others and to recognise our place in the world.

The Talmud states, “The word of God can only be heard in a humble heart.”5

We all know Aesop’s fable, “The Ants & the Grasshopper.”  The ants are busy all summer storing grain, while the grasshopper plays his fiddle.  Come winter, the grasshopper is begging for food and the ants mock him and turn him away.  However, worker ants generally live only a few months, so the grain they were eating in winter was collected and stored by a previous generation.

Every spring, Monarch butterflies migrate 3,000 miles from Mexico to Canada, but they only live 6-8 weeks and it takes 4-5 generations to cross that distance.  The ones who left Mexico will never see their destination, but they start the journey anyway.  I’m not sure the Pirkei Avot had butterflies in mind when it said, “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it,” but it certainly applies.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been collecting photos for the Temple’s 59th birthday, which is next Sunday.  Seeing people I’ve known for a couple of years engaged in Temple life twenty or thirty years ago has been delightful.  These are not people who took the Temple for granted, nor believed they alone could support it. They recognised the Temple as an inheritance, and that their hard work was needed to continue it for the next generation.  They did not do it for glory or recognition, but out of a sense of responsibility.  These are humble people in the truest sense and I, for one, am very grateful that I can be here today because of them.

Of course, I don’t want this to go to their head.  As writer E.D. Hulse said, “Humility is a strange thing. The minute you think you've got it, you've lost it.”

The last verse of the triennial is Devarim 10:11: And the LORD said to me, “Up, resume the march at the head of the people, that they may go in and possess the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.”

Shabbat shalom.

1 https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/eikev/all-you-need-love
2 https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-challenges-of-humility/

3 https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/humility-in-judaism/
4 https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/83807/jewish/On-Humility.htm
5 Taanit 7a