friendship

Build your networks

| jaylazzo

The idea of friendship as building pipelines speaks straight to the heart.

Some pipelines, like the one you built with your salesman, are only used occasionally and for one purpose: you give him the cash, he gives you the laptop. The pipeline between you and your best friend might be used every 25 years but deep and meaningful stories go both ways over one dinner. In both cases, trust holds up the pipeline.

Some pipelines involve a large investment by one party and a much smaller one by the other. So for example, a doctor invests only this much in a patient: he diagnoses and he prescribes. But the patient invests much more, he sees the doctor, he follows his advice (sometimes at great sacrifice), and pays him the professional fee. In a mentoring relationship, the mentor invests by giving advice, monitoring, finding contacts. The mentee? He listens to the mentor and then does his work and meets those contacts.

In true friendships both parties invest a lot of time and effort, sometimes continuously, sometimes with serious accidents. But you know two people are friends when the pipelines last and can transport a huge amount of goodwill. Friends, it is said, are one soul in two bodies.

In a relationship called “association”, the pipeline is used for purposes related only to work, to common interests, and to common schedules. Most of our colleagues are associates, NOT friends, even if you see them everyday, or have lunch with them everyday.

Do not treat your associates as friends, not yet. It’s like forcing bunker oil through a pipeline made for jet fuel; you could burst the line permanently. And do not expect them to treat you like more than an associate either, even a very good one.

I’ve lived in multicultural settings, and I have seen people in different cultures handle friendships and associations differently. Some associates can be so friendly-sounding, but you should not take that as an invitation to friendship. They may even talk to you about topics that in your culture are only shared among intimates: politics, family, and education. I made a mistake once of opening up a matter of religion with one of these, and I received an immediate “I do not want to talk about these things.” I appreciate that he made the boundary clear.

Some associates will become friends only after a long time.

However, sometimes it happens quickly. I met someone who I have interacted with less than 10 times in 6 years. On our second meeting I knew we would become friends, but that really happened on our 5th. I cannot say it will be the same for everyone, except in one thing: both must invest equally. I think one reason friendship develops fast in some cases is that there is clear proof of equal investment by both sides.

Pipelines operate on trust. A big investment is to open oneself to criticism or rejection — this is called displaying vulnerability. Fearing the response will manifest as a certain discomfort and one comes across as not being himself. This behavior betrays a lack of trust.

But the fact that you don’t have a lot of trust in another, nor that they don’t trust you as a friend, isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s not a character defect. Most of the time lack of trust is not even a deal breaker if we just adjust the expectations to fit the level of trust.

But two behavior are potentially deal breakers for most pipelines involving associates and friends: 1) revealing secrets, and 2) dissing others bigtime, talking trash behind peoples’ backs. My logic is this: if they can smear others, they will smear you. But even calumniating common acquaintances, the worst of behaviors, can be repaired if both parties want it.

I am not here speaking of a panelist on a hiring committee whose job is to evaluate defects. If he were a pro, he would not talk about the dossiers to people who do not need to know. I do not speak of voters discussing the strengths and weaknesses of candidates.

I have seen that, in some cultures, revealing secrets and talking about the defects of others in casual conversations is common. In the Philippines we call this chismis, or Maritess. In small matters, like this guy has a funny accent, I agree, that’s entertaining. But I draw the line where a secret of office is betrayed.

For example, I HEARD in a confidential chat with P.P. that he heard from a relative that A.Y. had cancer. I told J.L., A.Y.’s boss and one who may have a need to know. “I heard A.Y. is sick.”

“Well, he has been having a flu, something like that,” said J.L.

“I heard it to be more than that. But I think it should come from the horse’s mouth. I’m telling you, this is hearsay, so I can’t say what,” I told J.L.

Even though I know A.Y. would receive a lot of sympathy and support if others knew, it would also mean that I was party to the revealing of what I assume was told in confidence.

Pipelines — whether friendships, associations, or any other relationship — need us to get out of our way to make them. Like real pipelines, they are enormously profitable.

Six Degrees of Separation. Downloaded from: https://blog-c7ff.kxcdn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/blog_image-01-2.jpg

Because we are all connected by them. All the lines connecting people form an enormously complex network, one that could put you in contact with any other person through as little as 5 to 6 intermediaries.

So keep building them.

(Q.C. 230207)

i met old friends at a wake

| jaylazzo

A friend of the family passed away Christmas of 2022.

He was my dad’s friend and father to 7 children who were also our buddies. We one by one went our different ways as we graduated university. Some went to the US, others stayed, some married, had kids. One from our side briefly dated one of theirs, and my brother is a neighbor to two of them in the US. But, on the whole, I haven’t seen most of those kids in over 30 years.

Until the wake of their dad.

I got to see all of the 7 back home, in the Philippines. The middle boy, M.V., was one of my best friends in college although we were from different universities. I got to meet his him, his wife and one of his daughters in 2015 in the US. Seven years later, today, I got to see the full extent of what my “nephews” and “nieces” have become, thanks to the hard work of their dad.

This is how his kids turned out. They all went to the best schools: Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard, all on full scholarship. The two oldest girls, newly married, are employed as software experts in Google and Disney, one of whom is credited with a published VR technology. The oldest boy was offered scholarships in several top schools and chose Harvard.

M.V. though very intelligent was not what we call “academic”, but he in an extremely hard worker. He also had a little something to prove: middle children often do. I recall him telling me that he solved all the problems in one of his engineering textbooks and shared the answer sheet to his classmates. He married young right after college and migrated to the US, where he worked for a software company before founding his own consulting firm.

They never had a lot of money and they still live in a rented apartment. To raise 6 kids and give them good education they had nothing but hard work to rely on. It was not easy.

Education in the US is very expensive. The yearly tuition of just one kid could nearly wipe out one’s yearly salary. The only way his kids could get the education he wanted for them was through full scholarships. This is hell to process.

Aside from showing exceptional scholastic performance, there are tons of documents to fill out. This grueling chore has to be repeated every year. And every year, M.V. is audited by the universities, a process requiring even more paperwork. It was so hard that M.V. has closed his business in order to work full time administering the scholarships for the kids who are still studying.

The boy, M., in particular, is something. His SAT scores are perfect in math and nearly perfect in verbal, stratospheric enough to be offered full scholarships by several top schools including Harvard and Princeton. One question on the application form for Harvard asked “What did you in the summer, and what did you learn?”

M. could have done a regular summer job like most kids. But instead, the dad suggested that 1) his son design and build a product; and 2) that he shadow his dad in his consulting work. For the product part, M. designed and programmed an educational app that used virtual reality technology, with the help of his sister. For the shadowing part, he wrote that he spent the summer dusting the innards of computers.

For someone in high school to design and build a virtual reality app is impressive. But what I found more impressive was what he said he learned from shadowing his dad. M. wrote on his essay that he learned the value of preventive maintenance.

There’s a management adage called the 1-10-100 Rule. It says that it costs $1 to verify your work, $10 to repair a mistake, and $100 to control damage from use of the product. Preventive maintenance is that job, least glamorous, but that makes all function efficiently and effectively. It’s a minuscule investment all things considered.

Preventive maintenance summarizes the whole of M.V.’s strategy. He invested in the unglamorous job of filling out the tortured paperwork, but by doing so he also demonstrated what great work really involves. Work is grind, grind pays.

As to not having a house? “What does a house add to all this?,” M.V. asked me. “Nothing”. You don’t own a house until it is fully paid for, and until then it is a liability, not an asset. Grant Cardone, wealth consultant and author of The 10X Rule, has never owned his own house either.

Today their eldest daughter’s family lives in their own house. On Lake Tahoe, of all places. That’s very expensive, but it’s also very Google if you’re a top performer.

I’m so glad to have met M.V. again.

Then my phone rings; it’s his brother. M.V.’s siblings were downstairs in a shop called Marketplace, and were about to go to a karaoke bar. Could I drive M.V. there? I said, “Sure,” but changed my mind. “We’ll be done in about 15 minutes. Could you guys wait?”

They did. So M.V. and I went down to the ground floor, passing for cheese rolls first chez Mary Grace, which does not exist in the US, and I was able to say goodbye to the whole gang: Some of the Best Friends I’ve Ever Known.

Always choose God

| jaylazzo

Once again, out of town. I just love going out because it is restful. I like to stay away from the house for a while. For whatever reason, say I don’t like being with certain people there, I just admit it because taking a step back is the first step forward to licking the problem.

I found this lovely little book that I hope will improve me a lot. Perhaps I’m not an extrovert, but I have some things I can share with the world, so let’s just maximize that area of strength. I think I can work in the direction of improving my social skills. But I should not imagine there is one right way of understanding social talent. I would rather emphasize where my talents and interests really lie, because those are the areas where i can ENJOY PRACTICING.

It is important, very important, to love practice. This can’t be overemphasized. That could be reading, writing, doing math, practicing the guitar, practicing data analysis. Whatever, it must be enjoyed, and you should be able to tell from the start that “this is the sort of practice I enjoy doing”. As soon as you can identify that, that would be a helpful resource for when discouragement comes.

Sand does not flow back up the hourglass; neither can you force sand to go through before their time. My attention is on the sand that goes through the hole, one at a time and in its own time. Focus on the present. Whatever I might or might not have done in the past is buried there where it should not be regretted upon nor enjoyed. The past today has no meaning save for a memory that hopefully is helpful. The future is nice for a vision, but I can’t live in that one either.

So, in a sense, even if it might seem that existence is dreary, I’m really recreating my life everyday! To put it more truly, I’m in front of the opportunity to do God’s will everyday. I could recreate my life as I want, or I could do what God’s plan requires of me. God wants to recreate me in the Image of His Son, that’s what the will of God ultimately leads to. Any other way of acting would be a false recreation.

It would be a false recreation to aim for an image or a situation in the future that is against the will of God. I shouldn’t plan to sin. I shouldn’t look forward to it. And even where sin is not concerned, there are certain activities, pastimes, hobbies that do not lead to me being recreated into the image of Jesus Christ because they waste one’s time.

A choice often presents itself before me: to deal with a person, or to withdraw. To do good or to do nothing. To show love or to withhold it.

At the bottom is WANT and DESIRE. At the bottom is the question: What do I choose to love right now? At the bottom are only two answers: God, or myself ahead of God. It’s rarely other than that. The rare exceptions DO NOT MATTER, such as do I eat chicken or pork. But those choices that are not indifferent, that do indicate a love or a hatred for a PERSON or persons, those are the choices that matter.

When I choose to WANT something, I should really ask WHO am I choosing?

A man with a pure heart chooses GOD CONSISTENTLY. No matter, whether it’s a big thing or a small thing, the man with a pure heart chooses GOD. That’s it, can’t be any simpler than that. Perhaps we can make it more complicated, but I do not think God had complicatedness in mind. If anything, He probably wants me just to “push the button” or to “swallow the red or the blue pill”, and the He does most of the rest. I could for example choose to waste time with a friend against utilitarian logic and God would make it right no matter what. This by the way is the logic of obedience done for love of God.

So, learn to see that every choice that matters is a choice for GOD or for SELF. If today were the last day of my life it would be in my interest and in the interest of the world that i choose GOD TODAY. Don’t think about tomorrow or yesterday. CHOOSE GOD TODAY, RIGHT NOW.

This is not going to be easy because choosing oneself is a natural instinct and one willed by God Himself so that we take care of ourselves. No problem. If we must do that, and I think this happens a lot, then do it because of love for GOD! I will choose this or that for myself because I am choosing GOD through those things. I will choose to love others for the same reason; at least I will avoid choosing to love others because I needed some favor or because it makes me look good.

That something so ordinary could in fact be a choice for God can be difficult to understand for one used to the idea that loving God is all about going to church. Again, I think God is simple, not complicated, and He wouldn’t want us to be complicated either. That’s probably one reason why Jesus Christ chose to become a man. It makes it a lot easier to imagine human friendship when we think of Jesus as Friend. A relationship with God is universe-level, but it can’t be more complicated than befriending another human.

Friends want the best for their friends, even to the point of making them suffer, as they themselves suffer for imposing punishments. But stop thinking of Jesus only as the Punisher. If anything, the Punisher role would not be like any earthly punisher’s role. Even in things as bleak as that, God is LOVE, and this never ceases, never for a moment.

It would be wrong to lose hope. One could lose hope by substituting one’s criteria for God’s. Simple as that. It’s also a lack of faith. Often, it’s a lack of love as well. Settle this issue, and I am sure I will come to love even the people I would rather avoid being with in the same room.

Friendship and indifference

| jaylazzo

It is natural that we give our best gifts to those we call friends. A friend is the same soul in two bodies. Our gift to them will in essence be our lives. We give them ours, they give us theirs.

There are other people in our life who are not at that level. These we call associates, assignments and mentors.

Associates are those with whom we share schedules, common goals and interests. These are the guys you will take coffee with but not invite you to your house, nor you they. We do not give our life to them, but we do give them time and vice versa. Some of them will become friends later. Ask the Holy Spirit to mark them out. In fact, He is already doing that by putting some of our associates in a position where we could take a step or two towards friendship.

Then there are two kinds of people where the gift giving is one way. Assignments are the people we are tasked to help. Like the demoniac of was to Jesus, you know, that incident with the pigs. Assignments don’t give us gifts other than the joy of knowing we made some difference in their life. And there are the mentors, who give us the gift of their expertise; the gift we give them is the joy of seeing that we listened. Assignments and mentors do not often become friends, but we can do a great apostolate with them. Just think of your mentee as that demoniac who Jesus turned into a disciple without being his friend.

We don’t treat everyone the same, but we treat everyone right. The opposite, the worst way to treat people is to be indifferent.

The devil hates what we are doing. Seeing that most of us will not be tempted to do great evils, he instead chooses a much more effective tactic: he will tempt us to be indifferent.

Indifference means “no difference”. It is a state where the line is blurred between good and evil, between useful and useless, where we look on a suffering victim and don’t care. Indifference turns the victim’s suffering into nothing; not a good thing or a bad thing, just nothing. With enough indifferent people you get a society like Nazi Germany.

Hence, this quote from Elie Weisel, Romanian-American author and survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

Indifference is worse than ignorance.

The devil has many points of attack. There’s pride and its progeny: fear of ridicule, fear of rejection. There’s natural tiredness. And, least problematic are lack of knowledge, competence and of means. I say this is the least problematic of all because Jesus proved it in the feeding of the 5,000: he fed them with truth as well as bread. Our Father proved it, and the proof is sitting on your left and on your right.

How do we reverse indifference? Bring back the fun. And not just the fun: bring in the sadness, the rage, the excitement, the nerves — all the colors and emotions that prove you HAVE a LIFE. Three ways.

First, work like a painter. Indifferent people are worried sick about making mistakes. A good painter in contrast keeps the brush moving regardless. We just keep on dealing with people and running our projects, making adjustments along the way. We keep fighting our interior battles without obsessing over every outcome. Action is the best motivator.

Second, work like a hunter. Indifferent people are in a way lazy. The devil is not; he is a roaring lion always on the hunt. We can’t be anything less. We must learn lion tactics. Lions plan in broad strokes leaving the tactical details open to circumstances. “Do not worry about how or what you are to say,” Matthew 10:19. Another lion tactic: they do not use drones. Instead, they apply all their physical, intellectual and emotional resources to the hunt directly. It’s dangerous work, they only capture 47% to 63% of their prey and a kick from a gazelle can shatter the jaw. What follows is death by starvation. Man, a lion’s SOUL is rivetted to its WORK!

Third, work like an athlete. Indifferent people are proud and self sufficient. But, a good athlete is disciplined and reflective. Work even though you don’t feel like it. Show up for the mass in the morning even with a hangover, show up for your appointments even if you have to i dunno what. Like David before Goliath, face your demons man with all your defects, tiredness, incompetence, and fears. Let’s examine our conscience. Then let us open up to our coaches and let us accept correction especially on those points we think we are already good at. Notice which of your team mates needs help. Assist. Sub. Recruit. Spot. Gino talked about much of this yesterday. Heard of the phrase “lift to failure”? It comes from weightlifting. Its when a lifter, on his last rep, goes for a weight that he is likely to fail 50 50. Its usually something done in training. What was remarkable about Heidilyn Diaz when she won gold was that she used it in COMPETITION. On her last attempt she went for broke and lifted a weight that was heavier than anything she had lifted before even in training. But she was also lucky in that the Chinese frontrunner failed her last 2 attempts. Weighlifting requires absolute focus. Miss China was probably thinking about Xi Jin Ping.

Painter. Hunter. Athlete. Bring the fire back to the fight. More you fight, more you fail, more you win.

Having ended with athletics, let us now begin to wind down this talk with a story that takes place where many athletes train. On a beach.

Once upon a time a young man was walking along a beach. There were many starfish on the dry sand. He picked up one and threw it back to the sea. Then he picked another and threw it back to the sea. And so on.

Sitting on a piece of driftwood was a young boy. He was watching the man and became very curious. The boy went up to the man and asked him, “What are you doing?”

“I’m saving this starfish’s life,” said the man, holding up the starfish that was in his hand.

“But what does it matter? You can’t save all of them!” exclaimed the boy pointing to the vast expanse of sand and starfish.

“I know,” said the young man. “But it matters to this little guy” and throws the starfish to the boy’s face.

We spoke about the world, about our region, about our place at work and our mission in it as members of the Work. Make no mistake: God wants good works and therefore He wants zealous action. Ask: Dear Holy Spirit, what problem in the world do You want me to solve, ecce ego and have mercy on me for my past irresponsibility. Grant me your grace to acquit myself honorably before you should I die today. Wrote the Brazilian poet Vinicius De Moraes: A coisa mas que linda que ha no mundo e viver cada segundo como nunca mas. The most beautiful thing in this world is to live every second like it was your last.

Trivia: Goliath was absolutely terrifying from a distance but not up close. Since the first article in the Indiana Medical Journal in 1960, experts think he had acromegaly. This form of gigantism is caused by a tumor of the pituitary gland. The tumor also compresses the optic nerve causing double vision and extreme nearsightedness, consistent with the biblical account. David, the shepherd, could see from afar that this beast was no wolf. Still, he could not have beaten Goliath in hand to hand combat. He used artillery instead. Not the puny slingshot kids use. David’s sling was 5 feet long that you swing like this. It is accurate and deadly. Experts have killed birds in flight, and killed or maimed enemies to about 200 yds. Glued to his spot by 100 pounds of arms and armor and unable to use his strengths, Goliath was a sitting duck.