Safety First

 

 

Public safety has become a charged issue in American cities. City folks rightfully take umbrage when non-city folks characterize cities as dangerous war zones. Non-city folks marvel that news coverage of crime and mayhem can be so quickly minimized by city folks. It is natural that something as basic to human existence as feeling safe has become so politically divisive to talk about and socially complex to resolve. 

Complicated problems require complicated solutions. My job today is not to wade into that, but rather to speak personally from my own experience navigating a big East Coast city and making sure my wife and children can do the same. You may have similar or different experiences, and similar or different takeaways from those experiences; in fact I assume there is a wide range of experiences and takeaways when it comes to moving around an American urban setting. 

Let me start by saying that crime is just one aspect of staying safe when getting from Point A to Point B in Philadelphia. For one, and understood that climate change may have something to say about this in the future, but we enjoy four true seasons and therefore lots of different kinds of weather, including shifting patterns from day to day or even within a day. Which means that one needs to check forecasts, plan accordingly, and prepare for unforeseen changes, or else run the risk of being miserably hot or cold or wet, and even worse having your ability to safely move around compromised or even completely blocked. 

Staying safe also requires being thoughtful of what mode of transport you choose and how to successfully navigate each mode. Most places in the US are not truly multi-modal, and in fact in many you have exactly zero choices, where things are so car-dominant that transit is unavailable and walking or biking is prohibitive. In Philly, “should I drive or bus or bike or walk” is a common question to ask oneself. 

Each mode, naturally, introduces its own risk calculation. I describe my urban driving as a weird combination of “defensive” and “offensive,” in that my goal of course is to avoid a collision (with another car, with a bicyclist or pedestrian, or with a concrete barrier or construction fence), but in order to do so one has to be ready to act decisively and not be too passive. When biking and walking, I now have to be mindful of those who are driving, wearing flashing lights when on two wheels, and not assuming cars will stop at stop signs when on two feet (and teaching my kids to do the same). 

Walking around or riding public transit involves its own game plan and game face. I tell my kids they are not allowed to do anything that displays to others that they are distracted, namely looking at their phones, wearing headphones, or anything besides having your head on a swivel. I’ve had to walk through different scenarios with Jada so she knows how she can, as a young woman, stay safe against the advances of men with bad intentions. And I tell Asher, as a large Black boy, that for his own safety he is not allowed to walk around with anything that can remotely be confused as a weapon and cause others around him to view him as a threat and take action against him. 

I wish this sort of vigilance wasn’t necessary but in fact it often is. Let me give three personal vignettes, which are relatively harmless but help illustrate this notion that what should otherwise be a mundane experience requires significant attention to stay safe:

1. One day, I was making the one-block walk from getting off the bus to walking into my office building. As I was quickly striding down the sidewalk, I noticed a guy coming towards me who was looking around in a shifty sort of way. I registered his erratic behavior even as I was thinking about the day’s schedule and being mindful of bumps and other people on the pavement. As the guy got closer he looked at me and then lunged at me as if to kick me, and I instinctively abruptly stopped walking forward and jumped backwards while yelling “whoa!” He missed me and then kept walking away, leaving me and everyone around me to look at each other and think “what the heck was that?” I am pretty sure that, if I hadn’t noticed him up the block, I wouldn’t have been able to elude his attack in time. I am also pretty sure that, if he had decided to use his fist instead of his foot, I also wouldn’t have been able to elude his attack in time. And yet, less than a minute later, when I entered my office building, my heart had stopped racing and I was on to the business of the day. 

2. I often bike to our local Y before the sun is up to get a workout in. It is so early that there are few if any cars on the road. Not that I don't keep my head on a swivel anyway, since I as a vulnerable and tottering cyclist need to share these local roads with two-ton steel boxes going at fast speeds. Sure enough, one morning I was roused from my sleepiness by a car abruptly arriving at an intersection as the same time as me, reminding me that I needed to pay attention. Which was fortunate, because the very next block a car driving erratically in front of me suddenly made a 180-degree turn and started speeding right towards me (on his left side of the street, which for me coming towards him meant right into the lane where I was biking). I immediately swerved from the street through parked cars and onto the safety of the sidewalk, not wanting to play chicken with a speeding car or hope he would steer closer to his side of the street once he got close to me. I was lucky there was a space between parked cars for me to make this transition from street to sidewalk, otherwise I'm not sure what I would've done to get out of his way, given how fast he was hauling and how directly he was going into my path.

3. Walking home from dropping Asher off at his friend's house, I turned a corner at an intersection with a spacious sidewalk and noticed a scary looking dog coming towards me. I looked up to see its owner, a petite young woman with her nose in her phone. Realizing that if the dog lurched at me, she might not be ready to rein it in, my gaze turned back to the dog to prepare for this possibility. The dog must have interpreted my looking at its owner and than at him as an act of aggression, because it immediately lunged at me with bared teeth. Thankfully its owner was able to keep grip on her leash, but I still had to jump back to avoid further danger. It was good that I was ready to, since I've definitely had multiple occasions when, while running in the dark, I come upon a scary dog and its sleepy owner, and there have been times when the dog feels sufficiently threatened and the owner sufficiently unprepared that the dog has run off towards me and the owner has lost grip of their leash. So I know, and tell my kids, to do everything you can to not sneak up on a dog, especially in the dark and especially if the owner doesn't look like they're paying attention.

In none of these situations was I directly hurt, even if I was deeply startled in all such cases. Unfortunately, not all encounters allow for such avoidance. I hold in my head countless stories of family members, friends, and colleagues who have witnessed or been directly affected by crime, sexual assault, and vehicular collisions. Some are minor and some are major; all of them accumulate to a body of direct and vicarious experiences that shape our thought process when we choose to move about this city. 

And so the mundane task of commuting to work or getting home from school is burdened with a hyper-awareness to things that can compromise our safety. And while it is good that I and others possess the “street smarts” to calculate danger potential and assess risk exposure, at its extreme it is tiresome, debilitating, or even paralyzing. 

We should approach conversations about and remedies for public safety with humility, because there are consequences to uninformed takes and ineffective actions that demean people, diminish concerns, and create more problems. But I hope it is not controversial to say that certain settings require a lot of planning and awareness to safely navigate, and that that overload of thinking is taxing to our wellbeing and worth considering how we can make things less taxing. To invoke my kids’ own experience again, a young woman walking around a city at night has to act in a certain way to stay safe, and I hope for a day in which that isn’t true. And a young Black boy biking to the park to play with his friends has to take care to avoid confrontations that can turn violent, and I wish someday this won’t be a problem. For now, safety is always first, and today’s post has been an attempt to inventory some of what that means in my own life.

Bike Works

 

Part of moving Aaron in freshman year at college was getting him some wheels. Kansas State is a compact campus, and Manhattan is a compact college town, so one can technically walk everywhere. But a vehicle increases your radius significantly. But a car is expensive, while a regular bike might be a bit much given how hilly and cold this part of Kansas can be. So Aaron asked for an e-bike, which let me tell you is a lot more expensive than a regular bike! 

But it’s proven to be a good purchase. Aaron has enjoyed the fun and mobility it brings. And, he’s parlayed this asset into a part-time job as a food delivery courier, which helps with spending cash. A promising sign of ingenuity and responsibility!

Skits Are a Great Way to Prepare for Your Career

 

Much has been made of the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence --5(AI) tools in the workforce, and the implications of this on higher education and career development. With two in college, I am following this trend with deep personal interest, for both Jada and Aaron are in a transition period from hitting the books in high school and living under my roof, to finding a job and living on their own. The question that awaits them has vexed many of their peers: do I have anything to offer to my future employer that would warrant their giving me a job and a salary and benefits? 

In addition to being a parent, I also run a consulting firm. So I view this topic from that perspective as well. I often tell our employees that if we as a firm cannot add value to our clients we will cease to be in business, just as if we as individuals cannot add value to our employer we will cease to be employed. Which means that, yes we have to learn how to use AI tools, just like past generations had to learn punch cards and spreadsheets and coding. But it also means we have to do what AI can’t do. 

And what is that? Some think that in a few short years the answer will be: very little. Which may be true. But there will always be a human element to our economy. I can give my restaurant order to a touchscreen, but perhaps part of the dining experience is interacting with wait staff. When buying a house, there’s so much information at my fingertips, but maybe when I’m making a huge financial decision that has emotional elements to it, I will want to access the advice of an actual human being. 

Additionally, even the most tech savvy pro-AI people will also say that, beyond the value of the human touch, there is the notion in which even sophisticated models lack the nuance of smart and experienced human beings in navigating a complex problem. To give a programming example, experts consistently say AI tools turbo charge their work by automating mundane tasks like troubleshooting bugs but are pretty far away from providing the initial framework for solving a problem. 

Which is why it is infuriating to me that far too many of our educational institutions and far too many of our young people view the classroom as a place to learn, memorize, and regurgitate rote content. Name the subject, and too much of the learning experience is digesting information and repeating it back in the form of homework and tests. 

Which is why work experiences, and more broadly life experiences like volunteering and travel and civic participation, are so important to gain the life skills that employers are looking for you to bring into their workplace, "life skills" being an umbrella term to represent "how things work in the real world" or even better "how to get sh*t done in the real world." Which is why the best educational institutions are figuring out how to bake those experiences into students’ time on campus, whether co-op placements, study abroad, or service projects. 

On that note, I am recalling my goofy high school friends of mine convincing our English teacher to convert our writing assignments into skits. She was an uncommonly good sport, and I think she enjoyed our humor, so we got many opportunities to do just that. I now realize that, in addition to the prep being much more fun – imagine the teen version of me and my guys figuring out how to translate a Greek tragedy into a modern-day tragi-comedy with contemporary cultural references – this is exactly the sort of applied learning that best prepared us for success outside of the classroom. (By the way, not coincidentally, perhaps this was the best way to learn precisely because it was fun, something today’s experts also espouse, which is that the best way to grow is to get into things that are enjoyable to you.) 

The worst situation is when students get A’s but do so by getting good at spitting information back to their teachers. A better situation is when students use school as a platform to gain and use skills in a real world format that is applied, complex, and results-oriented. Even better when you can do skits involving costumes, funny accents, and hidden inside jokes. Thankful for my own educational journey, and hoping that in 2025 my own kids are able to navigate their own paths to future career success.

Home for the Holidays

 

 

It was nice to have Aaron home from Kansas State for Thanksgiving break. I think he enjoyed having home cooking and catching up with high school friends. In a week, Jada will be home from study abroad in Taiwan, and later this month Aaron will be done with fall semester and home again too. Thankful to enjoy holiday traditions with the older kids back in the nest!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

 

Life is not always easy and sometimes hurts. But there is no dearth of things to be thankful for, so I hope that today you are with those you love and able to feel and express gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving from our home to yours!

The Explosive Child

 

Usually when you’re navigating a field strewn with landmines, the goal is to avoid them. Who wants an explosion in their face? But with parenting a pre-teen with behavioral challenges, sometimes we have to step right into it. 

I look to the Bible for guidance on how to live, which includes how to parent. Nestled in Hebrews 12, a chapter of the Bible of great significance to my faith journey, is this line: “For the moment, all discipline seems not to be pleasant, but painful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” 

Here the author is speaking of God as Father, disciplining us His children towards a life of righteousness. But the author employs the analogy of earthly fathers and their children. And in doing so they are taking as given that earthly fathers discipline their children, that discipline is not pleasant but painful, and that discipline yields positive outcomes. The use of this analogy proves that these are unassailable observations, rather than ideas that require explanation or justification. 

And yet for most parents, discipline requires some intentionality. For it isn’t pleasant, for parent or child, so our temptation is to avoid or soften it. In Asher’s case, it hurts him profoundly when we express our disapproval and render some negative consequence for some behavior he has exhibited. And, because his expression of this is usually pretty explosive, it’s no walk in the park for us either to decide on, communicate, and execute the punishment. 

But that’s why I hold that Bible verse so dear. Our goal as parents, my goal in being Asher’s parents, is not to be governed by what is easy and comfortable in the moment. Rather, what we want (and pray and live out on a daily basis) is that we are putting Asher on a journey where he comes more and more righteous. And, on that journey, there will need to be discipline, and that discipline will be painful, but yet it must be rendered still. 

I will not share details of where pre-teen Asher, in the year 2025, is in need of discipline. But any parent of a pre-teen and any parent of a special needs kid can probably relate. It is not pleasant but painful. But it is necessary, so we solder on. 

Growing Pains

 

Our kids are growing up in a world that is difficult to grow up in. It’s not just a mirage that people my age can look back on childhood as a more innocent time, because indeed it was. For better or worse, we didn’t have smart phones or YouTube or social media, with the attendant information overload and assaults to body image and emotional wellbeing. 

On the other hand, I’m lucky that my kids can live in relative ease. They standard of living is more comfortable than mine at the same age, growing up in an immigrant household that was pretty well off but lived below our means because it’s what my parents were used to and because it’s what enabled the foundations upon which my life is based, most importantly education. 

Parenting norms have, not coincidentally, also shifted dramatically. It wasn’t too long ago that kids were secondary in the family orbit, with very little catered to their limitations and interests, and most of their existence consisting of putting the labor to keep the family alive. Nowadays, those of us in upper middle class households very much center our family life around kids’ needs and activities. We are chauffeur and valet and bodyguard and cook and maid and assistant. 

I’ve written before that one of my great joys in life is making breakfast for my kids on vacation. It is a small act of love in the form of servanthood, which is to say I take delight and express affection by serving my kids, in this case literally serving them a meal. And while some of my more mundane parenting responsibilities don’t evoke as much joy, I do recognize the importance and preciousness of things like riding bikes with Asher to his boxing lessons or moving Aaron into his freshman dorm or reading Jada’s college entrance essays. I may be tired when I do these things, I do them willingly and joyfully. 

But I also do them because my kids need me to. They depend on me for their safety. They don’t know how to do things so I have to show them or in some case do things for them (more on this in a sec). They are still growing up in this world and have much to learn in order to navigate it. And it is a sober responsibility I bear to help them prepare. 

But there is a balance between helping and enabling. It is unfortunate to the point of neglect when we are unavailable to our kids or refuse to assist them as they stumble through their transitions from pre-teen to teen to young adult to independent person. 

But growing up involves struggle, for to not struggle is not to really learn. And struggle involves pain. As I often say to Amy, “sometimes it has to sting a little.” The sting of not properly preparing, falling on your face, and learning the hard way that you should’ve prepared. The sting of working hard towards something and still failing, and learning the difficult life lesson that very little is given to you and that sometimes you do everything right and still lose. The sting of doing the wrong thing and suffering the appropriate consequences for it. 

Imagine the opposite of these scenarios. If we stumble into an easy life even though we didn’t work towards it or actively did the wrong things, we age in time but don’t gain in life perspective. And it would not be loving of me as a parent to allow my kids to go down that path. Better to go through the necessary lessons, even and especially if they hurt a little. 

I hope I am not coming across as a masochist. That life stings sometimes is not meant to glorify the pain as good in and of itself. Usually it hurts to watch someone you love get hurt. But if you know it is a necessary pain for a greater good, then you don’t shield them from the sting, just like you would never withhold a vaccine from a kid simply because getting a shot hurts and they don’t like feeling that pain. 

We all seek comfort, including parents for themselves and for their kids. And yet we must have wisdom to know when comfort is in fact the absolute worst thing for ourselves and our kids, and accept the struggle that life gives us sometimes on our journey to adulthood and fulfillment.