Hand one another along

“Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee, and do not try to make the universe a blind alley.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you read last week’s 37days, you’ll know that my older daughter is at summer camp for almost 6 weeks. And if last summer is any indication, I’ll bet you a year’s worth of Gerber daisies delivered in tall cylindrical vases on the first day of every month that I’ll receive 2 letters of approximately 12 words each from her while she’s there. Not that I’m counting, of course, because that would be to quantify that which is unquantifiable, make tangible the intangible, hold her hostage to word count as if syllables equaled love, blah, blah, blah. I’ll just pretend she’s an accomplished (though as of yet undiscovered) Haiku artist, packing a whole expansive universe of meaning and devotion and unlimited love into 17 significant syllables.

I mentioned that Emma is Camp-Correspondence-Challenged to our next door neighbors, the fabulous John and Catherine—and since they want to hear from her too while she’s gone, they took matters into their own hands. Catherine arrived the night before Emma departed with a folder marked in big black letters: “Important Letters to Mail from Camp.”

In the left hand pocket of the folder were four envelopes, stamped and with their home address on the front. In the right pocket were four letters, each marked at the top: Letter #1, Letter #2, Letter #3, Letter #4.

They had created “fill-in-the-blank” forms for her to complete and mail back, letters that appealed to Emma’s off-beat sense of humor and took into consideration the challenges of letter-writing at camp. “I miss my little sister screaming early in the morning,” “You are the best neighbors imaginable and if I have children, I will name them Catherine and John,” and “When I am a marine biologist, I will name my manatees Catherine and John” (notice a theme?) were just some of the true or false questions they included.

My personal favorite was this section: “Today I did this chore ___________ and it was so much fun that I will do it every day at home.” One can dream.

I ask you, dear reader: who will get more mail from Emma this summer, us—her long-suffering parents who gave her life and have nurtured her and provided horseback riding lessons and trips to Israel to eat hot bagale with zatar and cool new Chuck Taylor tennis shoes and Doc Marten combat boots every school year and complex handmade Halloween costumes crafted of foam core in the shape of Chinese take-out boxes and washing machines—or Catherine and John, who live next door?

You got it—Catherine and John. And why? Because they made it possible for Emma to succeed rather than adopt my ill-fated strategy (repeated high-pitched whining and assignation of blame).

It got me to thinking about “reasonable accommodations.”

Having done a fair bit of work in the disability community, including a stint on the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, I’ve been around the language and the spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) since it was signed into law in 1990. The phrase “reasonable accommodation” is a cornerstone of that legislation, requiring businesses to make “reasonable accommodation” to enable people with disabilities to engage in fruitful employment, to give them the tools to do their best work, to ensure that they have what they need to be successful. What, you may be asking yourself, is “reasonable”? Good question and one that has kept many attorneys busy since the ADA was passed—and one that we won’t address here.

Instead, what intrigues me about “reasonable accommodation” is not the definition of “reasonable,” but the narrowness with which that whole concept is applied. As a friend asked many years ago, here’s the key question—the one we should all be asking: “Why don’t we ask every employee what accommodations they need in order to do their best work, to shine, to give all that they can give, to excel?” Simple, yet brilliant. And, I’d venture to add, why don’t we ask that in all aspects of life, not just at work?

The spirit behind this suggestion is not reflected in my negative approach of “I’m going to test you to see how well you can do (i.e., how many letters you can eke out at camp when you’re totally distracted by new friends, exhausted after kayaking all day, and ridiculously happy sitting around a bonfire singing soulful tunes about long-lasting friendship with your stuffed manatees and your 6.5” stuffed Aqualad?)”

Rather, it is reflected in John and Catherine’s positive approach of “What we want most in this world is for you to enjoy the sweet feeling of sheer success, so we’re going to be creative and do everything we can to make sure that you succeed (i.e., we’re going to create fun ways to make it as easy as possible for you to write us from camp—and then you’ll feel successful and we’ll benefit too because we’ll hear from you.)”

Hmmm…I’m thinking there might be some learning in there somewhere for me. You think?

And I believe it’s a lesson that goes far beyond summer camp. How do we approach people in this world? Do we meet people as if we’re testing them, making them run the gauntlet, taking the “life requires a lie detector test” approach, seeing if they’ll sink or swim? 

When I entered graduate school at what was then the highest ranking English department in the U.S., whoop-dee-doo, a friend warned that since women were only recently admitted to Mr. Jefferson’s University, I might have a tough time of it. “Pshaw,” I eloquently replied.

Indeed, besides the aging Milton professor who insisted on wearing leopard print muscle shirts tucked in too-tight black leather pants while asking me over to “listen to jazz,” the biggest obstacle to my Brilliant Career as a Literary Critical Theorist was the one tenured professor in the department who was a woman. “I had to work doubly hard to get where I am because I’m a woman,” she said in a most memorable conversation diatribe, “so I’m going to make sure you have to work just as hard or harder,” she told me. Nice sisterhood, I thought to myself, making a mental note to give Gloria Steinem a call.

So, is ours the “I’m gonna make you suffer like I did” and “let’s just see how well you do” way of being in the world or, alternatively, do we approach others in the spirit of holding them up, providing a human flotation device for them, enlarging the possibility that they will win, doing what it takes to make success not only possible but probable?

A few years ago, I wrote my first book. (Well, it was my second if you count the runaway bestselling success of my earlier tome, Teacher Education in the Arab Gulf States. I’m still waiting to see who will play me in the movie of that one. A quick note to my friend Richard in New Zealand: Sorry, but I hear that Johnny Depp has expressed interest in playing the male lead.)

Moving from teacher education to leadership issues, one of the CEOs we interviewed for the book was Muhammed Yunus who takes that second, positive, appreciative, buoyant approach to people. When he started Grameen Bank in the village of Jobra, Bangladesh, in 1976, Yunus understood at a very deep level that people need to be given the tools to succeed—and despite overwhelming odds and in the poorest of nations, Grameen Bank has a remarkable 98 percent repayment rate. How? By setting high standards and building systems to ensure success rather than “testing” borrowers. For example, loans are repaid monthly so borrowers receive incremental reinforcement that creates even more momentum and develops their self-confidence.

Yunus expects a lot of his borrowers and they live up to his expectations. He also internalizes and socializes the pressure to repay loans: rather than provide collateral, borrowers guarantee each other’s loans in groups of five, in essence becoming human collateral for each other. All are cut off if one defaults, so they meet weekly to make payments and critique business plans to make sure that doesn’t happen. Yunus and his managers don’t put the pressure on borrowers; rather, they embed that accountability inside the heads of borrowers and in the spaces between people on these collateral teams.

Yunus, like John and Catherine, knows how to help people succeed and how to ensure their success rather than constantly doubt and test them.

Is what they do more than just “reasonable accommodation?” Something more inviting, something that is actually more than reasonable? How about exceptional accommodation or stupendous accommodation or fantastically generous accommodation? Yes. Let’s have that be the new standard.

At the end of his brilliant novel, The Moviegoer, Walker Percy tells us that all we can do ultimately is to “hand one another along.” Yes, that’s it. Let’s all do that, shall we? (I’m reminded by the recent bombings in London that sometimes the best of human connectedness, even that bound up only in bits and bytes, comes through. For those of you who took time out of your own anguish and anxiety to connect to strangers in need, you already know what it means to hand one another along. Thank you.)

Oooh, oooh—I see the mailman coming—is that a letter from camp?

 ~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

Send self-addressed stamped envelopes, where “envelope” stands for what will help the people in your life succeed.

Make sure that you’ve done all you can to support others, not test them; help others succeed rather than wait for them to fail. In fact, stop looking at life as an exam and reframe it as a festival, a summer at camp, a fantastic backyard barbecue of fun badminton games where everybody gets a prize, one of those glow sticks you can make into a halo or a stuffed bear with a little t-shirt that says “I camp!” 

Go ahead, become human collateral for someone else. Be someone else’s human flotation device. Let’s hand one another along.