Things Keep Happening
If it's not one thing, it's another
Do you ever notice that things keep happening? I mean, really notice. Not just reacting to the daily flow of events, but noticing that life is about constant change.
It might appear that writing about that question is a departure from my usual content about AI and edtech. Please read on.
I’ll start with some things that happened a while ago. There has been a lot of attention to the 50th anniversary of US late-night show Saturday Night Live. As I experience that nostalgic outpouring (including in the well-done 2024 film Saturday Night), I have vivid memories of watching the show with its iconic first cast that included John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman and (in the second season) Bill Murray.
Except that can’t be quite right, because that first SNL cast all departed by May 1980, and I didn’t start watching SNL until I started high school later that year. Memory can be deceptive in the changing flow of life. Video replay has become my reality on this point, as it increasingly is in our hyper-connected society. (That’s a big part of why my current work is focused on video curation application PlaylistBuilder.)
One of the best characters in the first seasons of SNL was Roseanne Roseannadanna, created by Gilda Radner. Appearing on SNL’s Weekend Update segment, Roseannadanna would be cut off during litanies of digressive complaints (typically about various celebrities) by Weekend Update host Jane Curtin, to whom Roseannadanna would explain:
Well, Jane, it just goes to show you, it's always something—if it’s not one thing, it's another.
Roseannadanna noticed that things keep happening—with a theatrically disgusted attitude that these things were happening.
Even about un-emotive topics (such as a drop of sweat hanging on a celebrity nose), she could dial up the emotions. Boy, that woman sure enjoyed her outrage!
This is not the only attitude one can have to the things that keep happening.
A few weeks ago, I’d been thinking about things happening, when I read the brilliant post ‘A Leader’s Task: Managing and Mining our Volatile Moment in History’, by my friend and university classmate Tom Monahan, CEO of Heidrick & Struggles. Commenting on the volatility of current events, Tom noticed (quoting Roseanne Roseannadanna) that:
[T]his won’t be the last period of uncertainty [our] organizations will face. … This doesn’t minimize the difficulty of the current tumult — it just points to the fact there will always be more of it ahead.
Tom’s reaction to change and uncertainty is rather different than Roseannadanna’s. Rather than emphasizing concern or fear or disapproval, he concludes that:
[V]olatile times are excellent opportunities for reflection just as much as for action. Use this particular uncertain time to understand what’s working in your organization and determine how best to prepare for the next one.
This is excellent business advice—and spiritual advice, in the traditions of Buddhism:
All conditioned things are subject to change. When one realizes this truth, one feels wearied of these suffering heaps. This is the way of purification.1
and Stoicism:
Contemplate continually all things coming to pass by change, and accustom yourself to think that Universal Nature loves nothing so much as to change what is and to create new things in their likeness.2
Recognizing the inevitability of change—such as that brought by recent political unrest—allows us to refocus from pain of the effects of change on us (like Roseanne Roseannadanna always expressed, hilariously) towards the opportunities for learning and growth (like Tom Monahan urges us to pursue).
Practicing the ability to accept the inevitability of change may or may not limit the damage caused by change in particular instances, but it does significantly reduce the mental/spiritual pain from change, and massively augment opportunities to thrive in times of change.
AI and education can be emotive topics. We have choices about how emotional we get about them.
The Dhammapada: The Path of Truth, chapter 20 (The Way), Ananda Maitreya trans., Parallax Press (1995).
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV, paragraph 36, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Meditations_of_the_Emperor_Marcus_Antoninus/Book_4.
Mahalo Maury, I appreciated this!