Improvement is good.
Improvement with intention serving a greater purpose is GOLDEN.
A Contradiction Walks Into a Brand
There is a dichotomy that I want to talk about.
The concept of improvement is my brand, but in the same way that businesses should not always be trying to grow, people should not constantly be trying to improve.
This may sound counterintuitive coming from a man whose brand is to CHOSE TO IMPROVE; you might think that matches Lowe’s: never stop improving. However, there is a contradiction here…
Running at 80%—On Purpose
Think about the 80% capacity principle: businesses should not be run at 100% all the time. The most successful businesses are run at around 80% capacity because then you have 20% left for overflow, training, cleaning out the garbage, and repainting the walls.
Brown Sugar, White Sugar, and a Metaphor That Almost Works
Personal development bleeds over into professional development, and trying to separate the two is sort of like separating brown sugar after it has been mixed with white sugar.
The metaphor is incredibly strong, but…
Well, you get the point.
Thailand, Take Two
Last year, I had the joy of revisiting Thailand, where I cut my teeth in the education world.
I was a theater student. I made it over to Thailand to teach English as a second language and ended up discovering that the world of education was better than the world of theater for me—or at least it was then.
Hot Water, Cold Water, No Metrics
The point is, I found myself in the same old hot spring—the one just east of downtown Lampang.
Chae Son is a small village in Lampang Province. It has a natural hot spring that comes up from the Earth next to a waterfall and a river that comes from God-knows-where. For some reason, the water is incredibly cold, so you might say it comes from melting ice somewhere up on the mountain.
Or at least that’s what I like to think.
I was sitting in the hot spring, and for the first time in maybe a year or two, I found an absolute sense of peace—of calm. I found the teachings of the Buddhist meditation masters of the area in action.
In that moment, I realized.
I like Thailand.
I like how they have a lower set of expectations. I like how there is actually a balance between doing things and not doing things there.
Thailand has an additional option on the table that we lack in the United States of America: the option of non-doing, or inaction.
[I checked, I don’t have a picture of the private bath house where I had this realization, I chose inaction in that moment, but I have other pictures that are most definately more interesting to look at and have a higher compoositon value, like this one of the place wehre the hot spring meets the cold river:]
Growth, Growth, Growth—Until Something Bursts
I instantly thought of my time working in corporate America for Macy’s, Lowe’s, and horrific insurance companies that I will not name here.
The weekly meetings about year-over-year growth:
This year we raised this metric, and that’s what you’ve gotta do. Raise all the metrics, all the time.
Always growing, like a cancerous cyst.
The International-School Math Is Not Mathing
In that moment in the hot spring, I realized that I want to move back to Thailand.
Financially, it’s a terrible idea.
I would have to send my kids to an international school, which would cost somewhere between $2,000 and $4,000 a month because they don’t speak Thai. I would most likely go back to teaching English, barely making enough money to cover my own children’s tuition at an international school.
Of course, there’s a possibility that they could attend the school where I teach, and then there would be a discount.
But then I would work at the school where my children go.
That’s something I don’t wanna’ do.
I took this picture on the way from dropping my kids off at school.
So Where Does This Leave Me? Me?
Stranded somewhere in the middle of the United States, working a job that makes a lot of money, spending enormous amounts on taxes, insurance premiums, and—don’t forget—medical expenses.
Paying off expensive cars with reasonable interest rates.
Paying off two mortgages with interest.
Living comfortably, with my parents close by to help watch the kids.
Perhaps watching my wife silently suffer through living in an alien land where continuous growth and cancerous expansion are seen as holy attributes.
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Disney World and the Parenting Rulebook That Does Not Exist
What is the other option?
To go against the grain in the United States, I suppose. To live in this land where I make enormous amounts of money—compared to Thailand, at least—and find ways not to spend it.
Is that life?
Is that the life that’s best for my children?
To say, “No, we can’t go to Disney World”?
To say, “Yes, I’d like to take you to Europe, but only Mommy and Daddy can go”?
This is why parenting always gets messy. There’s no rulebook. There’s no guidebook. And yet, somehow, we find a way to do what we think is best for our children.
The Grass Is Greener Until You Miss the Guardrails
I know that someday I will find myself in Thailand again, and I will long for the rigor and structure of the United States.
The safety that comes from having safety standards and laws that are followed and enforced by an effective police force.
But for now, all I can do is look around, find what’s good, and embrace it.
Maybe Better Is Not More
Maybe I can even take a little bit of wisdom from my time on the mountain.
I can realize that where I am is my home—and that there is always the ability to retreat into my own mind and embrace the comfort of inaction.
To find peace.
Or I can write a blog post about how improvement is good—but not at the cost of mental well-being or peace.
“Practice inaction, occupy yourself with doing nothing.”…
“Rushing into action, you fail.
…Trying to grasp things, you lose them.”
~LAO TZU
Improvement Dave 