Essay Whiteboard

 

MY WHITEBOARD

Measuring 29 x 29 cm, my whiteboard has since its acquisition always held an honored place at my line of sight when I gaze left.  In my final office before retiring, it suspended by its upper enclosed metallic ring surrounding a red plastic push-pin on my corkboard.  I could see the whole square.  Now it attaches by parallel magnets to of the exterior of a four-drawer metal file cabinet to the left of my desk in My Space.  A goose-neck lamp clipped to my desk surface obscures the lower left corner.  This segment has no writing utility, being imprinted with Avandia in its logo green letters with an equilateral red triangle pointing down in the groove of the V of this once widely prescribed and heavily promoted thiazolidinedione, of blessed memory, a pill for insulin resistant diabetes.  If it lasts centuries, which it might due to its Avandia green plastic frame, archeologists can try to place its date in the late 20^th century but contemporary mavens of modern culture can assign it to an age when doctors like myself received a lot of medical kitsch, now about twenty years ago.  This promotional item retained its utility.  As a reminder to prescribe this drug by its brand name, it has long since lost its value.  As a reminder to register what I am about and what I need to pursue each day, it remains timeless.  The sage Kohelet of the Old Testament knew enough neuroscience to realize that “the wise man has eyes in his head.”  What we see, particularly when we take care to seek out the important, our visual focus creates our mental focus.

This treasured vertical flat surface with mostly unused clips and magnets for notes keeps me verbal.  I divided its surface into zones.  Its lower third has remained blank, a place for the empty clips and magnets, also made of pharmaceutical advertising.  There I deposited a single small paper with a security number that I will need to communicate with Social Security.  The upper two thirds contain meaningful writing.  On the right there are two four-word entries, the upper in English, the lower in Hebrew, each a different marker color for each word.  The summary of Mayor Bloomberg’s guidance to my son’s commencement class of 2008 won its place there the day after the ceremony.  It has not changed.  He advised the graduates to focus on their individual personal

·        Independence

·        Honesty

·        Accountability

·        Innovation

Some five years later while reading Rabbi Sidney Schwarz’ anthology Jewish Megatrends, I added the Rabbi’s four desired attributes, Hebrew on the board, translated here:

·        Wisdom

·        Righteousness

·        Community

·        Sanctity

There they have remained, thought about in some fashion most days.

In the center I added two insertions: a Hebrew DerechEretz which reminds me to remain courteous to all people whether they merit it or not, and a brief quotation from a TED Talk on writing: I remember the time when…  Ben Franklin advised remaining civil to all, enemies to none.  Since he did better than me, I need the reminder. We are the composite of our experiences, their contexts, how we responded to them at the time, how we allow those experiences to upgrade us.  Judaism in particular depends on memory. We remember Shabbat as Commandment #4.  We introduce Shabbat each Friday night with memory of Creation and of Exodus.  We all have those times when… We do not always allow those experiences to move us ahead, thus the daily reminder in my central vision. 

The left third of my whiteboard has a list of twelve initiatives that change at the end of every June and December.  What I want to accomplish, really intermediate goals that must remain coherent with the core values listed on the right third of the whiteboard, remains in my sight daily as I start nearly every day except the weekly Sabbath by deciding what activities would make for a good effort.  These are also color coded:

·        Red: Financial or Family Projects

·        Blue: My Living Space

·        Green: Projects filling my identity as a physician.  None for this half-year

·        Black: My personal development.  8 of 12 are listed with black marker this cycle

There is a theory that languages with vowels are read from left to right which puts their ideas into the analytical left hemisphere, while non-vowelized languages such as Hebrew are read from right to left, which forces us to form ideas from context as well as letters.  Our visual tracking puts this preferentially into our right cerebral hemispheres where we derive our emotional connections.  My whiteboard has a mixture, as does my formal and informal education.

Those are the mechanics that outline a blend of identity, principles, pursuits.  While I made a reasonably successful effort to stand aside from our American political fray, avoiding the temptation to demean anyone verbally, standing amidst our civil meltdown caught me as a victim along with everyone else.  I look at intersectionalities of political position more than I did just a few years ago.  Sometimes my opinion of people I don’t know defaults to disrespect, and not the amusing Rodney Dangerfield kind.  People have started to register in my mind by what they espouse, not the worthy efforts they might put forth.  With that framework, and not neglecting my own views which no doubt generate parallel poorly considered reactions, I went back to each item that puts my mind in perspective each day to assess how partisan each really is. 

My white board effectively divides left and right.  Unlike our political ideologies which are also labelled left and right figuratively, my left and right expressions are more literal.  On the left I have proposed actions, on the right and center, in two languages with different perspectives, I have abstract values that frame the daily tasks.  As much as people increasingly take a binary view of what they stand for, the daily pursuits, at least mine, have a consistent universality.  There is nothing partisan about nurturing a garden, visiting children, tracking expenses with the intent of better financial prudence, creating friendships, banding together with others in organizations where the target beneficiary is not self, maintaining health, or challenging my intellect.  However somebody else may imprint one of their labels or slogans to me, on most days we each do something because the effort generates joy, we take pride in our families with the expectation of forthcoming nachas, we know what our doctors think we ought to be doing and try to comply, and do our best to generate the funds we need for our responsibilities or aspirations.  Partisanship rarely arises from this task column, for me translated each evening into specific desired tasks to pursue the following day. For every troll who takes a written poke at me on our increasingly toxic social media, there is a more stoic person, sometimes marking with a red cap what is beneath that red cap, taking care of his home, acting in a courteous manner in the workplace to people he will slander with his computer later that evening, walking on a treadmill, or planning a vacation to a state whose citizens vote differently.

Those right and center placements on my white board, things that have resisted any modification from the time they were first written more than a decade previously, reflect more indelible and highly particular imprints.  Independence means no temptation will get me to blithely slogan somebody when I should be using my higher centers to assess circumstances.  That’s important to me, not at all essential to others who are more inclined to never challenge their nearest person of title.  Does it segregate by other elements of partisan ideology?  I think it does.  Mayor Bloomberg advised the graduates honesty.  I think the commitment to something like that really isn’t generated at University commencement, though.  Honor systems abound in schools and in the workplace.  Violations are few, but not so rare that they never occur.  And while people tend to maintain stage 1 of an Honor System by not cheating, we don’t do as well with stage 2 that requires reporting of cheaters.  Our political divide does not seem at all equal in willingness to come down on wrongdoers in their midst.  But with whatever tribe you select for yourself trust remains highly valued, and not particularly ideological.  We assume our credit cards will debit only what we authorize, our doctors will have our best interests in the advice we receive, other drivers will not abuse the orderly flow of traffic.  Yet, our tolerance for violators of honest does have its element of political intersectionality.  Accountability may differ as well.  Much of our public discourse has focused on blaming the opposition and scoring points with the faithful when that happens.  That negates accountability.  And I think the two partisan poles are highly unequal.  Willingness to exploit people’s vulnerabilities has its intersectionality.  Trustworthiness is one of the most fundamental of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that captured more than a few paragraphs by Dr. Stephen Covey in his landmark best seller. In many, trustworthiness portends success far more reliably than a degree from charm school, which may be why one group of voters seems more professionally accomplished in their distribution than the other.  And Mayor Bloomberg cited Innovation.  The challenge of college was to share common sets of facts but move in different directions from them.  The great innovative enterprises and the people who devote their efforts to advancing them are simply not uniformly distributed across America. 

The values that I wrote on the whiteboard in Hebrew have similar divides.  Chochmah, or wisdom, cannot be obtained while screeching slogans.  Tzedek, or righteousness, poses more of a challenge.  I think when a natural disaster occurs someplace in the world, people of all backgrounds offer their assistance, whether by personal relief efforts or generous contribution.  What differs, though, seems to be the assessment of the recipient.  We all help.   We don’t all help because the recipient is our equal.  I think that’s where the intersectionality of righteousness plays out.  It plays out more starkly in the willingness to harm somebody.  Most of us won’t.  In the early days of Facebook, as my high school chums reassembled to give updates on the forty years since graduation, most of us had families and a measure of prosperity.  One highly accomplished classmate introduced us in cyberspace to his gay partner, subsequently formalized to his spouse when that became his legal option.  This fellow had a very distinguished creative career, appearing in the final credits of many TV shows that I watched.  We go back to Cub Scouts, where his mother, now in her 90s, volunteered as Den Mother.  I had no reason to consider one way or the other whether he was gay.  His partnership approximated my marriage in duration.  Would I ever do anything that would hurt my friend?  Not a chance.  Would I resist somebody with fewer Gifts from God demeaning him in any way?  For sure.  That’s Tzedek.  We strive for it in large part because it is not set as a universal priority. 

Kehillah or Community often has a mixed message.  Some loners such as Burt Shavitz, the Burt of Burt’s Bees, valued his solitude yet became an icon of non-materialistic purity.  More commonly, though, we encounter people who either lack community or latch onto one devoid of personal contact through cyberspace.  Mass shootings tend to come from lone wolves, at least in America.  Misplaced but very real community can go awry as well.  As Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks noted in an essay in response to a British election, “Anti-Semitism, or any hate, becomes dangerous in any society when three things happen: when it moves from the fringes of politics to a mainstream party and its leadership; when the party sees that its popularity with the general public is not harmed thereby; and when those who stand up and protest are vilified and abused for doing so.”  Community shares purpose, though not always benevolence.  Moreover, community is continually being repackaged, a fluid arrangement of associations in which people frequently change their geography, employers, political affiliations, preferred places of worship, and numerous other shifts in loyalty.  Absence of community, as Judaism teaches, is dangerous in its own right, but people banding together does not by itself generate either cohesion or stability.

Kadusha or Sanctity forms the basis for inner peace.  Unlike pornography which one of our Justices knew when he saw it, we appreciate holiness more viscerally when violated.  For most of the past three millennia, religious codes have carried this banner and still do, though in a very fractious way and with enormous inconsistency over extended times.  Certainly, evil has not been eradicated even when a universal consensus largely agrees on not murdering or stealing.  Dualism abounds with stated positions that seem irreconcilable from one sacred text to another.  Historically we have schisms within a religion, creation of new religions, definable sects within large faith umbrellas, and defined behavioral obligations within each group.  Things that I would regard as deplorable serve as behavioral mandates to others.  That leaves this value at best minimalist.  Don’t harm somebody when they are vulnerable, or in Torah terms, “You shall not curse a deaf man, nor place a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall revere your God; I am the Lord.”  [Lev 19:14] While the literal divine imprint to the commandment offers universality and permanence, I think most atheists would not take a different view.  There are, however, moral challenges that divide by tribe.  I can easily convince myself that my view of Wisdom is superior to an internet troll’s view of Wisdom. I cannot really say with equal certainty the divisive questions of when life begins, what damage have people done to Mother Earth, or even when doing something expedient is a better option than doing something because it is right.  There are no shortage of clergy or demagogues who have their own shows on Cable TV that have more certainty than me, though I clearly do not share either their espoused desire to act or their certainty.  Socrates lives on in spirit for exposing these uncertainties to sanctity without exploiting them as so many public figures generate their followers by doing.  Kadusha depends on living with the uncertainty but remaining consistent.  As I write my daily goals for the following day, none can undermine my concept of holiness.  Yet I have to accept that some pretty dastardly initiatives fall within other’s version of what their God or other deities, literal and figurative, expect of them.

So, there’s my visible daily guide hanging to my left on a white board with color coded prompts, the left column what I do, the right column what I believe that forms the foundation of what I strive to do.  The actions of promoting various levels of performance and responsibility have a very universal consensus that does not get mired in the ideologies which are more fractious.  Yet it is those very personal and particular foundational doctrines that generate each semi-annual goal. On the left, shared interests in family, learning, money, and recreation.  On the right, sometimes putting on armor to defend core tenets of myself and often my tribe, sometimes making a truce with others of different driving principles and affiliations who still generate their goals in ways that complement mine.