Foolish Consistencies
by Tom Spendlove
24 July 2004
“foolish consistencies are the hobgoblins of little minds” – Ralph Waldo Emerson said that way back when, presumably he said it so people would write it down, and then one hundred years later students would study it, and benefit from it.
I learned it in my Junior year of high school and it’s always stuck with me. High school being 15 years passed, I forget a lot whether it was Emerson or Henry David Thoreau, but the spirit of the quote isn’t lost on me.
For the past week my company has been “shut down” – it’s two weeks at the beginning of July every year when, for the most part, we’re closed for business. The unlucky workers, who have programs in jeopardy or fiery hot issues or just bad karma, have to come in and work anyway. This year I’m one of those people on the bad list – lots of people like to work during these two weeks and save their vacation for other parts of the year, but I’d much rather be sitting at home hanging out with the kids and wife, or playing Gamecube games or just generally wasting time NOT being at work.
But I’m here, instead.
And not bitter, I’d like to add.
Each day I come in, and drop my “accessories” on the corner of my desk:
Sunglasses
Pager
Key Ring
Security Badge
I don’t need my sunglasses inside, obviously, and don’t use the keys unless I’m going out to my car, which doesn’t happen while I’m at work. Thankfully the pager hasn’t gone off this week at all (as an aside in a minefield of asides, it’s difficult to describe the feeling of having a pager. There’ve been times when it has really helped someone who I desperately needed to talk with contact me. There have been many more times when people I’d rather gargle glass than talk with contact me.)
I don’t carry my keys around, usually. For just driving my car, getting into my house (honestly, who opens a door to get into their house? Out here in the boonies we hit the button on the garage door opener and walk in through the garage) and getting into my school office, there’s an ungodly amount of keys that I drag around.
Last week my wife picked my key ring up, complete with the large, unwieldy, and multi-scratched ‘2003 Walt Disney World’ keychain, and said “why do you have so many keys?” in a mix of wonderment and horror. I couldn’t really explain to her what they were all for, let alone why I needed to drag them around with me every day.
Each day this week as I drive home, the accessories haven’t found a consistent place to be yet. One day my security badge stayed in the car, in the cupholder, and the pager came upstairs to the bathroom counter. The next day it stayed in the car on the front seat, with the spring clip of the pager holding it tight and secure.
One day I neatly hung the key ring on the key rack that hangs on the wall inside the door from the garage. Another day I walked in the door and picked up my daughter before doing anything, key ring still in hand, and so as I carried her upstairs the keys came with me, and ended their journey on the bathroom counter.
The sunglasses go wherever the wind takes them. Sometimes they stay on my head, sometimes they get placed in a little tiny shelf in the van, sometimes they end up on the counter, or the kitchen table, or in the door of my car.
My sunglasses are a constant memory quiz. There’s rarely a week that goes by in which I don’t get to play the ‘What the Hell Did I Do with My Sunglasses???’ game. I’m working with Milton-Bradley to put out a home version of this game so all of America (and some of Canada, I guess) can play right along with me.
Next week when work is back to normal, I will wear my pager and my security badge proudly on my waist, and the sunglasses and key ring will go in the top desk drawer.
I know, deep down, that if I follow the golden rule of organization “a place for everything, and everything in its place” that I will never have to worry about where I’ve placed anything.
I try to practice that.
With consistency.
It doesn’t work very well, of course.
My mind is nowhere near structured enough that I can always remember where I put everything, and always remember the one true place I have designated for every object that I own.
It’s easy-beyond-easy, however, to explain my theory to the kids when they can’t find something.
“Dad, I can’t find my pajama bottoms” – this sentence is uttered far, far too often in my house. Around half the time it starts with the word ‘Mom’ but it’s the same sentence. It’s easy for me to break into the whole “why don’t you put your pajama bottoms in the same place every morning, like the end of your bed. That way every night when you’re looking for them, you’ll know exactly where they are” routine. I’m really good at that routine. I could spit that sentence out in my sleep, if I wasn’t worried about how my snoring would make the words sound as they came out.
It’s easy to analyze anyone else’s actions, really, and show them exactly how they’re boning things up. It’s part of that human nature thing we’re always trying to shake.
Anyway, I try to follow the organizational mantra, but it’s difficult. My brain isn’t wired for that method of thinking. I generally just think about whatever’s popping into my head at the time.
What I often find myself wondering, though, is whether my mind has been proved to be UN-little because I am incapable of foolish consistencies, or whether my mind is truly little because I aspire to a consistency that I doubt I will ever reach.
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