Trust me: there is no ‘them’

This post is heavily influenced by the thinking of Kevin Kelly the founder of Wired magazine. He posted 68 bits of unsolicited advice on his personal website. I highly recommend them to everyone. Not because I agree with all of them, but rather because they will make you think. There are some real gems that he was sharing on his 68th birthday. Included on the website is a short video where he talks about this advice. The advice includes everyday common sense one would expect from most people who seem to have held it together to age 68, such as…

You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.

It is really good stuff for someone like me, just over half his age and about to learn some of the lessons he already knows. As one former colleague used to say, the things he has forgotten, I am yet to learn. The one that grabbed my attention the most was this one…

Trust me: There is no “them”

Kelly basically is referring to the human tendency to assign some sort of high level (or low level) conspiracy to negative happenings in our lives. This really hit me hard because I am one of these ultra skeptical, highly suspicious individuals who can create a conspiracy in my mind very quickly. Fertile ground to look for conspiracies about “them” is to look at demographics. While a lot of prejudice and discrimination exists in the world and is thankfully being brought to light through movements such as Black Lives Matter, not every negative occurrence in my life is due to my race.

Some common “thems” I have thought about before include the group of white executives who decide the fate of my career on the golf course, the small elite group of wealthy Afrikaans people living in Stellenbosch or the people from local government that will do everything possible to assign business opportunities exclusively to isiZulu speakers. The chances that they all exist and are out to get me must be very slim. They probably don’t really care who I am and honestly I can’t do anything about how they may or may not feel about me. “Them”…whoever they are, don’t actually deserve my energy.

Changing my mindset to expend less energy on these detractors, frees me up to focus on those aspects I can actually control. Instead of thinking what they will do, I think about what I can do. Instead of worrying about which government agency from which country started COVID19, I can wear a mask and wash my hands. Instead of wondering what food producers are putting in packaged food, I can grow my own vegetables. Instead of thinking that a business partner is out to get me, I can focus on being a valuable business partner to them. I know it is really difficult to accept a times, but what if there really is no “them”? What if nobody is really spending inordinate amounts of time plotting your downfall? If you believed this, what would you change? What would you do differently? In closing another Kevin Kelly quote…

The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested