Put…Down…the Shovel

There are three areas of life where self-awareness is critical.  One is physical in nature; one is financial in nature; and one is rhetorical in nature.  Self-awareness is a gift that varies widely in the amount, and type, possessed by different people.  Typically, when a person possesses a high degree of self-awareness in a single area, they tend to be highly developed in the other two.  On the other hand, there are occasions where an individual might be adept in one or two of the three, while severely lacking in one or both of the others.  One thing is for certain: Those that are blessed with a high degree of self-awareness in any or all of the three are truly fortunate. 

The lack of self-awareness is many times mistaken for commonly held social vices, such as aloofness, sarcasm, lack of empathy, rudeness, arrogance, smart aleckness, or just downright crudeness.  Those unfortunate people, like me, who have chronically lacked in self-awareness their entire lives and have never seemed to overcome it, eventually come to grips with the fact that they will never be the suave, self-assured, and smooth operator that a high level of self-awareness creates.  In time, we learn to cope with our shortcoming by keeping our mouths shut, behaving in a reticent fashion, and simply being a stiff social companion.  Unfortunately, simply being aware of our shortcomings in this area is not always a fail-safe compensator for the pitfalls that lie in wait for the one who is oblivious to their own words and actions.

Having said all of this, I find a distinction between the old school self-awareness realities of my generation (Boomers) as compared to the new school attitudes of subsequent generations.  I will call this difference “learning to put the shovel down”.   For those among us who are less aware, we are all too familiar with that moment.  The one when we painfully, and most often awkwardly, realize that we have ventured into the danger zone where our ignorance has allowed us to commit, through word or deed, some type of grievous social mistake.   Although belatedly, the realization of the faux pas typically arrives before the mistake reaches disastrous levels.  It is at this point in time when we take action to, as the old saying goes, cut our losses.  We cease the ill-advised direction in which we were traveling and make a not quite elegant exit or modification to avoid total catastrophe.  In other words, instead of digging the hole so deep that we cannot reach the top and escape, we remedy the situation by putting the shovel down.  We climb out of the hole the best we can and move on to the next hurdle.  Our new generations have some difficulty realizing when to put the shovel down.

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In terms of self-awareness in the physical nature, the human instinct for self-preservation oftentimes kicks in and we alter our behavior in spite of ourselves.  Unfortunately, the instinct’s arrival is many times too late to save the day and the painful injuries owing to our poor judgment are incurred.  In a generational sense, this might be attributable in part to the practice of older generations allowing their offspring to learn by doing; which in shorthand reads realizing pain from screwing up and learning the hard way not to screw up again.  It seems that in today’s world of helicopter moms and snowplow parents, permitting our children to endure trials by fire is simply not socially acceptable.  They never fully realize the importance of putting the shovel down and their natural instincts for physical self-awareness never get the chance to adequately develop.

Now in terms of financial self-awareness, there is no human instinct for survival.  Harsh reality dictates that the rules of fundamental personal finance are things that must be learned.  That learning, either from parental, societal, or educational sources is clearly not taking place in today’s America.   No matter how pure they may be in heart and spirit, our Millennials and Gen Xers are lacking in good, old fashioned financial principles and work ethics.  The concepts of equity and time clock diligence are lost on them.  This is not a qualitative judgment; it is simply an observation.  I am implying that they do not appreciate the full value of ownership as it correlates to debt reduction and they do not grasp the concept of eight hours work for eight hours pay. 

The following article covers a situation that seems all too prevalent in today’s environment … https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2019/03/14/student-loan-debt-crushes-millennials-car-home-buying-american-dream/3103065002/.  At some point in time, an individual must consider the benefit of a particular college degree as opposed to the cost of that degree.  At some point, one must evaluate the true value of a community college education as opposed to that of a so-called prestigious university.  At some point, it perhaps makes sense to cease being a full-time student living totally on borrowed money as opposed to being a part-time student that is borrowing less and paying their way with some type of employment.  At some point, we must all make the judgment that only so much of our life remains to pay off the debt we are incurring and our true financial freedom only begins when that debt is satisfied. 

The rupture of the real estate bubble brought with it a huge amount of financial pain and agony to our culture.  When it happens, and it will happen, the bursting of the education bubble will bring a similar load of hurt.  The cloistered community of academia is fattening itself on the consumers of its culture and is perpetuating a vicious cycle of ever-spiraling inflation that is patently unsustainable.  Instead of addressing the symptoms of ballooning educational costs in America, we should instead be focusing on the root causes.  We need to take a hard and sober look at the pompous and arrogant attitudes that are feeding and sustaining the academic industry and all the privilege that goes with it.  Things such as the hyper faculty salaries, the inflated tuition costs, the burgeoning administrative components of universities, the literal reams of funds being wasted on nonsensical university research, and the inane counselor steering of high school graduates into degrees that have little or no return on investment.  We need to educate our high school students career-wise and emphasize to them that the time and money they choose to spend on further education must logically lead to a job that will justify those investments.  We need to help our kids understand that there is honor in many types of professions and a good, solid future can be obtained through skilled trades as well as college degrees.  Our children must understand that college degrees for the sake of degrees is a ruinous path that can ultimately lead to a deep, financial hole that might very well require a lifetime from which to recover. 

Fundamental skills of personal economics must be introduced into our elementary, secondary, and subsequent education levels.  We have an entire generation that has lost the ability to understand the basic concepts of equity, compound interest, cash flow, investments, debt management, retirement planning, and simple fundamental accounting.  Is it any wonder that given the general approach our nation takes to basic economics education, Congress and the Presidency govern as if there is absolutely no civic financial accountability?  We have all learned well how to dig the financial hole; but we have not yet learned when to put the shovel down.

And finally, there is the area of rhetorical self-awareness, which poses the greatest challenges of the three.  Communication in its simplest form is difficult at best and completely infuriating at its worst.  Most of us live a full lifetime without ever mastering the byzantine complexities of the spoken word and body language.  Adding to this maze of difficulty is the fact that we now live in a world of technological wonders that record much of our lives in either unforgiving audio or video.  The old escape route of reasonable denial is far more elusive than it once was.  The haunting specters of the past’s spoken words and deeds are now real threats poised to intrude on the present.  In a strange way, it seems this new accountability for our past records has led us to a detachment from any type of accountability for present deeds.  Does that sound incongruous?  Yes, I suppose it does.  But it does actually appear that more and more, our politicians and celebrities are in greater trouble for what they have said and done in the past than for what they are saying and doing in the present.  The past is more solidified; beyond the reach of massaging and changing and molding the circumstances that surrounded the original actions.  The context is established.  But the present?  Well, it seems perfectly acceptable that people can say one thing today, another thing tomorrow, and perhaps a third thing next week.  And even though they may all seem contradictory and inconsistent, the explanation that is forthcoming eventually will tie it all together in some type of bizarre and Machiavellian logic.  

The license for irresponsible remarks and lack of rhetorical self-awareness seems to be cheaper, broader, and more frequently used today than ever before.  There was a time when it was fairly true that a man’s/woman’s word was his/her bond; not so much anymore.  And the lack of that obligatory honesty and sincerity has brought us to a point where rhetoric has become simply a grouping of words in a time and place that may or may not be significant; possibly being explained away at some point in the future…whichever happens to be most expedient.  To put a finer point on it, when considering some of the fully self-aware individuals in today’s world, it is hard to tell if they are talking to us from inside the hole or outside the hole.

Perhaps the antidote to a chronic lack of self-awareness is the art of coming to peace with oneself; getting comfortable in our own skins.  Once we can manage to discover that if we strive to do the best we can do, and then learn to be content with the product of that behavior…that in and of itself can go a long ways towards minimizing the impact of poor self-awareness.  Maybe the key is to try and avoid picking the shovel up at all.