A Rubric of Personal Accountability

Boom. December. WTF.

How was it for you?

It was pretty good here, except for that marauding elephant that entered the room and then pooped all over it. Say what you will about our country, our memories are short, and our hope is long. We are the anti-elephant, even in the face of rampaging orange ones.

And that is what I would like to talk with you about this month. Not “them”; we’ll have enough of that to contend with in the coming months and (Flying Spaghetti Monster help us) years. But us. You and me. Or really, you and you, and me and me.

I’ll clean that up:

It is traditional in December to do year-end accountings of gigs and experiences and opportunities and acquisitions. It’s also traditional to make resolutions for the New Year, the ultimate triumph of optimism over experience.

This year I’d like to try something different. I’d like to propose a Rubric of Personal Accountability. I’d like us to try measuring ourselves against the Slightly Worse Version of Us We Could Easily Be. No comparing to abstract unattainable ideals, no horse-racing against others, no grandstanding on the backs of our awards or our kids’ spectacularness. No obsessing over clearly worse people to avoid noticing ourselves. This year I’d like to propose a heavyweight bout of Us vs. Us–a year-end accounting of how we did versus how we could have done. By keeping ourselves “local,” we might be able to better navigate the global.

Here’s what my own Rubric of Personal Accountability might look like:

Rubric Item: Sins of Remembering
I wish I did this less. You go into an interaction, mindful of past ones, and interpret people incorrectly as a result. We do this most frequently with family members, whose worst tendencies cut us the most deeply. We forget that people are the product of habit and circumstance, and we also forget the existential cost of grudges. Sometimes, “Can I get you a coat” is an expression of concern and not an indictment of your clothing choices. At the very least, it is less “expensive,” emotionally, to just assume and proceed as if that was the case anyway.

This year I will aim to free up negative personal memory space for better things, even from people the negative memories are about. 

If I can do this once more this year than last year, I will be happy.

Rubric Item: Sins of Forgetting
On the other hand, there are certain memories we have an ethical responsibility to hold onto—people we’ve lost, experiences we’ve had, other people’s pain or secret sorrow that they’ve shared with us. The privilege we enjoy just by being the kinds of people who write or read Troubadour columns instead of scrambling for the penny that will make the difference between a life on the streets and one protected by walls and roofs. Privilege in general. Or the responsibility we have to be the means by which those we’ve lost, stay “found.”

This year I will aim to more frequently access the difficult memories it is easier to ignore. Not as a totem of misery, but as a tool of humility and gratitude. I’m looking at you, Dad…

If I can do this once a month this year, I will be happy.

Rubric Item: Crimes of Believing
We have been led to believe in certain human shortcuts like “body language” and “micro-expressions.” And there are some aspects of behavior that we can make some generalities about. But those generalizations are often wrong. People run deep—deeper than we sometimes like to think. Reducing folks to their outward affect is often a willful act on our part to avoid having to contend with the complexity they represent. As someone once said on a social media post I have always been grateful to have come across: “They are not giving you a hard time. They are having a hard time.” 

This year I will aim to do as I often encourage my kids to: make up the most generous explanation for someone’s behavior, and choose to believe that one.

If I can do this once more this year than last year, I will be happy.

Rubric Item: Crimes of Not Believing
Whether we like it or not, the fact is that people are the authors of their own stories. Facts, lies, compensations, rationalizations, misremembered events, even people’s “incorrect” stories about us, are nonetheless others’ truths. Even a lie, which someone knows they’ve either made up or gravitated toward, becomes their truth by virtue of their acting in accordance with it. So, we have no real choice if we want to live an ethical life: We must take people at their word. We don’t have to abide by that word, to cosign or abandon our own history/memory/beliefs. But we have to believe that they believe it. Once we make that adjustment, we can navigate just about any disagreement with grace.

This year I will aim to believe someone’s truth as they report it, even in light of my own differing truth. 

If I can do this once more this year than last year, I will be happy.

Rubric Item: The Cost of Human Beings
Every time two people are in the same place at the same time, the certainty of difference exists. But that difference is only complicated compared to the absence of other human beings on the planet. It’s glorious compared to what would have been, in that moment, without a second source of energy feeding into it.

I often say that “if other people are the reason you were late, then other people were not the reason you were late.” Or as the joke goes: “We are not in traffic. We are traffic.” Expect the implication of others and encourage the complication. The genome favors diversity. Take joy in the gift of difference.

This year I will aim to view interactions with others as an enhancement of—the necessary building blocks of magic.

If I can do this once more this year than last year in a non-musical, non-kid-related context—which is probably aka “once”—I will be happy.

Rubric Item: The Cost of Being Human
Finally: Holy crud, we are complicated AF. Not just in juxtaposition with others. We are made of tiny regional wars and alien mental civilizations. We contradict ourselves. We contain multitudes. We get shit wrong as a national sport. This year, I wish for you, me, and all of us the gift of self-forgiveness. Not free reign to treat others badly, but compassion for this ridiculously contrived machinery we’re put in charge of without any training. Mistakes are the natural by-product of the human condition. Success is learned. Mistakes are ingrained. Make them, enjoy them, own them when they hurt others, but then forgive yourself for them and move on. Or embrace them as a Beautiful Oops and recognize them as a precondition for better things.

This year I will allow myself a swing and a miss, in favor of creating the environment that rewards future swings. 

If I can do this at all this year, I will be happy.

That’s my own Rubric of Personal Accountability for the year ahead—my very own elephant-defense system.

What’s yours?

Is there something I should offer unsolicited advice about in future columns? Shoot me a line via the contact form at joshweinstein.com and let me know.