Rake Wisdom: "Just Don't Do It"

Most people have a "to-do" list. Not me. Here's my list of eight of life's "to-don'ts."

Oct 17, 2023

I’ve stepped on quite a few of life’s rakes in my 68 years.

Many were missteps of faulty logic or judgment. Others a result of happenstance, or bad juju. A few were simply a consequence of glaring stupidity. All caused some measure of pain.

Yet overall it’s been a net positive. I have acquired a lot of practicable knowledge from my blunders and gaffes, and valuable lessons on what not to do. That’s the wondrous irony of life; you learn the most, and best, when you screw up.

So I cheerfully pass on “Rake Wisdom,” a comprehensive overview of eight of life’s “to-don’ts.”

1. Don’t be unethical

(Don’t be a schmuck)

If you have a smidge of conscience, you understand precisely what being unethical entails. It goes by a handful of alliterative descriptors: dishonesty disingenuousness, duplicity, deviousness and deceit. This one’s pretty simple — don’t do things that compromise your integrity.

Orders of magnitude should not matter. A slight cheat is still a cheat. A discreet lie is still a lie.

It starts with personal ethos. Christians ask “What would Jesus do?” The secular version is “Do the right thing when nobody’s looking.”

I say “Don’t be a schmuck.”

Shakespeare spoke directly to personal ethos in Hamlet. In Act 1, scene iii, Polonius bids farewell to his son Laertes, who is leaving Denmark for France. Says Polonius …

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man”

Note that ‘to thine own self be true’ is the precursor to Polonius' essential wisdom. He follows by saying (paraphrase) ‘and if you are true to yourself, then it naturally follows that you will be true to others, too.’

Polonius wasn’t a schmuck.

2. Don’t be negative

Avoid negative and noxious people. Easy to say but hard to do. It is by far the most difficult “don’t” on this list. Co-dependence is difficult to reconcile, especially while it’s happening, and especially if it’s within your own family.

These people are often referred to as “narcissists.” But they don’t need to be classically narcissistic. Soul-sucking asshats come in various stripes.

You may be stuck with them by blood, by association, or by necessity (as in, your boss is a dick). But you’re not stuck with their corrosiveness.

Stop setting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.

3. Don’t Overthink

The art of creating new problems out of ones that never existed in the first place.

Look no further than the pandemic, where fear and phobia led to madness and mass psychoses.

Contagions aside, life always is a challenge of the five W’s. But if your mind is racing at 2 a.m. about that work email from last Tuesday, or you’re mentally juggling reasons why your sister said what she said, you’re doing it wrong.

Try using Occam’s Razor …

Occam's Razor: Or the principle of parsimony — often attributed to Friar William of Ockham (1285-1347) — that if you’re considering multiple or conflicting options to a problem, the simplest choice is usually the best.

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4. Don’t lose your shit

Equanimity: The ability to command your behaviors and emotions in circumstances beyond your control, even if your actions are limited by someone or something else.

This is how Rudyard Kipling opened his iconic poem “If” …

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

“If” proposes a path, or right of passage, from boyhood to manhood. But its message of restraint and composure applies to everyone.

So when a conversation or situation turns antagonistic and you feel your caveman DNA welling up, don’t lose your shit. Not a good look, especially if you’re a role model, and definitely not good for your well-being.

Caveat: When someone commits a crime against humanity — say, you miss a traffic light because the imbecile ahead of you was on their phone — it’s OK to secretly hope that lightning strikes.

Schadenfreude.

5. Don’t procrastinate

One of mankind’s great scourges, along with war, pestilence and Brussels sprouts.

Face it, procrastination isn’t a matter of time management, or prioritizing. It is being physically and mentally lazy. A problem avoided doesn’t stop being a problem.

A wise man once said:

“Don’t be the car washer waiting for a rainy day.” — Me (the wise man)

The magic you are looking for is still in the work you are avoiding.

6. Don’t resist change

Though it seems obvious, change really does get harder as you age. All the usual bromides apply, as in “teaching old dogs to be set in their ways.” Something like that.

Balderdash. You have been changing your whole life. You are not the same person at 50 as you were at 40, or at 40 from 30. You have accrued wisdom and life experience; change is evolutionary. And necessary.

Still, change is uncomfortable, like putting on a wet woolen jockstrap. (sorry ladies, I don’t have a comparable analogy. Maybe an underwire bra?)

But think. Being stuck in the trap of intransigence leads to slow rot from the inside out. If you think you’re missing out, you probably are. Adapt. Transform. Remember, one day your life will flash before your eyes.

Make sure it's worth watching.

7. Don’t be afraid of failure … or fear success

Imposter syndrome: The condition of being anxious and not feeling success internally, despite high-performance in external, objective ways. These people feel like "frauds" or "phonies" and doubt their abilities.

Everybody has been in places where they feel they don’t belong. Like the time in my early 20s (1970s) when I walked into a cowboy bar with really long hair … or when my new bride sent me to a pharmacy in Mexico to buy tampons.

But to achieve success, with verifiable credentials, and still think you’re a pair of brown shoes at a black-tie dinner? It’s just weird.

Self-loathing seems to be a thing these days. Some people frame their success as a result of their “privilege” and shamefully apologize for it. But that’s not humility; that’s being a stooge to an ideology.

Surely there’s more to fearing success. Maybe the Stoics were right: the happy life is found only in the pursuit of arete (virtue, or human excellence). Works for me.

As for fear of failure, I turn to my baseball background and think “You can’t get a hit with the bat on your shoulders. Swing away.”

8. Don’t stagnate

(Directly related to resistance to change)

The Wisdom of Ignorance theory. Seems like an oxymoron, but there’s great power in knowing what you don’t know. It’s the genesis of practical wisdom.

If you are willing to question your current beliefs, assumptions and perceptions you’ve accumulated, you will recognize your limitations and begin to improve the blind spots.

And you won’t sound like the village idiot in an intellectual conversation.

Somewhere along the line, admitting “I don’t know” lost its honor. You have a limited amount of time and bandwidth while on this marbled blue planet … use it to learn and grow.

It will help you avoid the rakes.