"It ain't what you do, it's how you do it."

I.
Polaroid printed sayings on their darkslides (the light-blocking unit that ejects when you load film). 
Like this one, below:

 "It ain't what you do, it's how you do it."

Whatever that means. 
Style over substance?
It reminds me of Billy Crystal as Fernando Lamas saying:
"It is more important to look good than to feel good." 

Cool old ^ wizard candle. A coworker priced it 99¢. 
I see them online for $5-30. At least the coworker didn't deem it worthless and throw it out, which is entirely likely.
I was tempted to price it up, 
but I left it for someone to get magic, cheap. Thrift stores should have some weird old stuff for cheap.

In this job, I must guard against fretting over other people's minor misjudgments--errors that usually amount to no more than a few bucks.
It's not really the money I fret about, of course--it's the lack of care and knowledge. But that way lies scrupulosity!
"It's a sin that they threw away this item!"

It is not. 

My job really puts me through my mental and emotional paces--like an obstacle course. A steeplechase. Soooo many minor irritants.

I suppose 'it's how you do it' does apply here too. 
My daily tasks are mostly low-stakes stuff;
 the art is in how I handle it. (Say, people pricing things wildly wrong.)

The skill I try to practice is:
 NOT taking it personally, not getting super-annoyed, etc.
You'd think that'd be easy, but we get attached to anything we do, even if the stakes are objectively low.

After I studied Funeral Science for one semester at the U, one reason I decided to drop it is I read that being a funeral director ranks high on Risks of Annoyance scale. 
And it's not low-stakes stuff, it's engaging with high-emotion family dynamics. You're supposed to be the peace-keeper, for instance, when the dead woman's kids duke it out over mom's casket. 

Back then, I wanted to think of myself as a nonjudgmental angel of mercy. ANYONE who knew me knew that was deluded. But I knew I would be terrible at that and hate it.

I am in the right place. I can keep my annoyance to a simmer.
The other day, a touchy customer who was angry at the cashier said, 
"You are always professional, not like some of your coworkers."

This was more a slam at the cashier than true praise of me;
but it does express something true: 
while I find this customer difficult, 
I do always keep my cool with him.

I see coworkers battling with difficult customers, and it's just insane. You will get nowhere! At the end, everyone will be more unhappy.
 
Okay, so, may be I am proving that "it's how you do it" that matters, in this case, more than in what you do.
Most anyone can handle the tasks of a thrift store job.
 Some of my coworkers are not great, but even the most literally brain damaged can manage okay.

The real art of the job comes in the "how" of it.
Some of that is sheer personality power.
Two of my favorite-ever coworkers were Louisiana and Mr Linens, who could barely hang clothes on hangers. (Or pretended they couldn't--it always looked like a resistance tactic to me.)
But they were both fantastic storytellers who got everyone laughing-- or howling in protest. 

Mr Linens from the beginning warned me not to take the work seriously--and not to rush. He was full of wise remarks.
"You'll never be done," he would say.

"None of this stuff is ours."

And, "Ask yourself, 'What difference does it make?'"
(Usually, very little.)

He had to quit because his emphysema got so bad, and he took that in stride too. He wasn't interested in assigning blame to tobacco companies and the like.  
"It was my own damn fault. I smoked all my life, now I'm paying for it."

I disagreed, in part---tobacco companies targeted young men like him--but his choice to claim full responsibility served him well. 
His resentment meter had a dim bulb, 
and his sense of self-worth was good, and not inflated.

II. Platitudes are not action plans.

I practice (try to practice) basic skills.
Like, drink some water! (It makes me walk away to the sink, if nothing else.)

Rub your ear-lobes and say, "whoo-sah". (That's from Mr Furniture, a calming anger-management tip he saw in the film Bad Boys II.)

It's fun to make it personal like that.
Most mornings when I walk down the alley to work, when the store comes into view I raise my arms and call out, 
"Hello, Bedford Falls!"  

That's from Jimmy Stewart––recalled from deadly depression in It's a Wonderful Life–– saying, "Merry Christmas, Bedford Falls!"

Lately, I've been singing "Climb Ev'ry Mountain". Singing a whomper like that forces you to breath.

Blogging! It helps me untangle my confusions.

And, you know, making little things with yarn.

[Tips? Your ideas are welcome!]
___________________________

Anyway, that's all challenging enough with low-level stuff, but I do okay, and I think I've gotten more able to stay light.

It's far harder to stay light when the matter is dark and heavy.
I've said before, the lack of leadership during the era of Covid & George Floyd's murder, and now while ICE is rampaging around town, really shapes the emotional environment. 

I do my little things---hang god's eyes, hand out whistle kit bags with buttons that read I stand with immigrants. 

"I see. I care. Beauty is possible in this ugliness".

In contrast with even the quietest expression of concern, leadership's silence reads as tacit approval of what's going on. (Even if that's not the intention.)

So, yeah--it matters what they do, or don't do.
AND it matters how they do it.

I'd change the saying:

It's not only what you do,
It's also how you do it.

______________________

III. HOT Thinking

I've been loving listening (free, from the library Libby app) to Michael Pollan reading his book 
"How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression" (2018).

(Oh, I see it's a mini-series too. I'd love to watch it. Have you?)

He gives examples of how people on LSD and other mystical trips come to conclusions so simplistic, they sound as cheesy as a Hallmark card.

"Now I understand, IT'S ALL LOVE!"

I laughed out loud at one woman who sat up in the middle of a therapist/scientist-guided trip, took off her eye-shade, and told the researchers to write down the insight she had that was SO IMPORTANT.

When she came out of the trip, she saw that she'd told them to write down, Eat right, exercise, take care of yourself.

I love this! 
That is so important! It is "all one"!

The challenge, right? is figuring out how to live in that when the very real daily grind breaks The One down into many little annoying motes that stick to our eyes.

We don't live in an All One, All Love world.
We need--another concept Pollan talks about--(I hadn't heard this term)-- HOT Thinking--Higher Order Thinging.

Leadership in my workplace (and plenty of others) barely does any of this---it works on implicit unexamined knowledge.



HOT generates actual heat because it uses energy. 

("The brain has high levels of metabolic activity, and all energy used for brain metabolism is finally transformed into heat."--via)

And, you know, systems want to conserve energy;
 so we often don't think about stuff if we can help it--if we can instead take a shortcut and assume we know what's what.

And that's what's make this era so INTERESTING.
We can choose to ignore what's going on in the 21st century, or, anyway, to not think too much about it, after assigning it a familiar label.

People all over the political spectrum do this.
The 'Die Nazi Scum' attitude of people enraged by ICE is an example of lukewarm thinking.
Fair enough! 
Normal when you're under attack.
But it's the brain equivalent of the ICE-agent thinking itself.
Not a great long-term strategy.

Do we even have a long-term strategy?
LOL
Not at my workplace we don't.

But I think it really behooves us in these interesting times to rise to the challenge and get ourselves one.

I've adopted the motto, "Stay, and be beautiful",
and am working on the strategy of HOW.

That motto is not about denial! It's not glossing over the ugly.
No! I can--and do--feel all the uglies . . . and still hold this overarching ambition.

I feel embarrassed to say this sometimes; 
it sounds foolishly romantic, childish, ridiculously earnest--also, possibly self-aggrandizing?

But it's like what people discover on LSD trips:
Eternal truths are simple.
They're just really, really hard to do.

I don't do them well,
 but I am trying to do them in my slow-poke way.

________________

"It ain't what you do, it's how you do it." 

But how do you "do what you do"?

Gotta fire up the old brain to figure that out. 
(And then do it.)

Also... you know this old chestnut.

“The way to do is to be”—Lao-tse

“. . . To be is to do”—Dale Carnegie

“Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra