One of life’s most difficult times is facing challenges in either your professional or personal endeavors. I’ve experienced both—when there have been challenges in my personal life, but my professional life was stable—and also when both were thrown up in the air simultaneously. Some of you may relate.
This past week was one of those times.
On the professional front—I have been leading a very aggressive soft launch effort working directly with our CEO to get things done and done right. I’m leaving a lot out—but you get the idea—high-pressure stakes. But I knew I could handle it and make it the focus of my week. However, life has a funny way of throwing curve balls you never see coming. As I walked my dog Tuesday morning, we suddenly found ourselves ambushed with five super cute puppies who came from out of nowhere and met us in the middle of the street as we crossed.
I wish I could say I had no idea what was happening—but I did. Our neighborhood is, unfortunately, a dumping ground for unwanted animals. I come across strays from time to time, but never an entire litter of eight-week-year-old puppies. And these were insanely cute and… helpless.
My first thought was, “no, no, not this week… I’m on deadline”!
But that faded quickly to “if not us, then who”? So, my wife and I loaded up the five pups in the car and figured we’d sort through it. And we did—after an intense twenty-four hours, we discovered that the Human Society would take three of them. So we decided to adopt one, and we strongarmed and manipulated good friends of ours to adopt another. What are friends for if not pressuring them to join you on life’s wild adventures?
But here’s why I’m sharing this: As I stood outside of the local Humane Society at the crack of dawn with puppies stuffed in a shoulder bag, waiting to have the remaining puppies complete intake—I was overcome with, well, I’ll say it—hatred for the people who dumped them. I found myself fantasizing about what I’d do to them if I ever had the chance. Looking back, it was not my finest moment, even if you can relate to the sentiment. What stopped me in my tracks was something I had remembered from an interview with someone who went through a string of hardships—when asked what they wanted audience members to take away from their experience, they said:
“That everyone has a story and you don’t know what it is—you have to look past the surface”
That hit me in the gut. I did not know the story of those who placed those puppies in our neighborhood. Desperate people do desperate things—and I needed to apply the same empathy I was showing to these animals—to the humans as well. It was a good lesson and one I hope I use if ever faced with a similar situation again. Also—feelings of hate, even if they seem justified, even when they are more about the action than the person who did it—is a corrosive emotion. I’m happy to report that I did a little better on the professional side of things while dealing with this mini-crisis, as I challenged myself to understand and empathize with colleagues under a high-pressure work scenario. I wouldn’t say I did everything right—but I got more right than wrong.
One of the reasons I started this Substack newsletter was that after experiencing a layoff in the early days of the pandemic, having just had my professional life turned upside down, and witnessing a summer of civil unrest—it made me very reflective on applying intentionality to my life.
That’s what design means to me. Intention.
So maybe being more empathetic by design means being more intentional about compassion—challenging ourselves to work past our instincts, even when those instincts are gratifying in the short term.