When is a mixture better than a middle?

We often optimize by looking for a nice middle partway along a spectrum:

• Exercising means challenging your body enough to respond but not so much that you hurt yourself.
• Astronomers look for potentially habitable planets in the"Goldilocks zones" around other stars, the bands where it's not too hot and not too cold.
• It's appropriate to get to the airport not too late but also not too early.
• Ordinary fruit juice tastes much better than straight-up concentrate does (oops), and also much better than plain water mixed with the tiny amount of juice left over from the last time you filled your glass.

This idea goes back at least to Aristotle, who claimed that virtues (like courage) are means between two opposite extreme vices (like cowardice and foolhardiness).

So when I read Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan, a book about how to prepare for the unexpectable, I was surprised to find that regarding the choice between high-risk high-growth investing and the low-risk low-growth options, he recommends not a middle ground, but a mixture: having some very dependable savings and some investments that are risky but full of potential. That way, you guard against catastrophe but stay open to good opportunities.

This got me wondering: When else is a mixture better than a middle? Another example would be a painting: a mixture of colors is much nicer than a canvas covered in a single average:

Pretend the left-hand side is a painting.

If I can spot the conditions that make a mixture better than a middle, maybe I can optimize in ways I'd never thought of before.

It certainly isn't always the case that a mixture of two extremes is preferable to a single middle: I'd rather be always courageous than sometimes cowardly and sometimes foolhardy. It's easy to see why a mean is better than the extremes in this case: the extremes are both bad! So that's one clue for when a middle is definitely better than a mixture: think whether the extremes are desirable or undesirable.

But just because the extremes are desirable doesn't mean a mixture of them will be. I like food either hot from the stove or cold from the fridge, but lose my desire to eat leftovers when I unevenly microwave them, leaving tongue-burning hot zones beside pockets of still-cold areas.

Or even worse, I like milk and I like orange juice, but mixing them produces a revolting curdled mess. (Thanks for that lesson, summer camp.) But orange cake with creamy icing is lovely, so sometimes it's the way you mix two things that makes the difference.

So a middle is better than a mixture of extremes when the extremes are both bad. And when the extremes are good, sometimes a mixture is worse than just sticking to one or the other. So when is a mixture the best way to go?

I think the answer resides in whether the extremes are alternatives or complements. Hot and cold are alternatives; you cannot heat and cool the same thing at the same time to enjoy the benefits of both. But opposite colors are complements: opposite colors can be sometimes be enjoyed even more side-by-side than alone. I caught on to this distinction a couple of weeks ago when my father-in-law mentioned growing morning glories and clematis on an arbor at their community garden. "Clematis takes longer to grow but is hardier, so it should be a good alternative—I mean complement—to the morning glories." Aha! A mixture can be better than a middle or extreme when you enjoy the extremes for qualities that aren't, in principle, mutually exclusive. Then you just have to find a way to combine them without destroying those qualities you like.

This explains Taleb's investing advice: the opposite approaches of high-risk/high-reward and low-risk/low-reward have complementary virtues, so a mixture makes more sense than a single medium.

Since I started working on this post, I've been thinking about what other areas of my life might benefit from mixtures as opposed to middles. For example, I like how personal tutoring is, and I love how many people an internet video can reach. I've often told myself that I'm aiming for a reasonable middle ground by teaching classes of 20 to 30 students, where I can interact with each one in some small way. But maybe it would be better if I instead worked more as a tutor and made more videos, to get more depth and breadth of interaction from a mixture of approaches than any single one would provide.

Here are my questions for you:

• What are some more examples? What are some areas where you regularly use a mixture of more than one approach to get the best of multiple worlds? (Answers may involve food, exercise, relationships, chores, work, fun, finances—you name it!)
• When is it hard to tell whether a mixture is better than a middle? I've mostly been focusing on cases where it's easy to tell, in order to try to get the principles down, but the next step would be to try to apply those principles to cases that are otherwise hard to analyze.

Thanks for reading!

Empathy and action: thoughts on old news.

Let me open these reflections with a story. During the horrifically devastating 2004 Tsunami I remember my sister and my mother having quite different reactions to the news. My sister was visiting home at that point (I believe it was near Christmas?) and she was glued to the computer, watching as the death toll rose, just stricken and horrified by the immensity of the tragedy. My mother took the little old Hungarian lady out to go grocery shopping. Both of them were a bit peeved at each other. My sister, because my mom wasn't paying attention and didn't seem to care about this massive tragedy, and my mom because she didn't see my sister's tearful observation as useful or helpful, whereas helping Mrs. Jakob, an elderly lady with no car, was both a necessity and a way in which she could actually lessen the need of the world. Before it sounds like I am slamming either of family members, let me clarify. If there is a villain in this story, it's me. I was also mildly peeved at my sister, but only because her using the only computer connected to dial up prevented me from AIMing with my friends. My sister is generous with her talents and her resources, my mother listens with knowledgeable concern to the affairs of the world. But at that moment my sister was empathizing, my mom was moving her feet, and they were both frustrated at each other for not responding to the tragedies and needs of the world in the same way.

The Peace Palace displays a French flag in flowers after the attacks

In the past few years I've been seeing a lot of similar conflict not in my household but in my newsfeed as people respond to the news in different ways. Because our world is much more connected now even than it was twelve years ago, and I can listen to the news from everywhere not just my hometown or home country, and this raises a lot of questions about what should be newsworthy. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris, the world, and as follows, the internet flamed with a gigantic flare of empathy and solidarity for the city of Paris. And immediately following rise was a criticism of that very empathy. Personally? I found this criticism for the show of support of Paris a bit grating. Because on the on the one hand it feels like ragging on people as they express and experience their grief. No one quotes numbers and figures to one whose brother just died in a car accident. From where I'm living now, Paris is my neighbor, a mere 2.5 hours by train. I've visited Paris three times in the last 14 months. My friends live there. For millions of Americans, Paris is the only place outside the US they've ever been, the easiest place for them to picture in Europe. Of course everyone responds with grief.

But on the other hand, the criticism had some truth to it, because when similar acts of violence happen in other parts of the world, there is nothing close to the empathetic cry of solidarity. Paris feels like my neighbor, because it is close geographically and culturally to me. I've never been to Syria. I've never seen a film set there. I've read portions of exactly one book set in Syria and it was about the conflict. When I hear about a bombing in Syria I don’t immediately respond with shock and rage because that’s what I expect from news about Syria. Which reminds me of the Black Lives Matter movement-- a voice in America calling out against an expectation of violence against blacks, a more casual look at police violence if it concerns people who aren’t white. And again, here we find people not seeing other people as their neighbors, not empathizing with their sorrow. Because of course both of these things are wrong. Jesus calls us to consider as our neighbor not people we feel close to, but everyone. We make people our neighbors by showing kindness to them, by seeing their struggles as if they were our own, and by caring for their needs.

There’s been a lot of recent criticism of politicians saying that they’re praying for families who have lost loved ones, but consistently voting against laws that (these critics believe) would make the use of guns safer in this country. In December, media of all varieties was abuzz with comparisons of politicians calling for action, versus those merely expressing condolence or only prayers. And while accusations got a little ugly in this case I think this example continues to bring up some interesting questions about empathy. People say, “when you pray, move your feet,” but I think that it applies not just to prayers but to our feelings as well. How much do I get upset about something in the news because I fear that the people around me don’t seem to care? Maybe if I care extra, maybe if I am really, really, really sad about a tragedy involving someone who seems marginalized maybe that will make it better?

I recently read the somewhat mediocre novel, Sarah’s Key, and in this book an American expat living in Paris learns about French collaboration in the Jewish deportation. Her fascination with this history, and particularly the story of a particular girl becomes and obsession. At various times in the story it becomes clear that this story of this child is more important to her than her marriage, her daughter, her job, and it seems at the same time somehow noble and also unhinged. She wants to apologize, she’s sorry it happened, she’s sorry she didn’t know, she feels personally responsible somehow, if nothing else, for not knowing. This journalist character is full of feeling but none of it is productive.

To contrast with this fictional journalist’s emotional fixation, the Resistance Museum in Amsterdam tells the evocative stories of the Dutch under the Nazi occupation. One temporary exhibit was about the “hunger winter” and the children sent away from their families in city. They were sent to households in the country not because of air raids, like in London, but because The Netherlands is a small densely populated country and everyone was in such danger of starvation at the end of the war. The exhibit followed the stories of eight children, told in text and video by the now aging men and women themselves. You could watch videos of an old woman talking the time when she was just seven years old standing in line to get food and seeing someone keel over, dead of starvation right in front of her. You followed these children and their stories through the exhibit, seeing photos of their thin frightened faces, watching the elderly men and women cry at their memories, and every part of it was hard to watch. One child was sent to a part of the country where they speak not Dutch but Frisian, and when he returned to his family, could no longer remember any Dutch, another returned to find his siblings had all died, just heartbreaking stories every one of them. Then at the end of the exhibit, when I was all ready for closure and the happy ending, in the past there was a display about children dying of hunger today. Not many Dutch children starve these days, but children elsewhere do. The museum called for donations, and for activism. They wanted to transform all of the easy empathy we’d found by listening to sweet old Dutch ladies into food for hungry stomachs in Zambia or Tajikistan.

I was devastated by the end of this exhibit, but also incredibly impressed because learning to feel with another person’s hurt takes effort and determination, and it’s not any fun. They’re two distinct steps: the empathy and the action, but they’re both important, and they go hand in hand, because it is very hard to fill a need, to soothe a hurt if you do not see it. I hope that more and more I will be someone who is active in my engagement with this world. Conscientious, well informed, and especially quick to listen to those with whom I may disagree. When I pray (or cry, or empathize) I want to move my feet.

Who's Your Driver? Thoughts about Feelings

Riley's driver is Joy

A couple weeks ago I saw the new Pixar movie Inside Out, and was as I expected, moved to laughter and tears, but like the best Pixar movies it also made me think a lot. In the movie, we follow a 10 year old named Riley, and we experience her life mostly through her emotions (the characters, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust.) Without telling too much of the plot of the movie, one of the interesting things for me was the little peeks we get into other character's brains. For most of her life it seems like Riley's driver (the emotion in charge of the control desk in her mind) is Joy, but when we get to see into Riley's mom's head, her driver is sadness, and Riley's dad's driver is anger.

Riley's parents' emotions

When my friend Linden asked me and Owen, "Who's your driver?" it surprised me to find that recently the emotion driving me forward has been fear. That weird little purple character in the movie, frightened of everything. In a lot of my life I think I've varied between different dominant emotions—it's a pleasure to have had joy as a driver for so much of my life—but I like that one of the messages of the movie is that it's okay to have another emotion taking a turn at the wheel. In Inside Out, Joy keeps trying to push Sadness away, out of Riley's head, and that's a really normal thing in our culture. The number one thing parents want is for their children to "be happy" but this movie says (and I think they're right) that sometimes you need to be sad. And when you are sad, sometimes you really need to express that, and you need people you trust and love, who will still love you even if you're not feeling the way they wish you could feel. (For more on this topic see the excellent book, How to Talk so Kids will Listen, and Listen so Kids will Talk.)

But what does it mean to have fear as my driver? Nothing makes me feel more like a child than fear. When I had lived in the Netherlands nine months, I melted down sobbing because I was afraid that (not kidding) no one would come to my birthday party. People did come, and I had a wonderful birthday that year, but looking back I am amazed at quite how scary the thought of "I have no friends" could be, even as an adult. A lot of the experiences that helped me mature into an adult were doing things that frightened me or seemed challenging in some way, and then excelling in those challenges. Now that I am an adult, life is scary in different ways. The next step isn't usually clear. My support system doesn't necessarily have experience in my situation, and so it's hard for me to parse through the various advice I'm getting. Instead of people around me telling me to go ahead and take the challenging opportunity, there is so much cautious advice. When I was younger I felt like everyone was telling me to reach for the stars, and now there's a lot more "that sounds like a lot of work, be careful—don't get too involved, are you able to pay for that? How will that work with having kids?" Not exactly advice to combat fear.

In her book, Bossypants, Tina Fey tells some of the hurdles in her own life in hilarious and compelling detail. Near the end of the book she compares her own paralyzing anxiety about her work and the possibility of having a second child to two small Greek children her mother once babysat. These children had never been out of their parents' care in their entire lives, and were desperate, crying inconsolably. After hours of this, the seven year old Christo cries out in Greek to his little sister, "Oh! My Maria! What is to become of us?" which send's Tina's mother running out of the room in a fit of laughter. Those children are going to be fine. Tina Fey's gynecologist tells her simply, "Either way, everything will be fine." It took hearing those words for her to see that (to anyone with a real problem) she must look like the terrified Greek children; nothing to worry about, but worried out of her mind. Either way, everything will be fine. "But, but, but, what if it's not?" I still want to ask. "What if something terrible happens? What if the thing you desperately want isn't the thing you get? What if you work, and work, and work, and nothing comes of it? What is the people you trust and the things you depend on turn out to be not as dependable as you thought?"

Children's book edition of Maya Angelou's poem

In the Psalms, I read that my feet are set on solid ground. That God is my refuge and strength, if mountains are thrown into the depths of the sea—even then "we will not fear." And on one hand I believe it, but it is also hard, because I do fear—even when the mountains are firmly rooted in place. Elsewhere I hear that perfect love casts out fear, and I believe that too, and I am glad that loving is something I can do, something others already do around me to build courage, and tear down fears. Right now, I'm going to try to be gentle. Gentle with other people, and gentle with myself in the face of fear. But I will also try to check in and see which of my emotions is driving as I make decisions. One of my friends wrote me an email full of stories from her life, but also a bit of strong encouragement. She says she tries hard not to let fear control her decision making, and I'd like to do the same.

Life Doesn't Frighten Me by Maya Angelou (excerpt)

Don’t show me frogs and snakes
And listen for my scream,
If I’m afraid at all
It’s only in my dreams.

I’ve got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.

Life doesn’t frighten me at all
Not at all
Not at all.

Life doesn’t frighten me at all.

"What do you do?", "You should...", and other anxiety-inducing phrases.

In the last two years, there have been a lot of conversations in my life that start with, "so, what do you do?" If any of you are wondering, here are some answers I usually give.

Most often I say something like, "I'm here in Leiden because my husband works for the University, and I'm not working full time, and it's been nice to have one of us at home, handling the heavy lifting of moving and adjusting to a new place. But I do teach violin lessons, tutor English students, and babysit."

If they're a teacher or a student I might say, "I'm a bit of an academic out of water at the moment. I study English Literature, but here isn't exactly the best place for me to do it, so I'm working on my own for now." I might add, "I did get to present at a conference in Scotland last year and that was great, and last year I wrote about once a week for an online Shakespeare news source." or possibly, "I just got hired to teach Shakespeare online at a homeschool academy online, so that'll start this fall."

At church I sometimes answer, "Many different things. I am pretty involved in my church, I play in the praise band, help run several of the ministries, organize the church library, and things like that. I'm often lumped in with the moms, because I'm not working full time, but I don't have children, so it's an interesting position to be in."

I know I am not the only one who dreads this question, and hopes my answers don't invoke pity or fear. That would be a tragedy.

Sometimes I give answers saying that I've been looking for work. Mostly not, because when I say I am looking for jobs, I am so often flooded with advice. I tell the sad and laborious stories of applying for many jobs, following many leads provided by friends every one of which hasn't worked out, and respond to many, many, many sentences beginning with the phrase, "you should."

That word, "should" is such a tricky word. I've been tutoring a Spanish speaker who is hoping to improve her English, so we've been working together. She has many questions, often questions on how to ask questions, and I find myself using the word should again and again. "How should I get there?" "Where should I put my coat?" And she asks about it, and so I explain, "we use it as a polite word, to ask someone's opinion. What they think is the best thing to do." And I realize that when someone asks with that word, "should" as in, "Where should I" or "what should I?" one must value the other person's opinion. When I resent the "you should"s around me, I dislike them because I feel like other people are not appreciating my own struggle. If they don't know my difficulties, don't know what I've tried, of course they will not be as effective at helping me. I am a little ashamed of my dismissal of the quick opinions of well meaning people.

Ashamed and anxious. Ashamed because I don't want them to think that I haven't tried what they see as obvious solutions to my long term problem, but also anxious that I do the very same thing. This anxiety as raised a lot of questions in my mind and heart.

How much do I judge other people by their jobs, their accomplishments?

Am I looking down on people whose work isn't as intellectual or stimulating as my personal preference?

How much of my identity have I tied to my occupation?

Have I always been jealous of other people's successes?

When did I stop seeing free time as a gift? a joy?

In what other ways have I devalued the basic everyday work of people who serve others?

How can I broaden my respect and appreciation for the people around me?

These are all questions I'm still thinking about, but that last one I can answer at least in part. And it's something I want to answer well, because maybe in five years I'll have a more normal answer to the question "What do you do?" but I hope to have learned enough to ask different questions myself, so I can listen better and judge less. I think that we can grow in respect and appreciation for each other by listening. By asking questions about people's lives, not just where they'll spend their time this week, but what's made them who they are today. What they hope for, what their struggles have been, how different things affected them, or how their life might be different or similar to your own. If we build understanding, we can get to a place where we want to know people's advice in our lives. We want to know it because we are friends, we know each other and trust each other. I think that can be a beautiful thing.

Anyone else struggling with these same issues? Wishing your story was better heard? I'd love to listen.