Shortcuts

Some things I like to take my time with.  Like eating a very delicious brownie.  Or my morning qigong practice.  For those things, I really enjoy the process.  I look forward to starting my day with movements and mindfulness just as much as the feeling of centeredness qigong gives me.  And I think it’s fair to say I enjoy eating a brownie much more than I enjoy having eaten a brownie.

I try to find some joy or satisfaction in everything I do, but there are some things I like to accomplish with the least possible investment of my time or energy.  Like clearing out my email inbox after time away from the office, or driving during rush-hour.  For the things I just need to get done, I try to find shortcuts.

When I was a teenager, my friends and I took great pride in knowing all the back roads to get around town.  We lived in Beaverton because rent was cheap, and we hung out in Portland because that’s where we all grew up.  We could get from anywhere in Beaverton to NW Portland without hitting any traffic, at any time of day.

We could run errands, pick up a friend, get to work, find the party, or arrive at our coffee shop hang-out spot at our ease.  It felt like secret knowledge the rest of Portland residents were not privy to.  In that way, as it separated us from everybody else, it brought us closer together.

We shared all our secret shortcuts as we discovered them, and made constant improvements.  A right through a parking lot here, a left turn a block earlier there, a side street to avoid a string of crowded intersections.  We crafted our secret routes through experimentation, which is certainly not a shortcut method.  That’s probably why I still remember all those backroads nearly twenty years later.

Shortcuts can be incredibly valuable in many ways.  Having a teacher is a shortcut to gaining knowledge or skills.  It took me fifteen years to earn my black belt, but it would have taken much longer without someone guiding me and providing instruction along the way.

Shortcuts can also have unintended consequences.  In the classic 80’s adventure movie, The Princess Bride, Prince Humperdink skips to the end of the wedding ceremony, and so invalidates his marriage to Buttercup.  No one said “I do.”  According to Buttercup’s true love, Wesley: they didn’t say it, so they didn’t do it.  Which turns out to be just what the story needs for a happy ending.  Unfortunately, not all shortcuts result in a happy ending.

In recent months I have spent a significant amount of time watching videos of police encounters.  From the shocking murders of unarmed humans of color to the more routine nightly protests streaming live on the internet.  I see a lot of short-cuts.  When the police interact with the public, sometimes they encounter a potentially dangerous person.  Rather than taking the time to find out if they are really in danger, or building the skill ahead of time to make an accurate assessment quickly, they skip to the end and start shooting.

Politics also seems full of the wrong kind of shortcuts.  The 1994 crime bill, for example, which lead to the mass incarceration of millions of Americans, including a disproportionately high number of black and brown folks.  It was supposed to increase public safety, but instead of addressing the actual societal ills that lead to crime (like poverty), it created a shortcut to lock away the symptom: people labeled as criminals.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is another example.  Thrown together rapidly in a mere three months, it gave some short-term benefits to mostly wealthy taxpayers while creating record high budget deficits, which our future selves will have to manage.  The creators of the TCJA and its subsequent amendments did not include any specific plan to cover the long-term cost.

Most environmental policy also fails to address the seriousness of global climate collapse.  Many politicians (and many constituents) do not seem to understand the difference between a beneficial shortcut toward a long-term goal and a short-term-only gain.  There is too much focus on winning the next election and not enough on the less glamorous groundwork of laying a foundation to support long-lasting changes.

It is really no surprise because short-term focus is reinforced by the instant-gratification culture of American consumerism.  There is no one magic solution, but if feels important to ask everyone to become more mindful.  Consider whether you are truly taking a shortcut, or whether you are just selling yourself or others short.

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Information and Inspiration

• IMDb: The Princess Bride
• Center for American Progress: The 1994 Crime Bill Continues to Undercut Justice Reform—Here’s How to Stop It
• Brookings: A fixable mistake: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
• ​Congress: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
• Rolling Stone: The Melting Arctic Is a Real-Time Horror Story — Why Doesn’t Anyone Care?
• The New York Times: The Trump Administration Is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List.
• EPA: Environmental Protection: Is It Bad for the Economy? A Non-technical Summary of the Literature (1999)​