The Kindest Thing You Can Do
Simply, take a chance on someone. You might just change the world.
A huge thank you to my sister who helped bring the idea to life and edited the piece!
“Artificial intelligence is going to do many things for us in the decades ahead, and replace humans at many tasks, but one thing it will never be able to do is to create person-to-person connections. If you want to thrive in the age of Al, you better become exceptionally good at connecting with others."
- David Brooks
In a world that is becoming increasingly digital and increasingly lonely, the people in your life matter. The people you connect with matter. Humans need connection as much as we need the basic necessities of life. As we continue to exist in a world that diminishes human connection by continuing to push us to live online, we should all try to be what David Brooks calls “Illuminators” in his book, How To Know A Person.
“I’m sure you experienced a version of this [Illuminators]: You meet somebody, who seems wholly interested in you, who gets you, who helps you name and see things in yourself that maybe you hadn’t even yet put into words, and you become a better version of yourself.”
Illuminators offer a form of respect that is both receptive and generous by letting people be who they are. They have an innate curiosity of those around them. They help to bring out the best in you and help you to see things in yourself that you knew existed but didn’t know how to bring to life. Illuminators help your soul to shine through and take a chance on you when few others might.
In life, we need illuminators, people who crack open things that may have laid dormant otherwise. They help us to see ourselves in a manner beyond what “defines” us. In a world of eight billion people, we just want to be seen and heard. Illuminators do that by taking chances on those around them. They help move the world forward.
For Nike to ever become a Fortune 500 company required Bill Bowerman, the track coach at the University of Oregon, to see and take a chance on Phil Knight, the guy who would later become the creator of Nike. It required Bill to see what Phil Knight could not possibly see in himself at the time. At a time when Phil had no money and had proven nothing with the company he was trying to create, Bill Bowerman came to Phil and wanted to be in on the deal of the Japanese running shoes Phil was promoting. This was the first step in Nike becoming who they grew to be today.
Bill Bowerman got that deal when he gave Phil Knight $500 in 1964, equivalent to just under $5,000 today, to invest in the empire Phil was trying to build. Phil had no sales, no cash flow, just an innate desire to make something of himself. In Shoe Dog, Phil Knight says,
“So that morning in 1962, I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy… just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.”
The world is made up of crazy ideas. Everything we love in life started as crazy ideas. All it took was one person, Bill Bowerman, to ignite the spark within Phil Knight. To compress the snow into a snowball that would grow into the avalanche that Nike would become. Few believed in what Knight was trying to create, not even his father, who balked at the idea of investing $500 in the company around the same time. But Bill was curious about Phil and wanted to bring the best out of him. He believed in his vision for the running shoe business and recognized the void that existed. Most importantly, he believed in Phil.
To ever get anywhere in your career, someone has to take a chance on you. All it takes is to have one person believe in you when no one else will.
Oprah Winfrey didn’t have a smooth sailing path to start her career. In 1977, she became the first black female news anchor and the youngest news anchor at Nashville’s WLAC-TV before moving to Baltimore. While at a Baltimore news station, she would get removed from being co-anchor and worked lower profile positions remaining out of the public eye.
A few years down the road in 1984, she moved to Chicago where she started to experience some success. She caught the eye of movie critic Roger Ebert who believed she would generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies. The show would be renamed the Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah was the star, and it was expanded to last an hour. Fast forward 25 years later and it became one of the longest-running shows in television history. It remains the highest-rated daytime talk show in American television history. Roger Ebert saw what few others could see and took a chance that no one else was willing to take.
Taking a chance on someone is one of the kindest things you can do. You just may never know where it may lead. Let me explain through the perspective of my life.
It was mid-May of 2018, and I was home from college for the summer, I was desperate for a job that would give me 40 hours a week. College is not cheap, and my expenses were not going to pay for themselves! I had just wrapped up my freshman year of college and I had two jobs, but the hours of both were inconsistent. Rather than trying to come up with 40 hours a week somehow between the two, I needed to make my life easy and find one job that would give me 40 hours regularly. It became a long, drawn-out process due to me trying to optimize for a job that was trendy and cool.
My mom, in typical mom fashion, had a very simple situation for me. She begged me to get a job at the grocery store up the street, but I resisted. It wasn’t trendy nor was it cool for a college freshman to slice deli meat, cut up cucumbers, and make pizza. I resisted until I couldn’t anymore. My search was just dead end after dead end. Mothers have a funny way of being right so eventually I caved and went in for the interview at the grocery store. Unsurprisingly, I got the job and they had more than enough hours they could give me.
Fast forward, six years later and I still work for that same company. The hiring manager at my local grocer would be the first to take a chance on me. Today, I am in a corporate role, but it is interesting to think that if I hadn’t needed a summer job six years ago where I might just be now. You make one small choice one day that you think has no effect and then you look back six years later, and it has defined your career. Something so trivial can grow to be massive, and faster than you realize. And it all started with someone taking a chance on me. Of course, to Lisa, the hiring manager, thank you. You helped to start my future career and we had no idea.
It started with something trivial, my mom telling me to go up the street and apply because she knew they could give me 40 hours, leading to something massive, my career. A lot of life is this way.
A lot of life is Dollo’s Law of Irreversibility. The law says once a species loses a trait, it will never get the trait back because the path that initially produced the trait was so complicated that it can’t be replicated. If an animal has spikes, and then it evolves to lose its spikes, the path for it to get the spikes is so complicated, it will never get them back.
Much of life is like this. Much of life is irreversible. And when we invite people into our lives and take a chance on someone or someone takes a chance on us, it leaves a lasting change no matter how small, big, indifferent, or trivial it may seem. So when you get a chance to bet on someone, do it.
And this doesn’t have to be an act where you make a tangible investment in a person either. You don’t have to put dollars to work, you don’t have to hire them, and you don’t have to assume a great risk to make it work. Sometimes, you can simply believe in someone and help them see what they might be able to see in themselves. Help to illuminate what they cannot see in themselves. Therapists help people see the beauty of their soul that the patient cannot currently see through their crowded mind. Podcast hosts can evoke emotions and stories to help us see the true self of the guests that lies underneath the surface. Teachers see potential in students that sometimes students cannot see themselves.
These people never make a tangible bet on you but they believe in you and what you can become, which is sometimes more than enough. I wouldn’t be here writing today if it wasn’t for my AP English teacher in my junior year of high school. At the time, she saw in me what I could not see in myself. Someone who could write. She always had a belief in me, encouraged me, and built me to be someone who would eventually see the skills I had. As much as I didn’t want to believe it at the time, she continued to push me, coach me, and take a chance on me. She believed in what I could become. She committed to me as a student.
It is commitment in a world where commitment is underrated. Options are great until a point. Options convince you to settle. Options rationalize moving haphazardly through life in the belief something better will eventually come along. If you are forever accumulating options, you will never commit to anything. To take a chance on someone is to commit. Bill Bowerman never knew what Phil Knight would become or what his company would grow into. Roger Ebert took a chance on Oprah and remained committed to her show despite the enormous scrutiny it was under. Lisa and my AP English teacher took a chance on me. If you study any person, there is someone who undoubtedly played an integral role in what that person became and what they grew themselves into. Someone who committed to believing in them.
Commitment does not come without doubt either. It is moving forward despite the presence of doubt. You can take a chance on someone and never know if it will work whether it be in a career, as a teammate, in a relationship, or whatever it may be. But part of this is having agency. Part of this is not only believing in you but also believing in others.
It is about deeply seeing others. It is less zero-sum thinking and less of it being about one person. It is about we, not I. To combat the rise of zero-sum thinking, we have to think we can help each other. Believing that we can see the good in people and that we control our destiny. We have been given the gift of life and now, we must live and live it as we please. Live it believing in the good of others.
And yes, we might fail. We might take a chance on someone where it doesn’t work but much of life is being agentic and believing in what you can make of the situation. If you fail so be it, it is a matter of how you see failure. David Brooks talks about failure and suffering in How To Live A Meaningful Life,
“Those moments of suffering in the valley, of moments of painful moments in our lives can either break you or break you open. And the breaking is when you get fearful. Some people, something bad happens and some people just get fearful and they close in on themselves. And they want to be invulnerable so they close in and they develop this coding of hard brittle stuff… But other people are broken open. They discover those low moments, the really vulnerable parts of themselves that are—the nerves that are exposed. And they decide I’m gonna live in a way that they stay exposed because when I expose these soft tender nerves, I’m able to relate to others, I’m able to be a better person, I’m able to be a more caring and loving person.”
You can’t control the way life unfolds but you can control how you react. In the trying moments, I believe it is about how you react. Do you let it crack you or do you let it crack you open? Do you let it make you a better person, a person who is capable of love, or a person who is capable of great things?
Failure should not scare you away and not discourage you. Kyla Scanlon says,
“The world is not yours to be angry at.”
If you do fail if you take a chance on someone and it doesn’t work, everything happening is not to spite you. It is less about individualism. Selfless people don’t think that way. Selfless people take chances and realize much of it is out of their control but they believe no matter what, they can determine how they react to what comes out of it. That they can play a role in someone’s life by taking a chance on them.
We don't often recognize how important it is that people take chances on other people and just because one situation might not work, doesn’t mean you should shy away from others. In the end, the only person that hurts is you.
In a world where we want to chase ROI, EBITDA, or build shareholder value, the real way to build value in your life is to take a chance on someone. Personal connections are something that AI won’t ever be able to automate no matter how hard it tries. Personal connections will forever be underrated.
Nike would have never been Nike if not for Bill Bowerman. Oprah would have never been Oprah if not for Roger Ebert. I, obviously nowhere close to Nike or Oprah, would have never been where I am today if not for my hiring manager and AP English teacher. Take a chance on someone. Connect with someone. You could end up influencing the next wave of people who change this world. It is on you. On you to make a difference.
You are the only person with sole control over your life. Your existence. Your day-to-day activities. Not just the life of your career, the life of your athletic pursuit, or the life of your thoughts but the life of your heart and your soul. Your soul that feeds connections in a world where we need each other. Anna Quindlen said it well in a commencement speech in 2000 to Villanova University,
“Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Each time you look at your diploma, remember that you are still a student, still learning how to best treasure your connection to others. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your Mom. Hug your Dad. Get a life in which you are generous.”
And if I might add, get a life where you might just take a chance on someone that is one way to be generous. You are undoubtedly already doing it so thank you for taking a chance on me by reading this piece. But don’t stop there.
Appreciate you reading.
-Scantron
This was a great read! It feels like it is often easy to underestimate the impact of a kind gesture and overestimate the effort it will take. However, many times a small kindness can have a huge impact. We should all try to be a little kinder than yesterday. Thanks for sharing.
This story just gives me a new to connect with people in my life. Thank you for sharing.