Wakarimasu ka?

How misunderstanding can lead to both comedy and war

Introduction:

” The key to strong relationship is great communication”.  That may be true.  Good communication is the constant cliché of books and videos.  Yet, miscommunication is an equal cousin.  I thought it would be interesting to look at the power of miscommunication.

Some miscommunication we can laugh about.  Still, miscommunication can make you scratch your head and go hmmmm?  This was my chance to make you watch the video from C & C Music Factory.

Still other miscommunications can create hate, violence and war.  Much like dark matter makes up a large chunk of the universe; I like to think of “miscommunication” as a dark side of the communication continuum.

Technology and Communication Fails

Autocorrect is an inadvertent addition to the comedy world.  It all starts with a text message.  We try to type quickly to keep up with a conversation.  Then, artificial intelligence kicks in and changes certain words as it predicts what your were trying to spell.  Some of the autocorrect threads are way too saucy for my blog.  If you are so inclined, it will take you 2 seconds to search for all best autocorrect fails. One interesting note, a couple of years ago all text auto correct fails were due to spelling corrections.  Now with voice to text, they are increasingly due to true language misinterpretation.

Three’s Company and the birth of the Sitcom

John Ritter played the character Jack Tripper.  He was the star on the hit sitcom Three’s Company.  Each week, you would watch a script that was essentially based on misunderstanding.  It was set in my hometown of Santa Monica.  For those of you that didn’t know the subplot on the show, John had to pretend to be gay to be able to live with two women.  This essentially created the foundation for the entire show.  Just changing each person’s perception of the “real story” allowed the screenwriters to create funny moments.  They even had a character Chrissy Snow that communicated in such a convoluted way, nobody understood her.

Most sitcoms have the same theme.  They are situations based on miscommunication.  The premise is that we all will laugh at the misunderstanding of the characters.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Morris the Cat

My dad told a story that I will never be able to do justice.  He describes a time when he was a professor at Kent State.  We were living on University Drive (for all the locals out there).  We had an orange cat name Morris.  Yes, it was from the old catfood commercials with the finicky cat name Morris.

Morris was an outdoor cat.  That means he would go out all night.  He would only return for food and an occasional rub.  Well, one night he went out an got in a fight.  He was a big cat, but got pretty messed up.  He had open wounds and my dad was worried about him.

My dad went to the University and was visibly upset.  One of my dad’s fellow professor friends noticed the demeanor change.  It was easy to see when my dad was upset. That was because he was one of the most outgoing happy people around.  Everything was about comedy.  So, when he was sad or upset it showed.

My dad’s  friend was of Indian decent.  I need you to imagine the accent because when my dad told the story, it was always there.    If I see you in person, I can demonstrate.

My dad’s professor friend asked “Dick, what is wrong today?”  My dad’s name was Richard.  Yes,  it is old school.  Everyone called him Dick.  My dad couldn’t hide his depression.  “It’s Morris, he got hurt and is really messed up”.  My dad’s friend was immediately upset.  “Did you take him to the doctor?”  My dad sighed and said “No, I will just wait a day and see how he is doing”.  This set my dad’s friend off.  “You should not wait!”  My dad walked away and started his day.

The next day, Morris was not better.  In fact, he was probably worse.  My dad was a good cat owner.  This has happened before.  He had certainly taken his cats to the vet for a variety of reasons.  Morris had also been in fights before.  He was a tough cat and had healed each time.

Once again, my dad was in a breakout room with his friend.  His friend immediately asked, “How is Morris?”  My dad sadly reported “He is worse”.  You can predict the response.  “Are you kidding me?  You are the worst father ever!  You don’t wait a day to take someone to the hospital after they get hurt!  What kind of person are you?  I don’t even know who you are anymore!”

My dad was really shocked.  He couldn’t believe his friend was so emotional about cats.  He decided to try to lower the tension by saying “My friend, I appreciate your passion for cats.  I will definitely take Morris to the doctor the minute I get home.”

My dad’s friend changed expressions.  He went from bright-eyed shocked to laughter.  “Morris is a cat?  I thought it was your son!  My god, we would eat cats when I was younger!”

One note on this story.  It was so much funnier when you add the Indian accent.  I am also sure I missed a lot of build up.  Yet, I never claim to be as good a story-teller as my dad.

Curb your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld

Larry David became famous as one of the writers on the hit show Seinfeld.  The character George Costanza was said to be based on the real life Larry David.  This Seinfeld writer decided to embark on a darker, more stressful show.  Curb your Enthusiasm was the HBO hit that was based on unscripted miscommunication.  In fact, the comedy was always based on misunderstanding Larry.  The best way to describe the show is uncomfortable.  You try so hard to root for Larry, but things never go as planned.  For instance, watching Larry describe Parkinson’s Disease can make you cringe. The interesting twist to miscommunication is that both Larry and the audience were always aware of the miscommunication.  Viewers have to painfully live through what follows.

How World War I began

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is famously linked with the start of World War I.  World War I may have claimed 10 million lives.  Yet, the final cause of his assassination was linked with a strange miscommunication in directions.  Apparently, the Archduke  had escaped an initial planned assassination attempt.  In fact, the assasins attacked the wrong vehicle.  So, an initial miscommunication saved his life!  Yet, when the Archduke attempted to visit the unlucky victims of the attack, his driver got mixed up on where to go.  In fact, his driver tried to back-up on a street to change directions.  This coincidently caught the eye of one of the members of the political party that planned the initial attack.  Sure enough, the new assassin hit his mark.  The rest is literally history.

MapQuest’s Rise and Demise

You would think that direction miscommunications were limited to turn of the century errors.  Horror movie plots love this premise.  Yet, I can remember a recent event that involved the “flash in the pan” website MapQuest.

Remember when we used to load addresses into the MapQuest website and print out directions?  Remember how many times it failed?  I wrote a whole blog post on that fail.  The post was called Real American.  If you didn’t read it, it received quite a few nods of approval.

War of the Worlds

This is one of my favorite stories ever.  The legendary Orson Welles was a radio personality before he became a movie star.  In 1938, he and his staff decided to tell the story of War of the Worlds (written by H.G. Wells) as if it was an actual news event.  What happened next was nationwide panic.  By the end of the broadcast, people assumed we were being invaded my Martians.  It was brilliant.  Yet, Orson Welles was later forced to apologize to the public.  I found the original recording.  Let it run in the background when you are doing something in your house.  The build up made you realize that the age of radio was so special.

Original radio broadcast of War of the Worlds

Wakarimasu ka

The title of this article comes from my memories of watching James Clavell’s Shogun mini-series.  Want a quick lesson in Japanese?

Conclusions:

This topic of misunderstanding spawns an important discussion about communication.  The problem is the cliché of communication.  We always talk about relationships being based on trust and communication.  The question is how hard do we try to understand others?  More importantly, how much do we care to understand one another?  I think many misunderstandings occur between families.  With that in mind, I will work to listen to my kids as they describe how they feel.  Right after that, I will try to convince them we are being invaded by Martians.

Copyright Walter Oden – September 2015 – All Rights Reserved.  See Global Copyright Notice on sidebar of home page for additional notifications.

 

The Happiness Project – Part I

How to quantify and gain awareness of your personal happiness

by Walter Oden

Prelude: 

I am generally a very happy person.  Yet, I have had some really low times.  We all face challenges in our lives. These challenges test our outlook on life.  Sometimes lows overshadow the highs.  I have been waiting to post on this topic for some time now.  I never seemed to find the right time.  I decided I would publish at a time I was REALLY HAPPY.  I also think I was nervous.  We are always wary when sharing some deep feelings.  Every holiday weekend is a time of reflection.  This weekend was no exception.  I thought about my dad often.  Yet, I really did have a wonderful weekend with my family.  Alas, happiness has motivated me to write about happiness.

Introduction

I originally wrote this article on New Year’s Day of 2012.  I actually shared it with a couple of friends at that time.   My dad was approaching the end of his life.   I was in a pretty dark state.  He had reached Advanced Parkinson’s Disease at that point.

I recently saw a poll result on general “Happiness”.  The report indicated that the average happiness of people was dropping dramatically.  One theory was that we are becoming too “technology” focused.  My theory is that “pressure” was taking over our lives.

Why Happiness is Important

Ask any parent what they want for their children.  Most will answer “I want them to be happy”.  What about your own life?  How do you want to breathe your last breath?  We have all seen the quotes describing what we will be thinking when we get older. They all have the same theme.  You will never say “I wish I spent one more day at the office”.  End game happiness is the goal. If we can learn how to do it, we can teach our children.  Then we will fulfill our mission.

New Year’s Resolutions

I make the same New Year’s resolution each year; Focus on happy.  This may sound like a cliché.  On the other hand, who hasn’t become a big cliché?  I am considered to be a “Tweener” by many.  I am not talking about the tennis shot between the legs.  A “Tweener” is term used around social circles to describe a state in your life.  If you have  people OLDER and YOUNGER relying on you for their well being, you are a TWEENER.  You also understand the special pressure that goes with this label.

My History

I have a beautiful loving family and my health.  I have a job I value.  Yet, the years of pressure from my dad’s health, debt, the economy and shear work load has added up.  In fact, it has robbed me of pleasure over the years.  It has robbed me of enjoying what is really important.  I have even occasionally described myself as unhappy.

Being weighed down by negatives is probably what is called “clinical depression”.  Do you see problems as bigger than they really are? This kind of negative stress has a big impact.  It affects you, your family and everyone around you.

My dad’s illness first became prevalent about seven years ago.  The first “hit” was when he lost everything he owned.  That became the least of our issues.  We were fighting so hard for his well being.  We wanted any glimpse of hope.   He lost his fight during January of 2013.  During his decline, I felt helpless most of the time.  Stress + Helplessness + Money Woes + Responsibility and you get one giant ball of unhappy.

Yet, I am going to hypothesize a strange concept; Unhappiness is a mirage.

Why do the Project?

I would try to go see my dad in the nursing home for long visits about once per week.  On other days I would pop in and out.  I was always guilty I couldn’t be there more.  He told me on New Year’s 2012 how “unhappy” he was.   During our visits it was very hard to focus on any positives.  My dad had not come to terms with his plight.  He was also very aware of what is coming.  My dad had dementia that kept getting worse.  He was very scared.  If I tried to bring up the past, he resisted it.  This was his defense mechanism.  It was almost like if he remembered the past, he got more depressed.  He wished it was the past and it wasn’t.

A Call to Action

And now for another cliché.  How do we live in the “now”?  Do you have a habit of waiting for things to happen to you?.  Are you always looking for that change that will make you truly happy?  Could more money or a better house make you happy?  Maybe, but not necessarily.

Yet, if we don’t get to happy right now, we’ll miss it.  That is because happy isn’t a moment in time.  It is time itself.  Having “time” is what happy is.  My dad was out of time.  He didn’t have much happy left.  He missed the opportunity to embrace his time when he was happiest.

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and say “I guess what I used to have was happy”.  I missed it.  I don’t want to ignore what is happy.

The Concept

I was trying to conceptualize this plight in the last couple of years.  I wondered if happiness was simply a state of mind.  I wondered if it was a state of awareness.  Could I be happy and not see it?  It reminds me of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life.  You go through life and can’t realize how lucky you are to be you.

By the way, I included the imbedded link above to also answer a favorite trivia item of mine.  Ever wonder how the characters Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street were developed?

So I said to myself “I wonder if we can define happiness in something that is NOT SUBJECTIVE.  How could we create a definition of “Happiness” in terms of something that is totally OBJECTIVE.  Could I take a math approach to happiness?  How about an accounting approach to happiness?  Could I tally things and record them on a balance sheet?  Could I create the financial statements of life?

The project

I am about to show the reader why I quit being a CPA.  I have to explain some basic accounting to the reader.  It will take you about 3 seconds to pass out with boredom.  Please trudge through it, it matters.

Basic financial statements include a Balance Sheet and Income Statement.  The Balance Sheet lists all your Assets, Liabilities and Owner’s Equity (Sometimes called Retained Earnings).

The Income Statement (Sometimes called the P&L) is a picture of income and expenses during a given time period.  That period is usually a calendar year.

This concept has not changed in accounting in a hundred years.  Even Ebenezer Scrooge understood this.  Although, his accounting methodologies included slave labor that took food out of the mouth of Tiny Tim.

If you are still awake, you may be asking why do we need to know this material?  The answer is what I call the “Happiness Project”

Getting Started – Your Balance Sheet

We need to build financial statements to your life.  We will begin with a Balance Sheet. Start by listing all of your assets.  These are not just things you OWN!  These are things that are positive to your life.  Some examples include:

1) A wife that loves me

2) Three very different kids that love their dad.

3) Own a home

4) A job I like

Then you need to list your liabilities.  These are the things that are potentially negatives.

1) Debt

2) House has huge flaws that can only be fixed with lots of money

3) Job requires long hours that take away from my family

4) Father in nursing home with incurable disease.

5) Wavering belief in higher power/purpose

Finally, you need to list what positives or negative you NET after your years.  That is the statement of retained earnings

1) Fairly youthful looking from years on tennis courts

2) Home is worth more than I owe from years of paying mortgage

Your Current Year – The Income Statement

Now we need to build an Income Statement.  This will require daily recording of Income (Things that make you happy) and Expenses (Things that block your happiness).  You need to religiously record this data every day for 30 days.  Record everything that made you happy, especially the simple stuff.

Monday

Income

1) Kids came running to door yelling “daddy!” and attacked me .  They squeezed me dragged me inside.

2) Had more than (3)  beers in the fridge

3) Great dinner waiting on stove top

Expense

1) Got into a conflict with co- worker today

2) Cash flow went negative today

3) Leak in pipe in basement appeared today

Working list and results

It is impossible to create all these statements in one sitting.  Our subconscious does an incredible job blocking things out.  You may be adding to your balance sheet as you develop your income statement. That is totally fine.

Analysis of your statements

You can have a good year or bad year (income statement).  The key is to focus on the income.  Why?

This is YOUR HAPPINESS PROJECT summarized!

Take all the INCOME items you listed for 30 days.  Put them on a single sheet. That list is your roadmap to happiness. It’s kind of like how you value a business.  Sometimes, you just want to know how much revenue the business earns each year.

Happiness is a cumulative conglomeration of happy moments all rolled up into a single ball.

This project forces you to be aware of your happy moments.  Happiness does not guarantee a life devoid of unhappiness or negatives.  In fact, the key to this project is being able to accept negatives and SEPARATE them from the HAPPY.  Focusing on the happy, is merely a matter of getting organized.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

This movie starred Jim Carrey,  Kate Winslet & Kirsten Dunst.  It got mixed reviews.  I thought it was brilliant.  The premise was that we had invented a way of erasing memories.  In fact, you could erase any BAD memories and eliminate your sadness.  The movie created a hypothesis through its story.  A person’s happiness is eternally linked to all moments in your life.  Eliminate the unhappy and you risk eliminating the happy.

Life experience, much like our income statement, includes both Happy and Unhappy moments. Our project allows you to focus on the happy without ever “erasing” the lessons learned from the unhappy.

Conclusions & Part II

This project will NOT add happiness to your life.  This project will not eliminate sadness or disappointment.  The bigger plan is to make you aware of what you already have.  That happiness is a state of mind.  It is a state of awareness.  We can either choose to be happy or not be happy.  I am choosing happy.  We will explore methods for improving your financial statements of life in PART II.

My Dad in 1968

Copyright Walter Oden & “I Have an Idea” –  January 2012 – All rights reserved.  Please review the global copyright notice on the sidebar.