Chicago Transit Annoyance

I am often asked what it is like living in a big city. People who have never lived somewhere as big as Chicago ask me the oddest questions about it. “Have you seen Oprah?” people often asked when I first moved. No, I have not seen Oprah. She doesn’t tend to wander the city, and as far as I know, does not host open visiting hours. “Where are my Cubs tickets?” asked an uncle. I don’t have any. As it turns out, they don’t hand out free Cubs tickets to all Chicago residents. “Do you have doctors and dentists there?” someone asked me once. (Really?) Yes, we have doctors and dentists. “How do you get to appointments?” The same way I get everywhere else, of course.

Public transportation.

Now we’re talking about something that is different about living in a big city. By and large, getting everywhere on foot and on public transportation is the biggest difference between my day-to-day life in Chicago and my former lives in Kalamazoo and Saginaw.  I don’t want to imply that everyone who lives in big cities takes public transportation. I don’t think all be cities have great systems, and even in Chicago where the system is pretty comprehensive, a lot of people avoid it. I, however, do not own a car, so for the most part I take public transportation wherever I’m going.

Like most things, there are benefits and costs. I hate driving in traffic and I especially hate circling for parking, so I like that I don’t have to deal with those things. I like that I’m doing something earth-friendly. I like that I have time to read when I’m on my way to and from work. It’s a nice transition into and out of the workday.

On the other hand, there are many annoyances. Elbowing your way into and out of a crowded bus is never fun. Whenever it rains, you can pretty much guarantee you’ll be waiting for the bus just long enough to get soaked. The amount of time it takes to get most places is astronomical compared to the time it takes to drive. Recently a friend sprung for a cab to a nearby movie theater, and when we stepped into the theater 10 minutes after leaving my apartment, it felt like a miracle.

There are two categories of public transit happenings that drive me the battiest, though. I call them the rude things and the gross things.

The rude things relate to dealing with people who treat public transit as if it were their own private transit. I know using buses and trains can be new and a bit scary at first, so I try to forgive tourists for doing things that I find annoying. But it’s not just tourists. I have found that the worst offenders for doing rude things are the daily commuters.

Dear commuters standing at the bus stop: We all know that there’s a good 25-foot span where the bus door may end up. The people who happen to be standing there are the people who get to get on the bus first. You do not get to edge your way in front of me if I happen to end up closer – especially not if my only reason for pausing is to allow the elderly or disabled person to board. The sooner you get on, the more likely you are to get a seat. We all know that. Shoving your way to the front of the line doesn’t make you clever. It makes you a jerk. Like the rest of us, you’ll just have to play your cards where the bus driver’s braking distance makes them fall.

Dear commuters who are right next to the door and don’t step back when more people want to get on: Step back. Or if you really can’t step back, then pass a message back for the people behind you to step back. It’s a rare case when there is not enough room for two or three more people. There is room. I can see it. Stop acting as if taking two steps back and being two inches closer to the people around you is more of an inconvenience than me having to wait for the next bus. I’m trying to get to work, same as you.

Dear commuter who puts her bag on the seat next to her and then pretends not to notice me as I walk up: No, using this tactic won’t prevent me from asking you to move your bag. I will ask you to move your bag. You are entitled to one seat. Not two. If you don’t like the idea of a stranger sitting next to you, take a cab.

Wait your turn. Make room for others. These are just rules of basic courtesy. It blows my mind how many commuters ignore them.

I will give commuters one thing, though: They don’t do very many gross things. I’m more likely to see gross things on the weekends, and mostly on trains rather than buses.

Dear transit rider who spread chapstick on the train pole: Seriously? WHY?! I had it on both hands before I realized what it was, and then it was on my coat, my bag, and God knows where else. It was really disgusting. Don’t ever do that again.

Dear transit rider who just opened a package containing a giant pickle along with a pool of pickle juice: If you must eat on the train (which is against CTA regulations and subject to a fine), can you pick something other than a giant pickle? The train car is going to smell like pickle mixed with all the other fun smells of the train. Oh good. Now you just handed it to your 8-year-old kid. AND THEN GAVE HIM PERMISSION TO POUR THE PICKLE JUICE OUT ON THE FLOOR. That’s just irresponsible.

Gross.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, let me also point out that public transit is also the place I’ve seen and heard more random acts of kindness than anywhere else.

I saw man who asked the woman who practically fainted into her seat whether she needed help when everyone else walked right on by.

I saw a bus driver walk a blind woman across the street and down the block to her destination.

I’ve seen dozens of people give up their seats for pregnant women, elderly people, and small children. I’ve found that the people who stand up are often the ones who seem most deserving of a seat.

The one I’ll never forget is the woman who tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a tissue on a day I was crying. I don’t recall now what had upset me that day, but I thought I was in control when I got on the bus. Then, I just wasn’t in control any more. I was trying to subtly wipe away silent tears and hating that I was in a public place. Then a stranger offered me a tissue without a word, and everything was a little bit better.

No one would have seen me cry if I had been in my own car. But no one would have handed me a tissue, either.

Rude, gross, kind. It all balances out in the end.  

October

12 Books

I read The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer.  It was on a list of books recommended for those who like the Outlander series. While it was no Outlander, I did enjoy it. Rather than traveling through time, the main character travels through parallel universes where she was born in different time periods. It’s worth a read if you like that sort of thing.

12 Recipes

To use the apples I got on this year’s trip to the apple orchard, I made caramel apple pork chops.  I give them a 7. They were easy and tasty, but did not blow me away.

12 Blog Posts

Click here to read about the mystery of the duck pajamas.

12 Ways to Meet People and 12 Fun Events in Chicagoland

This month I went to two events that both kind of fit in both of these categories. The first one was a group walk through the north side of Chicago. There is a meetup group that does several group walks per week, both in the city and in the surrounding suburbs, forest preserves, and trails. The pace was quite brisk, and I was sore afterward. While I enjoyed it, I likely won’t go back to many more, mostly because they are more about exercise than socializing.

The second one was a pumpkin carving party at a local community workshop. They have lots of tools available for use, like drills, ban saws, sanders, and lots of other things you can’t really have in a 1-bedroom apartment. I went to the pumpkin carving just to check out the space and the people there. I had a lot of fun carving my Harry Potter pumpkin.

12 Small Steps Forward in my Career

I gave a talk at the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference. It was a repeat of the talk I gave in Toronto, but for a much larger audience. It went ok, but not great. I should have put a bit more time into thinking about how to adapt it for a different style of presentation. I rushed it and was done very early. In retrospect, I wish I had been more thoughtful in my commentary about the problems I demonstrated. Oh well. Live and learn.

12 Crafts and Creations

A few days ago was my goddaughter’s birthday, so I finally get to post pictures of the alphabet blocks I made for her! Each one has the upper and lowercase letter and four pictures of things that start with that letter. I had such fun making these. Here are some of my favorites.

12 Pretty Things for My Apartment

I bought these pretty wall decals that are now above my bed and above the towel bar in my bathroom.

12 Things that Help Me Feel Good about My Appearance

I tried another set of acrylic nails, this time with accent designs on one finger on each hand. I got tons of compliments on these!

12 Grown-Up Things

After missing an Idina Menzel concert a couple of months ago because I forgot about it, I finally broke down and started using a personal calendar. It’ll take me a while to get used to adding things and checking it, but I do think this is a grown-up thing that needed to happen.

The duck pajamas

When I was in middle and high school, I wasn’t particularly interested in clothes. I mostly wore t-shirts and jeans, and the t-shirts weren’t even store-bought. They were free ones I got from various events and groups I was involved in. Clothes just weren’t my thing, and neither was shopping. I am sure I had many annoying habits, but asking my parents to continually buy me new clothes was not one of them.

Then one day when we were in the mall, I saw a pair of pajamas. They were light blue, with drawstring pants and a tank top, and they were covered with pictures of rubber ducks. I don’t know why, but I really, really wanted them.

My mom was reluctant to buy them for me. They were expensive, in the realm of pajamas, and I did not have a particular need for another pair of pajamas. So Mom said no.

Subsequent conversations went something like this:

--I would still like those duck pajamas, please.

--No, Katie. You cannot have those duck pajamas.

--Please, Mom? Please can I have the duck pajamas?

--No. No duck pajamas.

--Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

--No.

--Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

--Why do you want them so badly?

--I just do! Please can I have them? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—

--Ok, ok, fine! Just stop making that noise.

Due to my finely tuned persuasive abilities, I wore her down and she bought me the pajamas. She thought I’d wear them for a couple months, maybe a year, and then forget about them.

Ten years later, I was living in Chicago when my mother came to visit me. “Remember how badly I wanted those duck pajamas?” I asked her. She nodded. “Well, I still wear them,” I said, pulling them out of the drawer.

Another ten years later, and I still have the pajamas. I’m wearing them right now. They’ve moved with me through 10 different addresses over the course of 20 years. I’m quite sure they are the oldest piece of clothing I own.

This makes absolutely no sense. I did not often get my heart set on any particular thing I wanted when I was young. I have no particular affinity for rubber ducks. I never had one when I was little. Ernie was not my favorite Sesame Street character. (Can Grover get some love, people?) Also, pajamas are generally not made to hold up for 20 years.  And I only have a few random memories of wearing them. No strong sentimental attachments.

What’s up with these duck pajamas?

While I don’t necessarily think there is some deep-seated psychological explanation for everything, the fact that today is Halloween did get me thinking about it.

When I was in elementary school, my family passed down Halloween costumes. My sister would wear one, and the next year my cousin Kim would wear it, and then the next year I would wear it. This never bothered me. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that other kids picked their costumes each year. I just wore the costumes in order: the ghost, then the princess dress, then the gypsy, then… ok, I don’t remember any more, but there were at least six of them. Even later on, when it did become clearer to me that most kids picked their costumes each year, I was grateful to not have to make those choices. Too much pressure!

When Kim called one year to ask if I wanted to be a pair of dice for Halloween that year, I said sure. When a friend called to ask if I wanted to go as Riddler and Two-Face one year, I said sure. Happily skipping any choice-making was par for the course for me then. I didn’t like uncertainty. This is probably why I didn’t ask for a lot of stuff when I was a kid. That would mean picking something.

Then one day I saw the duck pajamas, and it just so happened that was the day it clicked for me. People pick out things they like, and sometimes they just get them because they like them. I like these pajamas. Maybe I could be ok with just having those pajamas and not having all the other pajamas. Maybe I could choose them. People do that.

So I begged for the pajamas, and I kept them for 20 years. Just because I like them. That’s the whole story.

It didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. It still doesn’t, really. It’s kind of a lame story. But looking back at it now, through the lens of all I’ve learned about myself and my issues with anxiety, it does make a little more sense. There have been several episodes in my life when I’ve said to myself, “This is a thing that people do, and I can do this too.” Each episode has been a little breakthrough in understanding that not everything is as challenging as it seems.

So thanks, Mom, for the duck pajamas. I hope I wasn’t too obnoxious as I begged for them. I think maybe I was just startled to discover that I had my own opinions.

September

12 Books

It was another two-book month. First I read Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s the story of a woman who adopted a young, abandoned Cherokee girl and later finds out that the adoption was illegal. Then I read The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain, which is about a woman who discovers that her sister’s suicide was faked. I give both books a 6 out of 10. I was interested enough to finish them, but generally not impressed.

12 Recipes

I tried two new slow cooker recipes this month: chicken tikka masala and chicken and wild rice soup. I loved both. I recommend both recipes.

12 Blog Posts

Click here to read about how I’m learning to be a godmother.

12 Ways to Meet People

Early in the month I went to a happy hour for the Chicago chapter of the Global Expeditions Travel Club. They organize a dozen or so trips each year to places around the world. They trips are designed with solo travelers in mind. They do roommate matching and whatnot and encourage people to not be afraid to come without knowing anyone else. The Chicago chapter has a happy hour each month to give people a chance to meet other travelers and share stories. I had a great time and look forward to going back again.

12 Small Steps Forward in my Career

It’s been a frustrating month, professionally speaking, but not without its high points. In particular, earlier this month, a semi-famous person in the math ed world sent me a note saying he had looked at one of my projects. He was impressed and wanted to collaborate in the future. I’ve been corresponding with him a bit and I remain optimistic for a future partnership.

12 Fun Events in Chicagoland

I did three fun things this month! First, I went to Midnight Circus in the Park, which is a fundraiser for the city parks. The acts were very impressive!

 

Next, I went to a cabaret performance at a small piano bar on the north side. It was a really cute venue. The performer was a friend of a friend, so I didn’t have any strong connection to her, but I did like getting out and supporting a local performer.

Lastly, I went with my goddaughter and her family to AllSeasons Orchard. They had lots of fun kids activities and a very pretty orchard for apple picking. We had a great time.

 12 Crafts and Creations

My hardworking mother is retiring on October 1, so I made a gift for her. It’s a retirement clock! No matter what time it is, it’s time for something fun!

 

12 Pretty Things for My Apartment

I completed my travel wall by ordering this acrylic of Hogwarts castle to hang above my scrapbook from Harry Potter World.

 

12 Things that Help Me Feel Good about My Appearance

One of the things I hate the most about my appearance is the dark circles that are always under my eyes. It does not matter how much rest I get or what kind of concealer I use. The dark purple smudges are always there. So, I looked up home remedies and tried a few. No effect, but I’m giving myself points for trying.

12 Grown-Up Things

I cleaned out and reorganized the shelves in my closet, which included purging about 70% of my notes and articles from grad school. Instead of 8 binders gathering dust in my closet, I now have 3 binders accessible on my desk at work.

Godmother

About three years ago, a close friend of mine asked if I’d like to be godmother to her soon-to-be-born daughter. I said yes, of course. How could I turn down such a thing? But I have to admit that I had doubts about my abilities to fill the role.

I’ve never been very good with kids. I don’t dislike children. I enjoy a cute baby, a hand-drawn picture, or a tiny dance recital as much as the next person. But I’ve just never been very good at interacting with kids. They’re mysterious to me. Some people are good at engaging kids in conversation. I am not one of them. In my 10ish years of adult existence, I had never been important in the life of a child. Even when I tried to be, I just never rose to that role.

Ergo, the idea of being godmother to a child was intimidating. As soon as my friend's daughter was born (I’ll just call her K), my mission was clear. I would get K to like me. I had never known how to relate to kids, but it was time to learn.

My first strategy attempted to play to one of my strengths: making cool stuff. Each Christmas and birthday, I have given K a handmade gift: a blanket, personalized mittens, colorful stuffed birds (one of her favorite animals, at the time), a hand-decorated step stool.  They all use the same color scheme, on the theory that even if she didn’t associate the gifts with me as she received them, someday she would realize that all the awesome purple-teal-white-pink stuff came from Auntie Katie.

Thus far, K has not made that realization. (A shocker, I know, considering that she’s not quite 3.) I have not given up on this strategy, but it’s a long-game strategy. I needed a short-game strategy.

What other aspects of me or my life would be appealing to K? “I want to be the first person to take her to the Shedd,” I told K’s mother. “And don’t go introducing her to Harry Potter. I want dibs on Harry Potter.” K’s mom promised. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There will be no Harry Pottering at our house.”

The Shedd and Harry Potter might be two great things for K and I to share. But she’s still too young for both of them. I am waiting patiently. But it quickly became clear that waiting wasn’t going to address the short game.

Admitting temporary defeat, I gave myself a few pep talks and began taking what is probably the obvious approach to the rest of you: I started spending more time with K. I’ve been careful to pay attention to her, attempting to engage her as often as I could.

The results have been a mixed bag. I’ve had a few successes. K seemed to rather enjoy when I taught her how to say, “Achoo!” as a fake sneeze. We also played a rousing game of peek-a-boo once, which involved a lot of high pitched half-scream, half-laughs from K.

(It occurs to me, suddenly, that both of these episodes when she was particularly responsive to me happened in the car, when she was buckled in her car seat. It seems that I’m an acceptable form of entertainment, but only when her options are limited. That’s mildly discouraging.)

(Eh, you know what? I’ll take it.)

There have been a few ongoing markers of progress, too. K knows my name and recognizes me, my photo, and my apartment building. She no longer cries when I get in the car. She used to do that consistently.

However, I still feel it’d be generous to say that K likes me. She tolerates my presence now, but still mostly refuses to sit next to me, hold my hand, or otherwise directly interact. I’m learning that building a relationship with a kid, particularly one that I don’t see more often than once or twice a month, is a long and humbling process. I’m counting on persistence to pay off.

I will say something positive for spending time with K, though. It may not be helping her warm up to me as fast as I would like, but it has given me a much greater appreciation of her. Kids have always been a mysterious and frightening class of beings for me, and K fell into that category for quite some time. But paying closer attention to the things K says has changed my perception of her.

Here’s a good example: Over the summer, K and I and her family were out at a city park. K was riding on her mother’s back and naming the things she saw. “Doggie,” she’d say, and point to someone walking a dog. “That’s right!” we’d say. “What else to do you see?” She saw trees, people, and even a helicopter. (It was really quite impressive that she identified that last one!)

Later on that evening we were in a restaurant, and I hear K say, “robot.” I thought she was still playing the “I see” game, so I looked around for a poster or something that showed a robot. I didn’t find one. “Where do you see a robot, K?” I asked. She looked around and then said, almost as if to herself, “I don’t see a robot.”

It’s not clear what was going on in her head at the time. Perhaps she wasn’t playing the “I see” game and simply said “robot” because she was thinking about something else. Maybe she saw something that looks somewhat like the round, automatic vacuum in her house, thought it was a robot, and subsequently decided it wasn’t. I’m not sure. Either way, she heard me and tried to reconcile my question with whatever she was thinking. “I don’t see a robot.” It was a thoughtful conclusion.

It’s things like this that help me understand that K’s not so frightening. She’s just a little tiny person who is trying to figure things out. I think she’s doing a pretty good job. It gives me faith that eventually, she’ll also figure out that Auntie Katie made her all that cool stuff, takes her to do fun things, and generally just wants to be her friend. 

 

August

12 Books

This month I read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s the chronicle of a missionary family’s time in the Congo in 1960, the year Congo declared independence from Belgium. It’s a beautiful book, narrated by all four daughters and occasionally their mother. A number of terrible things happen, but somehow the horror is softened a bit as you experience it through a child’s or teenager’s eyes. In that sense, it reminded me of Room.

I liked the first 400 pages much better than the last 150, but I did really like the book overall.

12 Recipes

This month I tried a rather ambitious recipe: pasties. I knew they were a lot of work, just from memories of my grandma and others telling me so, but the recipe looked deceptively simple and I decided to go with it.  I have a small kitchen, and also had to improvise when I realized that I don’t own a rolling pin, so rolling out the dough was a huge pain and time consuming. Otherwise, though, they weren’t so bad, and turned out well.

12 Blog Posts

Click here to read about the things politicians fail to understand.

12 Ways to Meet People

I have no report yet, but on the 31^st I’m going to a book club meeting. I’ll have to write about it in September.

12 Small Steps Forward in my Career

My work continues to take small steps forward and I’m happy to report that new experiences have been naturally coming up without much extra effort. This month, I led two meetings with outside groups we are working with on two of my projects – something that tends to freak me out, so the practice was valuable.

12 Fun Events in Chicagoland

This month I went to Mackinac Island with my friend Shannon. (Granted, that’s not in Chicagoland, but I’m still counting because the key to this category is fun.) Here are a few photos!

12 Crafts and Creations

For years there has been a black shirt hanging in my closet that is much too worn out to wear. It reminds me of my late friend Stephen, so I have been reluctant to get rid of it. This month, I cut it up and sewed it into a little teddy bear. The photos below that sewing is not my forte. He’s lumpy and rough around the edges, but am still glad I did something with the shirt.

12 Pretty Things for My Apartment

While I was at Mackinac Island, I bought this pretty dream hanger and put it up on the door to my bedroom.

12 Things that Help Me Feel Good about My Appearance

My struggles with my appearance lately all center around my weight, and I trying to get that in check. In the meantime, I wanted to do something small just to change my attitude. I painted my toenails gold and put acrylic rose-colored nails on my fingers. The fake nails are taking some getting used to, but I like how they look.

12 Grown-Up Things

Mostly, for this category, I’m continuing to force myself to do the boring-but-necessary that will make my apartment feel less like a place someone just out of college would live in. This time, I cleared a whole bunch of stuff out of my kitchen cabinets so stuff would stop falling on my head.

Knowing, Believing, Understanding

The upcoming election has led me to spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to understand something. When political candidates say that global warming is a myth, for example, I can’t help but wonder what they’re thinking. Do they know it isn’t a myth, but choose to say what they think will get them votes? Or do they genuinely not understand the piles of data that show global temperatures increasing, and so really believe what they say? Either option is equally alarming, so I’ve been trying to come up with a third explanation.

Here is my latest theory.

There are three levels of knowledge acquisition: knowing, believing, and understanding.

To know is simply to be aware of a fact, claim, or opinion. The things that allow us to know are passive forms of learning: reading, hearing, watching, mimicking.

To believe is to assign validity or invalidity to a fact, claim, or opinion. The things that allow us to believe are choices: how we choose to interpret what we know.

To understand is to be aware of the complete context around a fact, claim, or opinion. The things that allow us to understand are experiences: things that happen to us and, in some cases, to those near and dear to us.

My own recent experiences related to a couple of divisive national issues – namely, the stigmas about mental illness and rampant sexism – will help me explain my thoughts on this. Let’s start with mental illness.

I have known for a long time that depression and anxiety disorders existed. I took psychology courses in college, for one thing, and also heard them discussed in other contexts. I never disbelieved in their existence, per se, but did hear plenty of people saying they were sensationalized, and so I didn’t really hold any strong beliefs in either direction.

But then my father got treatment for depression, and he became an entirely different person. Then a close friend suffered through a terrible bout of depression and her whole demeanor spoke of struggle. I saw these things, and I made a decision. I believed in the terrible power of depression and anxiety and stopped being afraid to take a side.

This seems like it could be the end of the story, but it isn’t. Roughly a year ago, I can safely say I knew depression and anxiety were real problems, and believed it, but I did not yet understand it. It was only when I slipped into my own bout of depression that I really began to understand.

When I started to feel the depression coming on, I knew what it was immediately. But despite knowing that treatments existed and believing there was no shame in seeking them, I did not understand how bad it was going to get. I told myself I could power through it. I thought if I just faked it in public, I would be fine. However, I was completely, utterly wrong. I spiraled into a pit of despair. I woke up in the morning saying, “Oh God, it hurts it hurts it hurts” without even knowing what I was talking about. I counted hours and minutes and seconds until I could be back in my apartment, on my couch, which was the only place I felt somewhat safe.

Then I went to the doctor and got a prescription. I started taking it, and things got better. And that was when I got it. Not until I experienced depression did I really understand it – and the understanding definitely strengthened my belief in it.

It was similar with sexism. I’ve been interested in women’s rights for most of my adult life, so I heard all the stories of double standards in the workplace, catcalling on the street, and the like. I knew all of this was happening, and I wanted to believe it. But loathe as I am to admit it, I didn’t believe it right away. All of it seemed a bit exaggerated to me. How could men just be directly repeating what women said in meetings as if they hadn’t heard them say it? How could the same suggestion be lauded when offered by a man and scorned when offered by a woman? I just couldn’t picture these things happening. Certainly people were not this blatant in their sexism.

Then both of the aforementioned things happened to me in the space of a week. It was as if the things coming out of my mouth were being somehow transformed before reaching male ears. I had always pictured men as being deliberately disrespectful when this happened, and I think that fueled my reluctance to believe. I didn’t buy that they could get away with such things. When it happened to me, though, it was clear that my male coworkers had no idea they were doing it. It seemed like an SNL sketch, but it was 100% real. They get away with these things because they don’t realize they are happening. It's just that ingrained in our culture. This does not make it any better – worse, in many ways – but it did change my thinking about it. After I experienced these forms of sexism, I understood the problem. And I believed sexism was a rampant problem.

In short, these experiences showed me that there is are differences between knowing, understanding, and believing. Knowing is easy. Knowing is generally not the problem. Understanding and believing are the critical pieces. It is possible to believe without understanding, I think. After my experiences with unspoken sexism, for example, I wholeheartedly believe that unspoken racism is an equally rampant problem – despite knowing I’ll never experience it and so never fully understand it. (When it came to blatant racism, of course, I never had any doubts about its existence.)  Is it possible to understand without believing? Perhaps, but I think it must be rare. It is hard to deny truths that affect you directly. Experiences are critically important and influential to beliefs.

This realization helped me make sense of (though not approve of!) so much of what goes on in our political process. Suddenly I could explain to myself how so many educated politicians could be faced with so much data pointing to global warming and still assert that it is a myth. They see the data. Plenty of people force the data in front of their faces, and so these politicians know that global warming is happening. But because they were not the ones to collect the data, because they weren’t the ones to discover the temperatures climbing and the ice melting, because they weren’t the ones to experience that – these politicians do not understand it and have chosen not to believe it.

It’s the same with women’s rights. At the first republican debate earlier this month, several of the candidates said that they supported the idea of making abortion illegal, talking at length about the unborn child’s right to protection under the law. What struck me the most was not their assertion that a fertilized egg is a life that needs protecting. Rather, it was the fact that not once did any of the candidates acknowledge that the woman carrying the egg was a life worth protecting. The only mention of women at all was when the moderator pressed the candidates into saying whether they thought abortion should be illegal even when the life of the mother is at stake. Some of them said yes, repeating again that the fetus is a life that needs to be protected, without even mentioning the life of the woman.

The politicians know there are a myriad of circumstances that can lead to an unplanned pregnancy that extend far beyond unprotected casual sex. But they will never be a woman facing such a pregnancy, and so they don’t understand what it is like to make the choice to abort, or to not have that choice. For that reason, they continue to believe that the circumstances of the pregnancy don’t matter, and that the life of the unborn child should always trump a woman’s right to choose. The fact that a woman’s life may hang in the balance – the pregnancy may physically kill her, affect her psychologically for the rest of her life, or destroy a livelihood she’s worked her whole life to build – just does not matter.

So this is the state of things. There are things that the people in power do not understand, and so despite what they know, they believe things that are to the contrary to what they know. Those beliefs will always guide their decisions.

How do we fix this? If experiences are the key to understanding and the safest pathway to belief, then it seems that pressing those in power to experience the things they are discussing would solve many of our problems. Unfortunately, it's not that simple, as no one can experience everything. Sometimes there is simply a lack of opportunity. Other times, forcing a particular experience on someone is unethical. Still other times, it is a physical impossibility. For the most part, a man will never be a woman, and a white person will never be of color. No one can experience what it’s like to be everyone, and so there are a great many things that many people will never fully understand. That’s just the way it is.

The situation seemed quite bleak to me when my thought process got this far. Is there nothing we can do about this? Will nothing ever change?

As I was considering this question, a seemingly unrelated memory came back to me. Several years ago, my colleagues and I spent many hours discussing the most productive and helpful changes that should be made to our curricular materials for the next edition. A particularly iconic piece of the curriculum, a multiplication algorithm that appeared in our materials and almost nowhere else, was on the table as a potential cut. One of my committees had written the recommendation to cut it, and I had many solid arguments against it. It was a black box; kids didn’t really understand how it worked. It takes up a lot of paper and it takes some visual and motor coordination to keep the work straight. Parents and teachers issue a lot of complaints about it. And so on.

Despite what I thought was a solid case, several of my colleagues fought to keep the algorithm. This was utterly bewildering to me for a long stretch of time, and then suddenly one coworker said something that I’ll never forget.

“You don’t understand what it’s like to watch a kid struggle and struggle and struggle with multiplication and then finally be successful!” she said. “You don’t understand what a difference it makes to have this one as an option. You don’t understand how joyful and proud they are when they find a way to get the right answer!”

I stopped arguing immediately, because she was right. I didn’t understand it. I have never experienced being in a classroom when a struggling student suddenly found that this algorithm was their path to success. I didn’t understand the importance of the algorithm – but at that moment, I believed it. I shut up, and I let the former teachers in my midst make the call about the fate of the algorithm. I knew I wasn’t the right person to make the call.

Here is the point I’d like to direct at today’s politicians: It may be impossible for you to understand some things, because some experiences aren’t accessible to you. And often, it is understanding that leads to belief. But it’s important to remember that beliefs are choices, and you can choose to believe something even when you don’t understand it. Equally important, when choosing to believe something you don’t fully understand, is acknowledging that you don’t understand it. And finally, perhaps most important, is recognizing the truth of this statement:

If you do not understand something, you have no business being the one to make decisions about it – particularly if you are refusing to thoughtfully and fully consider the advice of the people who do understand.

The older I get, the more I believe that the way to accomplish the most is not to gain more expertise, but to know the limits of your own expertise and seek out the help and advice of others when you need it. This is what gains the respect of intelligent people. This is what leads to real progress and change.

You won’t win my vote by telling me about your long political record. You won’t win my vote by telling me you’re not a politician at all. You won’t win my vote by spouting off a bunch of disconnected facts. You’ll win my respect, and my vote, by demonstrating that you are aware of what you don’t understand and who the people are that understand what you don’t.

No one understands everything, but everyone can understand the fact that they don’t understand everything.