We are in a taxi in Paris – the four of us. PB gets a call. She gives us the sorry look and looks at the phone. She smiles.

“It’s L,” she says.

L is her daughter, her bright, beautiful daughter. We’ve known L since she was born.

“What’s up?” PB says to L.

For a full minute, she listens intently, the smile gone from her face. We wait anxiously, wondering how bad the news is.

”Okay,” PB says. “Now calm down. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to the nearest Four Seasons. Speak to the concierge. He’ll be able to help you.”

Pause.

“Love you too!”

PB and her daughter are very close. And that’s a wonderful thing. Here’s the problem. L is a full-grown woman – a married, professional woman.

What We (Should) Want for Our Children 

“Of all nature’s gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?” – Marcus Tulius Cicero

When my children were infants, I wanted only one thing for them: good health. 

I’m sure every parent feels this way. The wish for a child’s health is deep and strong. It’s as deep as DNA and as strong as the survival instinct. It is, in fact, a manifestation of the survival instinct. In wanting our infant children to be healthy, we are, at bottom, wanting the deepest part of our selves – our DNA – to survive.

When my children were young, I would have stepped in front of a train to save them. I still would.

I’ll bet you would, too.

Putting our children’s survival above our own is a good thing. But it’s not a virtuous thing. It’s an animal instinct motivated by biology.  So there you go.

Actually, I lied. There was another thing I wanted for my children when they were infants. I wanted them to be good looking. 

I know how that sounds. And I’m quite sure most parents would deny they wanted their kids to be good looking. But I did.

And why not?

If I had any other wishes for my infant children, I can’t remember them. So let’s move on.

When they were toddlers and continuing through their early childhoods, I wanted my kids to be good at just about everything they did. 

I wanted them to be quick learners, agile athletes, and accomplished at any extracurricular activity they joined.

Wanting these things for them felt as natural to me as my earlier wishes for their health and good looks. But it wasn’t nearly as strong. I definitely wanted them to quickly learn and shine in all of their growing challenges, but I wouldn’t step in front of that train to satisfy that want.

I’ve noticed that some parents seem to spend most of their time ferrying their kids to activities, cheering them on, and hiring tutors and coaches to develop their skills. Other parents never show up. Some of them probably have no time. Some just don’t care that much. The intensity of my desire for my kids to be good at everything fell somewhere in the middle. I signed them up for activities and showed up now and then. But I never coached them. Or paid someone to do it.

I remember going to one of my eldest son’s soccer games when he was only four. At the time, he had only a passing interest in the sport. I mean that literally. He spent most of his time standing in the grass looking down at the flowers. Every once in a while, the ball would land in his vicinity, at which point he would casually kick it away, as often as not to a team mate. “Good pass!” someone would shout. It usually turned out to be the parent of the child to whom my son had unwittingly passed the ball.

I never considered myself a fanatical parent. (Although my kids tell me that when it came to writing, I was like “Bull” Meecham, the character in Pat Conroy’s book The Great Santini that bounced a basketball off his son’s head.) But I do believe that the desire to see one’s young child excel  springs from the same DNA that makes us want them to be healthy and good looking. In other words, it is a desire that is natural and good, so long as it is reasonably restrained.

I also wanted my young children to be well mannered. 

When they were very young, my kids’ bad behavior often amused me. Their temper tantrums seemed oddly cute. (I have never felt that way about other people’s children.) And truth be told, I feel the same way about my grandchildren’s bad behavior today.

But by the time my kids were four or five, I was rarely entertained by their bad behavior.

K felt the same way. She believed that one of our parental duties was to help our children function successfully and appropriately in the world they were born into, which was our world, the adult world. We wanted them to be happy, but not at the expense of making people around them – children or adults – miserable.

For many parents, disciplining toddlers and young children is a harrowing experience. It wasn’t that way for us. Teaching our kids good manners was relatively easy, thanks to K, who understood the importance of setting clear boundaries.

K was a genius at this partly because she believed in self-discipline and partly because she herself was self-disciplined. No excuse for breaking a rule, no matter how ingenious, was accepted. Penalties – mostly time-outs – were enforced with unwavering consistency. (I was virtually no help in this regard.) K ruled the roost, and our boys were generally obedient and cooperative without losing their boyishness and their native instincts to cause a fair degree of chaos wherever they went.

When the boys grew larger and realized their mother could not physically enforce the punishments she gave them, they became emboldened and would occasionally defy her. This is when I became useful and when they began hearing the universal maternal refrain: “Wait till your father gets home!”

K did not believe in spanking, so I didn’t spank them. But I did employ the power of my deeper and louder voice to get their attention. And if they refused to go to their bedrooms for a time-out, I would escort them there. That was largely successful.

As they moved into their mid-teens, I wanted my children to be emotionally resilient and mentally strong. That wasn’t a decision I made formally. It happened serendipitously. 

Once, when my eldest son was about 15, we got into a play-wrestling match. It began as fun but quickly turned into the test that most fathers have with their teenage sons – the chance for the son to show his father that he is equal to him in strength and courage.

I felt my son’s strength the moment we began grappling. I didn’t initiate the higher level of play. He did. Had I not been wrestling competitively for years, he would have whooped me.  But since I did have the skills, I “upped my game.” I was on the verge of winning the battle when I had a flash thought: “If you do this, you are sending him a bad signal.”

So I let him win – and it saved us both. I feel sure that by winning that match, I would have damaged his self-confidence deeply and permanently. And that would have damaged my sense of being a good father even more.

The experience, short as it was, helped me realize that what I wanted most of all for him at that point of his life was that he would mature into a person that was mentally and emotionally stronger than me.

That’s what every healthy minded parent wants. Don’t you agree?

When my kids were in their early 20s, I wanted them to become financially independent.

I’m not sure how I arrived at this one. It may have been in response to talking to the boys about college. It may have been because I realized that they would soon be living away from us and would have to fend for themselves.

By that time, our financial situation had moved well beyond the meager straits we were in when the kids were small. We had the resources to support them financially for the rest of their lives, but we knew that would be a terrible thing to do. They had become hardworking, responsible, and self-sufficient human beings. We didn’t want to ruin that by laying a path ahead of them paved with easy access to money.

So we didn’t. We told them repeatedly that they would inherit nothing from us – that if they wanted the luxuries that money can provide, they would have to earn it themselves. They wore clothes bought at discount clothing stores. They were not permitted to have their own TVs or cellphones. They did not get an allowance, but they could work for spending money. And when they were 16, we didn’t buy them a car, like some of their friends’ parents did.

We deprived them of all these things because we wanted them to learn how to earn on their own and, even more important, understand that they were not entitled to our or anyone else’s wealth.

And it worked. During their college years and in all the years since, none of them has ever asked us for a nickel. I am immensely proud of that.

Of course, when they became adults and had their own children, we wanted to help them out in every way we could. But they were adamant about wanting to be financially independent. And though we keep trying to help out with this and that, I’m secretly pleased that they don’t want – or need – our help.

Now that our children are in their 30s and even approaching their 40s, I have discovered yet another wish I have for them. I want them to be and remain independent thinkers.

There is so much groupthink in the world today. When my kids were in college, they were exposed to all the politically correct ideas and ideologies that are still popular among academics. Sometimes I worried that they would emerge with heads full of conventional thinking. What was the point of going to a university for that?

One of my sons, fresh out of college, told me that he thought the Antifas were correct in sucker-punching people whose opinions they disagreed with. This irked the hell out of me. We debated the issue. But I couldn’t convince him of the absurdity of his position. It wasn’t his position that bothered me. It was the fact that he was making an argument that he had been taught by some jackass professor.

These days, I no longer worry about that. None of my sons sees eye-to-eye with me on anything. They have their own views and, like their father, they like to argue about them.

But the thinking behind their arguments is braver and more nuanced than it was when they were younger. Each in his way is skeptical of trendy ideas and opinions, analytical, and willing to state his mind. That makes me feel like, “Yes, son. You are a man now. You  can march forward into the miasma of bad thinking that awaits you and survive!”

And although they all express themselves differently in terms of style and temperament, they all make their arguments with less irritation and more kindness than I did at their age. That makes me proud.

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In Part 1 of “Free Is a Bad Idea,” I wrote about how “free” is generally bad in business – in particular, how free offers tend to work poorly as marketing campaigns and can actually weaken the long-term profitability of a business. Today, I’d like to talk about another area where “free” is generally a bad idea: how well-intentioned charitable projects can be damaged and even doomed by giving away things for free.

Free Is a Bad Idea, Part 2: Free Offers in Charity 

 “Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.” – Albert Camus

I know more about making money than I do about giving it away. But I’ve been inclined toward charitable giving all my life, and have been actively involved in running a charitable foundation for the last 20 years. So while I don’t pretend to be an authority on the subject, I’ve come to several conclusions about what works and what doesn’t.

Among them is this: In charity, as in business, “free” is generally a bad idea.

I am writing a book about the 20 years I’ve spent running and funding a charitable foundation, in which I recount dozens of stories about charitable impulses gone awry. (You may remember reading one of them, here on the blog, about my attempt to help Marcus and Gabriela.)

These stories all have the same plot: I decide to “help” someone by giving them something – usually money – only to find, in the end, that the transaction was good only for me. It made me feel magnanimous. But it hurt the person I intended to help in some substantial way. Not only were the objectives of the giving not met, but the giving usually gave rise to unexpected and disappointing consequences.

For example: I once gifted money to someone I cared about to start a business – no strings attached. Over a period of about two years, I increased the funding until I had put in nearly a quarter-million dollars. When it became apparent that the business model was not working, I discontinued funding it, which meant the business had to be closed. The response from the beneficiary of my generosity was a mix of anger and resentment.

We eventually got past that because we each valued our relationship more than our mutual disappointments. But I was vexed with the memory of it until I woke up one day and realized that I had to accept responsibility for the failure. My mistake, I decided, was that I gave the money with “no strings attached.”

Some time later, in 1998, I set up the foundation I mentioned above to manage my charitable activities. Its primary program was FunLimon – a community center in Nicaragua. It was initially intended to provide the local people with literacy and English classes, but soon grew into a large athletic and educational facility.

This was a significant commitment to charitable giving, and it gave me an opportunity to learn that there was still a great deal that I didn’t know about how to help people in a meaningful way.

Soon after we opened FunLimon, for example, I “sponsored” a local baseball team in the town. We bought them uniforms, shoes, and gloves, and paid the fee the team had been paying to participate in the league. The next year, they surprised me by asking for an entirely new set of uniforms, shoes, and gloves. When I suggested that they could use the old ones, they went on strike. (I’m not kidding.)

Another example: At the beginning of the school year, we gave all the school children in the local area a backpack filled with school supplies and a new pair of shoes. Many of them, too, asked for new backpacks and supplies the following year. When we asked why they couldn’t use the old ones, they told us that they wanted new ones.

Yet another example: For several years, we supplied the local schools with meat products to enrich the lunches they provided (which were basically rice and beans). Since we could not imagine any negative consequences to this particular program, we meant to continue it indefinitely. But then we discovered that several of the schools weren’t using the money we gave them to buy meat. They used it instead, they told us, to give the kids graduation parties.

I have better stories than that, but I’m saving them for the book.

Ultimately, I came to understand that giving away money is as challenging as getting it. To avoid the inherent negative consequences, I have to treat my charitable activities with the same seriousness as my business endeavors. That means, besides putting in the time required, taking responsibility for the negative consequences of anything our foundation does, even when those results are contrary to our good intentions.

Doing less damage than good… 

Our motto – “Do Less Harm Than Good” – reflects that principle. And from that, we have developed a mission statement, policy documents, and guidelines that help us evaluate and execute our programs.

One of those guidelines, one of the most important, is to be wary of giving away anything for free.

Our recreational facilities, for example, used to be free to anyone that wanted to use them. Now we charge a small membership fee – a dollar or two a month. Likewise, our educational programs – from English to Spanish literacy to martial arts and our trade school programs – used to be free. But now, they, too, have a small tuition fee.

At first, there was a bit of grumbling about these new fees. A few people even accused us of trying to profit from our non-profit! (Had they bothered to check the public records, they would have seen that the revenue we get from any and all fees and tuitions represents in total less than 20% of our expenses. Another 5% of our revenues come from private donations. And the rest of the annual budget – more than $200,000 a year – is funded by yours truly and family.)

When these objections were first voiced, I was surprised and disappointed. How could anyone complain about paying a dollar or two a month to have a membership in a first-class recreation center? And why would someone that was paying $50 a month for English lessons, given an hour away in the city of Rivas, feel that paying the foundation $5 for native instruction was a rip-off?

The answer is human nature.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there is nothing in the human mind that is more universal than the capacity for entitlement. (But that is a subject for another essay.)

Because of the initial objections, early enrollments in our programs went down marginally after we started imposing fees and tuitions. But within six months, those same programs were back to being fully booked and overbooked.

Perhaps more importantly, class attendance improved. In some cases, dramatically! The demand for English classes, for example, almost doubled (now that they had a chance to realize what a great value they were at $5 a month, compared to $50).

In addition, we noticed that the frequency of tardiness and truancy that we had taken as a norm during the “free” years diminished by about 20%. And the number of students that graduated from the trade school programs increased by more than 30%, from 60% to 90%.

And though we have no numbers to prove this, our instructors and staff personnel believe that all those that take advantage of our programs enjoy themselves more, appreciate what they are being given more, and complain much less. (Complaints are virtually zero.)

We still provide school books and other school materials to local students. But nowadays, they are required to pay for them – usually at a discount of 75% to 90% of what they would cost in a store. And if anyone can’t afford the small amount we charge, we offer no-cash alternatives that cost them their time and labor. In the case of school supplies, for example, they can pay for their yearly requirements (about $50) by spending several hours cleaning or painting the school.

So that is the short story of what I have learned about giving away charity for “free.” It is generally a bad idea. There are exceptions to this rule. I sometimes, for example, will pay for emergency medical expenses, and we have funded an area program for improving wells that was provided freely. But even those, I’m thinking, might be better used and more appreciated if we found a way to “charge” for them.

I expect that you don’t run your own charitable foundation. That your method of supporting charity is to give your money to a public charity whose mission you support. You may do your due diligence by consulting with one of the services that rates public charities based on factors such as what percentage of funds received go directly to the beneficiaries. I would recommend taking one more step and finding out if those charities give away their help for free. Most do. And that has almost certainly created negative consequences that won’t be in those reports.

Think about it.

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The Coronavirus and Making Friends With Your Devil 

A friend of mine, an economist and investment analyst, sent me a note saying that he is “expecting” the coronavirus pandemic to lead to absolute disaster, both in terms of public health and the economy. He may be right. He may be wrong. So I didn’t think it would help him if I countered his expectations with evidence to the contrary. What good would that do? It wouldn’t change his mind about his expectations. It would only change his view about my perspicacity.

So I sent him an abbreviated version of the following – an essay I’ve written a dozen times in response to a dozen different scenarios in the past 20 years. 

The Prologue 

Whenever I realize that I’m worried about something that might happen in the future,  I use a 4-step technique that I call “Making Friends With Your Devil.” I started working on it about 30 years ago, and have refined it and strengthened it along the way.

Before I explain how I use it now, I’ll give you an idea of how I developed it.

Sometimes K and I would plan something – something as simple as going to the zoo on the weekend or as complicated as taking a European vacation. When we were young and single, such plans were rarely thwarted. But when we had kids, thwarting was less the exception than the rule.

When it happened, I would get angry. I would feel miserable. I was not pleasant to be around. K was almost never like that. She seemed to take disappointment with a grain of salt. She would shrug it off and move on. I was jealous of that and determined to learn how to do it.

For insight into why I was getting so upset and a clue about how I could deal with these inevitable letdowns with more equanimity, I looked into two schools of philosophy: Stoicism (not Zeno or Epictetus but Marcus Aurelius and Seneca) and Zen (secondary sources).

I won’t quote any of that stuff here. You know it as well as I. But I will say that I found it helpful.

I was getting upset, I decided, because I had a strong habit of attaching myself emotionally to every decision I made about what I was going to do. And the solution was to detach myself from that emotional attachment the minute I made any decision about the future.

If, for example, K and I made plans to go to the beach on Sunday, I would – the moment we agreed that we would do it –  imagine waking up on Sunday to find that it was rainy and cold. I would imagine myself saying, “Okay, let’s go to a movie instead.” And then I would allow myself to be a little bit attached to that secondary plan. I would imagine myself enjoying a movie.

It worked. It virtually eliminated all emotional disappointment when things didn’t happen as I had planned. Sometimes, in fact, I was almost happy about it, because I had already imagined enjoying Plan B.

This little trick served me well over the years when dealing with minor disappointments. And eventually, I was able to springboard from it to dealing with larger issues – preparing myself for the worst sorts of disappointments in every area of my life.

Now, for example, whenever I make a major business or financial investment, I do all the normal calculations of possible outcomes, from best to worst. But I resist the urge to dwell on the best, which, I have learned, almost never materializes. Instead, I focus on the worst-case scenario.

When it comes to investing, the worst-case scenario will usually be losing every penny. So I imagine myself losing my entire investment. And I either get comfortable with that, or I hold onto my money.

The Four Easy-to-Hard Steps 

Okay, that was the history of the technique. Now, here’s how to do it…

 Step One: Imagine all the possibilities – from best to worst. Once you’ve identified a worst-case scenario, imagine the details, the specific problems you could be facing. In the case of the current pandemic, the problems might range from running out of toilet paper (minor problem) to running short of food (big problem) to defending your property (bigger problem) to (worst possible problem) someone you love contracting the virus and dying from it.

Step Two: Imagine the actions you would take. Decide how you would deal with each one of these potential problems. (Don’t spend a moment thinking about what you might have done leading up to where you are now. Focus on the future.) Imagine the specific decisions you would make and the specific actions you would take.

Step Three: Imagine how you would feel. For the less-severe problems, it should be easy to imagine yourself acting calmly but with purpose, intelligently but with compassion. But with the serious problems, this will be more difficult. In the case of the coronavirus pandemic, the hardest thing to imagine would be how you would feel if a loved one contracted the virus and died from it.

Step Four: Make friends with your devil. This is the most difficult step (until you get used to doing it). It’s part Stoicism, part exposure therapy. Allow yourself to experience the worst-case scenario by imagining that it has already happened. It will provoke angst, anger, and great sadness. But imagine yourself getting through it. Imagine yourself accepting this outcome and accepting it. Acceptance lessens the anger and the grief. Imagine those bad feelings diminishing. You are searching for a sense of peace – and that is what you will find.

If this sounds preachy, please forgive me. Preaching is what I do.

And before you accuse me of hypocrisy, I will say what I always say when so accused: Were it not for hypocrisy, I’d have no good advice to give at all.