Leveling up

Life is full of problems. Regardless of how good someone else's life appears to be, they have problems. They may be things that you don't see or they may be things that you do see but you think are easy to handle. Just like other people might find your problems easy to deal with.

There is a tendency to see other people that have a hard time dealing with any problem no matter how simple and we wonder how they make it out the door in one piece every morning. We might be inclined to laugh or poke fun at how much trouble they are having with the simplest things. But don't.

First, it is just plain rude. Second how would you feel if someone did the same to you and your problems? Third it is not helpful to laugh at others misfortunes. Besides, there is actually something you can do to assist them in growing.

But first a correlation between this and role-playing. In Dungeons & Dragons, the first major role-playing game ever, newly created characters are extremely ineffective at handling problems in their world. They are limited by a lack of knowledge about those problems. Everything is new and they have no experience with what to do in different situations. Before encountering one, a new group of adventurers has no idea that trolls can only be killed by fire or acid.

Unless they learn this through trial and error, while fighting the troll, they will have to either run away or die. After, failing to kill the troll, suppose they make it back alive to the local tavern, disheveled and exhausted. One of two things is likely to happen. They could give up and say they met a monster they could not defeat and are willing to pay someone to go and kill it for them. Or they could find someone willing to tell them the monster's weakness and then go out and do battle with it again.

In both cases the monster situation is handled. But only in the second one does the party of adventurers know how to defeat a troll if they ever happen to stumble upon another one.

The lesson here is if you see someone struggling with an issue and you solve it for them, they haven't grown at all and are still just as useless against that challenge in the future. But if you give them just enough information to be able to handle the problem on their own, they will be successful at that particular thing from that point on and can one day share that same information with others struggling with that issue.

More parallels between life and role-playing games. In D&d the things that your characters do generate something called experience points or xp. Once you gain enough xp, your character levels up. This means that they get better at all the things that they already know how to do and may learn new abilities. They get access to more and better equipment.

A single level five adventurer has the tools, resources and knowledge to be able to handle things by himself that five first level characters could not. D&d, while primarily about adventuring life in the dark ages of society is still designed to closely approximate real life situations today. A Bill Gates or a Mike Tyson can handle problems that hundreds of typical teenagers working together could not.

With age and practice comes knowledge, experience and wisdom that there simply is no replacement for. So that guy or girl that is too dumb or inexperienced to do to whatever it is that you think is easy, don't laugh at them. Just go to them and give them the instruction that they need to find their own way past that obstacle.

When you were brand new a lot of people saw you as the same invalid that you see others as. And  remember there is always someone better, smarter and faster than you at something. At every point in your life there is someone somewhere that could look over your shoulder at something you are struggling with and show you the way.

Bill Gates. Not a monster

A couple of decades ago, when all I knew about him was that he was founder of Microsoft and the man primarily responsible for the development of one of the most despised yet widely used pieces of software on Earth(yes Windows), I had the opinion that Bill Gates was nothing but a money grubbing power hungry douche bag.

He often looked foolish when product demos would fail spectacularly or he would say things that just did not make any sense to a person grounded in reality. So after awhile, I added idiot to the list of adjectives that I would use to describe Mr Gates. He may have been one of the richest people in the world but who cares about that?

In my opinion, if you aren't making the world a better place to be you are taking up valuable space that could be put to better use. Now in all fairness, my connection to current events is often...limited? special? non-existent? So, much of what I had heard about Bill Gates was just that, hearsay. A friend or family member would describe something they had heard or seen that he said or did and would provide commentary and I would form an opinion based on their third hand information.

At one point someone mentioned to me that he was donating a portion of his wealth to charity. When I heard that I thought, no big deal lots of wealthy people give money away. They don't really care about making a difference. They just want a tax break. Then I found out that Bill Gates has given over a third of his wealth away, more than 28 billion dollars. That caused me to change my thinking and to re-evaluate this person.

A greedy, power hungry jerk does not just give up that kind of cash. The mindset of a control freak is that more and more is always needed. And thinking about others and their welfare is just not in the cards. After doing some research of my own and not relying on other people's impressions of him It seems that many of the things that I thought about him were simply untrue.

One of the primary reasons that he stepped down from Microsoft was to be able to spend more time focused on the charity that he and his wife Melinda set up. I have been following him off and on through linkedin for awhile now. He recently posted a short bit describing a much longer piece that he and Melinda did debunking three of the major myths about foreign aid. He goes into detail about just how off the mark most people's thoughts about foreign aid really are. I have to admit before reading it, I was just as guilty of believing those myths.

Up until this point I have been taking the word of people who really had no better idea of how large scale charity contributions work than I do. But this is something that he has been doing for years now in a big way and directly hands on. He has been to many of the small villages and town that his foundation provides the aid to. He has worked directly with the recipients of that aid and is in a position to know where the money does and does not go.

It is really great stuff. I implore you to read it. The facts he presents are seriously powerful. He talks about the end of third world countries forever, not by destruction but through growth. It's really awesome.

http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/?cid=bg_li_ll0_012111#section=home