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| Executive Director of Hope House, Jaya James. Image by Bill Hulet. |
As you say, someone who has voices in their head---and stuff like that---maybe doesn't have much education, and is all stressed-out---those are not the sorts of people who are
It's not just an issue with the government. I was talking to the chair of the Meridian Credit Union a while back. She was talking about banks getting rid of all the tellers, and forcing people to use banking machines instead. It's a great way to save money to get rid of all the front-line staff.
I sorta got the impression from the website that Hope House---as a charity---is trying to provide the front-line staff. Is that a fair way to describe part of what you do?
James: It's not language I'd use---but it definitely makes sense. So it's good for me to hear.
Gabor Mate, a Canadian physician, one of the most prominent people in how to treat people with mental health problems and addictions, he has a saying that we use:
The opposite of poverty is not wealth, it's community.
 |
| Gabor Mate. Image c/o the Wiki Commons |
- physical
- spiritual: that you are able to find meaning and purpose in your life, that you have a role in the world
- emotional: that you're able to receive and deal with your emotions in a positive, healthy way---especially your negative emotions, how do you deal with them when you are really angry or frustrated, or ashamed
- relational: that you have a group of family or friends who would be "there" if you were to disappear or if something wrong was happening with you, and who would work with you, trying to get you back. encouraging, cheering you on
- financial
If you are really strong in the other areas besides finance you're going to be OK because your community will take care of you. If you've got a really strong sense of what your purpose is, you will be out there pursuing opportunities. If you've got good emotional health, then you will be able to express yourself in a way that people can accept, or, at least can hear.
And if you've got a strong set of relations then even if you've lost your home for a period of time you probably have someone who will take you in for a period of time until you get back on your feet again.
What we find with individuals who tend to be part of multi-generations with low income is that it's not so much that they've lost the financial wherewithal---even though they have lost that---it's that they are really struggling with the other pieces. They have really weak relationships and/or they have never learned or had the opportunity to learn how to communicate things that are very legitimate---like "I'm really angry"---in a manner that our society considers acceptable and appropriate. And they don't have a sense that what they do and where they fit in the world actually matters---that the world would be worse off if they weren't here.
When we design an approach or a program that serves our goal---I'm not saying we always achieve it by any stretch---our goal is to recreate community. We know that any worker or agency is going to have set hours when they are open or closed. But if we can create spaces we can encourage people to get out and socialize and make friends with others. That encourages people to help one another to each see their problems in new ways.
It might be the case that Hope House is closed on any particular day. But if someone who comes here meets---let's say "Aileen"---at Hope House, and she has a particular strength, and, they're friends now, so that person knows that he can call her and tell her that he doesn't know how to deal with this particular thing. Or, maybe he can just say "today I'm just not feeling so great---can I just chat?"
It's trying to rebuild something that never was perfect in society but maybe was stronger. That sense of social responsibility for each other. The sense that people really need to care for others. It wasn't just about your self and your immediate family. It was a broader thing that included others. That's what we are always trying to do---create those spaces where---as you said---if you're struggling with mental health challenges you need that "one-on-one" to work through things. Especially if at the same time you are suffering social isolation. You need to have that experience of seeing someone look you in the eyes and identify and be concerned and it mattering to them how you are feeling.
So that's why our cafe space is set up with tables with multiple chairs. We want people to sit together and talk. It's why we have arts and crafts---so people can do things together. It's why we have music. Again, it's things to help people form more relationships.
&&&&
Hulet: Here's a new question about visibility and invisibility. I have a friend who gave up having a car later in life and at that point she realized that there are a lot of poor people in Guelph. She hadn't noticed this when she was driving. Now she walks to a lot of places and takes the bus. Before, she drove everywhere---and these people just didn't exist.
How much of a problem is the fact that the poor and marginalized are just invisible to the mass of voters?
James: I think that that is very accurate because I know that I live in the downtown and I always walk but until I started doing this work I didn't think I paid attention the same way. I'd see someone and I'd realize that they were struggling. But it wouldn't register in my mind the same way it does now. Now when I see someone I don't just think "There's a person", Instead, I think "There's Bill, there's John, there's Tammy, there's Frank." They've become a person. So it's not just that they are invisible in the sense that you don't see them, but they're also invisible in the sense that you don't see them as people. I see them as people. Unless you can do that, they are just part of the mass of collective "person hood" rather than individuals with individual interests, and strengths and weaknesses.
I find as well---this has been almost three years and I'm terrible with names, I really struggle with remembering words. I work really hard to learn people's names. I've learned that if someone is having a hard day---. If you can acknowledge them by name, it is almost instantaneously a calming influence. If I've had to use something generic---like "buddy", or "sir", or "man", or "hey you"---that that can be like adding fuel to the fire. Right? Just being able to call someone by name, reminds them that they are being seen.
Here's an example of how this works. I saw this really beautiful thing the other day when I was walking downtown.
If I see people screaming and yelling and shouting downtown I know most of them now. I don't have this fear anymore. Because I know them well enough I have a very good read of whether or not they are an actual danger to others. I saw one of these individuals that I know. He's a young gentleman who was walking around and he was yelling at the top of his lungs and he was walking around, walking around. I could see people were moving away, and I didn't know his name exactly and he was moving somewhere else.
He was far enough off that for me to get involved I'd have to be yelling at him. But I was across the street and I saw this other woman call out to him. And she came over over and started talk to him. She gave him a big hug and then he was absolutely quiet. He sat down and she gave him a couple things from her bag. And she sat down and he was absolutely calm. The transformation was so quick it happened in probably 30 seconds from when she called him over and made eye contact with him. I wasn't close enough to see, but I'm assuming that there was some request first before she gave him a hug. She gave him a hug and it was like---.
In my mind it was like he was yelling and being noisy and all these things to be disruptive because he just wanted someone to acknowledge that he existed. And she did that. She acknowledged that he existed.
That's the piece that we are losing as a society. It's not just that with low income. There are a lot of individuals who come here who are not wealthy---but definitely not low income, who have enough to meet all their needs but they live by themselves and they're alone. You can sense that loneliness, that they want people to interact with them, that they want people to know that they matter, that they contribute. It's hard in the way we are operating right now for people to find these spaces.
Most spaces---there are exceptions---but most spaces have rules about the time you can stay there. Don't loiter. You always have to be buying something. Don't make too much noise---libraries are great places to meet in in some sense, but they're not great for talking.
There's the loss of those spaces where people would gather together and have those discussion and check in. It used to happen through things like service clubs and clubs in general, or through faith communities, or through general civic engagement in general. Now a lot of that stuff is breaking down and the things that are rising up and take the space don't fill the need. You can say that through something like Facebook people are connected. But there not connecting, they're following.
It's almost like now we are creating a generation of people who are just "stalkers". Who are watching what everyone is doing, but are not really involved in what they are doing. I'm watching my friends and what they're kind of doing but we're not actually having real conversations, and really connecting, and having that eye contact. And sometimes even physical contact.
&&&&
Hulet: I used to work in security at the university library and one of the things that I had to do that really stuck in my mind was an incident where there was a guy who showed up one night when it was 30 degrees below zero. He had a coat, but no hat or gloves. He had a guitar and an old Tim Horton's coffee cup that he was holding onto like a talisman.
I had to kick him out into the cold when the library shut down. I asked him if he had a place to go. He said that there was an all-night Tim Hortons where he could stay. I asked the police if there was some sort of emergency shelter. They said "nope" and gave me the usual explanations why there was nothing they could do. I don't know if any of the it---or all---was true. But I felt really crappy about sending that guy out the door with no place to go on that really awful night.
Here's my question. Most people are nice and want to help other people. What is it about institutions that changes these folks so they can participate in such cruel ways of treating people? There's a certain brutality about institutions and what they make people do.
There's something about professionalism that I find really disconcerting. It's sort of like you're trained to not care. You're not allowed to "bend the rules". As a charity I suppose that this isn't quite the issue---at least as much.
James: Any time we try to create some kind of consistency---which you're doing to try to treat everyone fairly---it can also stop you from seeing the "uniqueness" of the situation. So it's always something that we have to be aware of and think through.
So I think that the thing that you speak of can also happen in charities too. In our attempts to make things more uniform and consistent and fair, we can forget that we are not all cut from the exact same cloth and there is a uniqueness---and that's messy. The majority of humans do not like messiness. We like things to be neat and tidy.
We like to be able to define "it" and develop plans for "it" and standardize "it". Or perhaps our culture likes to create things this way. But to be "human", to be able to truly embrace the human side of yourself----you have to be always willing to break away from that a bit.
It's not easy and it's something I have been struggling with for a long time. One of the first books I ever read by Jean Vanier was Becoming Human---his Massey lectures. He was really talking about this. How our institutions in making things professional remove the humanity from us.
&&&&
Just a reminder that I put a lot of work into these articles. I won't ever hide them behind a paywall, because I know that many people simply cannot afford to buy news. But those of you who can, why not become partners with me in informing the public? You can do that by subscribing through Patreon or Paypal. It's really easy to do---and even as little as $1/month is greatly appreciated.
&&&&
Hulet: I was at a meeting years ago and a fellow said that the biggest dividing line in our society are our values. Some values or ways of seeing the world make you very successful and others really hold you back.
James: That reminds me of the "Circles Program" we do for the community.
It's something that came out of the U.S., where it's been operating for over 25 years. It grew out of research that was aimed at trying to understand why people were getting trapped over and over in poverty. A very simplified version of the conclusions was that every level of society has hidden "rules of engagement". When you are in low income the hidden rules that you have tend to clash with the hidden rules of middle to upper income. What's acceptable and how you engage and how you communicate tends to be what holds you back.
So the program they came up with and offer is really not that complex. All it is is taking people who are middle to upper income, making them take the course "Bridges Out of Poverty"---so they understand why people make the decisions they when they are low income. That way they learn that there actually are often rational reasons why they act the way that they do. That way the middle and upper income participants can learn to understand and have compassion for the individuals with low income.
Then they had courses for low income people called "Getting Ahead" which was really just focused on answering the question "What do you want for your future?" This is necessary because these poor people have been captured by "the tyranny of the moment".
Then the program gets the two groups to get together once a week for 18 months. They spend about 3 hours together, share a meal, have some sort of educational component. Then it breaks up into smaller groups, where the individual who's leading the family out of poverty is talking with her "allies"---who are middle to upper income---about the challenges they've had. The job of the "allies" is to help shed light on these "hidden rules" that they've never been taught because it wasn't the experience of the people around them.
Incidentally, we found through this exercise that the individuals on low income are able to help middle to upper income people---especially as they are entering retirement---when their income is dropping for the very first time. They still have more than enough to live on, but there's that anxiety about "Gosh there's only 2/3's of what I had to live on before---".
The low-income people are able to explain "Did you know that if you do this and this and this you can save a lot?". There becomes this reciprocal, back and forth where both sides are teaching each other.
Hope House is working in partnership with the county and public health to do this.
So we run the program. We've found that during that 18 month period about 30% of the individuals will come off social assistance including Ontario Works. 100% will hit the goals that they've established for themselves.
Not everyone's goal is to get off Ontario Works or some other form of social assistance. It might be to get their health under control---maybe they have high blood pressure, or diabetes.
So 100% of the people will hit their goals. And it's not that during that time together that they were really getting intensive training. It's not like we are doing job training. All they are doing is sharing and discovering what is missing from most individuals---is knowing what is or isn't considered "acceptable".
So as Elaine Weir would say "I grew up in a middle-income family. When I was getting ready
for my job interviews my parents were coaching me on what's the right clothing to wear to a job interview." So depending on the job it's various degrees of business dress. For individuals on low income when they're getting ready for a job interview they're focused on "Is this clean? Does this fit well?" and not think about whether it is appropriate for that type of interview. Because that's never been a priority within their community. So they might walk in with something that they've made a real effort choosing---it's clean, it fits well, but the people on the other end might think "well that's really casual for this role". So already you're getting "knocks" against you that might not know. But no on at the end of an interview is going to tell you that if you'd dressed up more it would have helped. Or, when you're speaking try to avoid those words. Or, reframe that experience in this way and it shows it in a more positive light.
But I've had the gift of having parents do that training for me my whole life. I had really supportive parents and I could always go to them and they would coach me through things. Many people don't have that experience in life. They haven't hand---whether it is because their parents were working all the time, more maybe their parents themselves never had a role model that they could follow---. There're a bunch of potential reason behind it, but they haven't been told about what we call "hidden rules of society".
Hulet: I have a friend that has been quite successful in her life who once told me that she'd noticed that upper class people usually use their full names when introduced---because they are always interested in building their networks, because those are important for their success. Whereas working people generally just use first names because it is less "formal"
James: That's a very good example of what I'm talking about.
Hulet: I have another friend who's a scientist---or at least was for many years. He comes from a working class back-ground. He was involved with a woman who was doing her Phd. and both her parents were academic scientists. He said he was absolutely flabbergasted by the amount of scholarship money she was able to vacuum up---because her parents were coaching her how to get it.
James: How to apply---.
Hulet: Or even to apply. Lots of scholarships go untapped because no one applies. So it's not just lower income people and the middle-class. It's people on all levels.
James: Yes! It's people on all levels. Every level has it's own rules. And then add to that the additional piece that there're cultural rules that play on top of that.
Hulet: Well, clothing certainly has an influence.
James: Yeah, clothing. But even expectations of where your priorities fall. For example, greater degrees of emphasis on family. What you want to do with your kids versus what you will let them do on their own.
I find it fascinating to see how those cultural things work out because that reminds me that there's more than one way to see the world. As I get older there's a saying that I repeat to myself: "Just because it's not the way I would do it doesn't mean that it's wrong".
I say that to myself because I think it's really easy---for me anyway---to look at something and think "That's not the way to do it. That's not right!" But that's not correct. There often are multiple ways that things can be done and will still get you to an outcome. It's okay to have people approach a problem in different ways.
&&&&
I think that this is a good place to stop the conversation for now. I think that there is still one more installment that I can write on this subject. It will come when it comes---.
When we design an approach or a program that serves our goal---I'm not saying we always achieve it by any stretch---our goal is to recreate community. We know that any worker or agency is going to have set hours when they are open or closed. But if we can create spaces we can encourage people to get out and socialize and make friends with others. That encourages people to help one another to each see their problems in new ways.
It might be the case that Hope House is closed on any particular day. But if someone who comes here meets---let's say "Aileen"---at Hope House, and she has a particular strength, and, they're friends now, so that person knows that he can call her and tell her that he doesn't know how to deal with this particular thing. Or, maybe he can just say "today I'm just not feeling so great---can I just chat?"
It's trying to rebuild something that never was perfect in society but maybe was stronger. That sense of social responsibility for each other. The sense that people really need to care for others. It wasn't just about your self and your immediate family. It was a broader thing that included others. That's what we are always trying to do---create those spaces where---as you said---if you're struggling with mental health challenges you need that "one-on-one" to work through things. Especially if at the same time you are suffering social isolation. You need to have that experience of seeing someone look you in the eyes and identify and be concerned and it mattering to them how you are feeling.
So that's why our cafe space is set up with tables with multiple chairs. We want people to sit together and talk. It's why we have arts and crafts---so people can do things together. It's why we have music. Again, it's things to help people form more relationships.
&&&&
Hulet: Here's a new question about visibility and invisibility. I have a friend who gave up having a car later in life and at that point she realized that there are a lot of poor people in Guelph. She hadn't noticed this when she was driving. Now she walks to a lot of places and takes the bus. Before, she drove everywhere---and these people just didn't exist.
How much of a problem is the fact that the poor and marginalized are just invisible to the mass of voters?
James: I think that that is very accurate because I know that I live in the downtown and I always walk but until I started doing this work I didn't think I paid attention the same way. I'd see someone and I'd realize that they were struggling. But it wouldn't register in my mind the same way it does now. Now when I see someone I don't just think "There's a person", Instead, I think "There's Bill, there's John, there's Tammy, there's Frank." They've become a person. So it's not just that they are invisible in the sense that you don't see them, but they're also invisible in the sense that you don't see them as people. I see them as people. Unless you can do that, they are just part of the mass of collective "person hood" rather than individuals with individual interests, and strengths and weaknesses.
I find as well---this has been almost three years and I'm terrible with names, I really struggle with remembering words. I work really hard to learn people's names. I've learned that if someone is having a hard day---. If you can acknowledge them by name, it is almost instantaneously a calming influence. If I've had to use something generic---like "buddy", or "sir", or "man", or "hey you"---that that can be like adding fuel to the fire. Right? Just being able to call someone by name, reminds them that they are being seen.
Here's an example of how this works. I saw this really beautiful thing the other day when I was walking downtown.
If I see people screaming and yelling and shouting downtown I know most of them now. I don't have this fear anymore. Because I know them well enough I have a very good read of whether or not they are an actual danger to others. I saw one of these individuals that I know. He's a young gentleman who was walking around and he was yelling at the top of his lungs and he was walking around, walking around. I could see people were moving away, and I didn't know his name exactly and he was moving somewhere else.
He was far enough off that for me to get involved I'd have to be yelling at him. But I was across the street and I saw this other woman call out to him. And she came over over and started talk to him. She gave him a big hug and then he was absolutely quiet. He sat down and she gave him a couple things from her bag. And she sat down and he was absolutely calm. The transformation was so quick it happened in probably 30 seconds from when she called him over and made eye contact with him. I wasn't close enough to see, but I'm assuming that there was some request first before she gave him a hug. She gave him a hug and it was like---.
In my mind it was like he was yelling and being noisy and all these things to be disruptive because he just wanted someone to acknowledge that he existed. And she did that. She acknowledged that he existed.
That's the piece that we are losing as a society. It's not just that with low income. There are a lot of individuals who come here who are not wealthy---but definitely not low income, who have enough to meet all their needs but they live by themselves and they're alone. You can sense that loneliness, that they want people to interact with them, that they want people to know that they matter, that they contribute. It's hard in the way we are operating right now for people to find these spaces.
Most spaces---there are exceptions---but most spaces have rules about the time you can stay there. Don't loiter. You always have to be buying something. Don't make too much noise---libraries are great places to meet in in some sense, but they're not great for talking.
There's the loss of those spaces where people would gather together and have those discussion and check in. It used to happen through things like service clubs and clubs in general, or through faith communities, or through general civic engagement in general. Now a lot of that stuff is breaking down and the things that are rising up and take the space don't fill the need. You can say that through something like Facebook people are connected. But there not connecting, they're following.
It's almost like now we are creating a generation of people who are just "stalkers". Who are watching what everyone is doing, but are not really involved in what they are doing. I'm watching my friends and what they're kind of doing but we're not actually having real conversations, and really connecting, and having that eye contact. And sometimes even physical contact.
&&&&
Hulet: I used to work in security at the university library and one of the things that I had to do that really stuck in my mind was an incident where there was a guy who showed up one night when it was 30 degrees below zero. He had a coat, but no hat or gloves. He had a guitar and an old Tim Horton's coffee cup that he was holding onto like a talisman.
I had to kick him out into the cold when the library shut down. I asked him if he had a place to go. He said that there was an all-night Tim Hortons where he could stay. I asked the police if there was some sort of emergency shelter. They said "nope" and gave me the usual explanations why there was nothing they could do. I don't know if any of the it---or all---was true. But I felt really crappy about sending that guy out the door with no place to go on that really awful night.
Here's my question. Most people are nice and want to help other people. What is it about institutions that changes these folks so they can participate in such cruel ways of treating people? There's a certain brutality about institutions and what they make people do.
There's something about professionalism that I find really disconcerting. It's sort of like you're trained to not care. You're not allowed to "bend the rules". As a charity I suppose that this isn't quite the issue---at least as much.
James: Any time we try to create some kind of consistency---which you're doing to try to treat everyone fairly---it can also stop you from seeing the "uniqueness" of the situation. So it's always something that we have to be aware of and think through.
So I think that the thing that you speak of can also happen in charities too. In our attempts to make things more uniform and consistent and fair, we can forget that we are not all cut from the exact same cloth and there is a uniqueness---and that's messy. The majority of humans do not like messiness. We like things to be neat and tidy.
We like to be able to define "it" and develop plans for "it" and standardize "it". Or perhaps our culture likes to create things this way. But to be "human", to be able to truly embrace the human side of yourself----you have to be always willing to break away from that a bit.
It's not easy and it's something I have been struggling with for a long time. One of the first books I ever read by Jean Vanier was Becoming Human---his Massey lectures. He was really talking about this. How our institutions in making things professional remove the humanity from us.
 |
| Jean Vanier, original photo by Kotukaran. C/o Wiki Commons. |
Just a reminder that I put a lot of work into these articles. I won't ever hide them behind a paywall, because I know that many people simply cannot afford to buy news. But those of you who can, why not become partners with me in informing the public? You can do that by subscribing through Patreon or Paypal. It's really easy to do---and even as little as $1/month is greatly appreciated.
&&&&
Hulet: I was at a meeting years ago and a fellow said that the biggest dividing line in our society are our values. Some values or ways of seeing the world make you very successful and others really hold you back.
James: That reminds me of the "Circles Program" we do for the community.
It's something that came out of the U.S., where it's been operating for over 25 years. It grew out of research that was aimed at trying to understand why people were getting trapped over and over in poverty. A very simplified version of the conclusions was that every level of society has hidden "rules of engagement". When you are in low income the hidden rules that you have tend to clash with the hidden rules of middle to upper income. What's acceptable and how you engage and how you communicate tends to be what holds you back.
So the program they came up with and offer is really not that complex. All it is is taking people who are middle to upper income, making them take the course "Bridges Out of Poverty"---so they understand why people make the decisions they when they are low income. That way they learn that there actually are often rational reasons why they act the way that they do. That way the middle and upper income participants can learn to understand and have compassion for the individuals with low income.
Then they had courses for low income people called "Getting Ahead" which was really just focused on answering the question "What do you want for your future?" This is necessary because these poor people have been captured by "the tyranny of the moment".
Then the program gets the two groups to get together once a week for 18 months. They spend about 3 hours together, share a meal, have some sort of educational component. Then it breaks up into smaller groups, where the individual who's leading the family out of poverty is talking with her "allies"---who are middle to upper income---about the challenges they've had. The job of the "allies" is to help shed light on these "hidden rules" that they've never been taught because it wasn't the experience of the people around them.
Incidentally, we found through this exercise that the individuals on low income are able to help middle to upper income people---especially as they are entering retirement---when their income is dropping for the very first time. They still have more than enough to live on, but there's that anxiety about "Gosh there's only 2/3's of what I had to live on before---".
The low-income people are able to explain "Did you know that if you do this and this and this you can save a lot?". There becomes this reciprocal, back and forth where both sides are teaching each other.
Hope House is working in partnership with the county and public health to do this.
So we run the program. We've found that during that 18 month period about 30% of the individuals will come off social assistance including Ontario Works. 100% will hit the goals that they've established for themselves.
Not everyone's goal is to get off Ontario Works or some other form of social assistance. It might be to get their health under control---maybe they have high blood pressure, or diabetes.
So 100% of the people will hit their goals. And it's not that during that time together that they were really getting intensive training. It's not like we are doing job training. All they are doing is sharing and discovering what is missing from most individuals---is knowing what is or isn't considered "acceptable".
 |
| Elaine Weir, Bridges out of Poverty Facilitator, addressing the Mayor's Dialogue on Poverty. Photo by Adam Donaldson. Used with his permission. Cropped by Bill Hulet Read and listen to his story here. |
But I've had the gift of having parents do that training for me my whole life. I had really supportive parents and I could always go to them and they would coach me through things. Many people don't have that experience in life. They haven't hand---whether it is because their parents were working all the time, more maybe their parents themselves never had a role model that they could follow---. There're a bunch of potential reason behind it, but they haven't been told about what we call "hidden rules of society".
Hulet: I have a friend that has been quite successful in her life who once told me that she'd noticed that upper class people usually use their full names when introduced---because they are always interested in building their networks, because those are important for their success. Whereas working people generally just use first names because it is less "formal"
James: That's a very good example of what I'm talking about.
Hulet: I have another friend who's a scientist---or at least was for many years. He comes from a working class back-ground. He was involved with a woman who was doing her Phd. and both her parents were academic scientists. He said he was absolutely flabbergasted by the amount of scholarship money she was able to vacuum up---because her parents were coaching her how to get it.
James: How to apply---.
Hulet: Or even to apply. Lots of scholarships go untapped because no one applies. So it's not just lower income people and the middle-class. It's people on all levels.
James: Yes! It's people on all levels. Every level has it's own rules. And then add to that the additional piece that there're cultural rules that play on top of that.
Hulet: Well, clothing certainly has an influence.
James: Yeah, clothing. But even expectations of where your priorities fall. For example, greater degrees of emphasis on family. What you want to do with your kids versus what you will let them do on their own.
I find it fascinating to see how those cultural things work out because that reminds me that there's more than one way to see the world. As I get older there's a saying that I repeat to myself: "Just because it's not the way I would do it doesn't mean that it's wrong".
I say that to myself because I think it's really easy---for me anyway---to look at something and think "That's not the way to do it. That's not right!" But that's not correct. There often are multiple ways that things can be done and will still get you to an outcome. It's okay to have people approach a problem in different ways.
&&&&
I think that this is a good place to stop the conversation for now. I think that there is still one more installment that I can write on this subject. It will come when it comes---.
Bill, I thank you for having this conversation and making it available to us. The points made are very important.
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