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David Coon: An Appreciation

The end of each year is a time for reflection. We often look back on the past year and try to summarize our milestones. Sometimes we set New Year’s resolutions with the best of intentions. At the moment I’m thinking about someone who won’t be part of the new year.

That is the way of things, perhaps the hardest part of being human, knowing almost as soon as cognition forms that there are bookends on all of us. That inescapable awareness is in many ways the essence of our humanity. We have no choice but to internalize it with relative calm. It doesn’t make it easier when we say goodbye, but it does give us a chance to express thanks for the lives around us who change the course of our own.

The Reverend David P. Coon was the head of the school I attended through middle and high school. He officiated at my wedding. I dedicated my second book to him. It is difficult to record in words what he meant to me because I would be looking for the kind of words it takes to summarize five decades of character-building.

Certainly the earliest of those years were more concentrated, but those took place at a time when I was least likely to understand the transformation he was causing to occur in my mindset. In those days he was Father Coon and I would literally tilt my head up to be able to look into his eyes. He walked the halls of our campus with a magnificent physical presence, a baritone voice that reverberated in the corridors, an embodiment of pure confidence, and a sense of authority that never needed to be asserted. He could be questioned on matters of intellectual curiosity, but not on matters of expectation. He expected we would take our education seriously, our shared community seriously, the mandate of maintaining humility seriously, and the place we would come to take in the world seriously.

He was a serious man and he endeavored to help us see the seriousness in the paths before us. He also laughed as loudly as anyone I’ve met and made us laugh, mostly at ourselves at the times our seriousness crossed into counterproductive meandering. We could ponder the world, obsess on this philosopher or that scientist, but we always needed to be moving forward. Laughing at ourselves moved us forward. It helped us frame ambition appropriately in service to others. It was okay to be on a reward path, but it was not okay to think that material rewards meant a hill of beans compared to healing our world. To gain his respect, we would be required to commit our gifts to the continuum of that healing.

I would not be exaggerating to share that without Father Coon’s influence, it is unlikely I would be typing these words. Our teenage years are a crapshoot at best; mine were a casino where the odds were daunting. Somehow this stranger, this teacher of the impossible, got me to stop betting against myself. He mopped up a mess and caused me to believe everything ahead of me was more important than everything behind me. How much of that did I understand? Come on, I was a teenager, none of it. Yet I remember it now, and it works even better with fewer years left ahead of me than there are behind me.

Was he a visionary? He would just say he was a teacher. I’m going to stick with visionary.

His career was remarkable, but I am going to let others write about the expanse of that. He took an all-boys school built on the ancient tradition of recital and transformed it into a modern coeducational place of learning. He initiated change that broadened the paradigm of “sage on the stage” to embrace peer cooperation that put the whole of the student body above the celebration of any single student. One Team, we called it. He elevated ‘Iolani School to global recognition as a laboratory of exemplary process and a trusted model for lasting outcomes.

He took the tragic lessons of the Vietnam War and opened the minds of a diverse audience to the possibility of peace. His sermons beckoned the beauty and unlimited empowerment of embracing one’s opposite. He was a theologian who could preach with the best of them, but he was a pragmatist who knew declarations without substantive action were the fast track to cynicism. He was not a cynic. His faith was unwavering, a boundless reservoir of resilience and optimism, ardently tested, joyously unshakeable.

If you needed food, water, a quiet moment of prayer, or a reinforcing nod of encouragement, you didn’t have to ask. He was always showing us how kindness and strength were compatible. He was an inspirer of unusual aspiration. The highest order of ourselves is of course never achievable, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to make it our life’s work to try.

Later in life, when he presumed I had reached adulthood, he insisted I call him Dave. That in his mind was one of the least difficult challenges he presented to me. If only he knew.

My wife, Shelley, there with Dave and a few family attendees at our wedding with a little New Testament and a little Old Testament, likes to talk about planting seeds. This is her spirituality, and she immerses herself in it as a matter of routine. When I mention the five decades of Dave, it is just these seeds that he planted that have blossomed in different expressions over the years. At our wedding, as I broke the glass, this Episcopal priest belted out the words “Mazel Tov” with such resonance they probably echoed in Jerusalem.

Those echoes live in me today. I’ll carry the octaves of his voice with me until my inescapable fate is the same as his, the same as us all. The learning inside me is without end because he made that important to me. The questions in me are more important than the answers because he showed me why the questions are eternal but the answers get rewritten by the centuries. Judgment is for the certain, and how many of us can be that certain with so little knowledge? Reflection takes us forward, always forward, because it requires systemically removing our ignorance. Forward is a path to wisdom, where humility is not a choice, but a necessity.

Demonstration of awe and honor is common among theologians. Dave knew that, likely early in his life, no problem. Would you expect less of a kid who grew up boxing in Flint, Michigan only to become a man of the cloth in Hawaii? The trick wasn’t that he knew it. The trick was he got me to know it, a highly unlikely candidate for that sort of unnerving alchemy.

And the next kid. And the next kid. And the next kid.

Those were the seeds he never stopped planting. They flourish now in every part of our world, across languages and borders, wherever there is a need for healing. The lives he inspired carry forward hope, breathe aspiration, and most of us try to remember on occasion to laugh.

Earlier this month I received our usual Christmas card from Dave and his wife, Joanne. In it was a printed note that said it would be their last, that they were going to spend their remaining time focused on each other and their family. I immediately put our card in the mail to them, telling them I would frame their photo and keep it on my desk forever. That card came back undeliverable. Of course, I didn’t know he was in hospice. That makes this almost our last Christmas together.

I end the year incomplete. Timing is everything and we seldom get to say goodbye to everyone we lose. I enter the new year a little more alone, a little less formed, but in knowledge that those seeds were well-planted if not fully seen and understood a half-century ago. Our character is tested daily, our mistakes are endless, and our learning is forever incomplete. Each of us should be so lucky as to have a few people who guided us forward and never let go. If you enjoy the good fortune to have been so inspired by a person of such wisdom, there aren’t enough ways or words to say thank you. We can only offer a humble appreciation.

Dave, this appreciation is eternal, as are your teachings, as is your incomparable love.

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Image: Dave & Joanne Coon, Christmas Card 2023

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Weak Thinking

I’ve been a student of philosophy for most of my adult life. It’s a passion, it’s an indulgence, at times it’s an obsession, and it’s a driving force in many of my most consequential actions. Digging through the canon of thousands of years of argument — hundreds of thousands of pages of dense text — can be vastly unsatisfying. It’s not for everyone. It becomes obvious there are far more questions than answers, and the answers that emerge do so largely to be impeached and reconsidered.

One of my key takeaways from this often senseless pursuit of the abstract is that the difference between reasonable inquiry and fabricated drivel is discipline. A noble premise or argument usually embraces long periods of study, focused meditation, and incorporated strings of historical context. Saying stuff because it happens to occur to you is not the same as constructing a point of view built on the readings of diverse schools of thought.

Weak thinking seems to be thriving these days in our universities. While I am fully in the camp of maintaining free speech on college campuses, praising the right of individuals to speak their minds is not the same as celebrating poorly articulated points of view. I also think some of these students better learn to get a thick skin and learn to hear words that are objectionable without expecting institutional protection. If students think they are graduating into a world where their feelings are going to matter to their adversaries, they better understand that there are few anointed referees handing out self-esteem shields.

So let’s assume we all have a right to weak thinking, we all will be exposed to it, and almost no one is going to protect us from it. Does that leave us in a world where all opinions are valid and to be polite we should smile and nod when we hear garbage thought? We should not. When we fail to incorporate proper intellectual discipline into our viewpoints, we should be knocked back to sensibility.

When Sam Bankman-Fried said he would willingly flip a coin if he knew that heads would make the world twice as good and tails would enact its destruction, he wasn’t expressing a valid philosophy. He was expressing the kind of stupidity that results in dangerous consequences, even beyond the absurdity of the abstraction. Imagine if he had retained wealth and power with this worldview. He would have made even more bad decisions that affect too many of us. The world should be spared this dose of weak thinking while he contemplates his theories in prison.

When viewers on TikTok recently discovered the manifesto of Osama Bin Laden expressing his fanatical Letter to America, some decided that this was a hidden revelation that pointed to an alternative point of view on terrorism. Are there two sides to the tragedy of 9-11? Does the weak thinking of a handful of younger citizens not yet born when terrorists took the lives of thousands in the attack on the World Trade Center warrant further discussion? No, this is not serious inquiry, not a valid call for plurality of opinion, it is rubbish. It is appalling and they should be told as much.

When a prominent business leader like Elon Musk decides to publicly acknowledge that an antisemitic rave is the “absolute truth,” is this just another opinion from a high-profile individual who has deeply considered the implications of his political expression? No, it’s lazy, spur-of-the-moment madness from someone who has convinced himself that success in some aspects of his career translates into broad intellectual authority. It is essential that we separate Musk’s technological accomplishments from his broader persona. He is a philosophical lightweight with an attention span disorder and grotesquely poor manners. His weak thinking is glaring, tone-deaf, and hateful.

These are but a few examples of the power of weak thinking to undermine civilized discourse and lead masses astray. Too many people still gravitate toward iconic figures to do the hard thinking for them. They also choose to invest unlimited time in scraping the surface of summarized ideas rather than focus on the detailed construct that might or might not support the idea. Said another way, if you want to buy into an idea, you can’t read enough about where it came from, how it’s been argued, and what it might really mean.

You might be left wondering who I think gets to be the arbitrator of weak thinking. Each of us has this specific right as well as the power to exercise it as it applies to our own opinions. The amount of energy we invest in considered thought is a choice. In my current observations, weak thinking is becoming endemic and putting our shared interests at risk. If you agree, read more, listen more, and at the risk of producing more unnecessary conflict, apply the discipline necessary to separate debatable philosophy from buckets of bull.

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Photo: Pixabay

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Making Sense of the Senseless

It’s a strange time, stranger than any I can remember in the second half of my life.

If you try to summarize the number of global issues our nation faces, it begins to feel unprecedented. There is violence on three fronts in Israel arising from the horrific terrorist attacks of Hamas. There is the question of how Iran and Hezbollah will accelerate that conflict. Putin is still waging a brutal war on Ukraine. No one is quite sure what Xi will do in Taiwan. Kim Jong Un remains a force of chaos in North Korea. That’s a lot of global conflict without much epicenter.

Then there is the building lack of faith in our government. The divisiveness between and within the parties is all but unbridgeable. Maybe we’ll fund the government, maybe we won’t. What happens if we have to make a really big decision, like going to war as a nation? Do we have the wherewithal to come together on anything that is consequential?

Inflation drags on family budgets. Healthcare costs continue to soar, while faith in modern medicine is frayed. Gun violence takes lives every day. The education gap widens and so does income inequality.

When we aren’t angry or fighting with each other with uncontained words, we often take on a cold silence of passive aggression, too exhausted to argue, knowing we can’t change each other’s minds. The internet should have been a gift of doors opening to each other, but we know it is anything but that.

In the midst of all that, we go to work. We try to focus on our goals. We try to do right by our customers, partners, and employees. We look for a path to salvation in our tangible achievements, but those are increasingly less tangible.

Two to three times each day people come into my office “just to talk” or call me on the phone with a long pause often preceding the inevitable opening remarks, “Hey, Ken, how are you doing with all this?”

I guess the flattering part is people think I might have something worthwhile to say. It feels like the days after 9-11. I had little worthwhile to say then. I have less now. It is impossible to make sense of the senseless.

I’m a trailing-edge baby boomer born many years after the last world war, but I wonder if this is how it might have felt then, when parts of Europe were being overrun and Asia was in equal turmoil. The US waited for its leadership to guide us toward the good. Then we were attacked, which made the response largely unanimous. Can we respond to anything unanimously today? Is there an FDR we have yet to meet waiting to show us what leadership means?

Back to the idea of trying to work steadily through all this. I often suggest to people that compartmentalizing can be an effective strategy for getting things done in a day despite the overwhelming distractions. I’m doing it increasingly, but I am finding it more challenging. Remember, we are making sense of the senseless. That’s hard to do and tackle your monthly sales quota without fail.

Few of us have the option of letting world events be an excuse for missing business goals. We all have inescapable responsibilities. We have to do what we have to do.

First of all, we have to be human. I am hopeful we can also be humane.

I write this as I am wrapping up project reviews for the past year, building a budget and a work plan for the new year with our team, and trying to listen closely to the smartest people around me offer wisdom on how to navigate the shaky ground we share. I read the Wall Street Journal for clues on where the economy is headed, but it is like a giant treasure hunt where no one knows if the treasure has actually been hidden let alone where. How do you find firm ground when the elephants won’t stop jumping on it, not even to take a breath?

Here’s what I know: Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we don’t have to be in this alone. If you think it’s hard to make sense of the senseless, you might have retained enough of your good senses to share that concern with another caring soul who can help you by listening. Yes, you are still sane if you think we are dancing aimlessly in a circle of senselessness, but there is strength in numbers and even greater strength in diversity.

When people come to me and open their hearts with questions I am always listening. Sometimes they share perspectives I never expected. Sometimes they find a way to make me chuckle. I find that keeping some semblance of humor is a gut check on reason. The bonds between us that let us continue to be successful no matter the noise around us can only be severed if we let them.

I have no good answers. Senseless means senseless. Let today be a day of strength, tomorrow be a day of hope, and the next be one of empathy. We advance in infinitely small increments, sometimes so tiny they seem invisible. Yet the bonds between us were formed in better times, and the goals we share give us an abstract common purpose that brings with it the dawn of a future we can never fully imagine.

Bend toward justice. Don’t let the bad guys win. Don’t give up. It’s called a dream for a reason. Dreams of peace and healing are not senseless.

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Photo: Pixabay

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The Throes of Attention

Some people suck all the air out of the room. You know the kind.

Some people try to suck all the air out of the internet. You also know the kind.

What do we miss when the signal-to-noise ratio is self-cancelling? How much valuable information might we be missing when a small cast of characters forever desperate for attention floods the airwaves with endless “look at me” pageantry?

I don’t need to hear anymore for a long time about Elon Musk. I don’t care about his transformation of Twitter into X and whether advertisers will embrace it. X is not a town square I frequent. It’s CB radio. Who listens to ads on CB radio? Let’s call the Isaacson biography definitive and put this subject matter on the shelf for a decade to see if it improves with age.

Hunter Biden has humiliated himself, his father, and the nation. He doesn’t have the good sense to retreat, apologize for abusing privilege, and start the long road toward repentance. Instead, we get to hear that he has done nothing wrong and will fight back with every resource someone else is willing to fund on his behalf.

The only thing I want to hear about Sam Bankman-Fried is when he’s going to be convicted of felony fraud. The human interest story around the benevolent “why” of his deception crimes is manufactured and disingenuous. A con man of this magnitude is unworthy of sympathy.

Lauren Boebert doesn’t know how to behave like an adult at a musical on tour. End of salacious story. I don’t care if she claims the reason she is disgracing herself is because of the lingering effects of her divorce. If you have no manners, don’t go to the theater, stay home. Oh wait, she has a seat in Congress.

Senator Bob Menendez gets caught with a room full of gold bricks and suit pockets stuffed with cash but doesn’t have the good sense to resign. Now we have to listen to why he is being victimized and will fight to retain his office no matter what. This is not a noble fight. He ought to slip away quietly while he can.

George Santos won’t go away. He can’t stop lying. There is not a token of substance in any proclamation he utters. Turn off every microphone in his reach forever.

Does it occur to any of these people or the media covering them that they are unworthy of this much attention? Has the notion of humility and decorum so left the public stage that none of these people can muster the good sense to be quiet? Is the media so equally desperate to remain relevant that it has found symbiotic bonding with a nucleus of spotlight seekers who revel in the throes of attention?

I won’t even embark on our upcoming election. Consequential? Yes, beyond belief. Filled with vital news or endless, self-aggrandizing, lowbrow drama. Yours to channel choose.

I have written before about noise and how necessary it is that we navigate it to sane retreat. The cacophony of attention-seekers can make us numb to more inspiring stories of triumph and self-sacrifice. Gossip may grab headlines, but it teaches us little. There are always voices fighting to break through the rancor and tell us things we need to hear.

Voloydymr Zelensky wants us to know what is really happening in Ukraine, why his people are giving their lives, and the threat Putin poses to the world order. Do we have time left to listen?

Children of 9/11 fallen firefighters are stepping into the shoes of their parents and joining FDNY to continue a legacy of public service. Their parents were brave and made the ultimate sacrifice to save the lives of others on that unforgettable day. Do we know who they are or how their lives unfolded?

In each of the ceaseless weather disasters we’ve heard about — wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, you name the storm — there are heroes who have selflessly saved lives, risked their own, rebuilt communities, and never given up caring for those in need. How many of their names do we know? Can we follow their living examples if we never learn what they discovered?

There was a time not long ago when getting attention was something people earned for doing good, not asking to be celebrated, and then quietly ceding the platform to someone else worthy of a big moment. I remember it well. I think maybe it was right before the advent of social media.

We live in a world of TikTok attention spans where every mobile phone is a video window to the world, but can we tell the difference between useful information and filled space? There will always be those with an insatiable appetite for celebration whether they’ve earned it or not, but changing the channel is always our choice.

Don’t be misled and don’t waste your time. There is usually a better story to hear. It just might take a little extra tuning to tune in something worthy of your attention.

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Photo: Pexels