The Red Strokes

I hated the red pen.

You know the one I'm talking about.

The red pen that marked all my wrong answers. That brightly proclaimed every grammatical error. The red pen that smugly declared the value of my half-hearted efforts at the top of the page.

The red pen judges me.

A 2010 study led by a Tufts University graduate student named Michael Slepian tested the difference between using a red pen and a black pen.

“Participants in the study were given incomplete words and had to fill in missing letters. For example, ‘fai_’ could be completed as ‘fail’ or ‘fair’; 'wro_' could be ‘wrong’ or ‘wrote.’ Those using red pens completed 28 percent more word-stems with words related to errors and poor performance than did people using black pens. 'The idea is if you are holding a red pen, the failure-related words come to mind more easily,' says Slepian.”

Isn't that interesting?

And other studies have produced similar results.

That got me thinking.

Am I a "red pen" person? Do I look for opportunities to call out the weaknesses of the people around me? Do I enjoy correcting their every error? Am I the self-proclaimed expert in too many conversations? Do I enjoy the bright red strokes a little too much?

Often, I do. Not always, but too often. I tend to see shortcomings before I see strengths. Quicker to criticize than to compliment.

The problem is "red pen" people never seem to run out of ink.

I don't want to be that way. I'm putting my red pen down.

Buggy

If you’ve never read the Dilbert comic strip, you’re missing out.  It’s really funny.

The comic pokes fun at the craziness of corporate culture – culture that stifles productivity, fosters laziness and awards incompetence. The cartoon’s observations of human behavior – though caricaturized – are remarkably astute (and not all that exaggerated).

In one strip, Dilbert is meeting with his Pointy-Haired Boss and the company CEO to update them on a recurring set of internal business issues.

“I found the root cause of our problems,” says Dilbert.  

“It’s people. They’re buggy.”

They sure are.

I sure am.

We are the root cause of nearly all of our problems. 

We are the root cause of our greatest miscommunications. We are the root cause of a lot of unresolved conflict. We are the root cause of most of our relational breakdowns.

We are all buggy.

It doesn’t do us any good to pretend otherwise.

So, let’s be gracious with one another. 

Let’s not be so hard on the flaws of other people.

Let's, instead, spend a little more time working on ours.

We might just change everything.

What We Have Left

The hall burst in applause as Itzhak Perlman appeared on the stage, took up his violin, and signaled to the conductor.

A couple of bars into the first song, one of Perlman’s strings snapped. It would have been quite understandable for the great violinist to bring the concert to a brief halt so that he could change the string and continue as he had rehearsed.

But, that’s not what he did.

He paused for a moment before signaling to the conductor to start from where they left off.

Perlman resolved to perform his solo with only three strings. He adjusted the notes in his head to accommodate the deficient instrument. When he was unable to find a comparable note on another string, he improvised. The piece held together spectacularly.

When the final note rang out, the audience sat in silence for just a moment, astonished at what they had just witnessed. Then, once again, they erupted into wild ovation.

Perlman waited until the noise died away before addressing the eager crowd.

“You know,” he said, “sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much beautiful music you can still make with what you have left.”

Perlman had full awareness of his weaknesses and full mastery of his strengths. He did not ignore the former, nor did he dismiss the latter.

We all have broken strings. We all have others still intact.

Artistic wisdom requires that we be both aware of our weaknesses and then learn to play to our strengths.

Only then can we make beautiful music with what we have left.