emergent ink

Here’s the original Sticking My Neck Out from 2003, revised for modern readers.

This June an unusual visitor crossed our front yard: a snapping turtle. A neighbor told us that this turtle comes out every June to lay her eggs. She was the biggest turtle I’ve ever seen up close—not that I got too close. Her shell was about 18” across and with her head and tail she was almost three feet long. And she moved fast. Every so often she’d stop, pull her head back into her shell a little bit, and observe. Then her neck stretched out, her legs started pumping again, and off she went. She climbed a low stone wall—her neck really stretching, so she could look over the wall and ahead—and up the driveway. I never thought I’d see a turtle climb a stone wall.

Snapping turtles have powerful jaws that can snap off your finger, and they can reach out pretty far and fast to get to you. I’ve always thought that turtles spend most of their time hiding inside their shell, and only move—very slow—when they have to. But I guess even turtles know that if you want to get anywhere, you’ve got to stick your neck out.

Everyone has to take some risk, just like a turtle does, to get anywhere. We all have shells that we hide under, that protect us, that may just be keeping us stuck in one place. Our shells aren’t hard domes that we carry around on our backs all day. Our shells are made up of our attitudes, our beliefs, and our habits. The way we perceive things, the way we react to things. Our shells protect us from the hostile environment of other ideas, and keep us from seeing things a different way. It’s easy to stay in our shells and to snap at anyone who threatens us. But we don’t get anywhere that way.

Whenever there’s a disagreement of some kind between people, the kind of disagreement that seems impossible to resolve, you can be pretty sure that there’s some turtle behavior going on.

The shell we hide under most often is a refusal to admit we might be wrong. That seems to be such a hard thing to do, and too many of us don’t practice it enough. You’re human, right? And humans make mistakes. Everybody knows that. That is, other humans make mistakes. You don’t.

It may be some time since you’ve had to apologize for something, or to change your opinion about something that someone has shown you was wrong. But it probably hasn’t been long at all since you’ve expected an apology from somebody else, or expected them to change the way they think.

George Washington wasn’t a turtle. George chopped down his father’s cherry tree with his axe, and when his father asked him who could have done such a thing, George admitted that he did it. We’re taught this story (whether it really happened or not) as an example of honesty. George could have denied it. But he didn’t, for some reason.

It’s also a story about responsibility. George didn’t blame the cherry tree for getting in the way of his axe. He didn’t say someone else made him do it. When you’re hiding in your shell, you don’t have to take responsibility. You don’t have to admit anything. You don’t have to listen to other opinions. You may hear them, but they bounce off your shell. They don’t make you change your mind. Your shell protects you from all that.

There’s something else the story of the cherry tree is about. It’s about why George was able to be honest, why he was willing to accept his responsibility. It’s about what happens after George tells his father the truth. His father embraces him. He didn’t have to lie or hide from his father. He knew that his father would be angry, but he also knew that his father wouldn’t stop loving him. So it’s a story about being able to forgive. About forgetting other people’s mistakes. It’s a story about why George was able to stick his neck out, without fear of someone taking a bite out of him. It’s a story about how to treat people so they’re not afraid to tell the truth and accept responsibility.

The secret to George Washington’s honesty and responsibility is his trust in his father’s love. You might have a problem with that word, so let’s break it down. George knew that his father respected, trusted, and understood him. He knew that his father would treat him fairly. He knew his father would be angry, but he also knew his father would be angrier if he didn’t tell the truth. Because that would mean that George didn’t trust, respect, or understand his father. That would be the real disappointment. His father had taught him, by example, that it is fruitless to criticize, condemn, or complain. There would be no cherries coming from that tree whether he forgave his son or not, but he still had his son.

Dale Carnegie thought “do not criticize, condemn, or complain” was so important that he made it the first principle in his classic, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

Every one of us has plenty of room for improvement in this area. There are public officials who won’t admit that they may have made a mistake, because they are convinced that doing so will do no good. They have taken so much criticism that they don’t want to answer their critics, and no longer listen to them. There are citizens who are unhappy with the way their government works, who can’t understand why they can’t get a straight answer, but who are looking for that answer not to understand but to attack. There are fathers who won’t talk to their daughters because they don’t approve of their daughter’s behavior. They have condemned their own child because of one bad decision, placing their own personal anger above the relationship of father and child. There are brothers who won’t speak to each other because of words spoken years before, because one brother did not call the other on his birthday. Brothers who will only see each other again at their parent’s funeral. There are friends who spend more energy trying to forget about their friendship because of a tiny slight, more energy than it would take to pick up the phone and talk it out, to apologize and to forgive.

We don’t have to be stuck in our shells, not able to get to where we want to go. If you stick your neck out a little bit, if you don’t stay inside your shell, you may be able to see something from another point of view. You may be able to see a better way to get there. You may be able to change your position. But you can’t, if you’re afraid of being snapped at. And you can’t control what the other turtles around you are doing. How can you get them not to snap at you? There’s only one way. You’ve got to show them by example that it is fruitless to criticize, condemn, or complain. You’ve got to be willing to be honest, to take responsibility for some of the problem, and to forgive them for their part in the problem. You have the right to expect the same. Because we’re humans, not turtles.