Month: July 2022

There is a television series I have watched during the past few weeks, a series that I dare say would be impossible for an American studio or production company to get the green light to film given American mores and even laws in some states. So what happens on this show, you ask? A young child, often about three years old, is sent by his or her parents on an errand alone. The errands are things like delivering a work uniform or buying diapers or picking up lunch. A pretense is created to set off the errand, a discussion about the task (sometimes taking as long as half an hour if additional motivation is required) takes place between the child and a parent, and then the child sets off. There is a microphone hidden in an amulet that each child wears like a tiny purse. There is also a large camera crew following each child around at all times and the store owners have all been made aware of what is taking place—the children aren’t actually alone at any point even if they don’t realize that. The self-talk is hilarious, there are often moments of confusion or hesitation, but eventually the tasks are completed. The best part of the show is the triumphant walk home. You can tell in their walk that the children are brimming with confidence. They know that they have just taken a step towards growing up.

There is a careful logic to the errands. The tasks are always things the children have done before with their parents and are at places they have visited before. The parents also center the errand around some other person to provide extra motivation. The diapers are for baby brother, the uniform is for dad, the lunch is for grandma, etc. This allows the children not just to be brave for themselves, but to be brave for someone they love too.

This show illustrates what some academics call the zone of proximal development. The cliff notes version is that there is a zone of competence where you know what you are doing, know what to expect, and where you can operate on autopilot. Outside of that is a much larger area of things you don’t know or don’t know how to do. The area just beyond your zone of competence, the things you can do with a little assistance or can do but haven’t quite mastered, that is the zone of proximal development. If you stay in your zone of competence all the time, you stagnate and grow bored. If you stray too far outside the zone of competence, you freeze up and become disoriented. Growth lies in between, in always pushing just beyond the zone of competence, expanding the zone of competence. That is exactly what happens on this little show.

P.S. The show is called “Old Enough” on Netflix. The show’s audio is only in Japanese, so you do have to be willing to read subtitles to watch it. I have also seen a similar thing on British television where slightly older children navigate their way across central London, probably on YouTube.

I have more-or-less recovered and returned to an almost regular schedule. Not that we have a regular schedule in comparison to most people (e.g. we had a meeting last night with someone in Japan), but regular for us. Over the last week and a half, though, I have watched more movies and television than normal. One of those movies was Dune, fare outside my normal entertainment diet but a film I had planned to see for some time. This is a movie based on a book, a book I read and enjoyed.

I was underwhelmed by the movie. Sure, there were some tweaks to the story that ranged from unnecessary distractions to contemporary pandering, but I expected that. Everything just felt rushed. There was nothing wrong from a technical perspective. The editing was good, everything flowed, and the scenes were shot to provide an epic scale. Despite this technical proficiency, the characters and the story were flat. The book contains large chunks of inner monologue for each of the characters, monologue that reveals motivations, desires, and concerns. The movie contained none of that, to the point that if I hadn’t read the book I doubt I would have even been able to follow why certain characters took certain actions (or even who those characters were).

My overall impression was that in changing the medium, a masterwork was made into a good but forgettable piece. It is a common refrain that the book was better than the movie, but maybe this is more a product of the book coming first than any inherent superiority. I’m ruminating on how this concept might affect my business or my life more broadly, but writing out my thoughts is part of the process and one of the less-intended benefits of writing this newsletter every week.

For the Fourth of July, I took a bit of my own advice from last week’s newsletter. I opted to go somewhere I had not been before. There is a large state park (Umstead) located between Raleigh and the RDU airport. There are miles and miles of walking trails, a few lakes for boating and fishing, bike tracks, and there can even be horses on the multiuse paths. A few years ago, one of the large trees beside one of the multiuse trails fell parallel to the trail. A few local artists took the opportunity to carve into the tree with chainsaws. Over the span of nearly thirty feet of fallen tree, there are numerous animals depicted—herons, owls, foxes, squirrels, rabbits, etc. The carving has become something of a landmark and even gets its own signage at the nearby trail junctions. I have visited the park a few times previously for the hiking trails but had never ventured to see the carved log and decided Monday was the day.

The log is only about a mile from the parking lot, so I added in one of the other hikes too to get more value for my journey. This was also a hedge as I knew I enjoyed that particular hike and the log was something new. That attitude is akin to the concept of the zone of proximal development in my mind, but that may just be a mental crutch. In any event, I do often mix the familiar with the new to reduce the risk of being overwhelmed. It may not be that that is necessary for everyone, but it is a tactic that has worked well for me down the years.

It’s a good thing that I took the other hike. I won’t denigrate the artwork, but that is definitely not a site I will be taking guests when they come visit me. I’m glad I saw it since I’ve wondered about it for some time, but that wonder is now permanently sated. On the walk back, my face displayed a combination of a wry smile and a knowing head shake of resignation. So it goes.