WTF?

One over-arching question hangs over all of our heads, demanding an answer: "Where's the fudge?"

Another way to think about this problem is to consider the concept of the mid-life crisis. One day, you're going along as usual, living your own life the way you've been living it, not bothering anybody, not questioning too much, when all of the sudden you get struck by a psychic meteor.

You suddenly are staggeringly perplexed. Nobody and nothing looks the same. An impermeable, clear membrane has wrapped itself around you like an alien from another planet. You can't get out and nobody else can get in.

It's just you with yourself in a way that you've never been before. It doesn't matter if you are man, woman, or both; whether you are rich, poor, or middle class (although I'm not sure middle is still an option); big, small, or average; none of these things matter when a MLC hits.

Even psychopaths apparently go through mid-life transitions. At least that's what I read between the lines in Dave Cullen's fascinating study, "Columbine."

I mentioned last week that I had to stop reading this book while waiting in a jury room when a suspicious visitor inexplicably entered the chamber, sat for a few moments, then left a book on a table in the center of the room, before exiting the facility. Cullen's account of the mass murders at Columbine High School had so agitated me that I had to put it away that day and turned to another fascinating new book, "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell.

On Monday, flying across the country, my airplane encountered turbulence just as I was reading Gladwell's chapter on why certain nationalities produce most of the pilots who end up at the controls when passenger jets crash, so I set his book aside and turned back to Cullen's.

Cullen writes that even psychopaths, those tragic and dangerous genetic defections who do not have the ability to access the normal range of human emotions like empathy, sympathy, kindness, shame, regret, and love can cause some of them, including the main killer at Columbine, to turn into monster killers, rapists, assassins and mass murderers -- but that even these people often go through a transition where by age 50 or so, they develop coping mechanisms that allow them to exist side by side with their fellow human beings without causing anyone any harm.

Switching back to Gladwell's book, it is packed with so many insights into why certain people succeed at virtually any task while others fail that I think every parent (or concerned citizen) should read this book as soon as you can. The cause of success, in his telling, and backed by solid social science, may shock you.

It's mainly about when you were born (which month of the year), what your ethnic heritage is, and how hard you work (obsess) at something. It doesn't really matter whether we are talking about sports, business, inventions, or art, the same rules apply.

Why? Because, in order to organize themselves, societies choose arbitrary cut-off dates to define which child qualifies for which level of whatever activity (s)he applies for -- in sports, or in schools, or in any other regulated area of life.

If the cut-off date is January 1, for example, in sports, most of the adults who reach the professional level will have birth dates in January, February, or March. Almost no professional sports stars in that society will have been born in October, November, or December.

The reason is that all along the way, at every successive level of development, the older, bigger kids in the cohort will shine while the smaller, younger kids will seem less impressive in the eyes of coaches who judge them not by their current level of physical, mental or emotional development, but by their comparative ability on the court or field.

It is an unequal playing field, and the younger kids get penalized again and again until in the end they get discouraged, drop out, and leave their dreams behind. This is not only a personal but a social tragedy. We all lose in the process, because we have mindlessly created a self-fulfilling prophesy about who is "best" among us.

It is not about inherent ability, nor is it about IQ. It is, most centrally, about our arbitrary divisions of time.

Please read this book and let me know what *you* think.

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