This is great. I've never heard that parable, but always think to myself, "Every law was signed in blood." I know that is the extreme case (and related to government/law) but I use it as a reminder that there's a reason things were done the way they were and you need to understand what that is before you can come up with something to replace it or a reason to eliminate it. One such situation: at our last house, we had a farmer's drain next to our deck, about 3 feet from our property line. It was nothing but a very deep hole (about 10 inches across) and if you didn't know what it was, you wouldn't realize its importance. Well, our neighbor's yard got a little wet one spring and she decided that drain was the reason - not the fact we were on a hill and her property was lower than ours - and angrily filled that hole, swearing as she went. She thought our hole was somehow helping us and screwing her. Cam just let her do it, watching, after explaining how it's actually helping. Within a few days, her entire yard was a lake. The peanut allergy thing is something I just heard yesterday. I had my kids between 1995 and 2001 and was an avid reader of all the parenting magazines...and during those years we weren't yet being told not to feed our kids those foods or I would have certainly complied. : ) Luckily (or perhaps because we fed them everything) there's not a food allergy in any of my kids but I'm equally happy I was able to throw a peanut butter sandwich at my 11-month-old for the sake of my own time and ease and sanity.
I get so excited when I get an email saying that Lisa commented! These stories are so perfect! Absolutely perfect examples. The one that I think about a lot is how at LiquidWeb we spent a decade branding “heroic support”. It was internationally known by hosting and web developer people. After we sold, the new management wanted to put their stamp on things so they changed it to “the most helpful humans in hosting”. They just had to change it even though it was working well.
This is one of my favorite parables, even though I am not great at following it. On the peanut front, I just saw today that peanut allergies have dropped by 43% since we rebuilt the Chesterton Fence.
This is great. I've never heard that parable, but always think to myself, "Every law was signed in blood." I know that is the extreme case (and related to government/law) but I use it as a reminder that there's a reason things were done the way they were and you need to understand what that is before you can come up with something to replace it or a reason to eliminate it. One such situation: at our last house, we had a farmer's drain next to our deck, about 3 feet from our property line. It was nothing but a very deep hole (about 10 inches across) and if you didn't know what it was, you wouldn't realize its importance. Well, our neighbor's yard got a little wet one spring and she decided that drain was the reason - not the fact we were on a hill and her property was lower than ours - and angrily filled that hole, swearing as she went. She thought our hole was somehow helping us and screwing her. Cam just let her do it, watching, after explaining how it's actually helping. Within a few days, her entire yard was a lake. The peanut allergy thing is something I just heard yesterday. I had my kids between 1995 and 2001 and was an avid reader of all the parenting magazines...and during those years we weren't yet being told not to feed our kids those foods or I would have certainly complied. : ) Luckily (or perhaps because we fed them everything) there's not a food allergy in any of my kids but I'm equally happy I was able to throw a peanut butter sandwich at my 11-month-old for the sake of my own time and ease and sanity.
I get so excited when I get an email saying that Lisa commented! These stories are so perfect! Absolutely perfect examples. The one that I think about a lot is how at LiquidWeb we spent a decade branding “heroic support”. It was internationally known by hosting and web developer people. After we sold, the new management wanted to put their stamp on things so they changed it to “the most helpful humans in hosting”. They just had to change it even though it was working well.
This is one of my favorite parables, even though I am not great at following it. On the peanut front, I just saw today that peanut allergies have dropped by 43% since we rebuilt the Chesterton Fence.
woah, that's awesome! I hadn't seen that study. That is great. Hopefully schools can start relaxing a bit on the peanut bans.