Chapter
2: Agency Gets Lost in Longcuts
My
husband and I drove nine hundred miles to Depoe Bay on the Oregon coast and
stayed in a condo twenty or so yards from the Pacific Ocean. Depoe Bay boasts
of having the world’s smallest navigable harbor and a resident pod of gray
whales. We went crabbing on a nearby wharf, walked the gift shops and art
galleries along the rocky shoreline, ate “today’s catch” in a restaurant on the
water’s edge, looked at the smallest harbor, but no matter whatever else we
were doing, our eyes were scanning the bay for spouts. First came the spout,
then we’d see a thirty- to forty-foot whale’s back rise gracefully in an arc
above the water. Several times, following the spout, we saw a large black fin
and twice we saw a whale’s tale, waving in the air just like in nature films.
We watched frolicking and feeding whales ‘round the clock. After three days we
drove 281 miles inland to my brother’s home in Klamath Falls for another three
days. From Klamath Falls, the trip back to Salt Lake City would be only 670
miles, but instead of heading home we decided to extend our vacation a day and
drive back to the coast, hoping to find another gem like Depoe Bay. We pointed
the car westward and started driving. In a couple of hours we were wandering in
the land of giant trees where ocean mists weave in and out through redwood, spruce,
and ponderosa pines. We kept driving down California 101, enjoying the elegance
until reality hit and we realized we really needed to forgo anymore hope of
whale-watching and find the quickest way home.
Looking at a map, I saw a road that
would be much shorter than going down California 101 to finally tie in with
Interstate 80, which would take us across Nevada and home. It was a shortcut
from Arcata, California on highway 299, to Redding—only one-hundred and forty
miles. Mapquest said it would take under three hours which equals out to be
about 50 miles per hour. We could have opted to take the freeway, but that
would have been so far out of our way, and any road you can go 50 miles per
hour on can’t be that bad. Right? I wish I’d charted the elevation changes—sea
level to over 5,000 feet, up one mountainside and down another, switchbacks,
dozens of them that have a lot in common with roller coasters. And then there
were construction zones, delays, and one-lane roads. It took almost five hours
which was more like 25 miles per hour! Yes, you are thinking, but you saw so
much more grandeur than if you’d been on the freeway. Perhaps, but it was
anything but relaxing as road signs kept warning of obstacles and hazards—deer,
rock slide areas, turnouts, construction vehicles reentering the road
unexpectedly, when and when not to attempt to pass, and the choice to take 299
greatly increased our risk of accident. So there we were, descending a steep,
narrow U-shaped turn, when suddenly in front of us appeared a speeding black
Mercedes, straddling the middle line. We had nowhere to go except to the edge
of the cliff, praying it didn’t collapse under us. The driver honked continuously,
warning us to get out his way. A few minutes after surviving this close
encounter, Richard said: “I’d call this a longcut not a shortcut.” Trying to
calm my pulsing adrenalin I considered his comment. “Longcut?” I asked. “Did
you just coin a new word?” “I don’t know,” he said, “but this is no shortcut.”
“Hmmm,” I wondered. “Do longcuts have application in other aspects of life
besides road trips?”
A longcut is a place you go where
you lose your agency. As Richard and I experienced this longcut, what should we
have done? We had two choices, well, three really, but we did not want to stay
where we were. The only real options were keep going or turn back. So we did
what you would have done. We kept going. Winston Churchill said, “If you are
going through hell, keep going,” and Robert Frost said, “The only way round is
through.” Recognizing road-trip longcuts is relatively simple, especially with
global positioning satellites spinning around the earth, where different routes
can be compared, distances measured, and destinations planned before embarking.
But GPS systems aren’t fail proof. We’ve had Seri, tell us to turn onto a
one-way street going the wrong direction. Another time she kept us going around
and around and around an airport in an endless loop. And as our 299 experience
shows, maps don’t show what obstacles may be encountered. The long and short of
road trips is that no matter how bad the road turns out to be, if you press on,
you will get to your destination sooner or later. And as long as you arrive
safely, whether it takes under three hours or nearly five won’t make much difference
by this time tomorrow. Traveling the road trip called life, however, with its
unplumbed number of potential longcuts, challenges every traveler, as longcuts
become mazes where there are no exit signs just dead ends and where GPS systems
may keep you in an endless loop.
From time to time we make choices
that take us on longcuts. It’s tempting to say that sometimes others close to
us make choices that force us into longcuts, but no matter what happens to you,
you are responsible for your actions. You can’t, in honesty, blame others for
the time you spend in longcuts because even when bad things happen to you
because of other’s choices, you still have agency to choose how you will
respond. Viktor E. Frankl, a Jew, learned this truth in German concentration
camps: “Everything can be taken from a man or a
woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any
given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” In
truth, the only way you take a longcut is if you choose it. Your attitude about
whatever happens is your choice. Your God-given gift of agency grants you this
greatest freedom, the one thing that cannot be taken from you.
Once you realize
you are on a longcut, the appeal that enticed you to take the longcut fades;
your freedom to choose other routes is limited, and as you entered with
enthusiasm, if you stay long, it takes Herculean willpower to get out. A
longcut can be so consuming that the longcut becomes your life. Some longcut
travelers take up residency and give up trying to get out. They acclimate to
their environment and think: “Well, Hades isn’t that bad after all.” Longcut
victims may forget what it’s like to live in the light of day. The longer a
person stays in a longcut, the harder it is to find an exit. Since we all
travel near longcuts daily, we need to develop skills to avoid as many longcuts
as possible. Unfortunately, none of us will be perfect at avoiding all of them;
consequently, we need strategies to get out when we are ensnared because longcuts
are like underground parking. Though you enter on the ground or street level,
you can go down and down and down and find parking on lower and lower levels.
That’s why every effort should be made to stop yourself or others from
entering. That’s also why few exit a longcut unscathed; longcuts pull you down
and suck you in.
Longcut entrances are the
bait in the trap and appear welcoming and alluring. Think of a commercial of
beautifully tanned young women in bikinis and robust, movie-star looking young
men, on a sandy beach, playing volleyball as the sun is setting. Attractive,
glamorous, appealing. In 1962, I remember such a setting as a college freshman.
One of the fraternities had a traditional outdoor feast that included alumni,
and I had been asked by a leader in the fraternity to be his date. I was from a
less than prestigious high school and was so excited to go to the party. When I
arrived, I met more attractive and influential people than I knew existed. I
saw meats, fruits, breads, and desserts of every variety piled high on the
tables. I saw ice buckets full of beer and soda pop. I had been taught by my
parents and church that alcoholic drinks release inhabitations and could become
addicting and are to be avoided, so I declined the beer and took a soft drink.
Then I saw one of my pledge sisters who I knew had also been taught the dangers
of drinking alcohol. She had a beer in her hand.
Politeness and good manners lasted about an hour and I
noticed that most of the alumni had gone home. Then the food that was still on
the table was used for a food fight, and the band that had been playing
background music started play loud rock music. Couples began dancing and my
pledge sister, her date, and another couple leaped on top of a table, stomping
and yelling in time with music, the likes of which, in my sheltered life, I’d
never heard nor seen. The thrill and anticipation I’d felt when I was asked to
the party was quickly fading. Then I watched my obviously drunk pledge sister
who seemed to be enjoying herself immensely stop suddenly, and to everyone’s
embarrassment if not utter disgust, throw up and pass out. I didn’t understand
what was happening to her then, but later I realized she’d chosen a path—a path
I’d now call a longcut. She earned the reputation as an “easy” date and didn’t
return to school the next year.
As I’ve come to understand what
longcuts are, I know that taking 299 is a very minor longcut because we
suffered no damage other than having extra adrenalin for a few minutes and
using up two hours we didn’t want to spend in that way. Real longcuts are
facades, all show, no substance, and they don’t take you where you want to go.
They are like movie sets with false fronts and collapsible scenery. The outside
of a longcut is staged to look fascinating and inviting, but once inside a
longcut it becomes maze-like, turning the longcut into your own personal
tragedy. That’s why each longcut is a battle we must win and why we should use
our energies and influence, sharing the skills we’ve learned, to help others
identify and avoid longcuts.
Avoidance skills: Other than the
theory that all things give you
experience and that longcuts can inoculate you against a worse longcut in the
future, longcuts have no value. Longcuts risk the loss of miles, money, energy,
emotion, potential, beauty, health, resources, peace of mind, opportunity,
hours, days, years, relationships, friendships, or even life itself. If you and
I can vicariously learn the lessons of life without having to personally
experience the downward spiral of longcuts, we will be so much better off. The
fewer longcuts taken in a lifetime, the happier and more productive the road
through life will be. It seems not only practical but also wise to learn to
spot the warning signs that danger lurks in a nearby longcut much like we
learned to spot the whale spout and know a whale was near. You can also develop
the discipline to resist the lures of longcuts.
The biggest obstacle in detecting
longcuts is that light travels in straight lines, making it impossible to for
you or me to see around the first curve. “So since I can’t see around corners,”
you are asking, “are there ways I can know if a road is a longcut that will
yield unpleasant consequences?” There are. One way is to look at the people who
have been doing what you want to try. Study it out in your mind before rushing
into what may be a longcut. Figuratively count the number of people going in
and coming out and measure the length of time each spent in the longcut. Look
at their faces as they come out. Are they happy or emotionally scarred? Do they
look healthy or worn? How do they smell? Can they look you in the eye and say
that longcut was truly a worthwhile experience? As you pause to assess, you
will discover this truth: longcuts hide dark secrets that can be seen on the
faces of those who exit. A few examples: Those entering the longcut of tobacco
use look normal. They don’t look normal, though, when and if they come out.
You’ll see their fingers stained with nicotine; their teeth yellow, turning brown;
and they and their possessions smell. Also, their bank account balances have
greatly decreased as they have literally burned up thousands and thousands of
dollars on their addiction. Many stay in their cigarette-smoking longcut,
trapped for life. Those who do come out, come out thin, ill, and coughing. Over
the years, millions have come out in coffins. Those who enter the longcut of
pornography look normal, and many, if not most, never come out. They leave a
trail of victims behind—wives, children, parents, respectability, educational
opportunities, jobs. Those who enter the methamphetamine longcut look normal.
Almost none ever come completely out. Those who do meth age rapidly, have few
teeth, blink with gaunt empty eyes—like no one is at home, and have dry,
bristly, thinning hair. Here’s the truth: if you don’t want to look like these
people, don’t go where they’ve been because, in all probability, if you come
out, you’ll look much the same as they do. Enter the longcut if you want to
look like them, feel like them, be like them, think like them. If you don’t
like what you see, wake up before it is too late and run for your life in the
opposite direction. Learn from the mistakes of others.
Another way to avoid a longcut is to
decide how proud or disappointed you will be of yourself for traveling that
longcut. If in the longcut you will do things you will later be ashamed of, if
what you do is done alone and in the dark, if you don’t want others to know
what you are doing, you can be certain it’s a longcut. If the longcut is a
place you wouldn’t take your wife or mother or child or grandchild, don’t go
there yourself. If they won’t be proud of you, in a few years, you won’t be
proud of yourself either. If you don’t want what you’re doing to be published on
the front page of the newspaper tomorrow morning, don’t do it tonight. If
anyone tries to get you into a longcut by telling you, “No one will ever know,”
I guaranteed you it will turn out to be a longcut because “No one will ever
know” is the classic lie. You will get caught. Every dark secret will be found
out because truth always surfaces. You cannot hide it forever. If someone
invites you to try a longcut “Just this once,” know you are in dangerous
territory. If this is a good thing to do, why would you want to do it “just
this once?” Too many longcut victims thought they could get away with trying
something “just this once.”
Still another avoidance skill is to
take counsel from people in your life who love you and want you to succeed. No
loving husband or wife or parent or grandparent or teacher or friend would
encourage you to smoke, do porn, take drugs, or have sex outside of marriage
unless they are in these longcuts themselves. A minor example from my life.
When I find an article of clothing in an online catalog that I think I might
buy, I read the consumer reviews and sometimes decide to order the product or
not based on the reviews. There are times I’ve disregarded negative reviews,
reasoning that the reviewers gave bad reviews because of this or that reason
that doesn’t apply to me. When the order arrives, almost always, I see for
myself that the negative reviews were accurate and I end up returning the
product. If the size ran small for reviewers, it was too small on me. If the
fabric was flimsy to reviewers, when I opened the package, I saw that the
fabric was flimsy. I’d be more successful in online purchases, if I paid more
attention when several reviewers gave the same negative review, which would
save me the time it takes to return it and the disappointment. With longcuts,
you can know, if it caused heartache, shame, or guilt for someone else, it will
cause heartache, shame, and guilt for you too.
Just as I sometime “dis” reviews in
online catalogs, it seems to be human nature to disregard advice and still take
a longcut even when others tell of their negative experiences down that very
same road. Arrogantly I think: “That happened to you but it won’t happen to me.
I’m different.” I can delude myself into thinking the consequences that followed
other people’s poor choices, for an extreme example—driving drunk, only produce
bad results for everyone else. With vanity, ego, and pure foolhardiness, I
think I’m unique, which allows the errors of the past to be repeated over and
over again, generation after generation, and we’re not talking about online
catalog shopping. As individuals and a society we often make the same mistakes
because we vainly believe we are the exception, that cause and effect happens
only to others who are not as talented, or disciplined, or smart, or rich, or
strong, or lucky, or whatever pride whispers in our ears. These vain and
self-flattering thoughts were described millennia ago in the first chapter of
Ecclesiastes, verses 3-10, in the New Standard Revised version of the Bible:
“What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but
the earth remains for ever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to
the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the
north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All
streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams
flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot
utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with
hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be
done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is
said, "See, this is new"? It has been already, in the ages before
us.”
The laws of nature are laws because they are immutable. The sun
rises and sets exactly on time each day; seasons come and go in expected
patterns; gravity exerts the same pounds per square inch pull on everyone and
everything; objects in motion tend to stay in motion; heavenly bodies stay in
their defined orbits. There are laws of motion, energy, and thermodymanics. For
example, if you are following the car in front of you too closely and don’t
break soon enough, you will likely experience an accident. If you stay out in
the sun too long, you get burned. If you swallow something that obstructs your
airway, you can’t breathe. No matter how you try to prevent aging, you will
age. You may postpone looking wrinkled with Botox or a face lift, but there is
no way you will look thirty when you are sixty. The laws of health and
nutrition are fixed. If you eat too much or too little, you won’t be healthy.
Oh, there may be an outlier here and there; you may be the one in a hundred
thousand that escapes the natural consequence of your actions for a time, but
the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you because of another indisputable
law—the law of the harvest. You reap what you sow. If you plant a carrot, you
get a carrot. If you sow unkindness; you harvest unkindness. If you sow deceit;
you reap deceit.
Just as predictably, life lived with
regard to tried and true principles makes for a happier life. The patterns of
history and the rise and fall of nations and individuals keep repeating and add
verity to this truth: “There really is no new thing under the sun.” To avoid
longcuts, we must be willing to take counsel from those who have traveled the
road before us. We must take advantage of and benefit from the cumulative
wisdom of the ages. Wisdom is the increase in good judgment that comes from
experience. Unfortunately, experience often comes from bad judgment learned by
wading through longcuts, longcuts that could have been avoided. I once heard a
man pray: “Help us learn the lessons of life without having to experience
them.” Learning the lessons of life from the experiences of others is one way
you can gain the wisdom to identify and avoid a longcut without having to
personally experience it. Learning the lessons of the past will help you avoid
longcuts. Francis Bacon said: “Histories make men wise.” George Santayana said: “Those who cannot learn from history
are doomed to repeat it” You don’t have to live the experience of being trapped
in a longcut to know of the dreadful physical, intellectual, emotional, social,
and spiritual toll paid by those who take longcuts. History teaches that
consequences follow every human action. History teaches that if you make
certain choices, you cannot unmake them. Learn from the mistakes of others.
Learn how past generations solved problems. Learn what worked and what didn’t.
This wisdom can keep you far away from longcuts. Earlier we defined
longcuts as shortcuts that turn long and waste time, miles, money, energy,
emotion, potential, beauty, health, wealth, peace of mind, opportunity, even
life. Now we will shorten the definition to a formula: Longcuts = chains of servitude.
One more very
compelling reason to learn to develop the discipline to resist the temptations
of longcuts is because once you enter a longcut, you discover that like a
labyrinth, longcuts have passageways that not only dead end but also connect to
other longcuts. For example, the smoking-tobacco longcut has passageways to the
beer-drinking longcut and the smoking-tobacco has roads to the marijuana
longcut. The beer-drinking longcut has a tunnel to hard-liquor consumption. The
marijuana longcut has subway trains to stronger hallucinogens and opiates.
Professional literature uses the term “gateway” to describe the
interconnectedness of longcuts. A gateway activity or substance may not in and
of itself be addictive but the activity or substance may lead to activities or
substances that are addictive. Whether it’s the activity or the substance that
increases the appetite for more or whether by participating in the gateway
activity or substance you come in contact with others who beguile you down
another longcut is for further research to determine. But either way, you form
habits that have the potential to become addictive and pose a threatening risk of even more dangerous longcuts in the
future.
(If you happen to be wondering how
shortcuts figure into this equation, a shortcut is a deviation from the main
path that consumes less of something valuable and yields a positive result.
Shortcuts add to the cumulative whole of life. Conversely, longcuts are
deviations that subtract from the cumulative whole of life and yield negative
results.)
To
avoid longcuts and preserve agency:
1. Take wisdom and counsel from those who have walked
the road of life before you
2. Never believe you will be the exception to the laws
of nature
3. Know you will harvest what you sow
4. Learn the lessons of history so you won’t repeat
the mistakes.
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