Common Good

The photos arrived via SMS. They featured my 87-year-old great aunt standing beside a world-famous fashion designer, beaming. In one of them, the designer is smiling at my aunt instead of the camera. In another, my aunt’s head rests on the designer’s shoulder. Each has an arm around the other. They look comfortable, relaxed.

It wasn’t an art exhibition, though it did feature elements of sculpture and performance art. On paper, it was just another activity at just another school fair. The activity was (to try) riding various bicycle-like creations that had been cobbled together from parts — or to watch from a safe distance.

At first I said “no” when my eldest child asked me, at a family gathering, if he could play a joke on the unsuspecting crowd.

He wanted to make and offer round some cordial — spiked with salt. Mine had attracted complaints because it was too weak. This would attract a taker because it would be strong.

One of the most diligent high performers I know has a theory about workers and their competence. He mentioned it in passing recently; I’ve since heard many stories that it could possibly explain.

The idea? Eighty percent of people aren’t good at their jobs.

I still remember my astonishment when an Australian PM, at a campaign trail event—the kind where hands are shaken, babies kissed—picked up a raw onion and took a bite from it.

If I saw the clip of that farm visit now, I might declare it a deep fake. Could someone really be so determined to please, so delighted by fresh produce, or so sleep-deprived—that they’d not only bite an onion but, still smiling, swallow too? Surely it was just an apple, digitally manipulated for a laugh.

Before explaining how to read rhythm on a page, my children’s piano teacher gave the class a challenge. She asked the kids to walk around the room without consistent steps — no repetition and no pattern. If you’ve never tried this, try it now. You might find you have to hop and skip and jump to keep your feet from falling — unintentionally, automatically, irresistibly — into a steady beat.

It’s a simple challenge. And it’s absurdly difficult. It shows that when we’re walking normally, we do so rhythmically, and unthinkingly. Even if we walk unevenly, our steps still fall predictably: ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. It’s natural, effortless.