Kittens...

Several Saturday's ago, it was finally time to tear down the ill-conceived chicken shed that was on our property when we bought it. Our 3 younger kids helped me deconstruct it and then pack the materials into my old Ford truck.

A week later, I drove the truck to our local landfill to get rid of the contents. It was a stormy afternoon, and as I backed up to the pit to begin unloading, the rain began to fall. I was wearing my new raincoat (which I had been eager to try out), so the rain didn't bother me at all and I cheerfully began tossing the old 2x4's and plywood covered with chicken excrement into the abyss. It was a good feeling.

We had packed the truck tight, so it took me awhile to get to the bottom of the load. When I got there, I found the 2 barn-style doors from the shed stacked on top of each other. The cross pieces were facing each other leaving a small space between the panels and making it difficult to separate them. Initially I attempted to throw both of them into the pit at once, but that proved to be too awkward so I wrestled the first one free and turned to toss it over the edge.

When I turned back towards the truck, I gasped out loud because sitting on the other door in the falling rain were 2 tiny kittens!! My stomach flip flopped thinking about how close I came to throwing them in the landfill.

Ever since we lost our beloved cat Franz several months earlier, we'd been looking to get some kittens, so this was a welcome find and I was excited to take them home to my family. As expected, my wife and kids were beside themselves with excitement, and after some discussion we decided to name them Penny and Rita (Beatles references).

All we could figure was that either a wandering mother cat had hidden them in the truck and then disappeared, or they had found their way there on their own.

Fast forward about 2 weeks...

I came home from work one day to find my family sitting in the living room in tears. A relative of one of our neighbors had just been at our house asking if we had happened to see 2 kittens that matched the description of our Penny and Rita. We told them the story of how we found them, then they told us how they had been waiting for the kittens to be old enough to take them from their mother, and then they had disappeared. They offered to let us keep one of them, but we didn't want to see them split up, so we tearfully said goodbye and let them go later that evening.

All of this got me thinking again about one of my favorite subjects: objectivity.

Objectivity is basically the practice of looking at a situation with as little bias as possible. It's the opposite of subjectivity which is all about looking at everything through the lens of your own interests.

Many years ago I began working on my objectivity skills while watching the Seahawks. In that context it was me learning to look at the penalty calls to see if they were the correct calls rather than just caring if they went in favor of the Seahawks. It didn't mean I wasn't still hoping they would win, it just meant that I was learning to not let that desire cloud my vision of right and wrong.

In the case of the kittens, objectivity meant looking at the situation through the eyes of the people who lost them, and knowing that giving them back was absolutely the right thing to do; regardless of the fact that it flew in the face of the crass "finders keepers" mentality which is so alive and well in our world.

What do you think your world would look like with more objectivity?

I'll warn you that it might not be what you think. True objectivity is about what is actually right and wrong rather than what you want to think is right and wrong; objectivity isn't just about convenience or what works best for you and the people you love.

Through the years it's been interesting (and sad) to watch people change what they "believe" in order to fit the shifting reality of the people they love.

If Johnny commits a crime, should his mother just change her mind on whether or not she thinks it's actually a crime and then proceed to hide him from the authorities? (I realize this could easily bleed into another conversation about loyalty, but I'll save that for another day.)

If you haven't yet, I encourage you to consider giving objectivity a try. I think it could change our world.