Making A World of Difference

Exceptions being the Rule

Upon reflection after writing this book and doing a host of interviews, it strikes me that the key rule about the people I met and admire seems to be those absolutely making exceptions to the rules.

Having traveled on five continents now, from Vietnam, to Sierra Leone, across Europe, the US, Australia, and now Argentina, you notice that everyone has rules.  And in each country or culture, they seem unbreakable.  Wherever we come from, we find the rules or customs the norm, and those from another culture’s odd.  For example, the Thai might have a soup for breakfast, the English, Aussies and Americans eggs and toast, and the Spanish or Argentineans only toast or “media lunes.”  Yet each thinks the others’ breakfast to be strange.

I remember a kind young ticket agent in France once when I wanted to stop over in Paris on my way back from Nice to New York.  It was a stressful time, and the flight went to Orly airport first, and I’d have to transfer to Charles De Gaulle anyway.  She looked at her computer screen and told me it was impossible for me to go to Paris.   She was sad about it, truly.  And her wide eyes almost misted, but it was “impossible.”

So I did the impossible.  I took a train.  Got a new airline ticket and went to Paris.

On the other hand, a great astronomy teacher at my university, Columbia, made the exception for me.  I was really struggling, with a head not meant for this mandatory science class.  When it came to telling stories, I could do fantastically.  When it came to numbers, figures, dates etc, I had the hardest time.  I was getting Ds and Cs, and a major paper was due.  I finally asked him the unthinkable:  instead of handing in a normal paper, could I write a science fiction story about astronomy, but using hard science?  A bit of a radical, symbolized perhaps by his ponytail, he smiled and thought it was a great idea.  If the science were solid, I’d get an A.  If not, an F.  The story as I remember it was about two binary stars that circle each other in a perfect orbit.  Otherwise, they collide and crash.  But mine fell in love and because they broke the rule, collided in a love suicide pact.  But I fortunately did get an A, through his making an exception.

Think about rules for a second: sometimes rules of a nation, or laws, dictate that certain people don’t have the rights of others, for example the Aboriginals of Australia or African Americans in the United States.  Or as my mother who was born in Czechoslovakia during the time of the Nazis puts it, “At that time in that place, it was a crime for me to be alive.”

But the people like Paul Pholeros who make exceptions make the changes.  He’s an architect, and a brilliant one.  Yet when Yami Lester, the blind leader, showed him the bathrooms built by the government that literally flushed to nothing, he didn’t say I only design beautiful houses, leave me alone.  He took on the challenge, along with his partners, and they have made a huge difference in Indigenous health by enabling the community to fix over 5,000 bathrooms – preventing trachoma and blindness.

Or Idris Azraq, the rebel from Darfur.  Instead of insisting what the people persecuted by Sudan needed like most rebels, he actually made the exception to find out what the people themselves wanted.  Flor and Wil in Amsterdam created a children’s farm with chickens, goats, rabbits and even a llama in the middle of a slum to create a sense of life and nature, again breaking the rules or at least making an exception to them.  At Oz Harvest, Ronni Kahn broke the rule that says poor people have to eat poorly.  Instead she got food from high falutin catered events to them.  To create her exception, she even got the laws of New South Wales changed.

That’s philanthropy, and it’s in daily practice it seems to me.  It might be the kind person at the takeaway place making a substitution of salad for the mashed potatoes with the chicken. It might be wanting to rush home on the train, but when the crowded car pulls up, allowing someone else in instead of shoving in.

Maybe making an exception comes from simply taking another look at oneself or one’s situation, or the rule itself.  Douglas Adams in his book published posthumously called The Salmon of Doubt tells a story formative to his whole outlook. As a university student, he missed his train home, and had to wait an hour at the station.  There he bought a pack of biscuits, a coffee, and a newspaper and sat down to pass the time.  As he read his newspaper, a stranger sat opposite him. The stranger proceeded to open the packet of biscuits and eat one.  Shocked, Adams did what any red blooded Englishman would do: “I said nothing.” Instead he too ate a biscuit.  The stranger also said nothing but ate another. One by one, they went through the biscuits until the packet was empty.  The stranger finally left, giving Adams a look, and was gone. Finally, it was time for Douglas’ train, and he picked up his newspaper.  Lo and behold, there were “his” biscuits.  The sad thing he remembers is that the stranger never got to know the punch line. I.e. Whose cookies were they anyway?

Maybe making the exception starts from just asking that simple question.  Do the biscuits or cookies have to be mine?  Do they have to be yours?  For Adams, he always took another point of view on whatever he assumed from then on.

Maybe binary stars can collide and just have a good pash instead of completely crashing.

That’s for my next astronomy course.  If there is an exception to the rule…