A life lesson about messes
I was barrelling through the kitchen to get outside. My mother was preparing the evening meal.
She asked, “Dave, can you clean up that mess on the middle of the floor?”
Someone swept the floor and piled the result in the middle of the kitchen floor. That same someone forgot the two steps about the dustpan and the garbage bin.
“I didn’t make that mess,” my 14-year-old brain blurted out.
Well, my mother dropped her food prep and cooking. Just to give me the lecture.
“Dave, there are three kinds of people in this world.”
“The first kind will step over and around this pile of dirt and not do a thing about it. Eventually this dirt will be scattered back to where it came from.”
“The second kind will stand over the pile of dirt and will wonder why someone is not cleaning it up. That person will be quick to blame others.” I got the stern look.
“The third kind will just clean it up. Without being told.”
The lesson my 14-year-old brain learned that day was that cleaning up this mess would get my mother off my back. I did so, and 30 seconds later I was outside.
Later in life
But somehow these three kinds of people resonated with me. Five years later, I was deep in the adult world of working.
I worked my first drilling rig in 1978. Our main job was to move steel pipe in and out of the drill hole. My employers needed strong backs, team players, and mechanical thinkers for this task. Moving pipe probably constituted 75% of our working hours. The other 25% was at a slower pace. During these slower times, I was looking to earn my wage with the least effort, justifying my lazy nature to compensate for when we were working hard.
But one of my co-workers was a cleaner. And drilling rigs are often dirty. When our shift was slow, he was always finding things to clean. I thought he was silly. But I noticed that the rig foreman was often yelling at me, but not at my co-worker. My mother’s words finally held some meaning for me.
From then on, I vowed to be a worker who kept the workplace clean and repaired when the regular work duties were a little slow. I would often spot little projects I could take on when we didn’t have important work to do. I didn’t wait to be told. I took this approach to my next oilfield jobs. My managers took notice.
Years later, I was working in a grocery store. When the work shift was slow, I took on a cleaning project that I saw a shift or two before. My managers noticed.
I believe that when you are paid a wage, you have an obligation to provide value for that wage. And I believe having little projects for the slower times enhances your ability for better service in the busy times. Nearly all of my many managers were reasonable in these slower times. They were not expecting me to sweat blood, but they sure appreciated my “slower paced” efforts to move the workplace to a better condition than before.
Cleaning up the political mess
Most of you reading this article want a better political world. So you would not be a #1 in my mother’s paradigm.
But many political writers are writing articles complaining and blaming. Some are blaming the political players, some the political parties, some the non-voters, some the wrong voters, some the media. Lots of blame is thrown around, without much action. These political writers would be a #2 in my mother’s paradigm.
Would you like to be a #3? You know, the people who clean the mess up?
Well, I have a project for you. We can build a new democracy.
I have invented a new democracy. Its most striking tenet is that it has no political parties. Here is my 318-word explanation.
Our current democracies aren’t working so well. They were made in the 19th century. We are in the 21st century.
We don’t care who made the original mess. When we are building this democracy, we are not standing over a pile of dirt, complaining and blaming. We are just cleaning that pile up.
And we will clean it up.
And building this new democracy takes only 10 hours a month! You still have lots of time to do things you really like.
Be a #3 in my mother’s paradigm!
I know you can do it!
Published on Medium & Substack 2025
Hyper Vigilance in Government
