A Market Disrupter meets the Common Good

May 29, 2021 (370 words)

The goal of any responsible journalist is to shed new light and increase understanding. Along those lines my own particular interest is trying to get friendly readers to reconsider their most cherished liberal or conservative assumptions. While these familiar categories of thought each contain worthy aspects to recommend them, the real answers to society’s most pressing issues lie somewhere in the easy-to-miss and hard-to-flesh-out radical middle, it seems to me.

That’s why any straightforward celebration of either conventional viewpoint never holds my interest. Instead, I find myself drawn to and fascinated by any newspaper article or magazine profile in which the protagonist has started to straddle that old, familiar liberal-conservative dialectic. Some sort of epiphany has recently occurred which reveals to him or her the playbook they dutifully followed to achieve worldly success and notoriety is, in the end, missing a few pages.

The current issue of a popular business monthly features a cover story on the young man who in 2012 made a viral video about razor blades that garnered 27 million views on YouTube, and prompted 12,000 orders of his new product in two days.

Yes, this is the Dollar Shave Club we are talking about, and the young man in question is Michael Dubin, now 42 years old. He sold DSC to Unilever in 2015, but stayed on as CEO until recently, to help grow the business even further.

Before deciding on what his next big thing will be, Dubin is enjoying a brief sabbatical that has so far been largely devoted to inspired reading – titles like Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, and Robert Reich’s The Common Good.

“Now that I have more time,” Dubin says, “one of the things I’m thinking about is, how do I put great ideas out into the world, without actually having to sell a product on the other side?”

He drives a white Chevy Volt, and wants to create an ad encouraging people to drive electric cars. “I think the story hasn’t been told as artfully as it could be. I think it can touch the heart, touch the funny bone. It’s been fun to think about. What ideas can have a real impact without profiting me?”

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr
May 29, 2021

A Vortex of Hate

May 26, 2021 (170 words)

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. At some point the woman I made a lifetime commitment to made her own conscious decision not to be happy with her lot in life. This extended to no longer being in love with me, and not wanting to be married anymore.

But rather than seek a divorce and move on, she chose instead to withdraw-in-place. Lots of passive aggressiveness, lots of unfriendly non-verbal communication.

After years of this, years of living in my own head, praying that one day the dark clouds would part and a willingness to engage with me would return, I have recently concluded this story is not destined for a happy ending. No matter how much I may want things to work out between us.

In coming to terms with this unusual situation, I believe the universe (i.e., God) is satisfied that I have fulfilled my marital obligation, and is giving me permission to remove myself from what has unfortunately become nothing more than a vortex of hate.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr
May 26, 2021

Sordid Family History

May 23, 2021 (246 words)

Many years ago my father fell under the spell of and married an Italian woman. I am told it was a brief courtship, no doubt the result of some romantic voodoo caste by this vixen on a poor, unsuspecting Irishman. They managed to have a long and mostly-happy marriage, though, and raised six healthy children together.

But we kids all bore the scars of my father’s impetuous choice of a life-partner. While he was safely ensconced at work each day, we little ones were confined to close quarters with this feisty little Pisan. And I can tell you we had no idea what to make of the situation.

The culture shock was only magnified when we visited our Italian side of the family. Who were these people? It was like encountering a different species. You want cultural diversity? Try visiting your father’s Irish relatives one weekend, and then the next weekend stopping in to see you mother’s people. On the plus side, I think I speak for my siblings when I say this multi-cultural upbringing prepared us to negotiate just about any social setting, with folks from any racial or ethnic background. Such was the mind-altering, consciousness-expanding impact of close, personal contact with colorful relatives of an Italian persuasion.

There is, however, one lingering side-effect of the early childhood trauma I suffered, which is only now coming into focus. Without quite realizing it, I have always been wary and steered clear of any and all Italian women.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr
May 22, 2021

The Spectrum of Mental Health

May 22, 2021 (258 words)

Each of us have our own unique pathologies to deal with in this life, which seem to have been assigned at birth. The lucky ones are able to recognize some of them as time goes on, actively engage the thorniest problems in a constructive manner, and occasionally work through and resolve a few. The not-so-lucky ones remain prisoners their entire lives, trapped by their unfortunate, ingrained patterns of thought.

The well-meaning bystander is often powerless to help such an individual effect any sort of positive change. That’s when the work of a trained and committed mental health professional can make a difference.

An innate pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality has always made me skeptical of the therapeutic industry. But in recent years I have come to appreciate that not all counseling is quackery. My go-to remedy for shaking the blues has always been simple and organic: going out for a long walk and some fresh air, or trying to get a good night’s sleep. But what has worked for me over the years doesn’t necessarily do the trick for others. There are troubled souls who are unable to get themselves untangled on their own. Such hard cases require outside intervention if they are to make any headway in confronting their persistent demons.

I’ve also come around on the use of pharmaceuticals, and now believe an appropriate prescription, when carefully monitored, can help balance the errant, run-away personal chemistry that often contributes to (or even causes?) the inner conflicts that express themselves as a deep unhappiness, and sometimes even as intense anger.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr
May 22, 2021

Two Sisters

May 17, 2021 (611 words)

I started with two sisters, but lost one to melanoma in 1998. She was 34 at the time, the youngest of the litter, and our family’s glue. She was in charge of parties and reunions and such. The remaining five of us would be a closer-knit bunch if she were still here today.

There were ten years separating me and my baby sister, but we got along with each other from childhood, and related very easily as adults. My surviving sister, on the other hand, is only a year younger than I, and we’ve never agreed on anything. Over the years I have approached our intermittent encounters with trepidation. This sister could always be counted on to do or say something that would infuriate me, and leave me stewing for days afterwards.

(My father once confided how he saw this sister and I as very much alike. He suggested that was probably the reason I felt at loggerheads with her all the time. This was an interesting perspective I hadn’t considered until he mentioned it.)

Our clan recently assembled in Sedona, AZ, for the late-in-life, first-ever marriage of our youngest brother. (He will turn 60 in October, and met his love on-line five years ago.) It was a casual outdoor ceremony with a beautiful mountaintop view of the famous red hills. At the reception immediately following, something unexpected happened.

At one point I gathered my courage and approached my sister’s table, sat down of my own volition, and actually engaged her in conversation. Not much had changed – we were still disagreeing about everything, and she still displayed that unnerving tendency to get the last word in, no matter the topic. But I was granted some sort of grace that afternoon, allowing me to avoid my familiar pattern of contentiousness.

By maintaining my emotional equilibrium for a change, I was able to see my surviving sister for what she truly is, for what she has always been: a woman of great integrity who takes her work in medicine very seriously, and who tries to make whatever she is involved with better, whenever she can.

Here’s a few other adjectives that came to mind as we chatted that day: practical, unsentimental, and indominable.

Why wasn’t I able to embrace this sister’s essence before? Why have I spent so much time quibbling with and picking apart a few minor stylistic differences in how we each discern life’s grand design?

Developing perspective as time marches on is a healthy pastime. I often think of my late father in this regard, who had a knack for seeing things clearly. Though I didn’t always feel that way about him. As a young buck on the way up, I saw my father as not fulfilling his potential, not using his obvious intelligence to get ahead in the world. In some ways I thought of him back then as a fool and a failure.

Fortunately, by my late thirties I had come to my senses. Not only did I learn to appreciate all aspects of his worldview, I began to feel a deep sense of gratitude for the rich (non-material) legacy he was ready and willing to bequeath me. With my intellectual equilibrium thus properly restored, I was able to reap the benefits of his wit and wisdom over the last twenty years of his life. My father died eight years ago now, and I still haven’t really found anyone else to talk to since he passed.

To mourn the loss of one’s youth is a common affliction. But I’m finding it’s good to get older. I am glad to be exactly the age I am right now.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr
May 17, 2021

Foolish and Wise

April 30, 2021 (16 words)

When speaking extemporaneously I often feel foolish. When I write, I am able to approximate wisdom.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr
April 30, 2021