Look at that banana, just look at it.

Bananas are a modern miracle. They’re cheap, nutritious, and readily available.

And just about every banana you’ve ever eaten (if you live in the Northern Hemisphere) came from the same tree.

Not just a similar tree, the way oak trees are all similar to one another. The same exact tree, which was planted in a hothouse in England about a hundred and fifty years ago. The Cavendish banana tree (named after the family that’s now called the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire) is sterile. It has no seeds. The only way to grow one is to take a cutting from an existing tree and basically grow a clone.

Because the tree was optimized for yield and taste, we end up with plentiful, delicious, cheap bananas.

Until a blight arrives. And the virus that’s just around the corner is almost here, and it will wipe out every single Cavendish tree on Earth in just a few more years.

There have been real environmental side effects all along, but at scale, they become impossible to ignore.

Or consider the legal system in my country. It grew from a fairly informal and resilient (if not always fair) way to keep the peace and settle disputes into a behemoth, which combines the prison-industrial complex with a very expensive civil suit system that’s beneficial to many of the key players but ultimately insensitive to those that can’t use it to their advantage.

Check out Rohan Pavuluri’s new TED talk about bankruptcy, or Bryan Stevenson’s urgent talk on criminal justice.

People aren’t bananas, and the injustices that the legal system has created have always been shameful. But at scale, immense scale, they’re even worse.

Industrial scale seems to pay off. Until it doesn’t. And then it’s on us to change it, while there’s still time.

Attitude follows action far more often than action follows attitude.

We change our mood as a result of how we act. If you want to feel a certain way, begin by acting as if you do. On the other hand, if you truly want to accomplish something, waiting for the mood to strike is ineffective.

That’s all language is.

“Banana” is not a fruit. It’s a word that we use in English to identify a fruit.

And code words work beautifully as long as the person you’re seeking to communicate with understands the word the way you think they do.

Often, when people with goodwill and shared values end up disagreeing, it’s because they didn’t understand the code words that were being used.

In fact, it might be the only reason.

Eventually, the culture figures out how much time we’re supposed to spend on something. They call it the “right” amount. How long an education should take, or an RFP. How fast to deliver on an order. How long to shop around for a new car. How much time to spend with a patient. How much time should be devoted to learning a new skill or engaging with a new idea…

If you spend about the same amount of time as everyone else, you’re likely to get about the same amount of benefit.

There are two other choices, worth considering:

1. Spend significantly more time than anyone else thinks is reasonable. Charge appropriately. Perhaps this will lead to an extraordinary outcome.
2. Spend far less time than you’re supposed to, and invest that time into processes and alternatives and benefits that everyone else is overlooking.

Changes in the culture often happen when someone is gutsy enough to reorganize the time stack.

It always does.

Perhaps you remember when the most urgent issue of the day was the relationship between the US and Cuba.

Or the argument you were having about what flavor the wedding cake should be.

The very nature of ‘urgent’ means that it can’t and won’t persist.

Important, on the other hand, might hang around for a long time.

Who’s a better student? The one with a 3.95 GPA or the one with 3.96?

Neither or both, actually.

These metrics are foolishly and incorrectly precise. The decisions that led to this average had far more than a hundredth of a point of randomness and judgment calls along the way.

Who’s richer? Someone with 3 billion dollars or someone with 3.1 billion?

They’re both the same. They can buy anything they want and one won’t run out of money before the other.

And the same goes for clickthrough rates, body temperature and most of the other ‘measures’ of our life that deserve air quotes around them.

Just because we can increase the digits doesn’t mean we can see more clearly.

Up close, face to face, in the specific, it’s difficult to dismiss the humanity of others.

It’s only when we decide to industrialize the process, to do it all at once, to boil it down to numbers–that’s when we begin to disconnect.

One at a time. Because it might feel like a slog to you, but it matters to them.

Willem de Kooning said, “I have to change to stay the same.”

Because whatever system we’re in is changing. Because every step we take changes the ground we walk on. Because while you’re busy trying to keep it all together, someone else is working just as hard to change it again.

Some organizations, artists and leaders work to disrupt and innovate.

And some seem content to close their eyes and will things to be exactly as they were yesterday or last year.

Between the innovator and the laggard, though, is most of us. Surfing and dancing with possibility, simply to continue to serve and keep our promises.

What you do isn’t how you do it. What you do is the promise you make to the people you serve. If the people change, then the specifics of your promise have to change as well.

[Thanks to Will for the quote.]

When we say this, we might not be as accurate in our description of the situation as we believe.

Perhaps we mean, “that’s not what I was hoping for.”

Or we might mean, “if you knew how hard I worked, you would have made a different decision.”

Possibly, we mean, “if you understood the world the way I do, you’d agree that this outcome isn’t fair.”

We rarely complain about fairness when the world lines up the way we hope it will. Even (or especially) if the outcome was unfair to someone else.

There’s an enormous amount of unfairness all around us. People who don’t get the benefit of the doubt, advantages that are multiplied, systems that are rigged. But right here, right now, it’s possible that what just happened was fair, though it was also disappointing.

Hand washing used to be controversial.

Before Ignaz Semmelweis did his groundbreaking work in proving that disease spread when doctors didn’t wash before and after treating patients, hygiene was ignored. In fact, it took decades for the system to change.

Today, of course, it’s understood that doctors, food service workers and everyone else ought to wash their hands to protect those around us. Doctors don’t wash their hands because they enjoy it, they do it because that’s what doctors do.

Disease evolves.

As it spreads from one person to another, a disease reproduces and has a chance to mutate. And those mutations create new problems, problems that we may be ill-equipped to deal with.

And disease is frightening. When it collides with culture, culture often demands we stand still. We stick with what we know, with what feels safe, with the status quo. Because to do otherwise means that we have to acknowledge that perhaps one day, the disease will win.

It’s easier to sell a new fashion or a sports team than it is to sell public health. Like most of the human challenges we face, it’s a marketing problem, a chance to use words and affiliation and possibility to create change.

There’s a long history of culture pushing back on the smart, generous, safe interventions that ultimately become standard. Because the status quo is the status quo precisely because it’s good at sticking around.

When we have a chance to make things better for the people we care about, we usually realize that this is exactly the thing we hope to do. But first, we need to see what our choices are based on and where they lead.