six degrees of kevin bacon?
more like two degrees to an education
Contemporary life is absent accountability, it is absent encouragement, and it is absent community. Particularly for men. Our vision is a world served by better men: fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, uncles, friends, lovers, workers and humans. Become part of project kathekon by subscribing below.
One
Jared Leto to Viola Davis to Kevin Bacon (Suicide Squad; Beyond All Boundaries). Meat Loaf to Kevin Pollack to Kevin Bacon (Outside Ozona; A Few Good Men). Edward Norton to Tony Devon to Kevin Bacon (25th Hour; Telling Lies in America). Brad Pitt to Kevin Bacon (Sleepers); Helena Bonham Carter to Kevin Bacon (Novocaine).1 We all know the game, and if the above is any indication, the connections needed to link one person to another are far fewer than six.
We’re all connected. Connection is what helped many of us - myself included - get their first job. I may not have had a direct connection to the company, but someone my dad knows did. That helped get my resume to the top of the pile for review and set up the right interviews. Heck, connections helped previously get me my internship in New York which led to the summer of reading that set up a future of finding connections between ideas found in the written word. Connection is what, for all its society-killing faults, Facebook and other social media were built on before going so dangerously off course. In short, connections can be a short-cut to progress and success, but it’s vital to make sure the connections are pure, good and true.
Plus One
Although there’s an old adage about it, often attributed to men in particular, the three hardest words to say aren’t “I love you”. I grew up in a house that said it freely, just as our house does now, without any sense of diluting the words by saying them often. I know I’m not the only one that can say it without reservation.
The three words aren’t even “I don’t know”, whose silence has disastrous consequences as Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt explain. Though those words can be tough - especially at work, where one, for better or worse, feels he should be an expert so as not to look uninformed, or worse, feel like an impostor - there’s a lot that I don’t know and will freely admit to.
Take my garage, for example. I don’t know how to change my car’s headlights nor how to use jumper cables. I don’t know how to change my car’s oil, something I always thought a man should know how to do, but never managed to learn.
Sticking to cars, I don’t really know how to change a tire. I attempted it - once - when I was in high school, and my girlfriend’s car got a flat in the middle of farm country in northwestern Connecticut. I started off pretty well - found the spare tire, the lug wrench (whose name I had to just look up) and the jack in the trunk. After getting the car off the ground I proceeded to completely strip the nuts on the tire necessitating a call to AAA (by someone else of course).
Another tire-related item: I’ve never learned to change a bike tire either. Even as I’ve gotten back on the bike in recent months, I’ve kept my rides hyper-local, for fear of getting a flat and being stranded in the middle of nowhere. Many of you may be saying to yourself, “c’mon, man, just google ‘how to change a bike tire’”. A half a second later, and Google gives me one result for every 4 Americans - about 75,400,000 total. But where to start?
Staying on the bike, I don’t know how to use clipless pedals, though I’ve taken the steps of getting my bike tuned (something else I don’t know how to do myself), buying bike shoes, cleats and pedals, not to mention new grip tape, new bike gloves, shorts and jersey.
No, the three hardest words to say aren’t “I love you” or “I don’t know”. They are: “I need help.”
Equals Three.2
There’s a piece of information I left out of the story of how I met my wife that has relevance here: during those first few weeks of dating, we both connected over our deep dislike of the Beatles. This disdain has created controversy among friends and complete strangers alike. To see where my allegiance lies, one can look to Dobie Gray’s misheard lyrics: “give me the Beach Boys and free my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock ‘n’ roll and drift away.” But that’s a conversation to have another day.
That relevance I mentioned? The Beatles song Help!, in particular, the opening lines:
Help! I need somebody
Help! Not just anybody
Help! you know I need someone, help!
Let’s parse this out a bit.
Help! I need somebody.
The first three words, the toughest three words - I need help - are there, albeit in a different order. With an exclamation no less! Then, the call for a person. A living, breathing person. Not an Amazon-recommended purchase. Not a NetFlix-suggested show. Not one of the 75,400,000 Google results. Somebody.
Help! Not just anybody.
That word “help” again. Now we have some momentum, one more and we have a trend. And we’re back to referencing a human. But not just any human. It can’t be any random person - connection - or any old YouTuber telling me how to do something. That person needs to mean something to John - or was it Paul who sang it - I don’t know, and don’t plan on googling it.3 Oh, and “old YouTuber” is likely inaccurate: the highest grossing video producer is 9-year old Ryan Kaji who grossed $29.5m last year. How’s that for comparison, Daniel?
Help! You know I need someone, help!
That word “help” again - we have a trend! After saying it three times, the listener knows what he needs: someone to help. And that gets to the heart of the matter - asking a human, but not just any human for help. On second thought, maybe the Beatles weren’t all that bad after all.4
Which brings us to two degrees to an education. Think about something you don’t know. It could be a daily task many, but not all, of us know how to do, and do well. It may be a new fitness and nutrition approach that you’re curious about starting. It could be how to rewire a light fixture, put in a dimmer switch, or build a lamp from scratch.
Now think of your friends. Not your social media “connections” (and as my dad used to say when referring to gentlemen “and I use that term loosely”). Your actual friends. If you’re like most men, you probably have at most a dozen or so close friends, something Billy Baker gets into - for him, a Baker’s Dozen has a great double meaning.
Now think of their close friends and you’ve got about 150 people.5 While this is also the number of friendships a human can keep according to Dunbar’s Number (and number coincidences seem to pop up a lot - look at the size of a type Roman Legion, or an Army Company), I’m using it to illustrate the point that between your close friends and their close friends, you have 150 individuals with a variety of skills, experiences, passions, and best - and worst - practices that you can query for help. They may even have the equipment needed to learn some of the things you don’t know.
Now, every request6 for help requires a response to be fulfilled, and you may be thinking that no one will step forward to help when you ask for it. Bullshit. Think back to my earlier comment about wanting to look like an expert at work. People love sharing knowledge, especially when it’s about something they have both expertise in and an affinity for.
To sum it all up, the math is pretty easy. Next time you want to know something, you just need to ask your close friends. One of them may know, just like when I asked my wife to hear this week’s newsletter pitch.7 You asked them and they don’t know? Have them ask their friends. In my experience, you’ll likely find not only someone who knows, but somebody who will be more than willing to help.
A bit of a postscript: me, to my grandpa, to Kate Smith, to Alan Reed, to Harry Bellaver, to Kevin Bacon (Public Access TV; The Armed Forces Hour; Rambling ‘Round Radio Row #1; Perfect Strangers8; Hero at Large). Five degrees.
Let’s get you some help, friend
But first, two pieces of homework this week:
What is one thing you never learned to do, but wish you did? Now let’s go find someone who can teach you.
Is there something you know how to do, and do well, that you want to share with others? Don’t keep it a secret. Let the rest of us know in the comments, too.
I’ll turn in my assignment shortly.
in case you missed it
Let’s have a look at what’s been happening at project kathekon:
recently at project kathekon
We looked to the Foo Fighters opening MSG back up to a full capacity show as we start to come out of the pandemic here in the U.S.
After sharing what was learned by running with daughters, we started a conversation in response to three questions. We learned that it’s weirder in the back yard, we have a few aspiring morning larks, and that we lean to the city.
books, jerry. they (still) read books.
We recently introduced project kathekon’s book barter service. We’re still waiting for our first offeree and our second offerror. The first book on offer is Together by Dr. Vivek Murthy.
Already read it? Feel free to let others know in the comments what you think. Have a book to share?
we’re getting ready for another 10thousand1 challenge.
We’re all but done with June. I have about 800 more bicep curls to get me to 10,001 for the month. You can learn more about 10thousand1 here, where we welcomed a few new participants (hello to Antonio and Daniel Z.), and join us for July’s challenge, which will be announced later this week for participants.
We have more in store for you. Until then, we encourage you to subscribe if you haven’t already, or share it with someone.
While I can’t talk about it, the first person to name the movie that ties the first actors together wins a prize.
Apologies to my bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics.
If you know without googling, feel free to drop it in the comment.
Editor’s note: this line was added to make sure project kathekon doesn’t lose its community of readers.
12 squared equals 144. My bachelor’s degree remains in good standing.
The word “ask” is, and will always be, a verb, not a noun, despite what corporate America will have you believe and to have somehow convinced the Oxford English Dictionary. For shame.
Thank you for helping me get to the root of this, Jes. And yes, that’s another math reference for you all.
So well said. (I still say, my misheard words are better lyrics for ‘Drift Away’!) Before GPS, Mapquest, and Google Maps, paper maps were all men had for guidance on longer trips by car. I still can vividly see your Grandma berating your Grandpa for refusing to stop and ask for directions, and, of course we became hopelessly lost. That happened on almost every long trip to a new destination. And, then, you’d think I would have learned better, but the exact same scenario often took place with your Mom and me when we were young. Truly, men do need be willing to ask for help, but, it’s hard. We seem to be wired not to. Our egos get in the way. We think it’s unmanly. Admittedly, it’s still a hurdle for me to overcome. But, after reading your brilliant piece, I’m going to try harder.
1. As evidenced above, there is so much I don’t know how to do, and that’s just for things in my garage. So let’s start there. I’d love to learn how to change a bike tire. While we’re at it, I’d like to learn how to do a few fixes on the road like chain issues.
2. This one is tougher than I thought it would be. I don’t consider myself an expert at many things, more a dabbler. But I would say for this purpose, Bullet Journaling would be something I have experience with and am moderately good at if we use my consistency with it as a guide.