Years ago I saw a play three times in one week. It was written and directed by my friend David Beaird. I have forgotten the title, but I remember the essence: to solve a difficult and urgent problem use the “Four C’s.

OK.  What are the “Four C’s”?

Imagine that you’re flying in an airplane and are lost. If you don’t solve the problem you will die. What do you do?

1. Confess. Confess that you are lost. It’s like alcoholism, or a miserable marriage. You have to first admit that you have a problem that you need to solve. Although this seems obvious, most of us prefer the comfort of feeling that we are in control of the situation. That can be a mistake, sometimes a big mistake. At age sixty-five my mother discovered a lump in her right breast. She didn’t tell anyone for ten months. That turned out to be a very bad idea.
2. Climb. Climb as high as you can, both to give yourself more time to solve the problem and to open yourself to a broader perspective. By climbing higher you might see an airport. Or a thunderstorm chasing you. Perhaps another airplane. You want to access as much information as you can. My mother should have seen a doctor.
3. Contact. Contact a ground station. Ask for help. “Houston, we have a problem.” You have to publically admit that you need help. That step is difficult for many of us, unless we are in serious pain. To paraphrase Proust, “We listen to pleasure. We obey pain.” Isn’t it better to solve the problem before you double up and become immobilized? A close friend of mine was experiencing financial problems. She was having difficulty making her mortgage payments and fell further and further behind. When she finally made an appointment with a financial advisor she was in serious risk of losing her home. Jim Henson, fifty-three years old, creator of The Muppets, died of organ failure because of a strep infection. Quick action could have saved him. He didn’t want to be a bother to people, and declined the suggestion of his family that he should go to the hospital.
4. Commit. Commit to a course of action. You will have limited time before your airplane runs out of fuel. Then the engine will stop and your airplane will crash—with you in it. You have to do something. You have time for only one maneuver. It’s like the Aesop’s fable of “The Cat and the Fox.” One day the hunting dogs began to chase both a cat and a fox. The cat immediately climbed up a tree to safety. The fox used many strategies: double back and forth, ran through a stream to throw the dogs off his scent, hid in a burrow. Nothing worked for the fox (no relation to me), who was eventually caught. Moral of the story: one trick, when it works, is better than many that don’t work. So commit to your course of action—it’s time to perform.

There it is. Memorize the Four C’s. Or write them down on a notepad or in your phone. And think about the situations in which you can use the Four C’s. When you need them it may be too late to look them up.

Confess. Climb. Contact. Commit.

Alan

Gordon, a friend of mine, recently told me this sad, then happy story about his marriage to Louise.

“Alan, I used to walk around feeling like I weighed more than a thousand pounds.  Most of that was anger.  For some reason I had this crazy idea that if I was super angry for long enough Louise would give me what I wanted.  Every time I was upset I would walk around the house with a mad-on for days, or weeks.”

“Yes, I noticed that a few times when I visited you.”

“But Alan, I found that being angry is no fun.  It colors the world rotten.  And it’s painful. As I said, I finally understood what was really going on with me was the absurd belief that if I hurt hard enough for long enough Louise would cave in and give me what I wanted.”

“That doesn’t make any sense to me,” I said.

“Exactly, and when I really thought about it, that idea didn’t even make sense to me.  But that’s how I felt for many years.”

“So does this story have a happy ending?”

“I think so.  I finally told Louise that when I appeared to be upset and withdrawn to just say to me, ‘Gordon, you seem upset.  If there is any way I can help, please let me know what it is.’”

And what did she say?

“She said, ‘Fine.  I can do that.  Then what should I do?’”

“Then just leave me alone. My anger will dissolve.  As much as I want it to last forever, I never manage to carry anger around for more than a few weeks. But I want to let go of it a lot faster than that.”

“So how did this deal with Louise work out?”

“That’s the good news.  It worked out great.  Even though my anger used to hurt me a lot more than it hurt anyone else, it also felt wonderful.  I felt justified.  But starting from the day of my talk with Louise, with her help I was able to just let it go.”

“You know, Gordon, my father has a theory that no one has to feel negative emotions from the neck down, and that you always have a choice.  That idea must be working for Dad, because he is in a good mood almost all of the time and he’s more than 101 years old. I think my dad, and you, may be on to something.”

Gordon smiled in agreement.

I now suggest that, for all of us, when we are burdened by all those heavy pounds of anger, we simply apply what Gordon and Louise discovered – to just let it go. I even practice this myself.  Today I choose not to be angry, and I never am for long.

Over the past few years, Gordon has lost a lot of weight, and most of that was anger.

Anger is a lonely job.  Fortunately, no one has to do it.

Alan

Many years ago the surface of my desk was a cluttered mess.  I decided to clean it up and, with help, in a day or two my desktop was immaculate.  Perhaps I was motivated to take action because my assistant discovered a rather large check buried under the disorder. I needed the cash for my brand-new business to survive and it would have been helpful to have deposited the check when it was received four months earlier.

My desk remained neat for nine months.  Every single day before I left my office I filed or otherwise dealt with every single piece of paper.  But I still remember the day when, as I stood up to leave, there were three pieces of paper on my desk.

“Alan,” I said to myself, “if you don’t take away those three pieces of paper, it’s over.  Your desk is going to be a mess again.”

The nice part of talking to yourself is that you control both sides of the conversation.  “You’re right,” I muttered in my mind.

“So take them off your desk.  It’s only three pieces of paper.”

A second advantage of arguing with yourself is that you always win.  Unfortunately, you also always lose.  The papers remained, and were joined by hordes of companions over the next few weeks.

As I have previously written, a good relationship can only be built upon a foundation of trust. Lies are like those little pieces of paper accumulating on my desk, first one and then another. If I deceive you once how can you ever trust me?  If you work for me and I pay you two weeks late one time, how can you possibly trust me to pay you reliably in the future? If you lie to your partner about why you were two hours late arriving home, how can he or she not be concerned every day in the future that you might be late again and not tell the truth about the reason.

It’s a slippery slope.

I have met every payroll on time for more than forty-five years.  I always tell my wife the truth about where I am and who I’m with.

And the top of my desk is still a mess.  I wonder how many checks are buried there.

Alan