Module 1 · WHAT IS TRUE · Lesson 2 of 2
What is not your fault
You can be responsible for your part and still not be to blame for theirs.
Lesson 2 of 12
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Your little brother is fourteen. He watched a video this week and he asked you a straight question.
If he did everything right, why did they still shoot him?
You have about four seconds before your answer becomes the thing he believes. What do you say?
Two things that are both true
Here is what most people cannot hold at the same time.
There are things you can do that lower the odds. That is real. Hands, movement, tone, timing. The next ten lessons are that.
And doing all of them does not guarantee anything. Also real. Philando Castile is the proof and there is no way around him.
People pick one and drop the other, and both drops are damaging.
If you only hold the first one, then every time something bad happens you look for what the person did wrong. That is where he should have just complied comes from, and it is how a fourteen year old learns to blame a dead man.
If you only hold the second one, then nothing matters, nothing you do counts, so why bother. That is the version that gets somebody killed on a Tuesday over a decision they did not have to make.
Both. At the same time. That is the whole lesson.
The word responsible does two jobs
English is sloppy here and the sloppiness costs people.
Responsible can mean at fault. Who caused this.
Responsible can also mean the person handling it. Who is on duty. Who has the job.
You are not at fault for how you are perceived. You did not build that and you did not agree to it.
And you are the one handling it. Nobody else is standing in that spot. Not the person who built it, not the person who should fix it, not anybody on the news. You.
Those two sentences do not fight each other. Being the one handling something you did not cause is what an adult is.
The trap on the other side
There is a second trap and it is quieter.
Some people take everything in a course like this and turn it into a rule about how to be smaller. Talk less. Take up less room. Be less of yourself so nobody gets nervous.
That version works, right up until it does not, and it costs something every single day it is running. A person who has trained himself to be smaller is carrying that into a job interview, a classroom, a relationship, a doctor's office. It does not switch off when the lights go off behind him.
This course is not that. Reading a room and controlling what you project is a skill, and it is the same skill that closes a job, wins an argument in front of a judge, and gets a landlord to say yes. It is power. Module 2 is about running it on purpose.
The difference between the two is who is in charge. If you are managing how you come off because you decided to, that is skill. If you are shrinking because you are afraid, that is damage, and it is worth knowing which one you are doing.
What to tell your brother
Back to the fourteen year old.
You do not tell him it was the man's fault. It was not.
You do not tell him nothing matters. It does.
You tell him this. There are things that help, and I am going to teach them to you, and none of them make it your fault if somebody hurts you anyway.
That is the whole answer and it takes eleven seconds. Say it out loud once, right now, before you read further, because the day you need it you are not going to have time to compose it.
You are not at fault for how you are read. You are still the one reading the room.
The workEight questions
Two of these nobody reads. They are marked.
Write, in one sentence, what you would actually say to the fourteen year old.
Somebody says he should have just complied. What is happening in that sentence?
- AThey are looking for a reason it will not happen to them
- BThey genuinely believe compliance is a guarantee
- CThey are blaming somebody who cannot answer
- DAll three, usually at once
Which trap is closer to you right now: thinking nothing you do matters, or thinking you have to be smaller to be safe?
Write one thing you already do to lower the odds in an encounter. You probably do more than you think. Then write where you learned it.
You are in a store and a security guard has been following you down two aisles. What are you doing?
- ANothing different. I am shopping
- BMaking sure my hands are visible and I am not touching anything I am not buying
- CLeaving. It is not worth it
- DSaying something to him
Has anybody ever made you feel like it would be your fault if something happened to you? Who, and what did they say?
There is a difference between being at fault for something and being the one who has to handle it. Write an example from your own life that has nothing to do with police.
Finish this sentence in your own words and make it something you would actually say.
There are things that help, and none of them mean ______________________________________.
DeeperThree reflections
Nobody reads these.
- 1
Write about a time you were blamed for something that was not yours. What it did to you, and whether you still carry it.
- 2
Write about a time you made yourself smaller to get through a room. What it cost, and whether you would do it again.
- 3
If somebody younger than you is watching how you handle all of this, write what they are currently learning from you.
Before you go
Most people never get told both halves of this. They get the compliance half from one direction and the nothing matters half from the other, and they are left picking.
You do not have to pick. Two things can be true and holding both is not weakness, it is accuracy, and accuracy is what keeps you from making a bad decision under pressure.
Everything from here is the short list. What you control. Starting with the thing almost nobody teaches, which is what you look like from twenty feet away to somebody who does not know you.
Say the sentence out loud to somebody younger than you. Anybody. A cousin, a brother, a kid at the park. There are things that help, and none of them make it your fault if somebody hurts you anyway. Then write down what they said back.