(podcast available)

Like many of the podcasts/articles I do, this idea had to originate somewhere. In this case, from a fortune cookie. Actually a meme of a fortune cookie.  As much as I was kind of an anti-meme person a few years ago, it is funny how much these have grown on me.

Brevity is an art, and it is something I struggle with. Memes are perfect at this and make me better. I have an entire photo album of them on my phone.

“I don’t throw shade. I throw shine.”

Not something I thought about when I first read it, just one of those I scrolled through and passed on by.

But my brain works a little differently; somewhere throughout the night, that sentence embedded itself in my brain.

For those of you who know me, you know me as a pretty positive guy. Even the head of our youth soccer calls my wife’s and my coaching style “The Positive Peters.”  It’s just weird all the way around, but it’s a compliment. I’ll take it.

The principal at my kids’ school, Miss Tara, also has commented to me a few times about how positive I am.  

And, when it has anything to do with coaching or kids, 95% of the time, I will be almost pukingly positive.

But there’s still that 5% of the time.   Ask my wife.  Nobody can be on all the time.

My favorite type of comedy is snarky, poke fun at people, don’t have your feelings hurt, we’re just throwing something funny out there.  Sarcastic, Seinfeld, Chappelle, Will Ferrel style.  These guys tend to be the best at making fun of themselves, and therefore it’s OK to make fun of others if it’s humorous. 

But what about the guys that we don’t have any action interaction with?   Making fun of people I don’t know or have never met?

Almost every day when I drop my son off at school, I see a few kids who don’t fit my family norms.  Weird kids, dressed in weird clothes, acting weird.   It’s been a part of high school for eons.  

High school is the ultimate in cliquey settings as it’s the exact time of the most social experimentation in identity, style, preferences, friends, interaction, and a million other factors of life.    It’s the apex of “trying to figure out where you fit” as well as the all-time most pressure cooker situation that makes it feel more real than it most certainly is.

It’s also a sociologist’s fun zone.  Because people who hang out together even unconsciously start to copy each other.  Style, clothes, the way they walk and talk…it’s called “Homophily” summarized as “birds of a feather flock together.”

We all have it. I notice it, and you do too.

Grace, Ferris Bueller’s secretary said it best, “Well, he’s very popular. The sportos and motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads, they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.”

And when I see the goth skater chick with 17 pierces and dark eyeshadow, it’s a tossup of what I think to myself.

Some days I think, Man, I wonder what’s going on that’s so dark in her life, sometimes I chuckle and think South Park got their characters spot on, and sometimes I applaud her drive to push the boundaries and test reaction. 

It depends on the day I’m having, probably more than anything else. 

And I think that’s honest.  Look, nobody was more 1990’s stereotype “superjock” than I was.   I didn’t see the humor in the movie, “Friday Night Lights.”  I thought they should go for the win.  Much like the comedians mentioned above, I feel it’s okay to chuckle in my own head as I’m also a walking, breathing stereotype.

Ok, enough science.

What my point is, we all throw Shade- even if we’re just thinking it.   At HEB, at work, at life.   I think it’s how humans are wired.  Find anomalies and then “see them.”

This morning something changed in my head because that meme was rolling through my brain, and all the strange, weird, eclectic kids that I saw at drop-off were coming at me from a different head space. Today, I thought, “These guys and girls are strong and unique. They are trying to figure out their own personal style. That’s not easy to do, especially in high school.”

I threw Shine, not shade.  And it felt better.  

Like so much of the stuff on this website, many of the things I’ve played with in my life and noticed a benefit from revolves around things that I would have chalked up to new age, granola, pseudo-hippie stuff a few years ago.   

At about 40 years old, I became really big into wanting to try new things, learn new skills, and devouring updated and modern information.  The funny thing is, much of it is ancient.

Stuff that seemed weird until I tried it, and it works.

 And there’s no doubt in my mind positive thoughts Reflect better with our physical body.

So I’m going to go out of my way to try to throw shine.  As an experiment and just because it’s a good thing to do.  Of course, the added benefit of “It makes me feel good” doesn’t hurt.

Our brains are wired to find the bad, the scary, and The not-normal.  I teach this in tactical settings and even have a chapter on this as security in my parenting book. 

So find it, and then label it with something positive when applicable. I’ve only been playing this for a couple of days, so I don’t have any long-term results.

I do, however, have a strong belief that this is going to do a lot to rewire and set the tone for my brain. Over the last few months, my articles like “The Internal GPS, Best Burger, Paul’s Beer Review,” and others talk about listening to the subconscious, and my subconscious tells me it wants more positive, so I’m going to feed it what it’s craving. 

My oldest son is like this. He has a very hard time saying something negative about anybody. Even the guys that he particularly doesn’t like, he’ll simply say, “They’re not my style.” and that’s enough. He doesn’t get into personal attacks on people and I love him for it. I can tell he’d like me to keep my mouth shut and probably would vocalize it exactly like the fortune cookie.  “Dad, throw more shine, less shade.  Bruh?!” 

The world could use more of this.