The Last Word on the Most Over-Rated Candy Ever: Tootsie Rolls

Earlier this week (as I was pillaging my children's Halloween candy) I posted on my Facebook status: "The most over-rated candy ever: Tootsie Rolls."

This, of course, drew the ire of some FB friends and the rabid support of others. My faithful sparring partner Michael Whitman commented thusly:

I thought it was a well known fact that Smarties were tied with Spree for the title of "most over-rated candy". Since when can anything with Chocolate (even bad chocolate) in it be over-rated?

Of course, given the gravity and seriousness of this conversation, and this comment in particular, I have been pondering the subject all week.

I believe that Smarties and Spree win out over Tootsie Rolls because they are one thing and they do not pretend to be very good at it. Smarties and Spree are simply tart artificially-flavored fruity things. And they deliver on that.

Tootsie Rolls, however, attempt to be chocolate-like blended with Now & Laters. And the result of this hideous combination is that it does neither well. It delivers neither the limited promise of a Now & Later nor on the near-infinite promise of good chocolate.

This, my friends, is the problem: to do something excellently requires disciplined focus and singular-ness of thought.

In this case, Tootsie Rolls fail due to the un-holy blending of very bad chocolate and Now & Later chewy-ness (I concur with my FB friend Ed Hoppe: "all that work chewing and no real pay-off"). Whereas Sprees and Smarties are simply Sprees and Smarties--no attempts at blending tarty-fruity-crunchy with, say, black licorice.

Of course, some might object that there are exceptions to this rule: Peanut Butter cups, for example, blend peanut butter and chocolate. Creme-filled donuts also seem to violate the sacredness of the "do one thing in order to do it well" principle.

But the exceptions do not overturn the rule. They are simply that--exceptions. By and large in life to be excellent at anything takes rabid focus.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book "Outliers" where he posits the 10,000 hours of practice rule for freakishly good "outliers" like Bill Gates or The Beatles.

Jim Collins also talks about this in his epic study of various companies in "Good to Great." The companies that made the jump from good to great had what he calls a "hedgehog" concept--a single, unifying vision or principle that guided them in making hard decisions. The "also rans" tried to do everything; ergo, they remained also-rans.

There are few people who are excellent at anything. I'm not sure that I have what it takes to get there, either. But at thirty-six, I'm beginning to get some inklings of what it could possibly look like to find my one thing and to develop it more deliberately. Maybe I could still squeeze in 10,000 hours of practice before my time runs out.

Bottom line: Tootsie Rolls are terrible and terribly over-rated. And that's because it tries too hard to do too many things and ends up doing neither of them well. I'd prefer they just changed the name to "Halloween bucket space-eater-upper" in keeping with truth in advertising.

But all of this has got me thinking that maybe I've got some things in my own life that are just taking up space. And I've got to go to God with this, but maybe it's time to focus and figure out if he's made me to be chocolate or a Now & Later.

Or maybe he'd prefer me to stay multi-focused and do his work through me in my weakness rather than becoming omni-competent at any one thing. That's his call--he made me and prepared good work in advance for me to do. I trust him. But I think it's good to at least be asking the question.

Either way, we've got tons of leftover Tootsie Rolls here at the Kirk house, if anyone wants them.

Why I Don't Trust Myself (And What I Do About It)

So there's a lot of talk in both religious circles and the pop-psycho-babble Oprah's book club circles about being true to oneself, about finding out who you are and living into that.

And clearly there's much to be said for this. In our cult of personality world where the Hylton sisters can be famous just for being famous, it can be tempting to build a life of appearances rather than anything of substance.

Even in religious circles, there's personalities that we can be tempted to emulate in self-defeating ways. In the galactically famous David v. Goliath story from the Old Testament, the voice-cracking, zit-popping pre-teen boy David tries on king Saul's armor first before discarding it in favor of his trusty slingshot and a couple of smooth stones. He was a shepherd, and he would take Goliath down as a shepherd.

But there's a problem with all this 'be true to who you are' talk. We don't have any earthly idea who we actually are.

This is in part because of a lack of information. But it continues well beyond our own pre-teen, voice-cracking, zit-popping years. And that leads us to the real problem: self-deception.

We tremendously under-estimate our own capacity to self-deceive about who we think we are and why we do what we do. Self-deception is the proverbial monkey wrench in the battle-cry of 'be true to you!' that rings out from Oprah to Dr. Phil to the messages of moralistic, therapeutic deism that so drive much of our religious landscape.

And so I am deeply skeptical of my own ability to find my way towards being faithful to me...or even of that being a laudable goal.

On thing that helps me are tools: I like stuff like Myers-Briggs personality tests and the Enneagram not because I'm self-absorbed (although that might be true) but because it helps me to see myself. The Spirit uses this stuff to help me see myself for who I truly am.

This is particularly crucial for a couple of groups of people: leaders and parents. If you don't know your un-healthy tendencies, you'll most likely pass those along to the people you're leading...a particularly unsettling thought when it comes to the little people.

Ultimately, we will always remain a mystery to ourselves. There will be parts of ourselves that will always make us sad or surprise us.

But there is One who knows us. To the one who made us, we are no mystery. We're fully known, even the deepest, darkest corners. That passing thought you're shocked by? No shock to God.

We were made to know God and to be known by God. And God is patient with us. There's stuff about God that we can't handle. And there's stuff about ourselves that we can't handle yet, either. He is good to show us himself and ourselves as we are ready to receive it. We can deceive ourselves nearly infinitely--no personality test can outsmart our self-deception. But we do not ever deceive God. That's good news.

And in the end, I do think that we are most fully human when we are doing what we were made to do. I think how we get there however is often less to do with digging into ourselves and more about looking for help outside of ourselves.