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#12 Not too bad, all things considered
Things could be worse even when they aren't
6/27/20254 min read
I absolutely love poetic, absurdist comedy. And golf. There’s a link.
Earlier this week I wrote, "not too bad, all things considered" without any sense of irony in an email to one of my brilliant (and fellow Palace fan) clients at Mind Tools.
In response, they asked me if I’d seen the eponymous skit by Bill Bailey. I hadn’t, but thanks so much for inspiring this week’s golf lesson. Because when you use that phrase, like Bill says, you're implicitly saying things could have been a lot worse and at the same time claiming to have considered everything.
What follows is beautiful, human genius at its peak. I mean, have you really considered all things? Bill’s list is lovely journey into ultra-specificity:
“The Okavango Delta, the cradle of human life. The genius of Mozart. The limpid minimalism of Arvo Pärt. The piano music of Franz Liszt, whose giant manatee-like flipper hands mean that if you're not a circus freak or a yeti, you can't play the bloody stuff...”
Watch the joyfully long (but ultimately short) list of all things considered that I guarantee you haven’t considered yet.
Also shortlisted by Bill: “the baffling longevity of LinkedIn.”
Equally cosmic in its inexplicability is the LI algorithm. I know at least one copywriter who’d agree — the B2B video star and part-time stand-up Heather Barnett who just posted about seeing posts three weeks after the original posting. Not too bad, all things considered.
But here's the golf thing. Perhaps golfers actually ARE considering all things. And maybe that's because our prehistoric brains still work like the good old days in the Delta. The only difference is we’ve got better tools and equipment now.
A palaeolithic par
Think about your origins. Before Croydon or even Yates’ Wine Lodge existed. Hard to imagine, isn’t it, Louise Holmes?
Proto-humans wandered around hitting things with sticks, grunting when things went to shit or someone got eaten, occasionally whooping when they got lucky. They moved in small groups, told stories about big ones that got away, and spent most of their time scrambling among trees and bushes looking confused.
That’s basically most weekends for me. On the golf course, I mean, although equally as applicable to a night out in Croydon. Same levels of frustration and disappointment punctuated by occasional elation, and in slightly less animal fur.
Scientists mostly agree we first appeared around 200,000 years ago somewhere in the vast Makgadikgadi-Okavango wetlands of northern Botswana. Our ancestors thrived there for 70,000 years. Then we ventured forth to explore the rest of Africa and eventually the world. Even Croydon.
That's countless generations of you and me – all perfecting the art of hitting things with sticks while walking around looking for stuff.
Maybe golf didn’t originate in Scotland? Blasphemy, I know, sincere apologies Madders, but perhaps it's our species' oldest game. The clubs got better, the targets got tinier, but the essential Neanderthal experience is unmistakeably early human golf.
All things actually considered
If you find yourself saying, "not too bad, all things considered" (whether after a round or someone asking how you are), make sure you consider at least three miracles:
You can think, talk, and walk upright without dragging your knuckles. Clearly, that doesn’t universally apply to all males of the species. Still waiting.
Life can’t be bad AT ALL if you can afford (in terms of time, money, and an absence of sense) to choose such an infuriating recreational activity.
Your ancestors survived everything from ice ages to sabre-tooth tigers and world wars to procreate so you could stand here moaning about a three-putt.
In short, YOU ARE HERE. Somehow.
The Okavango Delta is where The Human Experiment began. And when our prehistoric cousins left that fertile wetland during droughts 130,000 years ago, they took their stick-hitting habits with them.
As an anthropology graduate, I’ve seen more than a few cave paintings. Which makes me vaguely qualified to tell you that some of the tools the cave dwellers are brandishing look suspiciously like primitive golf clubs, to me at least.
I mean, exactly how else are you supposed to keep yourself amused when you’re not tracking a woolly mammoth?
LinkedIn prehistory mystery
Campires, that’s how. Back to Bill's “baffling longevity of LinkedIn.”
The social media platform we love to hate and yet still connect to like fury is just a version of showing off around the campfire. From cavepeople sharing stories about their hunting and gathering exploits to all of us in our millions camped around screens banging on about our smartypants business ideas and hole-in-one* achievements.
Same baseline need to impress the tribe, different platform. Food, clothes, shelter and showing off.
The mystery isn't why LinkedIn exists, but why we're all still surprised it works. Just like golf, it doesn't make sense that so many people voluntarily subject themselves to something that often induces imposter syndrome.
Yet here we are, posting to our people and booking tee times like you could be dead next week.
Beautiful absurdity
What's remarkable about "not too bad, all things considered" is that it might be the most honest ever assessment of everything. Ever.
Against the vastness of the known universe, the improbability of consciousness (good luck with that one, machines) and the fact that you’re in the car park and snack area adjacent to the abyss, not in the abyss.
Turns out the tectonic plates ARE inching around beneath our feet. Mozart WAS a genius. Liszt DID HAVE huge spanners. And the Okavango Delta IS PROBABLY the evolutionary gene pool of humanity.
Somehow, against all odds, you're out there “spoiling a good walk”, trying to give walking a purpose, and muttering, “not too bad, all things considered” when you just fucked up again.
Considering abso-bloody-lutely everything going on right now, the fact that we’re still even here in the 21st century is extraordinary.
Not too bad at all, really. A state of being for which this infinitesimally small speck of humanity is grateful.
*haven’t stopped banging on about it yet, only just getting started