Grow The Pie (Not The Scarcity Lie)

Imagine yourself at 20, perfect GPA, with your cousin’s wedding conflicting with your strictest class. Your professor is encouraging you to go, but has also reminded you that you’ll lose half a letter grade for an absence. What do you do?

This isn’t a hypothetical story. The 20-something in that imaginary picture is a young adult/pre-movie star Elizabeth Banks, taking a class at University of Pennsylvania, where the teacher had a strict attendance policy.

Banks had a family wedding, planned in advance, that required her to take the drive from Philly to Tennessee, and leave on a Friday. When she realized she’d miss the class, yes, the one with the attendance policy, she sought out the professor and plead her case. The teacher heard her out, agreed how important the wedding was, suggested she should go because family is important, and then - reminded her that she still would lose half a grade.

It was a lesson in adulting. It was a lesson in adulthood. But, most of all, it was a lesson that set up her biggest post-college LIFE lesson: the scarcity that she was born chasing - of jobs, and money, and success - it was as much a myth as any actual entitlement was reality.

A lot of life has gone by since that conversation with her teacher. But, not so much life that she forgot that exchange. She chose to go to the wedding, and she definitely lost half a letter grade for doing it. Over the years, it became a badge of honor. Seriously.

So, when you invite Elizabeth Banks to give your commencement speech, you probably don’t expect her to call out a teacher from almost 30 years ago, and then side with that teacher. But that’s what she did. I wish every graduate, from college down to kindergarten could hear this lesson.

What the teacher wanted to know is that she was an adult. Adults have agency. Even if a college-aged adult feels like a college-kid, they’re an adult, capable of making AND owning their choices. This is what the teacher was doing.

The teacher was treating young Ms. Banks as an adult, not entitled to anything, in full ownership of her decisions AND consequences. 

And you know what? The lesson stuck. But was only the beginning of a bigger lesson.

The next lesson, after understanding how she was entitled to nothing, came when she encountered The Myth of the Pie. The “pie” here is the metaphor for the money/success/glory in the system, that if we are not entitled to, we must figure out how to take, with full knowledge that everyone else, above us and below us and next to us in age, is chasing it too.

Banks’ commencement speech is David Foster Wallace This is Water level good. I’m best just to summarize what follows via quotes (lightly edited, with my highlights). I would love every young person and many (too many) older persons to understand this, deeply:

I’m a long way out of college, but this speech hits me personally (even if it took years to recognize it). I remember my post-graduation mindset. I remember thinking I had the tiniest pieces of the bigger pieces of the pie I was after. A few gigs, here and there, enough money to pay rent, and still, so many dreams. I’d had the entitled beaten out of me long ago, but I still felt like people knew about some secret playbook that I did not.

It took a lot of years, and a lot of frustration, to realize all of my focus belonged on growing bigger pies. When I was young, I was all about building and growing stuff myself (usually in music, and bands, and my many side hustles). But then, I tried to climb a corporate ladder, and I sort of forgot all of this. I got very focused on the pie, and the way to get a bigger piece, and the titles and metrics along the way as those above me incentivized.

The problem was, they weren't giving me true agency like Banks' professor did. They were offering a different deal: “Do this to get that” - but without stating the real terms. What they meant was: “We view this as zero sum. You do the work, we'll give you crumbs, and unless we're dead and gone, you can never have our piece. Accept that fate or leave.”

You know what I did, eventually? I figured out what Banks had learned at 20 - that I had agency, that there was no pie, that I could bake my own. It only took me two decades. I left. I owned it.

Take all this back to graduation. Please. Let’s put a bow on it. Let’s make this post something you can take with you to one of those graduation parties you’re inevitably going to be at in the coming weeks:

You’re entitled to nothing (but you have to learn this for yourself, like a rule of big toe, not a rule of thumb, that somebody tells you).

There is no pie. There is no piece of it you are chasing. You are only ever competing against yourself.

If there’s nothing you’re entitled to, there’s nothing anybody else is entitled to, and, if there’s no pie, with no fixed sized piece, you only need worry about what you can make, grow, build, or help make/grow/build in your life.

The opportunity may not be under your nose. If it’s not, go, leave, and find it. When you do, and it will probably take several attempts, figure out how to grow the pie. Not just for your benefit, but for those around you.

Last but not least, look for others with this mindset. Those who think they are entitled, or who see a pie and want their piece, exercise extreme caution with them. You didn’t put in all this work to be or stay small, rise above.

Ps. If you need this message, stop and think about it deeply. If there's a slice you're waiting for someone to hand you, stop waiting. Start today. Bake. Grow. You already have all the ingredients you need.

“Stop competing and start beating the pie lie.” Amen Banks. This is water, and that was the pie lie.

And if you need more graduation fodder, my two David Foster Wallace, “This is Water” inspired notes are here and here. Or, you can’t beat the original: