I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier. As I've studied and written about human nature

over the last many years, one thing has struck me over and over. Often it may seem to me that

people's behavior makes no sense, but when I understand their perspective, I see why they do what

they do. I may not agree with it, but I see why it makes sense to them. Like with the foretendencies,

what seems appropriate to me as an upholder, may not make sense to a questioner of light or

a rubble. Sometimes behavior that seems ridiculous to me may have a perfectly reasonable explanation.

One extraordinary example of this principle is a story about the rock band Van Halen,

which I read about in Chip and Dan Heath's excellent book called Discicipt, How to Make Better

Choices in Life and Work. So by way of background, let me explain that Van Halen was an extraordinarily

popular band. And in the 1980s, they toured constantly and they were one of the first rock bands

to have major stage productions in smaller markets. Their setup was extremely complex and technical

and a lot of it needed to be done by the people who worked for the venue. And the band was always

concerned that the stage hands would cut corners and the band would be exposed to some kind of injury.

And this is the kind of thing that really does happen. But because they had such a busy schedule,

the band's own crew didn't have time to do a full quality check at each stop. So what could they do?

Now in other news, you should know Van Halen had a wild reputation. They partiedly crazy,

they were out of control, they were demanding and destructive, they were notorious. And one of the

most notorious stories was that the band's contract writer specified that they had to have a bowl

of Eminem's backstage with the brown Eminem's removed. In fact, Article 126 of the contract said,

there will be no brown Eminem's in the backstage area upon pain, a forfeiture of the show with full

compensation. And this clause was buried in the middle of countless technical details. And there

were stories of David Lee Roth walking backstage seeing a brown Eminem and trashing the dressing room.

...