​Humans belong to tribes. Whether you think you do or not, you are part of communities larger than yourself.
 
Tribes have customs, language, communication patterns, lifestyles. You learn those things with time, whether you grew up in a certain group or came to join one later in life.
 
One of the more amusing tribal customs to me is the “finger wave.” For those of you who live in farm communities, grew up there or moved to one, you’ll know what I mean. When you drive down a country road, if you extend you first finger up from the steering wheel to an oncoming driver (often a pickup truck), they will respond in-kind.
 
The finger might mean: “Hi. What’s up? Be safe. Good to see you. Drive safely.” Or something else. It is an acknowledgement of connection in country life.

It doesn’t only exist there. Many years ago, living in Washington, D.C., a group of us took a camping vacation in the Virginia hills. We drove together in green boat, a car so huge from the 1970s that if felt like it was floating on water. The guy who owned it became the best man in my wedding. We’ll call him P for identity protection.

P was and is a very funny guy. Always able to make you laugh. Observant of life and its nuances. He’d found the finger wave somewhere recently and was obsessed with it.

“Watch this, Dave,” he’d urge me as we meandered down an almost deserted road, some old clunker coming our way.
He’d lift his finger. Invariably, he got a finger response from the oncoming vehicle. This cracked him up. He was easily amused.
 
My wife and I moved to Nebraska in 1997, where the tribal finger wave became even more apparent. Driving long distances with no settled humans probably leads to loneliness, and just about any driver I encountered in my job criss-crossing the state responded to the finger communication. “Hey, it’s lonely out here. How the heck ya doin’? Seen any other cars the past two hours? Nope.”
 
Most recently, I’ve found the orange Subaru Crosstrek (OSC) finger wave culture. Purchasing the car last year, I didn’t consider I’d joined a new tribe. You don’t see many OSC’s, so when you do, you kind of perk up. This led to me identifying other OSC’s coming my way.
 
And, of course, that meant lifting the greeting finger. The first time I did this got a positive response.

While this didn’t surprise me, I had to validate my data. I began watching for OSC’s, prepping myself and trying to make eye contact with drivers while raising the greeting finger.
 
And yes, oh yes, the response was terrific. Close to 89 percent of OSC’s coming at me from the opposite direction or turning in front of my car at an intersection saw the greeting and responded affirmatively. “Yeah, your car is cool, too. Aren’t we special?”
 
Though that’s not really the connection, there was and is something to be said for this tribal cultural connection. You like a funky colored car. So do I. We have something in common. Cool.
 
In our currently disconnected world, it’s nice to have these connections. Reach out. Give someone the wave. Join the tribe.

​Walk away to solve your problems. This works in a multitude of ways.

I was thinking about this recently while puzzled by the word game, “Connections.” If you’re unfamiliar with it, you are given 16 words and you must match them in four categories of four based on some component on how they relate to each other. For example, you might have “hammer,” “saw,” “nail,” and “shingle.”  The category would be “things needed to repair a roof.”

The challenge in the game is that they give you cross-over words that seem to fit in multiple categories and it’s hard to determine which ones to eliminate and which ones match up. You figure it out through the process of elimination and quantum leaps of intuition and logic (or plain luck when you give up, which I do once or twice a week).
 
We need to thank AI or the software program (seems to me they are same thing, performing the function of the human brain for us) for the difficulty of the game. They throw a lot of curve balls and it seems like it’s often easy to get three connections, but four requires more brain cells than I have at the moment.

The key word there is “moment.” Because if I’m stymied and walk away, the brain batteries recharge. I come back fresh.

I do this regarding “Connections” on a regular basis when I’m frustrated. When I return to the game 10, 30 or 50 minutes later, I’m refreshed and thinking differently. I’m in a different frame of mind, and solutions often pop up immediately when I click the game back on my phone.
 
This is not unusual or weird. It makes sense. It’s a classic problem-solving device. Walk away. Don’t think about it. Come back later.
 
Our brain’s neural pathways lock up. Yours may work better than mine or be more fluid and flexible. But I think all of us face this dilemma to a certain extent.
 
Let’s say you’re trying to figure out how to put together a piece of furniture from IKEA, for example. You’re not good with directions. You get the legs locked into the base of the chair, but for the life of you, you can’t figure out how to insert the framed pieces to the back. No matter how hard you try, the directions don’t make sense. You event new curse words.
 
Time to get a cup of coffee. Step outside, breathe some fresh air. Take the dog for a walk and think about the beauty of nature. See if the mail arrived. Ah, okay.
 
Now, come back. Holy Mackerel, Andy, suddenly the pieces look different. “Hmmm, this fits here and WHOA, this one slides right in. I can’t believe how simple that was.”
 
You hold the finished chair up for examination. You sit in it. Yeah, that’s it.
 
Walking away gets you there. There’s something about stepping away from a problem and NOT thinking about it that allows freedom to reapproach it later fresh. You think differently. You’re relaxed. Those are keys to success in many endeavors – approaching something with a new mindset and being relaxed.
 
High level athletes understand this. You can’t keep hammering away at something in the same way if it’s not working. Try something new. Walk away.

I’m not sure what started the following conversation. “Hoarding” was the topic – people who can’t throw things away. Letting piles of items grow and grow in your closets, garages, basements and elsewhere, to the point where someone else comes in, visits and wonders, “What the heck is going on with this person?”
 
I remember back at the turn of the 21st century (Y2K folks, remember that?) and we lived in Columbus, NE. In our neighborhood, there was an old AMC Gremlin (yup, what a name for a car, huh?) one block away from our house parked on the street. An old guy lived there.
 
Curiously, one day I looked inside the car because you could see things piled up against the window. “What the heck is in there?”
 
It turns out, a LOT. Mostly newspapers, but also cans and clothes and other stuff. Piles and piles, to the point where you realized something weird was going on, and that this individual NEVER drove a passenger since another human being couldn’t fit anywhere inside.
 
At that moment in collective world history, I’m not sure I’d ever heard about the hoarding syndrome – where people stockpile things that they can’t seem to throwaway (for whatever reason).
 
One important lesson in life that most of us learn, but not everyone, is that you must throw away things you don’t need. Nostalgia value doesn’t matter. Utility value does. You must make a decision.
 
If you don’t, your closet, garage or basement comes back to claim you. They get so packed with things you don’t use that you can’t find the clothes you want (closet), can’t park the car inside (garage) or do laundry (basement).
 
Recently during my morning workout routine, a trusty friend who always has great stories, weighed in with his own when I raised this subject. He laughed and related a tale with his son.
 
He mentioned he hoards two things: jackets and fishing lures. Both accumulate exponentially. He gets rid of them and soon thereafter the stash morphs like an amoeba splitting. Cut off the head and the body grows.
 
Enter his son. They take on the mission of reduction. His son does not appear to have the accumulation/hoarding gene.
 
They go to the closet. His son: “When was the last time you wore this?”
 
“Last year.”
 
“Gone. How about this jacket?”
 
“Uh, a couple of years ago.”
 
“Toss it.”
 
Things went on like this, slinging away all those little-used jackets. Then came the fishing lures.
 
“When’s the last time you caught a walleye with this one?”
 
“Never. I was thinking about getting rid of it.”
 
“Why didn’t you?”
 
“I don’t know. Always the hope the next walleye isn’t so bright.”
 
“Lose it. What about this one?”
 
“That one I got for my 21st birthday. I can’t get rid of that.”
 
“Sure you can. Do it.”
 
And so on. The process continued. Unused items got tossed and piles shrank.  All to the good. You have to break the bond, let go. My buddy knew this.
 
Yet, and yet.  Lurking is the potential for a return as new items replenish your stock. For lone-term success, you must resist this.

As my buddy jokingly stated, “a year later I was facing the same issue again.”
 
Sometimes you can use a logical plan to reduce the hoarding, like he did. You can also use the replacement method: “if something comes into the closet, something must exit the closet.” This works.
 
It comes down to decisions. Make them. Stick to them. Don’t look back. But save your dad’s baseball jacket because some day you might need it.