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I have a question for you. It's simple: are you a mammal or a mensch? Well, in reality, you're both. Think about what it is not to be a mammal, but to act as a mammal. So if I say "mammal versus mensch," it tells you there's a tension between those two states of being. Well, what is a mammal? Let's think about what a mammal does. A mammal acts on its own nature and its instincts. And what is a mensch? Well, if you don't know the term, it's a Yiddish term, and I think it's one that's made its way into the English language as well. It means somebody who is striving; it means somebody who's growing; it means somebody who is trying to be better than they were. They are competing not with other people, comparing themselves not to other people — they're comparing themselves to who they were yesterday. It's a fine human being. It's somebody we want to strive to be. It's somebody that we admire for their behaviors — it's not what they have, it's not their good looks, their height; it's what they do, it's how they treat other people, it's how they handle their affairs, themselves.

So if you have that idea, then you know that the mammal can become the mensch. And probably you know also that every mensch is also, at times, just a mammal — that's just who we are. But think about dogs and cats, and think about how they greet each other, and think about what they do and where they do it, and think about how they treat each other. If a dog approaches another dog that's eating food, you might get a growl, maybe even a bark, maybe even a bite. Human beings do the same. We only need to look in our prisons, we only need to look in the news, to see plenty of stories of people behaving as mammals behave, and nothing better than that.

Let's create a portrait of a human being — both mammal and mensch — with a line dividing the two: the lower self, mammal; the upper self, mensch. Why upper, why lower? Well, the reality is it takes effort. Gravity will pull you down to your mammal self and your mammal behavior every time, but you can rise above it with effort — and it does take effort. I wish it weren't so, but the truth is, how do we gain muscle? By lifting. And the same is true in our character and our behavior as well. It takes effort to rise up above what we instinctively want to do or say before we hit send. It's the mensch who says, "I can't send that message, and I certainly can't phrase it that way, or send it now."

But we have those opportunities throughout our lives, throughout our careers. And when we think about the people that we really enjoy spending our day with, at work or at home — the people that we admire, the people that make us feel calm, at ease in ourselves — we know the work that they're doing, we know the efforts that they're making, to rise above the mammal self, the lower self, and to be not something else, but more than just that: to be a mensch as well.