The Self and The Dance.

After their best gig ever, the jazz trio report that it was like time evaporated and so did their self consciousness. They say their reflectively aware egos "disappeared." But the instruments didn't play themselves. And they didn't sound like someone else, but themselves at their best and fullest potential. Scotty Pippin, the Chicago Bulls basketball great, reported that in their greatest games, it was the same. Time slowed down, or almost didn't exist. There was no conscious thought. The ball was where it was supposed to be. Michael was where he was supposed to be. In the zone, what was to happen just happened, and he was aware almost as an observer but not making decisions or wondering or trying hard against the opponents, who themselves became just a part of the dance. When I was writing my novels, my deliberative mind that, left on its own will write a sentence seven times to get it right, and then delete it, that mind seemed to have taken a break and gotten out of the way, and the story just flowed with its own quick speed and power. I'd sit and type for six hours and it would seem like twenty minutes.

All our humanly created problems result from big opaque blundering egos out of control and in the way. "I want." "I need." "I'm mad as hell." All great solutions to problems seem to arise out of ego holidays, when the big bloated beast gets out of the way and allows the dance to happen, the dance that begins who knows where and bubbles up in the quantum field and reaches out in mental and spiritual ways to animate anyone whose egos have become more translucent, then transparent, and then even bow out of the way. The dance happens and we're there and not there and more there than ever and yet are conduits. We're the canvas on which the dance is painted, the floor on which it happens, the air through which it moves. We get out of our own way and make way for the way that alone will lead us well. So, when you catch ego rearing up and roaring, back it off, calm it down, soothe it and rock it to sleep so that something great and full of wonder can happen, like that jazz guy or that baller or that author or the mesmerizing teacher or that nurse who lights up the room with her dance. When the self can be free of the ego, it can dance.

A Big Surprise About Success

One of my biggest wisdom bombs: For over thirty years, I've studied conceptions of success throughout human history, and have analyzed advice about success from nearly every historical period, across cultures. And it never really occurred to me until recently that, as important as the enterprise of proper goal setting and attainment is for the individual or the group to leave a positive mark on the world and contribute to its betterment, the growth that comes from the struggle is every bit as important, and sometimes more so.

The whole structure of human attainment in the end is a spiritual thing, and it's supposed to be about individual and community growth in spiritual maturity, across all the dimensions of our lives. It's meant to be a difficult and joyous adventure, embraced and shared with others. Apparent failures on the surface often hide deep success down below. We're brought into the world as amazing creatures, and that's supposed to be the starting point of an equally astonishing growth. Many get it wrong, and have done so for thousands of years. But there is hope that more of us can catch on and deepen the process, and attain through our mistakes and struggles the glorious ends for which we were made. And yeah, there's a word you don't see often. But you should. Because that's the nature of the intended journey we're on. So remember, it's not so much what you get in life as how you grow that matters most in everything you do.

The Past and Future You

There's a Biblical story about Lot's wife that you likely know. She's supposed to be leaving the past behind, but looks back and is turned to stone, or a stone-like pillar of solidified salt. There is a way in which our inability to let go of the past hardens us in the present and makes any real dynamic movement into the future impossible. We're no longer limber and resilient or able to grow and adapt.

It's always been puzzling to me that we identify the Biblical character not by her proper name but by the phrase 'Lot's wife.' Her very identity is in her circumstances, in her external relations. And that's itself a warning. We are not ever just where we've been or what we've experienced, who we've known, or what we've done. There is a core identity that is intended to be open to the new, spiritually transformable by the alchemy at work in the world at all times and that we can use to form our souls anew as we move forward into our best possibilities. I suspect those guys on Easter Island were also too caught up in pondering the past, nostalgically looking back. And there they are, stuck in that past. Don't be like them. Focus forward. And go forth anew.

Two Greek Words

Two Greek Words. Ok, in English letters: Telos ("TEA-loss") means something like Real Purpose. Techne ("TECK-nay") means Rational Process.

Your telos is your true reason for being, the essence of who you are at your best, what you do when you’re in flow and flourishing, and why you properly are and do. It's your overarching aim and goal and calling in life that properly helps you select, organize, prioritize, and balance all other goals and interests. It’s the North Star of your wellbeing and best work.

Techne is the art, craft, and science needed to live your purpose and attain your goals. It's the toolkit for embodying your telos in the world. It's rational in the broadest sense of the word, incorporating logic, information, and intuition properly together, the head and the heart, which both have their reasons, as Pascal once said.

Your Right Path is the result of both, brought together well, in work and in life.

So to sum up: Real Purpose + Rational Process = Right Path. And that’s how philosophy should work. Simple. Deep. Comprehensive. Practical. If you agree and find this post helpful, please share it with friends. I did a shorter version on social media today, but this is the full deal.

Og and Moog: A Thought Experiment

Og and Moog. Travel with me back many thousands of years to early humans, or their ancestors. Imagine two of them, hunter gatherers Og and Moog, walking around hungry and seeing some wheat blowing in the breeze in a clearing they've come across. Imagine this is a day before anyone has ever thought of baking anything, except maybe wild boar on an open fire. Og stops and stares and has a creative moment, saying, and I translate here from cave man talk, "You know, some of that would make a nice loaf of bread." Moog replies, "Loof! Loof!" Then a cow walks by and Og says, "Yeah, a hot loaf smeared with ... butter." And Moog just looks at him, puzzled. My point of course is a simple one. We need in our time to be able to do the equivalent of looking at wheat grains and seeing for the first time bread, or at a cow and envisioning butter. It's much more than seeing an oak in an acorn, by a big leap. It involves the mystery of our own alchemy, the transformative creativity, the ability to make beyond what anyone else has ever imagined, that's sleeping deep in our souls most of the time. We need to awaken it in our day, more of us than ever before, and see the world around us not just as it is, but as it could be. And then get to work baking the bread we need. We need to be like Og. Amen?

A Dogged Pursuit

I love how a metaphor can help us think through some aspect of our lives. Sometimes, a verbal one tells a story that can be both illuminating and powerful. And occasionally a simple photo can do the same. I saw this simple picture today and was sparked to ponder a general feature of our existence.

For a new challenge, the first step is often the hardest, and as you struggle with it you may feel the frustration of being blocked from going any farther. But that's the nature of the new in our world. It's an experience we share with all those who now seem to be on top of the world, at the pinnacle of the highest staircase, to continue our metaphor, one they may even have had to build as they dreamed and did through their own struggles. But hope kept them going, or sheer persistence of will. If their intent was noble and for the greater good, we celebrate their grit, resilience, and alchemy. And we learn that the same qualities are available to us. So keep climbing, doggone it!

Bring the Light

Be someone who brings the light. I'm tempted to think a purpose of the dark is to raise up light-bearers among us. It's a noble task to which we're called, one that gives benefit to many. We all steer through our lives by the glows of illumination sprinkled about us, some near and others far. If you have a lamp to light, spark its flame and hold it high.

Gifts and Gratitude.

The third volume of the Roman philosopher Seneca's Moral Essays published by Harvard Press features a group of reflections entitled "On Benefits." At one place, Seneca states that benefits are the force that holds together society. We've all benefited from those who've gone before us and built the world in which we could come to be. We're alive because of all our ancestors who strove to live and work well in their own adventures. We're the beneficiaries of billions of people and trillions of choices, from those of the early humans in hunter gatherer bands to our neighbors and teachers and friends who have helped us without condition when we needed it. And our response to all of them and what they've done to make our lives possible should be a deep thankfulness, a gratitude of the spirit.

Surrounded by uncountable blessings and benefits, we too often choose instead to focus on the petty blows, bruises, and bullshit that comes our way. And so we miss the bliss. In one passage, Seneca reflects on the man who sees everything good in his life as being, at best, deserved payment for his own high merit. His sense of entitlement is so high that even what he thinks the world owes him always comes too slowly, with too much trouble, and even then still falls far short of what he believes he truly deserves. The philosopher clearly has fun mocking what's far too common an attitude on life. It's a perspective of course that we need to avoid.

As we grow more acutely aware of our many benefits, we should increase in gratitude, and in become more lavish in giving benefits to others. Gifts and Gratitude are the dynamic Yin and Yang of a full life. And indeed they provide the bond that can unite us all beneath our many causes of division, if they become our proper focus along the way. Happy Day of Thanksgiving to all my philosophical friends!

Out on a Limb

Wisdom often finds itself out on a limb, doing and saying contrarian things. Love your enemies. Become like a little child. Most things aren't what they seem. Selfishness is self defeating. Pure giving is the best getting. Joy is at the bottom of the jar. Humility is the path to positive power. Vulnerability is strength. Stoop to rise. Serve to rule.

But everything great has its imitators and counterfeits. Publishers discovered years ago that confidently contrarian announcements got attention, sparked controversy, and could sell books by the millions. Whatever was common sense or received opinion was wrong, backwards, upside down. "We've always thought X; but a series of clever experiments recently proved Y instead, the very opposite of X. We've always been wrong! Buy this new book to see how."

Beware the charlatans, the con-men, the flim-flammers simply out to make a buck. They end up sawing off the limb they're sitting on. But real wisdom retains its perch. Wait. How then do we know the difference? Well, what lasts? What echoes through the centuries and when lived makes people better, deeper, and more loving? That's the test. But to apply it takes a measure of, well, you know: wisdom. And yet, only a dollop, a modicum, an open leaning forward with a modest discernment, and that will get you more. Guaranteed. And to learn more about this unexpected insight, buy my books. Just kidding.

The Wisdom Edge

The main character in a seventies movie once remarked in existential exasperation, "Don't you realize what a thread we're all hanging by?" The metaphor may change, but the reality is the same. We live on something like an edge at all times, near a precipice, whether we realize it or not. The wise are those who know exactly what the situation is, and where they are, and possess an inner calm about it, along with an agility of balance and correction to deal with anything that may come. Agitation never helps. Fear can be self defeating. A peace deep in the spirit is the sole fount and fulcrum from which good things may arise and even endure, despite the age of the thread or the bare breadth of the edge.

The Benefits of Confusion

Clarity often emerges on the far side of confusion. We have to go through the tangle to find the thread.

The ancient philosophers had a fascinating idea that few things in the world are intrinsically good or bad, but rather have their value residing in how we use them. How do they function in our lives? This can be true of confusion. Since the time of Socrates, people have wondered why Plato’s Dialogues portray him as questioning people about important concepts they thought they understood—like courage, or piety, or justice—and shaking them up, demolishing their felt certainties, and leaving them in confusion without a positive resolution or a “right answer” at the end of the conversation. It may be because Socrates thought of the confusion he left them in as having a power that a simple certainty could never possess. It might goad them into wrestling with ideas they’d taken for granted, and in the process they might not only find the truth themselves but be transformed by the search, something an easy answer could never provide.

In the opening of the Odyssey, Telemachus wants to know whether his father Odysseus is still alive, years after the Trojan War. The man has not yet returned home. The young man asks the goddess Athena, who knows the answer. But rather than just telling him and giving us a much shorter book, she suggests that he travel to a distant land to seek the answer, knowing that what he really needs more than information is the transformation that only such a risky journey can provide, if he is one day to be the properly strong partner for his father to help save their land from arrogant and rapacious enemies.

We like to think of questions as simple transactions. I give you a question, you give me an answer. Loop closed. Transaction complete. But the best questions aren’t like that at all. They take us on an adventure of search and understanding that’s much deeper than simply finding a true sentence at the end of the road. We become seasoned travelers in pursuing our concern. Like Telemachus, we get stronger. And we may be led through various stages of bewilderment and confusion along the way that cause us to rethink, reimagine, and discover what we might otherwise never have been able to think. It may all cause us to become what we otherwise might not have been able to be.

There are obviously some bad forms of confusion, for example, a drug or dementia induced mental fog, a terribly troubled state of mind that can produce a fight or flight panic, or a fervent wish to just shut down thought altogether. But there may be many good kinds of confusion as well and we need to appreciate them for what they’re worth.

Jean Paul Sartre once said of boredom that it’s a state of simultaneously too much and too little. We might say the same about many forms of confusion. It’s perhaps a state of mind that involves both too much and too little. Too much information, not enough knowledge; too much knowledge; not enough understanding; too much understanding but not enough wisdom; too much peripheral complexity, but not enough grasp of the essentially simple core.

Don’t fear the confusion that comes from real adventure, from grappling with new things. Don’t let it tie you in a knot. Take a breath, center yourself, and live into the adventure. Great clarity may eventually result.

A Good Life

I woke up early this morning with these thoughts rolling through my head and had to write them down.

A Good Life. We all want to live a good life. But what does that mean? I suspect that at the core it’s fairly simple.

We all want a life in which we make our proper difference in the world and it makes its proper difference in us.

We seek the journey and result that our being here makes a positive impact for good, however small it may seem, since there is no such thing as small in the realm of the spirit.

We want to be and become with appropriate action, wonder, and most of all, love.

We hope to serve as a blessing to others wherever we are, and to the broader natural world.

And we want to grow into some version of our better or higher or even best self, in the circumstances given us and that we form throughout this adventure.

We may not have all the words for these things explicitly in our minds along the way, and we may not keep consistently on track, but this is what we are born to aspire to, and what's always hidden away in the bottom of our hearts. And all of this, seasoned with gratitude, hope, and compassion along the way, is, I think, a good life.

Solitude and Mastery

The solitude required of mastery can be profound. Even for essentially social skills, a cultivation within is necessary, and time alone in analysis, imagination, and development equally crucial. When properly done, the isolated immersion is so complete, though, that time and space conspire in shrinking tight around you to form a total cocoon so that you seem to miss nothing in the broader world while that one thing is itself everything.

Moral Memory and Wisdom

There's cognitive memory and muscle memory. That's well known. I suspect there's also moral memory.

Sometimes, cognitive memory is easy. You have an experience and you later remember it. Sometimes it's hard. I had to work for days to memorize the famous "To be or not to be" passage in Hamlet, and even longer to get the Saint Crispin's Day Speech down perfectly. You should have heard me motivating the troops as I drove to the grocery store, my "band of brothers" ready for anything. I did it over and over and over. And that's the recipe for muscle memory as well. There is a cumulative readiness in the nerves and musculature cultivated by repetition and awaiting the next spark for a nearly automatic flow of your tennis serve or golf swing or guitar chord progression. Moral memory I take to be similar.

It's all about wisdom and that part of wisdom known as virtue, though we can equally well and more traditionally think of wisdom as one of the virtues, even if perhaps wildly the most important one, since it may encompass all the rest, both generally and situationally. Yeah, I know. That won't fit on a bumper sticker or LinkedIn poster or get 2,000 "likes." But it's true. And the implication for us today is that your moral choices, to attend, to focus, to feel or to act, are cumulative as well. The sheer repetition sets up a memory in your soul making you more likely the next time to focus or feel in that way. Because of this, moral goodness gets easier with practice. But so does moral degradation and corruption, as we can see in the news daily. Every choice adds up. There are no exceptions. We’re never just doing, we’re always becoming. Small actions create small habits and they become big and deep traits of character.

With this in mind, take care to build your wisdom in little things, then you'll have it readily and almost automatically available in big things. It's something important to know and to remember.

An Aperture. A doorway.

Sometimes, there's a breech in the stone, an unexpected crack in the wall of the cave, and a whole universe opens up. It could be a book or a heard sentence, or a film, or a song, a poem, or even some fleeting aspect of a day in nature. It could be almost anything that for a moment opens up a new and spectacular view of what's out there, or in here, or around and beyond. Find a way to capture and save that amazing glimpse.

A character in my novels talks about taking a wisdom bucket wherever we go, for precisely this reason. He says that waters of insight can fall from the heavens like rain suddenly at any time and we need a way to capture those moments to use later and share. So keep a snapshot in your head or a small bucket in your heart and you won't forget, but can pass on to others what you've so wonderfully seen.

Regis and Me

Regis Francis Xavier Philbin was a really good guy. I was at a Notre Dame football scrimmage, the springtime Blue and Gold Game, when an older coach came up to my row in the stands and yelled out, "Professor! I want you to come and meet one of my good friends! Can you come down for a minute?" "Sure, Coach." I made my way across the seats to Coach George Kelly and down the aisle as he tugged on my sleeve and said, "I've been wanting you to meet an old friend of mine. We go way back."

We got down closer to the field, only a few rows up, and the coach led me across a row of seats. "Regis, Regis, I want you to meet my favorite professor, Tom Morris." George Kelly patted me on the back. "Tom, this is my old friend Regis Philbin." I got a big smile from the television icon. His show, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee was at the peak of its popularity on ABC. "Professor, come sit down and visit!" I did, and he said, "What do you teach?" I said, "Philosophy." He said, "Wait a minute. You're my daughter's favorite professor." What? "She's in your big freshman class." "Really?" And we talked on and on for a long time. Regis had no sense of self importance or celebrity. He was just a nice funny guy. The man wanted to know all about me and what I did and at some point asked me if I was thinking about writing a book for general audience. I said, "I just did and it's out next year." "What's it about?" "True Success for everybody. The wisdom of the great thinkers." He lit up even more. "Let me know when it's published and we'll have you on the show to talk about it!" Wow. Ok. "I'll do it!"

Regis was the ideal conversationalist. Nothing was about him. Everything was about me and whomever was around. He was engaging, and really funny. In fact, I was so taken up in the moment I forgot to tell him that a few years before, when Notre Dame had won the National Championship, I had written, recorded, and released a rock and roll fight song called "The Fightin' Irish Are Back!" And Champion T Shirts made up a special shirt for it featuring the Irish Leprechaun playing my Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, with my initials added to the headstock: TVM. Regis had played the song on his national show and danced to it. And it didn't even occur to me to mention that to him.

A little more than a year later, I was on the famous sofa with him and Kathie Lee, in front of the live audience in late August of 1994, if I recall, talking about kids having success going back to school, and listening to him pitch my book to his national viewers. He'd come backstage to the Green Room to talk to me and make sure I felt his personal welcome and enthusiasm for the book True Success before the show. But of course I was in the Men's Room. But he met me in the hall and we had the best chat. He was a real motivator. After that little hallway talk, I could have suited up and played with the team. Even at my age. After the broadcast, he grabbed me and pulled me around all the cameras to the audience and held up my book and said, "Everybody go get this book right away! You'll love it!" And they did. And then I saw him at a few parties in South Bend on game weekends, and he was always kind, generous, happy, funny, and just a joy to be around.

His daughter and my philosophy student JJ has created her own show Single Parent, and her husband is the creator of The Good Place. Good people. Good work. Regis will be missed by all. Gone too soon. A good, good man who did great things for other people, like me. And that's true success.

The Canterbury Tales

I like to read old books. I just read Pater Ackroyd’s masterful prose retelling of The Canterbury Tales, first penned by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late fourteenth century. With all the wild naughty stories of mistaken identity, folly, fornication, and flatulence, you have to remind yourself that you’re reading stuff written two hundred years before Shakespeare and six centuries before such storytellers as Neil Simon and John Updike. It’s a “retelling” published by Viking not long ago, which is a touch beyond a loose translation or tight paraphrase, simply because not everyone wants to wade through:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licóur

Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

But my favorite lines in the original prologue, sampled here, are:

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye,

So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages …

The 436 pages of tales are full of wisdom about our earthly plight, as well as its entertainments and wonders. A group of random pilgrims is traveling through England on their way to a holy site, when one of the group suggests they all tell engaging stories to help pass the time. And they’re off to the racy races. Who knew? But under all the off-color marvel and merriment, there is indeed a lot of insight. In The Knight’s Tale, you come across this rumination on how little we know, and the wisdom of not rushing to judgment. He says:

<<Why do so many people complain of the actions of providence, or the decisions of God Himself, when their eventual fate is better than they could have imagined? Some men long for riches, but at the expense of their health and even of their lives. Some men desire to escape from prison, as I once did, only to be murdered in the households of their kin. We do not know the answers to our prayers. We fare as one who wanders drunk through the streets; he knows that he has a house, somewhere, but he cannot remember the name of the street. His is a long and wayward journey. So do we fare in this fallen world. We search for felicity down every lane and alley, but often enough we take the wrong path.>> (38)

And consider these cautionary words on the wheel of fortune, the ups and downs of life, spoken by “The Man of Law” among them who tends to emphasize the lows:

<<Woe is always the consequence of bliss. Sorrow follows prosperity, and suffering succeeds joy. That is the way of the world. Follow this advice for the sake of your well-being. If you ever experience happiness, keep in mind the day when it will end. Nothing abides.>> (127)

Debbie Downer has an ancestor. Later he says again:

<<The joys of this world do not endure. Life changes, like the tide. After the brightness of the day, comes the darkness of the night.>> (143)

And later, the Squire, in his own tale, remarks:

<<But nothing lasts forever. Fortune turns the wheel.>> (273)

And later, the Monk says:

<<Who can trust the dice that Fortune throws? Anyone who makes his way in the difficult world must know that misfortune and disaster are always at hand. The only remedy is self-knowledge. Beware of Dame Fortune. When she wants to mislead, or to deceive, she chooses the least predictable path.>> (357)

And later, the Nun’s Priest, in his tale says:

<<The end of joy is always woe. God knows that happiness in this world is fleeting.>> (382)

You want to say, "Cheer up! It goes the other way, too!"

On the topic of wealth and poverty, the Wife of Bath speaks about rags and riches in a way that could get us talking for an hour. She says:

<<Seneca and other philosophers tell us that cheerful and willing poverty is a great blessing. Whoever is satisfied with a slender purse, even though he does not have a shirt on his back, I hold rich indeed. He who is greedy is wretched; he longs for that which he cannot have. He that has nothing, and wants nothing, is a man of wealth; you may call him a knave, but I call him a spiritual knight. Poverty sings. You may know that quotation from Juvenal, to the effect that a poor man whistles and dances before thieves. Poverty may seem hateful but it is in truth a blessing. It encourages hard work. It teaches the wise man patience. It teaches the patient man wisdom. It may seem miserable. It may be a state no one wishes. But it brings us closer to God. It brings us self-knowledge. >> (174)

The Clerk speaks about the masses of people in his time, and in a way that may resonate a bit too much in our own day:

<<Oh, fickle people, people of the wind, unsteady and unfaithful! You are as ever changing as a weathervane. You delight only in novelty. You wax and wane as does the moon. You gape and chatter, much to your own cost. Your opinions are worthless, and your behavior proves that you are never to be trusted. Only a fool would believe anything you say.>> (228)

And the Pardoner could be speaking for certain self proclaimed religious figures in our time, if they would ever confess to their own methods, when he says:

<<That is how I retaliate against those who defame me. I spit out my venom under the cover of holiness. I seem virtuous, but seeming is not being. I will tell you the truth in one sentence. I preach only for money. I want their silver pence. That is why my theme has always been, and always will be, the same. “Greed is the root of all evil.” It is suitable, don’t you think. I preach against the very vices I practice! It saves time. And even though I may be guilty of that sin, I persuade other folk to repent with much wailing and lamenting. But that is really not my intention. I will say it one more time. I preach only for the cash.>> (309)

And in the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, a fake expert is unmasked, a sharp conman who seems to be able to fool an inordinate number of otherwise normal people. The teller of this tale tells us of the man, a real life individual, and thereby anticipates several bestselling authors and gurus of our time:

<<No one would be able to describe his infinite tricks and subtleties. You could live a thousand years and not be able to fathom all of his craft. No one is his equal in falsehood. He is so sly in his use of words, so slippery in his language, that he can make a fool of anyone he talks to. He could beguile the devil, even though he is one himself. He has duped many people, and will carry on deceiving them as long as he lives. Yet this is the curious thing. Men travel for miles to consult and converse with him; little do they realize he is a swindler in disguise.>> (412)

But perhaps that’s enough. I’ll save all the bawdy salacious bits and pieces of narrative for your own deep dive into this breezy and often insightful text. But don't say I didn't warn you!

For the book, click HERE.

Kindness

Kindness. In a surprising cultural time of snark, derision, and callous cruelty among people, it becomes a powerful and healthy counter-cultural act to be kind. If you use social media for any time and watch the news nightly, you'd almost think kindness was a foreign language, or perhaps the hardest thing in the world. And it's the very opposite. It's built into our nature as one of the requirements for proper spiritual growth and inner fulfillment. When we show kindness to others, we certainly benefit them, as well as the general tenor of society, but the deeper reality is that we cultivate our own garden in a beautiful way. So I often ask myself: Why wouldn't everyone want to do this? Nasty benefits no one. Kindness is good for all.

The Path

Half of life is covered by the advice: Let go. Be Open.

The other is addressed by the words: Stay firm. Be Brave.

Following both pairs of reminders, each in its way, is the path. Discerning the proper time and aspect for each is wisdom. Both are ultimately best applied, in their own apt forms, at every time. And the sun will rise on you with new energy each day.

Pyramids in the Sand

In one sense, our highest achievements are like sculpting pyramids in the sand. The waves of time and change will eventually obliterate all the creations of our hands. So what's the point? Why all the effort at achievement? Why all the arduous endeavors to learn from our failures and finally get it right?

I've come to believe that what we become and help others to be as a result of our worldly efforts are spiritual things that will never be erased. A good deed for a friend, an innovation at work that improves things in some way, a social media post that informs or heals or encourages, those few minutes on Zoom or Face Time with a good person who needs your help can have ripples of positive consequence that never end. Plus, why should we think in the first place that impermanence itself drains things of all value? Perhaps it endows good things with a particular, zestful, concentrated value, however ephemeral in itself though lasting for us, to be fully savored as we can, and celebrated as the art we’re here to make. So build boldly in the sand, hear the ocean, feel the breeze, notice the little birds, and enjoy.