Self Trust and Joy

A Vital Lesson Well Learned. I experienced the most amazing Zoom session Wednesday night as a viewer. The people who made college possible for me, the prestigious Morehead-Cain Foundation, has a network of former and present scholars around the world in every sort of profession and job (Frank Bruni of the New York Times, Alan Murray who runs Fortune and Time, Inc, our current and great North Carolina governor, the best selling novelist Shilpi Somaya, British television producer James Dean, and on and on). All are graduates of UNC Chapel Hill and keep in touch across space and time in various ways.

This week’s evening event was the second in a series of group Zoom sessions (I sadly had to miss the first) where our Morehead-Cain “cousins” - as we call each other - will variously speak on topics from our own lives. Last night, our speaker was Tom Thriveni, the accomplished Writer for The Late Late Show with James Corden (that super talented dude who also rides around and does Carpool Karaoke with top vocalists like Adele). Tom spent the hour talking about his life journey and how he learned self-trust, which is a big challenge for a lot of us, regardless of where we are in life. It was one of my favorite chats ever.

Tom’s parents came to America from India and worked hard to create a good life for their children, whom they hoped would get great educations and go into solid professions where their futures would be assured and they wouldn’t have to take the sorts of risks their parents had embraced in order to begin a new life here. Tom was on track. Great university. Econ major. But then a wild summer internship with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show sparked a flame. And he knew what he wanted to do. But it was too risky. So he became an investment banker instead and then went into private equity as impressive stepping stones to eventually attending Harvard Business School and then of course ruling the world from a corner office high up in a tall building somewhere in the world, and thereby making his parents both proud and unworried for his future. But investment banking and private equity weren’t for him. The pressure, the long hours, and the not at all loving the work put him in the hospital for brain surgery. Yeah. More than the normal work headache. Brain surgery. Maybe two of the scariest words in English. It went well. So he became a comedy writer. Obviously. The surgeons removed all the grey cell investment banker-equity neurons and his remaining synapses naturally reverted to jokes.

“Mom. Dad. I have news.” Oh, no. The conversation. The previous such chat, involving cranial cutting as it did, wasn’t a great precedent. How not to end up back in the hospital? How could he face this? But back up. How could he face the world of comedy, which of course is not known for any guarantees concerning corner offices in tall buildings, world power, and impressive wealth. But Tom had developed a trick. Whenever he confronts a daunting new possibility, something he really wants to do but that has a failure rate percentage with numbers that better reflect normal body temperature, nowadays around 98.3% or something, he uses his imagination. He’ll ask himself “What’s the worst that can happen?” And in pretty much every case where he has ever employed the question (apart, of course, from the brain surgery), the answer has been a version of: “I’ll do something very interesting and fail and come away with some great stories to tell.”

And he has learned something else along the way. Great people make what they do look easy and natural. But whenever we tackle something big and new to us, it doesn’t typically feel easy or particularly natural in the early stages. And so people give up. Tom figured out that something’s being really hard at first doesn’t mean that you’re not supposed to do it, or that you’re not meant to do it, or that it’s not for you. This is exactly what anything challenging and interesting is supposed to feel like at first. That “natural” free throw shooter? Yeah, he makes it look easy after those three million practice shots we never saw.

Tom also learned a third thing. As if these two aren’t enough for that corner office, at least metaphorically speaking. Because, yeah, in comedy you learn to work with metaphor. It beats brain surgery. At least on one end of the surgical scenario. He learned that success isn’t about big titles, major status, and great sounding attainments. He said something profound: “The process is the joy.” And that’s a powerful secret.

The joy isn’t in being named “Writer” for a major television show and being known for the signature monologues that make America, and often the world, laugh. It’s about the process. But then when he described his normal day and what the process is like, I could see that, first, it’s a good thing he’s a lot younger than me to work the hours he does, and second that to enjoy a process that hard is living proof he’s found his thing. Nothing makes it easy. But the fit with his passion makes it great.

Thanks, Tom Thriveni, Writer, Great Zoomer, and Philosopher of Life!

Courage and Your Philosophy

Courage has nothing to do with a lack of fear. It's all about how we react to the fear, worry, or anxiety that we naturally feel in the face of any danger, including the unknowns of radical uncertainty. Do we feed the fires of fear, do we allow anxiety to grow insidiously and uninhibitedly, or do we act inwardly to redirect our emotions, attitudes, and actions in more positive directions? Courage means first and foremost doing what's morally right for both you and others around you. It means prioritizing our values properly, giving up what's not necessary, and protecting what's most valuable.

Every one of us capable of extended thought is by nature a philosopher, whether we realize that or not. Every one of us has a basic worldview, however well or badly developed. The only question that remains is whether we'll be good philosophers or bad ones, which is to say, whether we'll live from the resources of a powerful and productive worldview, or a poor one. We all need a good philosophy of life, or a basic worldview that will allow us to respond wisely to the ups and downs of life with a measure of inner peace and calm. Anything positive that you think anxiety may help you to achieve can be had without its intervention, as a gift from wisdom alone, without the worry.

In our unusual time, we have the need and so the opportunity to examine our personal philosophies of life and ask whether they're up to the challenge we clearly face now, and that we could well encounter in different forms in future years. The courage to engage in self examination, to seek new self knowledge, and to work toward developing a robust philosophy of life that can give good guidance and inner peace will repay us in benefits for as long as we live, and perhaps even beyond those bounds.

Note: These issues are addressed more deeply and I hope helpfully in my Egyptian novels and in the new book Plato's Lemonade Stand, in case you want to explore them more fully. Just visit TomVMorris.com and click around.

Greatness, Danger, and Courage

Like most people, I knew of the author Antoine de Saint-Exupery because of his famous petite children’s book The Little Prince. I had to laugh today when I went back to re read this small prose poem many years after I first encountered it, and thought anew that it read like it had been written by someone under the influence of ample and exotic pharmaceuticals. But it’s sold over 140 million copies worldwide and is often described as one of the most beloved books of the twentieth century. It turns out that it isn’t the only book inspired by his years as a pilot flying from Europe to Africa and across other parts of the globe in the early days of manned flight.

I had never read any of Saint-Exupery’s other books until now. His memoir Wind, Sand, and Stars is stunningly exceptional. If you had asked me whether I might be interested in a book about early airline pilots delivering the mail and an occasional passenger between France and Northern Africa in the 1920s and 30s, I would have thought that to be a little far afield of my normal fascinations and concerns. But what a surprise! This is a book about adventure and life. It’s about fear and courage and commitment. It’s about focus and meaning and love. It’s about making our way through a world that’s often terribly harsh and then also lovely beyond words. It’s about our nature and our condition. As I read, it occurred to me that the book would be an ideal companion read to my own short novel, The Oasis Within, due to not only their shared stories about the Egyptian desert, but also their truly surprising overlap in deeper themes and insights.

Saint-Exupery sees all of us as something like the dispossessed members of a royal family, a royalty of the spirit that too many of us have left behind and sadly forgotten as we make our way in the world. He sees a spark of greatness in us that we need to fan into the flames that are meant for us, within our souls. You find this view intimated in several passages and informing many others. In one place, he’s reflecting on the life of a slave who has been kidnapped into service and is happily doing his job well. Saint-Exupery writes:

<<This man before me is not weighed down with chains. How little need he has of them! How faithful he is! How submissively he forswears the deposed king within him!>> (110)

In a later part of the book, we come across this statement:

<<If a particular religion, or culture, or scale of values, if one form of activity rather than another, brings self-fulfillment to a man, releases the prince asleep within him unknown to himself, then that scale of values, that culture, that form of activity, constitute his truth.>> (175)

We are all, in his view, royalty of the spirit. And we too easily lose our feel for this origin and destiny. One stormy morning early in the book, our guide is on his way early to an airfield for what’s to be his first piloted flight with the mail. He’s riding a bus with other men who are going off to their own apparently dreary office jobs in town. He listens in to what strikes him as their banal and mindless chit chat. In it, he catches a glimpse of the prison that is their daily lives and, musing on it, he directs his thoughts to one of the men, addressing him with sympathy and concern:

<<Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as a man. You are not the dweller upon a errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.>> (11)

In another passage on how most people seem to live, he exclaims:

<<How shallow is the stage on which this vast drama of human hates and joys and friendships is played!>> (67)

We shrink our lives from what they could have been, from what they’re meant to be, into a small shadow of their potential. We play out our days in what we consider the safest place we can find to hide, and so we miss the greatness we could have inherited. He says:

<<With more or less awareness, all men feel the need to come alive.>> 219

Our poet pilot believes that our happiness will never be found in solitude, but in community, in friendships and partnerships together. Early on, he remarks:

<<Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in the warmth of human relations.>> (29)

Each of our lives is a part of a bigger picture. And it’s crucial for us to see that picture well.

<<It is only when we become conscious of our part in life, however modest, that we shall be happy. Only then will we be able to live in peace and die in peace, for only this lends meaning to life and to death.>> (222)

Some of Saint-Exupery’s deepest insights are to be found in his remarks on danger, fear, and courage. He first thinks of danger not as just a feature of flying in his time, be as a pervasive truth about the world and mentioning the desert bandits, or razzia, to be encountered in North Africa, he says:

<<We might believe ourselves secure; and yet, illness, accident, razzia—how many dangers were afoot! Man inhabits the earth, a target for secret marksmen.>> (92)

No matter what we confront in this life, our philosopher believes we can handle it. He even thinks that the extreme concepts of horror or terror never apply within the immediacy of experience, but only after the fact, and on the part of those who merely see or hear about the dangerous or harrowing incident that can be lived through with courage. He says, aphoristically:

<<Horror does not manifest itself in the world of reality.>> (49)

He always says:

<<Nothing is unbearable. Tomorrow, and the day after, I should learn that nothing was really unbearable.>> (147)

In fact, he views our hardships as providing a necessary condition for our deepest and highest growth. He writes:

<<But men are like this: slowly but surely, ordeal fortifies their virtues.>> (197)

He also believes that danger can bring us together in a distinctive way. He’s seen it and lived it. In fact, the deepest friendships evolve over time and endurance and memory:

<<Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.>> (27)

Saint-Exupery believes that we best make it through the hardest challenges and the worst situations by means of a focus that will not be shaken. One of his friends, a man named Guillaumet, had survived a harrowing ordeal and Saint-Exupery was subsequently offended that some journalists portrayed the man as if he were something like a careless insouciant rebel who merely laughed at danger. He saw his friend’s approach to the traumatic much more deeply. He says to us:

<<There exists a quality which is nameless. It may be gravity, but the word does not satisfy me, for the quality I have in mind can be accompanied by the most cheerful gaiety. It is the quality of the carpenter face to face with his block of wood. He handles it, he takes its measure. Far from treating it frivolously, he summons all his professional virtues to do it honor.>> (30)

This is the focus that allows us to move forward in the worst circumstances. He quotes his friend Guillaumet himself as having said, “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.” (38)

Saint-Exupery writes:

<<And I thought: If we were to talk to him about his courage, Guillaumet would shrug his shoulders. But it would be just as false to extol his modesty. His place is far beyond that mediocre virtue.

 If he shrugs his shoulders, it is because he is no fool. He knows that once men are caught up in an event they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

 Especially if it is scrutinized with Guillaumet’s lucid gravity. Guillaumet’s courage is in the main the product of his honesty. But even this is not his fundamental quality. His moral greatness consists in his sense of responsibility. He knew that he was responsible for himself, for the mails, for the fulfillment of the hopes of his comrades. He was holding in his hands their sorrow and their joy.>> (39)

In all things, we can grow through our ordeals shared with our fellows, through the bad times and the good. Finally our advisor says of another friend named Mermoz and the craft of flying, or any craft in our lives:

<<This, then, is the moral taught us by Mermoz and his kind. We understand better, because of him, that what constitutes the dignity of a craft is that it creates a fellowship, that it binds men together and fashions for them a common language. For there is one veritable problem—the problem of human relations.

<<We forget that there is no hope of joy except in human relations. If I summon up those memories that have left me an enduring savor, if I draw up the balance sheet of the hours in my life that have truly counted, surely I find only those that no wealth could have procured me. True riches cannot be bought. One cannot buy the friendship of a Mermoz, of a companion to whom one is bound forever by ordeals suffered in common. There is no buying the night flight with its hundred thousand stars, its serenity, its few hours of sovereignty. It is not money that can procure for us that new vision of the world won through hardship—those trees, flowers, women, those treasures made fresh by the dew and color of life which the dawn restores to us, this concert of little things that sustain us and constitute our compensation.>> (27-28)

But I quote too much. The book overflows with poetic insight into the deepest truths of our lives. I recommend it highly.

For the book, click HERE.

The Courage to Be.

In 1975, my next door neighbor Paul was a very famous architect, a graduate of Harvard, the University of Berlin, and the Bauhaus. He was in his 70s and an avid skier. He was a handsome man in great shape and with a lively mind. I had seen his homes in books of modern architecture.

I would go visit him frequently. He asked to borrow my books about Wittgenstein. We loved to sit and talk philosophy and modern design. I liked to play on his tennis court. My wife and I took care of his chickens when he and his young Chinese wife traveled. They lived in an old New England farmhouse that had been added onto time after time. It was an architectural mess. He was an architectural marvel. And he was my favorite unofficial mentor.

But then we had to move out of the one bedroom "mother in law" apartment in the big house where we lived outside New Haven. The husband of the family owning the home had disappeared for a year, only to show up one day in a crazy disguise. I didn't recognize him at all, but his kids yelled out "Daddy!" Weeks later, men in dark suits and Ford LTDs arrived to take boxes of things out of his part of the home. And soon, we had to move a mile away.

I later heard that Paul had been diagnosed with cancer. I tried to figure out what to say to him before I visited. I couldn't come up with anything. I was afraid to visit without good words for him. I thought I had to have answers. I postponed seeing him. I procrastinated. I was busy. I was in graduate school at Yale. I thought of him often, and put off what I thought would be a very awkward visit to a man who had been so full of life. Then someone told me he had died. Waiting for words was one of the worst mistakes I had ever made.

Don't wait for words. Don't wait for answers. Go to people in need and just show you care, words or not. People need love more than answers. People need you.

Sorry, Paul. I was an idiot. Actually, I was a coward. But I didn't understand that at all. I do now. And I've developed a little more courage, the essential courage to just go forth and be. I don’t have to have all the answers. But I do have this one. And now, all these years later. I have the courage to admit my weakness and to say thanks for the lesson. I still love you, man. I finally realize what it takes to show that to others.

A Blessing

I'm halfway through the editing of my next novel, The Mysterious Village, and just came across this passage that expresses wishes and blessings that I want for us all. In the midst of travel across the desert, and at a special Oasis, Walid is in the presence of a mysterious lady who seems to have special knowledge not available to most. He asks about the future. She's reassuring but elusive. And this happens.

She reached out her right hand and spread her fingers wide, pointing her palm toward Walid but not touching him or even coming close to him. She spoke several words in a language he didn’t know or understand, and in a strange tone, both softly and quickly, with her eyes closed. And then she opened her eyes wide and said, “May you and your friends be richly blessed as you move on deeply into the adventures that now await you. May a firm faith and a resilient hope be with you and in you at all times. May you persist with courage and prevail through any difficulties you’re called upon to face. And may you then be able somehow to share the story of your journey with future generations. Great blessings will go with you and be on you, enduring blessings to you and your friends and all who learn of you, my golden young man of the kingdom. We are blessed to have you with us for this short time, Prince Walid.”

For information on the series in which this will appear, early summer, go to www.TheOasisWithin.com.

Fear. And Love.

What should we think about fear? Maybe Aristotle can guide us in the way he assessed the very different, but often related, emotion of anger. He believed the value of this powerful state of mind and heart could be revealed by such questions as: Toward what or whom? In what measure? For how long? And to what end? We should probably ask the same questions about any instance of fear. When there are real dangers, fear is rational. And it can be reasonable for us to allow it sometimes to call the shots, determining our thoughts and actions at a particular moment, or in a certain fraught situation, and thus guiding our behavior then and there. But this should not be a common occurrence. And there could be a better alternative.

A courageous person never lets fear unhinge him or her and always seeks to do the right thing, regardless of any dangers that might loom and threaten. Sometimes, that means listening to fear and accepting its guidance to pause, or stop, or retreat, or avoid. There are times when it's wise to be moved by fear. But in modern life, this emotion tends to intrude into our thoughts and feelings much more often than its help is needed. Practical wisdom, or prudence, demands that we respect a wide range of values in our actions, and those values encompass proper concerns for our own health and self preservation, as well as for those we love, and even to consider and protect a positive reputation among at least the wise in our communities. But fear is often a bully in its warnings that we may lose what we value, and is as subtle as any insidious force can be.

Fear has a thousand faces. It quite often presents itself as something other than what it is—as perhaps a common sense and reasonable desire for safety, or security, or comfort, or simply for what's known, as distinct from what might be clearly uncertain and unknown. It can make itself look like altruism, or moderation, or sheer rationality, and even when it's the polar opposite of these things.

I've let fear influence my choices far too often in life. But I never recognized it at the time. I was a master of self-deception. And, whether I know you well or not, I can imagine that you are, too. We all have this unfortunate skill. We can rationalize almost anything. And the smarter we are, the more convincing we can be, not only to others, but to ourselves. We allow fear to mask itself as a proper concern for another person, or as the voice of reason, when it's not that at all. And we need to learn the form of discernment, a component of wisdom that allows us to spot our emotions and motivations for what they are, rather than being moved around by what they appear to be. It's almost as if negative emotions can be illusionist shape-shifters and masters of disguise. Part of the Platonic program of stripping away illusions and getting beyond appearances means unmasking them and refusing them illegitimate power.

Fear can present itself as any reasonable person's primary concern. After all, what's more important than survival, it asks us. Well, perhaps a lot. I've come to see fear as being, at best, a rare and secondary motivator along the course of an imperfect life. Yes, it can be helpful. And for that we should thank it. By I now refuse to allow it to call the shots as often as it would like. I'll feel its cousin anxiety arise within me, but nowadays I'll spot it, and question its validity in the moment or the situation, and dismiss it from my heart and mind when it's counterproductive, or in other ways uncalled for. I hope you will, too.

Salespeople are trained in some organizations to act on the fact that most people are much more motivated by a fear of loss than by a desire of gain. And I have a corresponding suggestion: We should not be among those fearful people, and thus, by our own independence, diminish their numbers. No one has ever attained excellence or greatness by following a path of fear. No one ever made his or her best contribution to the world from a place of fear.

It's often been said: Two forces motivate us—love and fear. I recommend love. It's a vastly better guide, overall, than fear. It can give us the true safety that fear always pretends to care about, and yet without the illusions, constraints and deceptions of fear. Love, understood properly and done right, should be our prime mover and most consulted guide.

I think of love here in the deepest spiritual sense, and very differently from the popular understanding—not as an emotion at its core, but as a perspective and commitment to certain positive values, and to the good of all souls. Love is, on this perspective, the main application of wisdom, which is both love's fount and guide. If you value the right things, and embrace those values properly, if you have the right perspectives and insights, you don't need the goad of visceral emotions like fear or anger to motivate proper action. Love wins over all.

On this view, fear is merely a substitute motivator for those who have not fully developed love. And the tug of this pretender can misfire frequently and actually keep us away from the path of what we ought to do. Sometimes, the visceral electric shock of the snake at your feet or the sound in the night simply prevents the right exercise of the mind and the quick action you need. That's why the quintessential hero has a calm mind and a good heart. She does what needs to be done not from fear but love.

And in the end, I think that the deepest spiritual love is a mark of true courage. That's why we hesitate ever to attribute this virtue to suicide bombers or any terrorists, despite the actions that intentionally take them to danger and death. Their fanaticism may mimic courage and produce a counterfeit that's convincing in the minds of their fellow fanatics, but that's because they fail to understand the nature of genuine courage, by their blindness to true love. Any of us, in lesser ways, can make the same mistake. Love puts fear in its proper place. And as the Gospel says, perfect love casts out fear. When love is perfected, this alternative motivator is not needed in any way. It’s left behind. And this is a state of being for us all to hope for and to seek to attain.

Sponge-Worthy Morning Thoughts

Fear is not typically your friend. Anxiety isn't your best advisor. Hang out instead with hope and courage for your finest path forward.

My dreams bring me issues I need to address, and most often in a very creative form. I've learned to pay attention.

The thing about Socrates that most stands out to me was his courage. And I've come to see that as a central quality for any fulfilling life.

Compassion and Courage. What would the world be like if these two qualities led us every day, in equal measure, and applied by wisdom? Let’s bring a little more of each into our lives.

When we cultivate the thought beyond words, we begin to explore a realm of wonder that far exceeds the reach of language.

What if creativity is really your default setting? It could be that you just need to remove some artificial obstacles in order to be your innovative artistic best.

When circumstances squeeze you, it's best not to be a dry sponge. And what you'll give out will be what you've soaked up. Remember that.

Friends can double the good and cut the bad in half. Aristotle understood that it would be difficult to live a great life without friends.

The one external good that's of genuine internal worth is a friend.

A Cluster of Thoughts to Ponder

As Rome burns, I refuse to be a fiddler and insist on being a fireman. Grab a bucket, won't you? Join me in rushing to the calamity. Let's do what we can.

Words you never want to hear the dentist say to his assistant while he's in your mouth: "Get me the saw." Yeah. It's from personal experience.

Lesson from the dental chair: Almost nothing is quite as bad as it seems, or as good. So stay calm.

My job is to respect and nurture Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Unity—cultivating the intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual sides of life. And, yeah, it’s your job, too.

Justice is everybody's business, in the small details of life. Fairness. Kindness. Evenhandedness. And then mercy can take its proper place.

When we lose sight of the best in us, we tend to manifest the worse in us. That's a key to personal life, and to national politics as well.

Every difficulty, every challenge, every disappointment tells me something about myself, and provides me an opportunity for transformation.

Nothing's really ours. Everything's given to us for a time. We're stewards meant to care for all the outer and inner blessings of life, and share them.

How hard is it to listen? Just listen. Really listen. Quietly. Attentively. Compassionately. Imaginatively. As an act of love. Courageously.

We can't overstate the power of humility in life, to be like the humus, the soil of the earth, open and ready to grow what you're given.

When we seek to love more than to be loved, to appreciate more than to be appreciated, to encourage more than to be encouraged, we get it.

In times of high emotion and deep division, we're to love our neighbors as ourselves, and even our "enemies" - valuing their true good.

Too many people live lives of illusion. And that's a great tragedy of the human condition. Refuse illusion. Seek truth. Have courage.

Plato's insistence: Never let appearances blind you to realities. And that may be one of the hardest tasks in life.

Aristotle's formula for the highest human good was simple: People in Partnership for a shared Purpose. There's nothing solitary about it.

Never let adversarial thinking be your baseline or default mode of thought, outside the bounds of a real battle with bullets and bombs.

Dreams are the engine of achievement. But the gas in the tank is hard work.

A Few Morning Thoughts.

Reading, done right, is transformative.

Listening well is a spiritual discipline. It connects people deeply.

Our own timelines rarely match the pace of events. A measure of patience can be helpful to synch up the inner and the outer.

No matter what you do, there are some people you can never reach. It's not your fault. Let it go and move on.

If someone slights you or insults you, it's more often about them than it is about you. Healthy souls respect others and show kindness.

The unknown is where the greatest things happen. And yet, most people are afraid to venture there. Curiosity and the boldness of love can alone launch out well and conquer.

Courage is often a small inclination of the heart toward what's right and what needs to be done. It's not flashy or heroic. It's just good.

Most of us have a self awareness deficit that hamstrings our ability to do good in the world. That's why Socrates said, "Know yourself!"

Yes. The world is as it is. However, nevertheless, you are worthy of high thoughts, lofty deeds, and lovingkindness in your own heart.

Don't let the news or gossip or the siren song of social media distract you from your own proper path. Anything that stops you robs us all.

We should be thankful from our first conscious breath each day. There's good to be done, beauty to be seen, and love to be shown.

On the Necessity for Virtuous Action

"Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike

As if we had them not."

Measure for Measure, Act I, scene 1.

Some Random Thoughts

Courage. It's necessary for all the best things we might do, have, or become. It somehow matters every day.

"Courage is the only soil in which our talents can grow and be used well." Ali, in The Stone of Giza, soon to be published.

Speaking the truth in love. That's one of my favorite phrases in the Bible. And it's a great ideal to aspire to. Both parts are important.

Don't fear being contradicted. Fear only being too incurious to see what's true. Keep your guard down and your mind open to learn well.

Discernment and logical care are vital components of what we call wisdom.

Whatever your work or life might be, a sense of nobility and humility kept in balance will allow a level of greatness otherwise impossible.

The Double Power Principle: Anything with great power for good has equal and opposite power for ill. It's normally up to us how we use it.

The Dual Significance Principle: Any job productive of good can be given a trivial or noble description. Ultimate motivation needs nobility.

When people use a holy book or scriptural quotation to condemn and divide, it makes me sad. There is one Judge, and none of us is that one.

Your inner thoughts can enrich or corrupt you. Nothing else has that power without engaging your thoughts. That means you can choose.

When you have the deepest understanding of life, you come to realize that we're here to help and not harm those around us. Compassion rules.

Good people can make bad mistakes. Let others back into your heart when they learn and recover. You'll need them to do the same for you.

What Moves Us Deeply?

I'm a fairly emotional person, but I've never teared up over a great business deal. I've smiled. I've laughed with pleasure. I may have gotten all tingly. But in such a setting, I've never had to rub my eyes or reach for a hanky. No tear has ever trickled down my cheek from the successful negotiation of a great contract or a big sale. And yet, I often get misty-eyed when I see other forms of human excellence. Why is this?

Just the other night on America's Got Talent, a show I haven't followed over the seasons, but that I happened to linger on while flipping channels, I had such an experience. A thirteen-year-old girl walked tentatively onto the stage and then amazed us all with her voice. Laura Bretan was cute, sweet, and humble in every way. And she looked so very young on that big platform. But her vocal abilities instantly took the audience to a new place. Everyone rose to their feet.  It was almost a spiritual experience. Simon Cowell said that in all his years, he had never seen anything quite like it.

In case you missed the performance, it's well worth a few minutes on YouTube. And make sure the Kleenex is nearby, if you're at all like me.

Maybe I'm just an emotional mess. But, almost like Robert DeNiro's character in Analyze This, I tend to get weepy at certain things. I don't sob and honk my nose, but I feel the tear ducts awaken, and sense a moistness around my eyes. I may even get a little choked up. It's a bit harder to speak for few moments. I think my sensibilities are much more selective than DeNiro's were in the famous film. But they still range over many things. I get misty when I see real courage in action, and wonderful acts of kindness. I tear up at exceptional displays of human excellence when they rise above expectations and somehow capture elusive aspects of beauty or goodness. An example of self-giving love that's shown in extraordinary ways can get to me and move me deeply.

What touches us in such situations? It may be something that's deeply of the soul, or at the core of the human spirit—even something of virtue, in the classical sense. The Greek word ARETE (Aratay), which can be translated as excellence or as virtue, may come close to capturing at least part of it.

It's especially moving when ordinary people rise above our common experience and in their actions reflect something that's both high and deep, something truly inspiring that hints at perhaps why we're here, and what we're all supposed to be living in our own ways and with our own opportunities. It's as if these moments remind us of the special wonders and mysteries of life that the daily grind can hide from us. And thus, they speak to us. Yes, that's why we're here. Yes, there's real beauty. Yes, there's genuine love. Yes, there's much more out there, or in here, in our souls, for us to embrace and live and enjoy.

So the next time you see something that moves you and you reach for the Kleenex, remember that it can also be a moment to reach for the stars, and aim high in your own life, with your own talents and opportunities, and in your own potential impact on those around you. Let the moment reconnect you to something great and reinforce the best that's in you.

The Purpose of Fear

One of the greatest pieces of advice ever given is this: Seek to live from love, not from fear. Over the long run, a few important things are true. Love expands us. Fear contracts us. A life mainly guided by fear is a small, shrunken substitute for what it could have been. 

But most of us can't completely avoid the experience of fear. And in this world, we probably shouldn't, anyway. So. In order to deal with it properly, we need to know its purpose. And here's a surprise.

The purpose of fear is to make us act. It's not to make us freeze.

Think about it: How many times do we ever find ourselves explaining someone's tremendous success in a challenging situation by saying, "She froze. That's why she prevailed."

The deer in the headlights doesn't escape danger by becoming motionless. The purpose of fear is to motivate action - often avoidance, sometimes preparation, always a new level of focused concentration. When we're trying something new where great gains or losses are at stake, fear will often arise. It's a certain form of emotional energy. The question then becomes: What do we do with it? Sometimes, it properly makes us stop and think and then proceed no farther. Often, it makes us stop and think and then proceed better. Courage can listen to fear but doesn't misunderstand it as nature's ultimate Stop Sign. Courage can be counseled by fear, but is never undermined by it.

When you next feel fear, let it make you act. Don't react in paralysis instead. Act. The right action may be a higher level of thinking, which, after all, is an action in its own right. Or what's called for could be a matter of physical movement. Fear isn't always our enemy, simply something to be overcome. It can be a stimulus to act properly, with consciousness, and focus. It can guide us to adapt, adjust, and act well.

It always signals the unknown. And the unknown is where the amazing can be found.

Just don't let fear stop you from acting at all. And remember, still, that the highest motivation is love. And perfect love, as we're told, casts out fear, even if it first feels it, and listens, and acts - it just never lets fear be the final word.

Confidence and Courage

Confidence and courage are closely related. We often need them both in challenging circumstances. But how exactly do they relate to each other? It occurred to me today that I should reflect for a moment on what's similar and what's different between these two important qualities. 

I've claimed for years that confidence is one of the seven most universal conditions for success in any difficult undertaking. But why not courage? Don't we need it as well? Why would one of these qualities, and not the other, be universally applicable to success in challenging endeavors?

First, some careful clarification. 

Both confidence and courage are dispositions to think and act in certain ways rather than others. Neither of these qualities in you will let your circumstances dictate what you think or what you do. Courage and confidence both seek to rise above circumstances and shape reality, not just reflect it.

Confidence isn't mainly about believing that certain things will certainly or likely happen. It doesn't require making precise predictions concerning the future and feeling sure of them. It's more about believing in yourself, or your team, than it is about believing that one or another thing is sure to happen.

Courage is more about valuing and treasuring, than it is about predicting or believing, although it can involve all these things.

Confidence is a positive orientation toward doing what you judge to be right that's undeterred by obstacles. It carries a personal expectation that your action will lead you in some way closer to your goals.

Courage is a positive orientation toward doing what you judge to be right that's undeterred by danger. It carries with it a positive commitment that your action is right, regardless of its ultimate results.

Ignorance isn't confidence. Ignorance isn't courage. Neither positive quality can be produced by brainwashing indoctrinations, or supported by mind altering drugs. Each of these qualities is best nurtured in a soil of knowledge and wisdom.

Confidence helps you do what you feel you want to do. It's about marshaling your resources.

Courage helps you do what you feel you ought to do. It's about defeating your fears.

A person acting courageously doesn't necessarily expect success in securing a desired outcome. A person acting confidently does to some extent expect success in securing a desired outcome.

Confidence is a universal condition for success in any challenging endeavor, because challenges always involve obstacles and difficulties. Courage is always helpful, but not always literally necessary, since many challenging situations don't literally involve dangers of harm. But a generally courageous person ordinarily has an easier time of being confident in the face of difficulty.

The deeper of the two qualities may be courage. But the most pervasively useful is probably confidence. When you think about them enough, you come to realize that, different as they are, these two qualities very often go together and be mutually supporting.

Courage in 5 Tweets

I was looking through my little book Twisdom and came across a few old tweets on courage, a topic I've mentioned recently in responding to a blog post comment. These tweets struck me anew and generated some nice additional pondering, so I thought I'd share them today. 

1. The courageous souls around us are here to remind us what we’re here to be.

2. Only courage will crack the thick shell of possibility and yield us the treasures within.

3. Courage is willing to walk in darkness while shining a light for others to follow.

4. Courage is something we have deep down in us when we need it – if we’ll just reach for it and act!

5. Courage is the power of choice even in the face of fear.

 It was number two that really got me thinking. How much possibility is unrealized in the world and in our lives, because we're not bold or brave enough to crack the shell around it? In the coming year, let's be courageous in little things as well as in big things. We need it. And so does the world. And that leads me to number three.

Shine your light.

Sometimes, Leap

"Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." David Lloyd George.

This is a nice image that I've long loved. You can't cross a broad chasm in two small jumps. Sometimes, you have to take a huge step, and sometimes a giant leap.

If you're normally a small stepper, that can be hard. But some things can't be accomplished any other way.

There are some big leaps in life that don't make sense. And there are others that do.

How can we know the difference? Discernment. Wisdom. Intuition. Listening.

What are your values? What do you love? What matters to you?

What do your dreams tell you? What is your heart saying?

If you're led to the edge of something new, and it's something very good, and a leap needs to be made, and your heart is nudging you forward, then leap!