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.

A Brief Thought for Our Fraught Moment, or Any Challenging Time

Remember: Don't mistake a frame in the film for the film itself, a chapter of the story for the whole tale, or a moment in your life for more than it is. We're all in some way the co-creators of what comes next and can make a positive difference to the outcome in the overall flow of things.

In many great stories, the hardest things happen before the most wonderful things come to be. And we tell such stories and love to hear them because they reflect the strange movements of our world in a way that we need to be reminded of, time and again. It’s always darkest at some point before the dawn. Things look hopeless for the hero when he’s down, and then there’s a great turnaround.

Courage. Faith. Hope. Love. Creativity. Openness. Peace. Positive Action. Many things can float our boat well.

Gilgamesh and Our Motivations

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of my favorite books ever. It’s also the oldest epic tale we have, describing events that date back to about 2,500 years BCE.

Gilgamesh was tall, handsome, strong, smart, and the King of Uruk, a walled city-state in what is now Iraq. He was reported to be 2/3 divine and 1/3 human. He was also a pretty major malignant narcissist. As a consequence, he was a very bad king, who viewed the kingdom as his personal candy store. His position as a leader was all about getting everything he wanted at the expense of whomever had to pay. He exploited his position and his people for his own base enjoyments and personal enrichment. When we meet him, he’s not married, but he insists on always being the substitute groom who spends the wedding night with any young woman of his kingdom who is married, and then he moves on to the next special treat he plans to give himself. He wears out the young men of the kingdom in competitive games just so he can win, over and over, and continue to prove his immense superiority.

The people complain to the gods, “Help us with this guy! We can’t take it any more!” And the gods do something creative. They make him a counterpart, an equal to him in size and strength, and they initially put this man into the woods to live with the animals as their protector. While Gilgamesh is a man of the city, this new creature Enkidu is a child of the forest. Gilgamesh has experienced the height of sophistication in an urban setting that at its peak had up to 80,000 inhabitants. Enkidu as a nature boy has a mindset of simple innocence. Rumors of his existence, great strength, and exploits in saving the animals from hunters make their way to the city, and Gilgamesh is both intrigued and troubled. He has to meet this individual and perhaps once again prove his superiority over what is quickly becoming an urban legend and, in that sense, a threat to his own reputation as the strongest and greatest man alive.

Gilgamesh goes to the big religious temple in town and approaches the beautiful temple prostitute—which was apparently a well-known job in ancient times, serving to unite the world and the spirit in distinctive ways—and he asks her to go find this legendary man in the woods and use her special skills to lure him to town. She agrees and is successful. I'll elide over all the fascinating details.

To summarize: Enkidu arrives just as Gilgamesh is about to exercise his jus primae noctis (right of the first night) or, as it later came to be called, his droit du seigneur, and the wild hairy man of the forest intervenes to stop the king from this presumptuous deed. They fight violently and it’s basically a tie. Gilgamesh is very impressed. So is Enkidu. They instantly become best friends, and soon go off on adventures together. The prayers of the people have been answered. The king is no longer interested in exploiting them. He has bigger fish to fry with his new buddy. But the things the two big guys get involved in bring the wrath of the gods, and Enkidu has to die. Gilgamesh is stunned and falls into intense grief. He goes on a challenging and difficult quest to find the secret of avoiding death, any key to eternal life possible, having heard that there is one man far away who has this unique gift. In the midst of his daunting journey in a desperate search for immortality, he oddly comes across a wine bar in the middle of nowhere, and a wise barmaid named Siduri, who advises him to abandon this inevitably futile search and learn to be happy with what he has.

In one of the most beautiful and wise passages in all of literature, Siduri says:

“Gilgamesh, where are you going? You’ll never find the eternal life you seek. When the gods created man, they gave him death, and they kept life without it for themselves. Humans are born, live, and die. This is the order that’s decreed. But until your own end comes, enjoy your life. Live it in happiness and not despair. Relish your food and drink. Make each of your days a delight. Bathe and groom yourself well. Wear nice clothes that are sparkling and clean. Let music and dancing fill your house. Love the little child who holds your hand. And give your wife pleasure in your embrace. This is the way for a man to live.”

He’s unable to listen to this great advice, and continues on his mission until when it fails, as Siduri knew it would, and he returns to his city, chastened, and humbled, and perhaps ready to live as the wise woman had suggested.

It’s often been said that the two great forces in life are love and death, or the polarity of desire and fear. The Greek word ‘Eros’ is often used for the former, and ‘Thanatos’ for the latter. When the story begins, Gilgamesh is motivated by Eros, but in a bad and corrupted way. Then, with Enkidu’s death, his motivation changes. He’s moved by Thanatos, but also in a bad way. I believe the power of the story is that he discovers in the end how to be motivated by both in a constructive and positive way.

I won’t follow Freud in his famous uses of Eros and Thanatos, which I take to be the claim that we’re either motivated by a constructive creativity that moves toward unity and life, or a destructive aggression that delights in dissolution and death. I would rather see these two polarities in a different way.

The force of Eros is a pull toward life. The force of Thanatos is a push away from death. Or to put it more comprehensively:

The Pull of Eros is about embracing life, strength, pleasure, and growth.

The Push of Thanatos is about avoiding death, suffering, deprivation, and weakness.

The common human quest for money or power, status or fame can be driven by either of these forces. Gilgamesh experiences the full range of this, and for most of the story only in bad or unwise ways. Siduri recommends to him a life of proper Eros in a constructive mode. Before the death of his friend, the king had been living a life of Eros in an improper or destructive mode.

The proper mode of Eros is to bring good to others as well as yourself. The improper mode is to focus only on yourself.

When Enkidu dies and Gilgamesh is plunged into the shock and grief that results, his motivation changes. He is desperate to avoid death in his own life. But perhaps even before he met Enkidu, there was a negative motivation from the side of Thanatos in his life. The destructive mode of Thanatos, like destructive Eros, is also to focus only on yourself, but in this case in a willingness to sacrifice the good of others in order to avoid your own vulnerability to death, suffering, deprivation, and weakness.

By contrast, a proper and constructive mode of Thanatos motivation is to focus on helping others to avoid needless death, suffering, deprivation, and weakness.

Done right, the two motivations of Eros and Thanatos both can be manifestations of love. Done wrong, they’re the opposite.

Love: Care, Compassion, Nurture, and Delight: That’s what Siduri wanted Gilgamesh to learn to experience and give to others. And I think eventually he does. If there was hope for him, there may be hope for nearly anyone. It’s a story well worth your time.

For the best translation of the tale, scraped together from various clay tablets, click HERE.

Yesterday

My workout partner and his family treated me to a movie last night. When we got to the multiplex, I realized I was really tired from not enough sleep the night before. I was dragging. We showed our tickets and were told go to to Theater 3. There it was, down the hall. Here's how tired I was: When we got to the door, the sign above it said, "6:40. Yesterday." And I promise I actually thought: "Wait. We're a day late???"

So yeah. Yale PhD. Philosopher. Idiot.

The Movie Yesterday (now in both senses of the word) was amazingly good. It woke me up fast. And I was enthralled. Forget the 2.5 stars you may see. Go to it. Let yourself experience it. It's an incredible thought experiment on culture, ambition, morality, music, business, and life. It's vivid, well acted, and chock full of great tunes, as you might imagine. It's a love story, a buddy caper, a meditation on happiness and success and so much more. And don't worry, it's actually showing Today and Tomorrow at a theater near you.

The Wrong Road to Success

A Sentimental Education.

Decently smart people can do indecently stupid things. An intelligent and attractive young man from a country town near Paris moves to the city to find wealth, fame, and love. But it never seems to occur to him that he might have to do or be something of merit in order to deserve any of these things.

Frederic Moreau becomes a clever manipulator of others to further his own aims, and demonstrates what a life is like with no inner core or reliable sense of what’s right. He’s fickle, undependable, and greedy. He falls in love with a married woman more than once and finds himself living parallel secret lives with his various lady friends, all in his efforts to advance his own interests in fortune and status. Revolutionary events begin to swirl around him and it’s never certain who can be trusted. Ambition drives everyone else in his circles as much as it does him. Lust and despair alternate in his life, causing giddiness one minute, and grim hopelessness the next. When he does come into money, he wastes it on showy extravagances to impress those around him as he seeks to heal an inner need that can never be satisfied in such a way.

At the end of the story, he sits with his one remaining friend, the companion of his youth who had become a lawyer in order to prevail in politics, and they reflect on their lives.

<<They'd both been failures, the one who'd dreamed of Love and the one who'd dreamed of Power. How had it come about?

"Perhaps it was lack of perseverance?" said Frederic.

"For you maybe. For me, it was the other way round, I was too rigid, I didn't take into account a hundred and one smaller things that are more crucial than all the rest. I was too logical and you were too sentimental."

Then they blamed it on their bad luck, the circumstances, the times in which they'd been born.>> (462)

Frederic never came to realize the inner man he had neglected to his own great detriment. He never understood the role of character or true commitment in life or love. And in that blind spot, he prefigures many in our own time.

A Short Dog Tale

The World as It Is. A car sped down a rural road and what looked like trash was thrown from the window. The farmer mowing nearby stopped his work and walked over to pick up whatever paper had been thrown into his field so that the mower wouldn't shred and spread it everywhere. It wasn’t paper, but a puppy just a few weeks old, covered with bruises and now with a newly broken tail. The astonished man picked him up and took him home. A friend of his sent a picture to a friend of mine named Doug who immediately adopted him and called him Miller. That was two years ago.

Recently, Doug and Miller were at Lowe's Hardware and Miller pulled hard at his leash to get to a lady standing near an end-cap. Doug pulled him back in surprise. It was odd behavior for the ordinarily well behaved dog. They found their item and got in line. Miller pulled again and this time moved around behind Doug, who then turned to see what was going on. It was the same lady. Miller was instantly sitting next to her with his head leaning on her leg. She was crying.

"I'm so sorry." Doug had no idea what was going on.

"No, no. I had to put my dog to sleep a few hours ago."

Dogs know a lot more than we think. They understand and feel in ways we sometimes can’t even imagine. Honor the animals in your life.

And maybe ask them, "How's the stock market going to do tomorrow?" And let me know.

The opening picture above is of the puppy himself on his first trip to the vet! And now two years later, the comforter: A truly good dog.

Faith, Hope, and Love

Faith, Hope, and Love. And the greatest of these is Love. - Paul, getting it right. First Corinthians, 13:13.

I had a professor in college who talked a lot about seeing with the eyes of faith. We need more of that. Not the talking part. The seeing.

We also need to see with the eyes of hope. And that's hard sometimes. But to the degree it's hard, it's necessary.

And we most of all need to see with the eyes of love. View the people and things around you from the best and highest divine perspective. Appropriate a sliver of God's Love for us. Let it reflect and refract through your own interpretations, infusing them and lifting them up. See others in such a way as to lift them up. See yourself that way.

Seeing through the eyes of faith, hope, and love is definitely better for those who manage it. It's better for the world whenever any of us does it. And it gives a wonderful example to others. The eyes of faith. The eyes of hope. The eyes of love.

Happy New Eyes.

The Living Mosaic

Imagine a living mosaic of stunning hues and shapes where many of the tiles, noting their neighbor's differences, sought to destroy those other bits of color. Great beauty would be lost.

This image came to me when I ran across a statement from the Dalai Lama this morning: "In today’s interconnected and globalized world, it’s now commonplace for people of different world views, faiths and races to live side by side. It’s a matter of great urgency, therefore, that we find ways to cooperate with one another in a spirit of mutual acceptance and respect."

It's all about living the four transcendental ideals: Truth. Beauty. Goodness. Unity.

"And what about love?" you may ask. There it is. I answer.

TBGU were first pondered in the book If Aristotle Ran General Motors, which is really not about Aristotle or a car company. They're just placeholders for all the great thinkers and all the places we work where we need a sense of fulfillment and happiness to boost us. It turns out that Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity are the foundations for this, in any context.

For more, see, If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soul of Business

Socrates and Jesus

I always had my Intro to philosophy students read Plato's Apology (The Greek word means "Defense"), an account of the trial of Socrates, during the first week of our class, because of the portrait contained there of a man wholly dedicated to the life of the mind. Offered the chance to live and go free if he would just stop doing philosophy on the city streets, Socrates said, "As long as I live and breathe, I shall never cease to philosophize." My students were stunned to see an adult, as they would say, committed to a mission, so imbued with a purpose, that he would willingly go to his death rather than recant or change his ways. Such determination! Such passion!

Socrates was intensely committed to truth. And he died for that commitment. Jesus, by contrast, was fully committed to love, and he died for that.

I would suggest that you can be committed to truth without an equal felt commitment to love and compassion, but that you can't really and fully be committed to love without also thoroughly honoring truth. So Socrates had, perhaps, a big part of life's puzzle, but not the whole thing.

An old professor, an orthodox Jewish Rabbi who taught philosophy of science, once said to me, "Christianity is all about what you believe, while Judaism is all about what you do." Well. It's not quite so stark, is it? But I get what he was saying. Since Jesus was a Jew, and so were most of the early Christians, maybe we should dig a bit deeper. Perhaps Christianity is more about an attitude and commitment of the heart than about either the beliefs or the actions that might properly attend that attitude and commitment. We do cherish our beliefs and opinions. We're willing to fight for them. Maybe we should cherish God and his creatures more.

There's this other contrast between Socrates and Jesus. Socrates could come across as arrogant. Jesus, strangely, despite alluding repeatedly to his own literal divinity, seemed to live and preach humility. The trick in life is to have all the right commitments, but with all the right attitudes.

The Greeks didn't appreciate the deep power of humility. Christian theologians have, because of Jesus. In the end, truth may indeed be worth dying for. But it's love that's worth living for.

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.

Philosophy: Some Thoughts

Philosophy etymologically means "the love of wisdom." And since wisdom is more than knowledge, but is a whole-life phenomenon, philosophy is about living well.

Philosophical wisdom is the depth of understanding that's meant to percolate through every aspect of your life—guiding your path, and lifting you up.

Philosophy isn't argument. And it isn't about intellectual positions. It's a life commitment to wisdom and virtue in all their forms.

The philosophical quest is meant to be the deepest and most comprehensive adventure of them all. Without it, we either drift, or run headlong down all the wrong paths.

Discernment and courage, along with compassion, are or ought to be, the pillars of philosophy.

Philosophy is first of all about love (philo). Without that, wisdom and virtue are genuinely impossible, at the very deepest level.

Speak the truth in love, live with perspective, explore the rich realm of possibility with boldness. Nurture others, encourage them, and build creatively in all things. That’s the challenge of philosophy, done right.

How to Live. A Brief Synopsis.

Live to learn and love. Then you will learn and love to live.

Breakfast with the founder of Whole Foods

One more in my accounts of memorable philosophical meals. So. It had been a long time since I had spent the night at anyone's house but mine. Yeah, dozens of hotels a year, sometimes scores, but no sleepovers at private homes. Before or after a big talk on a stage in front of however many hundreds or thousands of people, I like the quiet isolation of a hotel room. We don't have to go all the way back to bunny pajamas for my last sleepover at somebody's house, but still, it had been long ago. Yet, when John Mackie, the founder of Whole Foods, invited me to come down to Austin a day before I was due there for a talk, and stay at his house, I couldn't pass up the chance—just to see what was in his refrigerator. While he was cooking us dinner, we drank champagne and talked about life. And with the meal we had a nice red wine. He's a strict no oil vegan, so it was with some trepidation that I took my first bite of the baked potato piled with water-sautéed veggies that he had prepared. But it was surprisingly good. His wife had just returned from one of her frequent spiritual trips to India, and the three of us stayed up late talking about the top gurus there and the legendary feats they reportedly accomplish, through a mastery of the mind and its impact on the body.

But I was going to talk about breakfast. So, I got up the next morning in the beautiful book-lined home and padded down to the kitchen, where I think I remember various granolas, great breads and jams and juice and coffee. But I could be wrong, because it was early, I was still half asleep, and it was the conversation during that entire visit that stuck, including that morning. Here's an example.

John told me about his first little health food store in Austin. It was his dream. He and his girlfriend ran it, and lived upstairs, without a bathroom or anything. They were barely surviving. But they had a great idea for providing a place for healthy fresh foods, and they loved their early customers, and those people felt their care and responded with a special affection for the little shop. Then an unexpected flood nearly destroyed it all. Everything was ruined. They were devastated. It looked like the business couldn’t possibly recover. There was little or no insurance. But customers, neighbors, and friends spontaneously showed up the next day and voluntarily got to work, cleaning up the monumental mess, rebuilding the store, and giving us the foundation of what would soon become the national chain, Whole Foods. What had looked truly terrible was the prelude to something great.

In 1971, the night before the rock band Deep Purple was going to record an album in Montreaux, Switzerland, their venue burned to the ground. The musicians watched all their plans go up in flames as thick smoke spread over Lake Geneva. And yet, they didn’t get discouraged, give up, and go home, but instead wrote and recorded the classic hit song, “Smoke on the Water.” 

Scientist Percy Spencer was visiting the Raytheon Company and stood too close to a magnetron, a tube that released energy as a part of radar equipment at the time. A forgotten candy bar in his pants pocket melted, made a mess and ruined the pants, and yet got him curious and thinking, which quickly led to the modern indispensible marvel, the microwave oven.

Swiss engineer George de Mestral was on a walk in the woods with his dog. At some point, he realized that they were both getting covered with annoying burrs, sticking to the pants of one and the fur of the other. After painstakingly plucking the burrs off, he examined a few closely and, with what he learned, invented velcro.

Floods. Fires. Melted candy. Sharp, irritating burrs. The world is full of problems that come our way, large and small. But you don't have to be a guru in the mountains of India in order to use your mind and spirit to transform the situation, often with the help of likeminded people, friends, and colleagues. What may initially seem bad can be the doorway to something very good indeed. Even when it's vegan cooking.

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.

Joy and Some Random Thoughts

Joy isn't properly viewed as an endpoint, but as an energy like no other, a fuel that can propel us to our best and highest achievements.

Love and justice should be the currents along which our spirits flow. Only those waters will take us where we need to go.

The philosopher Epictetus reminded us that we all need liberation from something. We're all chained down by something. Wisdom breaks chains.

Habits of thought underlie habits of action, and either can imprison us in a small dark cell, when the broad bright world outside awaits us.

If half the energy devoted to crime and scam was redirected toward productive good, the world would change quickly for the better.

We've always known that love is the most powerful force in the world. So why do our leaders proceed so often through threats that sow hate?

When will the world wake up to understand that anger and violence never themselves improve anything? They plant seeds for more problems.

The greatest gift you can give yourself is time to be quiet, relaxed, and peaceful. That gift, in turn, can give you all that you need.

The best doing arises out of the deepest being. Constant busyness will not allow for peak excellence or the highest joy. Learn to just be.

It's important to be able to calm your conscious thoughts, make your mind a blank, and get out of your own way now and then. Then, the magic.

A Few Thoughts on Kindness and Love

Kindness is a connection that allows wisdom, virtue, and inner growth to flow in both directions.

When the powerful cease to care for the powerless, when the rich ignore the poor, the world has developed a malady of the very worst sort.

Kindness should be as natural as breathing. It should be our heartbeat, our DNA—not just a default, but a constant under all else.

Perhaps God made you big to help the very small. Or maybe you're now small to challenge and inspire the large. Either can be a blessing, and confer one, as well.

Only the confused are without compassion.

Love is giving more than getting. It can be wonderful, severe, and challenging. It's the work for which we're here. And it is its own reward.

There is a deep magic beneath the turbulent surface of the world. And in that underground stream, peace and power are to be found. The waters that flow there are those of love.

What you love will reveal you, and further form your soul. Therefore: Love the right things. Avoid the unworthy. Live with compassion.

When you love the right things, the right things will find you.

Three Kinds of People

You may have heard an old proverb: There are three kinds of people in the world—Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who go around saying, "What happened?" I’ve always loved that distinction.

A different but related three-fold difference has been on my mind recently. There are lots of people who will run way from a building that's on fire; there are many others who, from a safe distance, will watch a building burn; and then there are a few brave souls who will actually run toward a building in flames—to see if they can be of help to anyone in there who might desperately need their assistance.

Most of us will go through a time in our lives when it seems that things are burning up, or burning down. An important business or financial opportunity has burned to the ground. A trusted relationship is being consumed by flames. An inner psychological or emotional conflagration has been sparked unexpectedly. And some people we thought we could count on will see it happening and run away. Others may choose to watch from a safe distance. And yet, there are a precious few who will run toward the fire, and into the building, to try to be of help. When there's someone like that in your life, you should be very glad. But what’s even more important is to try your best to be that person for others.

The late novelist Reynolds Price once wrote an amazing short book with the title, Letter to a Man in the Fire. It was a heartfelt response to a correspondence he had with a young medical student whose life and career were suddenly being consumed by the inferno of cancer. The young man had deep and personal questions. The writer ran to the fire and sought to bring him answers.

There are people in our lives who are in a fire. They’re in a burning building. Will you run away to keep yourself safe, or just far from the discomfort it might bring you? Will you watch it all burn from a distance? Or will you run toward the flames to bring whatever help you’re capable of offering? We should want and strive to be in that category. We won’t always succeed. We’ll sometimes fail our fellows and friends. But we can seek to embody that courage in all things to run toward the fire and seek to aid anyone who might be endangered by the flames and need, perhaps, such as we can bring.

Wisdom: The Pearl of Great Value

Wisdom is never just a matter of words. It's embodied insight, lived discernment, and really more like love than knowledge.

There are of course a lot of things that get discussed under the name of love but aren't wise, and under the name of wisdom but aren't loving. Those are always pretenders, counterfeits, and inauthentic substitutes.

True wisdom is loving. True love is wise. When we use those insights as touchstones for authenticity, we're better able to spot the inauthentic for what it is.

Give me wisdom. Give me love. And I'll give both away as soon as I can. And then, wonderfully, I'll somehow have more.

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.

Siddhartha's Search

I think I first read Siddhartha, the little classic novel by Hermann Hesse, in college, in the early seventies. I read it again in 1998. Then again this week. It's the story of a well born boy in India who is handsome, highly intelligent, well liked, and by all appearances effortlessly successful in everything he does. But he's not happy inside. Despite what seems to be an easy path of Brahmin life, through study and eventually a sort of priestly vocation, Siddhartha decides to renounce all his privileges and go into the forest as a Samana, or beggar. The idea is to minimize the physical in order to get in touch with the spiritual and find both meaning and happiness. His best friend Govinda joins him. They go in search of spiritual teachings that will bring them meaning, purpose and fulfillment, and continue on this path for three years. But they don't find what they're looking for. 

And then they hear of a great teacher, the Buddha, who has broken free of all illusion and has attained the goal of true wisdom and happiness. They go to meet him. He shows inner peace in everything he does. His words are attractive. Govinda wants to become one of his followers. Siddhartha can't. He is immensely impressed with the Buddha but senses somehow that what he needs is not more teaching, or more words, from anyone, but a different path, one that's distinctively his.

The childhood friends part company. Siddhartha moves on, and comes to a town where he sees Kamala, a stunningly beautiful young woman and richly attired courtesan who, as a profession, teaches the art of love. He ardently wants to be her student. But she's unwilling to practice her art with a dirty, ragged beggar. She will see him only if he wears beautiful clothes and shoes, and is bathed and perfumed, with his hair fixed in the way of the wealthy. He then quickly attains these things as effortlessly as he's gained anything in the world that he's ever set as a goal - other than, of course, enlightenment, which alone seems to have eluded him. And he becomes Kamala's best student ever. He learns to play at love as an artist. And in order to continue with her, he learns also to play at business, as another art, or nearly a sport. He flourishes in all outward ways. But he's still not happy at his core. He grows to love Kamala but to hate what he's become in order to win her.

One day, Siddhartha leaves again for the forest. But this time, he's so distraught over what he's become in his pursuit of wealth and worldly pleasure that he feels suicidal. He meets a ferryman at a wide river and, to his great surprise, this man becomes the person who leads him to the enlightenment he has always sought, but who does so more with actions than with words. The ferryman isn't a teacher or preacher so much as a listener. And because of this he shows Siddhartha how to listen - at first to the river, and then to any living thing, and to hear and see and find within the nature and people around him the universal pattern and unity of all things that has otherwise eluded him.

In the Bhagavad Gita, a charioteer is the source of wisdom and enlightenment. In The Legend of Bagger Vance, it's a golf caddy. In this story, it's a river ferryman. All are servants. All are people who help others to move toward their goals. And in all three stories, the simple servant is the source of enlightenment. Because a good servant listens, he can then speak in such a way as to direct the seeker toward his goal. And that's a lesson worth pondering for those among us who want to help others accomplish the right things in their lives.

Siddhartha is a book you can read multiple times, a short tale of 122 pages in the old edition I own. And it's provocative. You won't agree with everything in it, but it can stimulate your own thoughts  about life and love, work and wealth, meaning, purpose, and happiness.