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!

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.

The Necessity of Philosophy

From the time of Plato and Aristotle, astute philosophers have sought the wisdom to understand what makes people feel their best, do their best, and become their best. In our time of massive uncertainties and daunting challenges, every organization of people working together needs to put the most effective tools of such wisdom into everybody's hands and minds. That way, people become much more hopeful, more engaged, more committed, more creative, and more productive because they're truly more empowered.

Wisdom is a force multiplier. Unwise choices never lead anywhere good. Ordinary mindsets aren't optimal for extraordinary times. Only the best of wisdom can bring us the resources for transformative innovation and genuinely excellent work in all its dimensions. The best leaders understand this and do everything they can to introduce the most practical philosophy to all their associates. And I'm grateful for that understanding, because it's allowed me to have a wonderful career for decades as an independent philosopher, bringing people exactly that. The right sort of philosophy isn't after all an elective luxury, but a required necessity for that excellence consisting in and produced only by the inner happiness wisdom alone brings.

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.

Goodness Wins in the End

The Sea-Wolf, written by Jack London, has become one of my favorite novels of all time. It’s about the power of goodness when held onto and lived despite terrible obstacles, and also it's ultimately about the power of moral partnership to prevail over what seems to be invincible evil. It’s a message perfect for our time. I first read this in 2014 but too quickly. On my second read, just finished, I came to appreciate its depth as well as its compelling narrative.

Wolf Larsen is a thoroughly amoral leader, the captain of a seal hunting ship, whose only personal value is power and its exercise. He’ll kill a man just to feel that power. In our own time with too many amoral people in leadership positions, Wolf stands apart. He has the body and physical strength of an Achilles and a brilliant mind, though rough and unfinished through being entirely self-educated, even at the earliest stages of reading and writing. He was born of a poor family in a remote region of Norway and lived a rough adventure that led him to the leadership role in a seagoing ship. He has attracted a crew who are mostly as hardened and casually evil as he can seem to be. We learn of him through a highly educated literary man who survives the capsizing of another boat near San Francisco and is “rescued” by the Ghost, Larsen’s ship. The Lord of the Flies has nothing on what subsequently transpires, with our narrator, Humphrey Van Weyden, forced into service on the ship and treated with abominable cruelty.

This castaway is puzzled by the seasoned crew members on board, who seem able to endure agonizing physical injuries without complaint, but will “fly into the most outrageous passion over a trifle” (40, Book of the Month Club Edition). Van Weyden says of a particular seal hunter aboard:

<<He was doing it now, vociferating, bellowing, waving his arms, and cursing like a fiend, and all because of a disagreement with another hunter as to whether a seal pup knew instinctively to swim. (41)>>

He goes on to comment about the rest of the men:

<<Childish and immaterial as the topic was, the quality of their reasoning was still more childish and immaterial. In truth, there was very little reasoning or none at all. Their method was one of assertion, assumption, and denunciation. They proved that a seal pup could swim or not swim at birth by stating the proposition very bellicosely and then following it up with an attack on the opposing man’s judgment, common sense, nationality, or past history. Rebuttal was precisely similar. I have related this to show the mental caliber of the men with whom I was thrown in contact. (41)>>

And the moral caliber of most of them was much, much worse, with a few exceptions, soon to be roughed up and killed. Later, our narrator says of the ongoing discussion, modeling the political discourse of our own day:

<<The hunters were still arguing and roaring like some semi-human amphibious breed. The air was filled with oaths and indecent expressions. I could see their faces, flushed and angry, the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sickly yellow of the sea-lamps which rocked back and forth with the ship. (43)>>

One of the mates tells the new arrival about the captain, making what he takes to be a useful distinction: “He’s not black-hearted like some men. Tis no heart he has at all.”

Of the amoral and power-hungry skipper and his top henchmen, reflecting again too much that's wrong about our own world now, our narrator says:

<<The callousness of these men, to whom industrial organization gave control of the lives of other men, was appalling. I, who had lived out of the whirl of the world, had never dreamed that its work was carried on in such a fashion. Life had always seemed a peculiarly sacred thing, but here it counted for nothing, was a cipher in the arithmetic of commerce. (64)>>

Later in the story, after Humphrey witnesses the may terrible and unpredictably evil actions of the captain, who keeps our narrator alive only because his education amuses the brute, and this autodidact skipper among fools finally enjoys having someone to talk to about literature and philosophy, an event of great significance happens. The ship spots and picks up some other marooned sailors and a passenger from another ocean going vessel who are bobbing about in the vast pacific clinging to a small boat and hoping for rescue. An elegant and exquisitely educated young woman, Maud Brewster, a famous poet who is by wild coincidence known to our narrator—a literary critic who loves her work—is among them. Humphrey desperately tries to tell her about the captain:

“You must understand, Miss Brewster, and understand clearly, that this man is a monster. He is without conscience. Nothing is sacred to him. Nothing is too terrible for him to do. It was due to him that I was detained aboard in the first place. It is due to his whim that I am still alive. I can do nothing, can do nothing, because I am a slave to this monster, as you are now a slave to him; because I desire to live, as you will desire to live; because I cannot fight and overcome him, just as you will not be able to fight and overcome him.” (208)

The ship was a sort of hell presided over by Wolf Larsen. Maud eventually calls him Lucifer. Humphrey comments on the man and his henchmen:

<<Wolf Larsen it was, always Wolf Larsen, enslaver and tormentor of men, a male Circe and these his swine, suffering brutes that groveled before him and revolted only in drunkenness and secrecy. (243)>>

But the tale is not told with too much gruesome detail. It’s not like what I would imagine one experiences reading a horror novel. There’s psychological complexity and a wonderful narrative flow. Wolf and Humphrey even debate their opposing worldviews marvelously, when alone, the crass materialist and the spiritually sensitive man of morals debating life and death and value. The conversations are fascinating. Larsen enjoys the rare intellectual challenges, but on a whim might thrown his interlocutor across the room or choke him nearly to death, just to display his power.

Humphrey and Maud know they have to escape the ship where their deaths are eventually inevitable. And there the story takes off and becomes one of the most amazing tales of all time. The two of them face the greatest odds imaginable and adversities that would be impossible to imagine in advance, much like Odysseus in The Odyssey, but brought into a more modern and less mythological day.

There are lessons about persistence and resilience and courage and confidence and success again the odds all through the book, but especially in its final third. I wish I could take the time here to share more of the lessons on goodness and partnership in the face of evil and overwhelming adversity, because they’re reassurances we all need right now. But instead of going on and on, I’ll simply commend the book to you in the strongest possible terms. If you buy it on amazon, take care the publisher. There are independent publishers now who mangle the text and make it microscopic, and Amazon has unhelpfully put the same comments on each edition, though the complaints clearly apply only to one or two. I’ll paste here a reliable publisher, and you can just click the pic. At some point, please read this book! And yeah, in advance, you’re welcome!

For the book, click HERE.

What Gets Your Attention?

What gets your attention? Even more importantly, what holds your attention? For many of us now, it's the shocking, the sad, the abhorrent. But a constant attention diet of bad almost by definition isn't good for us. We need to remind ourselves to notice the good, the delightful, the lovely, the ennobling, and when we see it, take it in. Allow it to hover and stay with you a bit. We become like the people we're around. We've long known that. But we're also formed deeply by what habitually gains and holds our attention.

What happens to us can carve, paint, and compose us, as we react and respond. Our thoughts matter, as well as our emotions, and the attitudes that we develop over time. And as the wise Dumbledore tells Harry Potter, it’s our choices that most make us into who we become, far more than our inborn talents. And that’s something over which we can have control, as we grow our powers of control, from whatever tiny modicum a situation might allow us, under howling, pressing emotion, to the full sway of what we’re eventually capable. And attention is vital to that development. That’s why it’s been stressed by every major spiritual tradition. Take care how you choose to pay attention, because that can affect deeply the full measure of choice you gain for yourself. And it will color who you are.

Two Paths in Life

I've been reading Truman Capote this weekend, Breakfast at Tiffany's and three of his better known short stories—A Christmas Memory, The Diamond Guitar, and House of Flowers. In the widely acclaimed Breakfast, Capote brings to life a character very much like Thackeray's famous Becky Sharp, a poor girl born with beauty and a hedonistic lust for adventure among the culture's markers of money, status, and power, an ingenue perfect for the 1940's but seen at every time, a creature who learns to augment her physical attributes with a shrewd and manipulative charm that men can't seem to resist. Holly Golightly, of course, is the belle of Truman's ball.

At one point, explaining some of her tendencies to our narrator, who lives in the same apartment building as the enigmatic young woman, Holly recounts her many ways of turning herself around when she's feeling bad. She admits she's spent too much money buying and consulting astrological charts to read her future and says:

"It's a bore. But the answer is good things only happen to you if you're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean. Not law-type honest—I'd rob a grave, I'd steal two bits off a dead man's eyes if I thought it would contribute to the day's enjoyment—but unto-thyself-type honest. Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical." (Modern Library, p. 79)

Holly's authenticity, her "honesty" is wholly in service to her own perceived self interest, and seems to magnify her unfortunate personality tendencies and character weaknesses to the extent that she's never actually happy, or long in the possession of good things, but always chasing happiness in deluded ways.

By contrast, a character in the immensely wonderful story A Christmas Memory seems to embody goodness and simplicity. The narrator here is a young boy growing up in the country in a house of adults, one of whom, an outsider to the others, becomes his best friend. He says:

<<Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880s, when she was still a child. She is still a child.>> (ML 144)

They bake fruitcakes to give away for the holidays, and go hunt down a tree to decorate together. They make kites for each other as Christmas presents. They collect pennies and the occasional dime for treats. She gives Buddy a dime each week so he can go to a picture show in town. He says about her, in a wonderful passage:

<<My friend has never been to a picture show, nor does she intend to: "I'd rather hear you tell the story, Buddy. That way I can imagine it more. Besides, a person my age shouldn't squander their eyes. When the Lord comes, let me see him clear." In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never: eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry. Here are a few things she has done, does do: killed with a hoe the biggest rattlesnake ever seen in this county (sixteen rattles), dip snuff (secretly), tame hummingbirds (just try it) till they balance on her finger, tell ghost stories (we both believe in ghosts) so tingling they chill you in July, talk to herself, take walks in the rain, grow the prettiest japonicas in town, know the recipe for every sort of old-time Indian cure, including a magical wart remover.>>

This is one of the most wonderful stories ever written about the simple life and the real and deepest honesty that's not merely a second order true-to-yourself-whoever-you-are thing, but a matter of fidelity to the highest and best that life, in true authenticity, offers. Truman had a talent. But his early sufferings ended up pushing him along the path of Holly Golightly, rather than Buddy's childhood and properly childlike friend. And that was a tragedy that need not have been. And yet, having experienced both sides of life, he can describe them powerfully well.

For the book, click HERE.

Wisdom for Big Challenges

Last night, I was in another great Morehead-Cain Zoom session with one of my MC cousins, this time George Hodgin, UNC Class of 09, who began his short chat by describing an experience he once had at 2 AM, 60 miles from the Pakistan border, hearing the crunch of gravel under his boots as he led a group through the dark for his first time as team leader. He was in his twenty-fifth year, a quarter of a century young, and for most of us what happened in the next seconds would have aged us through the rest of that century. His night vision goggles picked up a shape ahead, what turned out quickly to be a human shape that instantly turned and started spraying George and his men with automatic weapon fire. That was the challenging start of a mission of overwhelming success that ended with George getting his entire SEAL team back to base completely uninjured and ready for the next adventure.

After seven years as a SEAL, George decided to go to Stanford Business School. But the change at first was tough. As a SEAL he had experienced a daily sense of fulfillment from a clear purpose and with great camaraderie. That wasn’t all reproduced automatically in a business school setting. At first, he didn’t have a compelling, clear sense of purpose, or great partners in the challenge like the guys who had been on his team. He learned some important advice for anything we do. Last night he put it like this: “Find a partner to pick you up when you fall.” It’s Biblical, and it’s the principle used by Batman when he sheds the loner MO to take on a sidekick known to us as Robin.

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him who is alone when he falls; for he does not have another to help him." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)

Speaking of the Dark Knight, in a masterful series on Batman entitled “Hush”, superstar writer Jeph Loeb quotes Aristotle: “Without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” Friends, colleagues, comrades, good partners: This may be the most commonly overlooked secret to success in anything we do. It’s no surprise to me that the oldest western war epic, The Iliad, is really about the power of partnership and what happens when it isn’t properly maintained. The Odyssey is then about the power of purpose and its importance to help us get through the greatest difficulties we face.

George’s favorite professor at Stanford one day wrote this on the board:

"Regret for what you have done can be tempered by time. Regret for what you haven't done is inconsolable."

It lit a fire. George needed a new sense of purpose and new partners, or at least a challenge from a friend. One of his SEAL pals was struggling with injuries and the opioids used to treat his pain. The man wanted to use the known properties of marijuana as a safer alternative, but there wasn’t any medically available. And doctors couldn't even do legal research on what might work. So my MC cousin quickly went on to succeed at Stanford Biz, a daunting task in itself, did a tremendous amount of research on the health relevant properties of marijuana, and has now taken on a new major challenge: to become the first federally approved legal provider of medical marijuana, nationwide. But federal agencies can be tougher than the Taliban. They’re uninterested. They drag their feet. They produce obstacles instead of solutions. But George says, “I have to be an optimist.” It turns out that SEALS don’t quit. No surprise there. And they’re opportunistic, always looking for the hidden doorway, or the covered path forward that others might not see. And I learned a few other things in our session.

There’s a common misconception that Navy SEALS are successful because they’re very good at doing enormously complex things. But George says the truth is rather that they do the basics best. I like the old football analogy. It’s not trick plays. It’s being the best at blocking, tackling, catching, and running. Be better than anyone else at the basics. That's the secret.

And you don’t have to go out on night patrol in Afghanistan to experience fear. There’s plenty of it readily available in our business lives, and in our personal affairs. George says the key is to manage it and your other emotions well. “You are not your emotions.” You are the person who can manage and control your emotions. But fear can be instructive. When you feel it, ask what’s causing it, exactly. It may be able to speak to you on a deep level about something you need to notice or address. Then act on it or move beyond it.

George points out that having pre-established procedures, like a checklist, is immensely helpful. When you’re doing combat scuba and you suddenly hear a boat above you that’s not supposed to be there and there's an instant visceral reaction that could get in your way, you need to fall back on procedures and checklists. Yeah, thanks George, I’ve had exactly the same experience. Just kidding. But we all have our own shocks and reactions of fear from things we didn’t expect. It always goes better if you have something to fall back on, some rehearsed way of responding, at least inwardly.

And even in a business meeting, the 4x4x4 rule can help with anxiety or stress. Breathe in for four seconds. Hold it for four. Breathe out for four. Use your breath to calm your heart and head and center yourself for the challenge.

I love this. George gave us one of his favorite analogies. We’re almost always juggling too many balls in the air. Just don’t drop the glass one.

Don’t drop what’s actually most important, dearest, and perhaps preciously fragile, in your pursuit of any success. Know which balls can be dropped, which will bounce and be fine, and which must be protected most of all. In a great zoom session today with bankers, I mentioned this advice and mused that for most of us, those glass balls may be faith, family, or friends, perhaps proper self care, and likely our basic integrity.

George Hodgin is like Steve Jobs in taking on big challenges, problems that are as big as his heart and head, his spirit, and his talents. And he’s learned the joy of the journey. It’s not the mission accomplished that brings the delight, but the deed well done in the doing.

And I could go on. Lots. But it’s fifteen hundred hours and by the ROE, I’ve got to pull chocks right now and get outa here. The only easy day was yesterday. Hooyah.

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!

Philosophy Can Change a Life

I'm so thrilled at every email from a reader, even those who are determined to convince me I'm wrong about something. But every now and then I get one that says, "You changed my life." With the permission of the writer, I want to share one of those that came to me this week, with exactly that title. I hope this powerful message will nudge you to read some in the Stoic philosophers, whether through my book or someone else’s. The book referred to by my correspondent here, by the way, could be my least known general audience book, and yet I was gratified just today to see a philosopher I greatly respect and admire say that it should have been a top bestseller when it appeared. And there’s an interesting story about that. I always do my best to write books worth reading. I do hope I succeed! Now the email:

Dear Tom,

I read your book, The Stoic Art of Living, back in 2016. My life until that point had been pretty miserable. I suffered from terrible anxiety, depression, 24/7, obtrusive negative thoughts, anger, uncontrollable emotions, and a belief that I was destined to be unhappy.

I was introduced to Stoicism in a philosophy class a few years earlier, but I struggled to sift through the dense philosophical texts. Your book helped me take Stoic wisdom and actually apply it to my life. I remember reading it over and over, finding it so fascinating how each time I read it, a new gem of your wisdom popped out of me which was completely applicable to my current situation.

Over the years, I continued practicing Stoicism and finally overcame each of my struggles. Today, I experience a near-constant sense of happiness and freedom from negative thoughts (really, I have a clear mind free from such thoughts for ~95% of the day). I transformed from a complete pessimist to an eternal optimist. I know how to immediately practice neutrality toward adversity or turn challenges into something to be grateful for. I truly feel like a Stoic.

And now I help other people do the same. I developed an 8-week program where I teach people logic and principles from Stoicism that help them create happiness and change the way they respond to challenges. The methods that I use and have developed make the wisdom stick so it becomes second-nature. The results have been fantastic so far.

I just wanted to reach out and say thank you for changing my life and for the work you do to keep philosophy alive in the modern-day. I think with all of our technological progress, we’ve forgotten some of these basic laws of nature that allow us to create happiness regardless of our genetics, what we learned from the people who raised us, and the difficult experiences we’ve had.Your book had quite the ripple effect, not just on me, but everyone I've worked with who has benefited from the treasures of this ancient philosophy.I would love to hear what you’re up to. Thank you again!

Best Regards,

Kayla Trautwein

www.kaylatrautwein.com

For the book, click HERE.

Your Attention, Please!

YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE. The great spiritual traditions have all wanted us to pay attention to how we pay attention and to what. They've asked us to focus on what we focus on. Attention matters. Focus bring can bring us great good or terrible ill.

The philosopher and novelist Irish Murdoch even suggests in her little book The Sovereignty of Good that what we habitually pay attention to and focus on creates most of our ethical life. We build up through our focused attention, or lack thereof, structures of value and commitment that may or may not be healthy and helpful throughout our days. And when the time comes to make an ethically charged decision, the choice has often already been made by those freely but often unconsciously adopted structures of value and commitment.

Pay attention to what hooks your attention. Focus on what you habitually focus on. And ponder why. You may learn a lot as a result.

The Fantastically Improbable Meets The Providential.

I hope I get all the details right. So. One of the best people I've ever known had a very bad heart attack on SuperBowl Sunday. We first heard of it, and that, as a result of it, our friend and former pastor whom for present purposes we'll call Bob, since everyone does anyway, was then "on ice" and in a coma in intensive care in Raleigh, and that we should all pray for him. It sounded like the sort of story that would not normally end well, from a worldly point of view. But Bob had moved from the beach to Raleigh to lead a church there, and the area happens to have what may be the best cardiac care in the state (which is impressive, considering the facilities at UNC, Duke, and Wake Forest, as well as here in Wilmington and elsewhere). Updates trickled in that he seemed stable. Then news came that he was making small bits of progress, but would need a triple bypass surgery if he could ever regain sufficient strength and functioning, which he then quickly did within days rather than the hoped for weeks, and had the surgery successfully, and was then said by the medical staff on site to have had a truly "miraculous" recovery.

I was having breakfast with two friends yesterday and mentioned what looked like the providential care of Bob, if just in the fact of his location when the heart attack happened, and then I heard the story behind the story. You know the old real estate adage: Location, location, location. And the spot of the attack was vastly more significant than I had known, or could even have imagined. Bob was picking up his dry cleaning right before a planned two hour or more trip alone on the highway. And he suddenly had trouble trying to pull away from the drive through window. A guy in the car behind him noticed something strange in the movements of his car, which had now come to a full stop. The stranger put his own car in park, got out, walked up to the driver's side window of Bob's car, and saw our friend slumped over the steering wheel. The door was locked, so the man broke out the car window, determined Bob's condition, went back to his own car, pulled out a portable defibrillator that he happened to have with him (And really, who doesn't, on an average trip to the dry cleaner?), got Bob's seat reclined, shocked him back to a heartbeat, and waited for the EMTs he had already summoned to arrive.

If your heart stops beating, you don't have very many minutes to survive the event. If you're alone on the side of the interstate in your car, a thousand other cars and trucks may pass you by before someone, at some point, thinks to stop, and then of course it will likely be too late, especially when you factor in the initial caution of anyone approaching an occupied car in the middle of nowhere, and then the eventual emergency call and the likely long wait to get professional help. There aren't even that many busy public places that would be ideal for a heart attack, if you were to have one, in terms of available people nearby who would have a clue what to do to help other than dial 9-1-1 and hope that emergency assistance arrives soon enough.

But there's my man Bob, who decided to go to the dry cleaner before hitting the highway, where otherwise his episode most likely would have occurred. And he happens to be in a parking lot RIGHT IN FRONT OF the ONE GUY in the state who happens to have a defib machine in his car, who of course had himself earlier decided to go to the SAME dry cleaner at precisely the time he'd be needed—not three minutes earlier or ten minutes later. He doesn't just honk his horn at the aberrant driver or merely pull around him. He goes to look, and BREAKS A WINDOW and gets down to business. And then of course, later, when they learned the details of what had happened, NO ONE KNEW who the mystery man was or how he disappeared into the traffic of Raleigh after tucking in his superhero cape and giving a pat to his favorite machine. Of course, the cumulative magnitude of intrinsic probabilities that this would all work out as it happened would be absurdly small to the vanishing point. Which makes it look like someone was looking out for Bob. And who knows, maybe you and me, too, despite how things sometimes might seem.

It's almost as if things are going on behind the scenes, between the lines, and hidden from normal view, perhaps all the time, which is a major theme that runs through my Egyptian novels, and is something that continues to impress me and deepen my own worldview. There are odd wrinkles in the affairs of this world that not even the best dry cleaner can press away. They're worth our attention as, perhaps beautifully revealing as to the ultimate fabric of reality.

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.

The Lessons of Socrates and Christmas

Socrates called philosophy a preparation for death. I guess he never heard of estate planning. Philosophy in my view is a preparation for life—a full and good life. For death, it gives us very little solid guidance. For life, it offers a lot.

And yet then, perhaps the wise and good life it prescribes is in itself also the best preparation for death, or the final ending of this life. So, in a sense, the old boy was right. But then, I think I am too. And he left out the middle part, which is not to be ignored. But then again, our Christmas and Easter stories imply that even the finest intellectual guidance or theoretical preparation for life or death is never enough. Inner transformation is required of us. We come into the world like unmolded clay. We need first to be formed, and then transformed. And while that never comes from philosophy, it can be mediated through it. Perhaps that was the one more thing Socrates would have told us if he had not been required to drink the particular spiked punch that ended his time here. But don't worry about him. He was prepared.

Happy Christmas. May the joys and lessons of the season infuse the new year for you and yours.

Wisdom For the Culture!

Today my new publishing endeavor got some great and unexpected publicity from one of the best book and film reviewers in the country, a man I'm honored to know. We had coffee together the other day (actually Diet Coke for him) but we had a great talk that I didn't know would generate a very nice write-up that went out over the wires and into papers this morning. It’s about part of my ongoing effort to bring practical wisdom into the culture by every means possible. I’m just thrilled that philosophers around the country are now asking me to publish their books! And don’t worry. I’ve tamed my hair since this photo of me philosophizing earlier in the year.

For the short piece, click HERE.

Heroic Endurance

I've read The Odyssey three times this year, over five or six times in my life, and that's not nearly enough. People have read it and talked about it for over three thousand years, across 150 generations. It's that good and important. But why?

It's a tale about a flawed hero, a man of intellect and action and excellence in many things who faces nearly endless obstacles to the one thing he wants the most—simply to get home to the wife, son, father, and friends he loves. But everything seems to stand in his way. Any of us who have ever faced adversity, especially repeated difficulties that threaten to end our dreams and extinguish our hopes, can find inspiration in this doggedly determined human being. He's sometimes punished by the gods, and at other times favored by them.

To give you a flavor of who he is, I've copied every major description of him in the Robert Fagles translation. There are some repetitions, because of the epic's background in oral recitation, but what's chosen to be repeated says a lot about how the character of Odysseus is viewed by the bard. It's quite a list of terms, many of which appear in apposition to his name in the telling of the tale. But I thought it would be useful and illuminating to give you them all. May he inspire us all. So here we go.

Cursed by fate

luckless man

longs to die

one who excels all men in wisdom

never at a loss

the most unlucky mortal man ever born

one who outperformed all men of his time

the godlike man

cunning

More than all other men, that man was born for pain

no one there could hope to rival Odysseus, not for sheer cunning

at every twist of strategy he excelled us all

brave Odysseus

No one, no Achaean, labored hard as Odysseus labored or achieved so much

the crafty one

that fearless Odysseus

More than all other men, that man was born for pain

Never an unfair word, never an unfair action

Never an outrage done to any man alive

who excelled the Argives in every strength

that luckless man

that godlike man

long-enduring

a spirit tempered to endure

Man of misery

Long-enduring

weighed down with troubles

the man of many struggles

seasoned, worldly-wise

long-suffering

long-enduring

raider of cities

seasoned man of war

most cursed man alive

unlucky friend

man of twists and turns

born for exploits

master of exploits

man of pain

the unluckiest man alive

the man of countless exploits

mastermind of war

man of tactics

cunning

famed for exploits

luckless man

equipped with the gods’ own wisdom

who had suffered twenty years of torment

sick at heart

man of misery

foxy, ingenious, neer tired ot tricks and twists

far the best at tactics, spinning yarns

the cool tactician

so winning, so worldly-wise, so self-possessed

kind

the man for all occasions

raider of cities

full of tactics

no one could touch the man at plots or battles

man of exploits

a brave man in war and a deep mind in counsel

the great raider of cities

strong, enduring Odysseus

the one who knew the world

master of many exploits

the man of many trials

master of craft

a man who’s had his share of sorrows

the master improviser

the great master of subtlety

the man of craft

sly profit-turning

There was a man, or was he all a dream?

The Son of Pain

man of exploits

man of exploits

the unluckiest man alive

Impossible man!

great and strong as a god

mastermind in action

master of craft and battle

the wily fighter

the wily captain

mastermind of war

master of tactics

raider of cities

the crafty rascal

long-enduring

the best on earth, they say, when it comes to mapping tactics

the most understanding man alive raider of cities

the soul of cunning

long -suffering great Odysseus

Happy Odysseus

mastermind

long-enduring

the most unlucky man

Man of strife

luckless man

master of exploits

To get the book, click HERE.

The Birth of Philosophy

Philosophy was born in a time of massive self deception. I don't mean that a lot of people suddenly thought, "Wow, if I study this stuff, I can surely get a good job and end up popular, rich, and happy!" No. You can go to your local university's philosophy department and see that this is not the inevitable result of serious pondering. It won't typically look like life on a cruise ship, unless it's one ... with norovirus. But then, the academic study of a thing is rarely the thing itself. Philosophy is a path, a way of life, and not a profession.

The Athens around Socrates was full of people who thought they knew things that they didn't know at all. Many of them arrogantly presumed they had life figured out. And Socrates realized they didn't even have themselves figured out. Through intensive questioning, he unearthed a massive amount of self deception all around him. And once he started charting the possibility of an alternative, young people began to respond. This activity of philosophy was something different. This alternate path departing from smug prejudice and personal delusion might offer light and air and hope.

And so, given the massive self deceptions of our own time, we can be optimistic that, perhaps, philosophy will be reborn out of its own ashes and lead us once more to that light, and air, and hope.

Aristotle's Recipe for Greatness

Aristotle's simple recipe for human greatness:

People in Partnership for a shared Purpose.

It's never put so briefly (he's Aristotle, after all) but it's to be found in his Politics, which is about how we best live well together. Oh, how we've drifted! Here he is sans pupils. But that's ok. We can be his pupils, even today. He reminds us that greatness is never a solitary achievement. It arises out of people working together. How? In partnership. And there must be a clear, shared purpose that brings the people together and makes the partnership possible.

I just finished my second reading of The Iliad a few days ago, as I’ve mentioned here before. It’s a great story about partnerships breaking down when there is no longer first and foremost a shared purpose. I had a great talk on the plane the other day with a fellow philosopher from the real estate world about how The Iliad can help us to be better in our organizations and to avoid or heal those breakdowns. The wisdom is out there. It’s up to us to find it and use it. Good wishes in your own wisdom adventures!

Sisyphus, The Rock, and the Roll.

Y'all may have to help me out with this one.

“I think of Sisyphus as a hero.” A great psychologist, top leadership expert, and a good friend said this to me the other day on the phone. Sisyphus is of course the guy who rolls a rock endlessly up a mountain, only to have it roll back again, and he has to repeat his task endlessly, with the same result. I had never heard him called a hero. “Really?” was my astute reply. “Yep,” I recall my friend explaining to me. I was surprised. “I’ll have to think about that.” And a day later I called him back to ask for a bit more detail.

Before I go on, I should give you the basic back story of the famous mythological figure. And I’m not making this up. According to ancient sources, a baby boy named Sisyphus was born into money and power that came from his father. He went on to become, like that father, a king. And he came to be known as a greedy, avaricious, self-aggrandizing and deceitful ruler, who often killed those who sought to come into his country. This may be starting to sound vaguely familiar. His only concern was to maintain his own power, and he devoted most of his time and energy to that end. He had a brother he hated and so he seduced the man’s daughter as part of a failed plot to kill him. Two children resulted from the sorry episode, and their mother, the niece Sisyphus had seduced, is said to have killed them both. It wasn’t a happy group of people.

The bad king also made another major error in later on betraying Zeus for his own intended gain. He wasn’t much for respect and loyalty to others. As a punishment, the chief of all gods sent Death to visit the man and put him into chains. But the slippery king was not to be so easily stopped, and he managed to trick Death into showing him how the chains would work, and the Grim Reaper himself ended up locked in place. Zeus, as you might imagine, was not to be thwarted so easily. So he took charge himself and bound Sisyphus to the endless task for which he has become famous. His new life was to push a large rock up a mountain to the top, but right before fully accomplishing the job, the rock would elude his control and roll back down the hill. So Sisyphus would have to start all over again, pushing it back up again fruitlessly, since it would always roll back down, and this would be repeated forever.

We can see here several patterns. One is the cycle of aspiration, striving, near success and ultimate failure. Rinse and repeat. We find it too often in life. Is this the dog chasing his own tail? Is it a metaphor for all of existence? What exactly is it?

When we think of the man now, we tend to envision only this endless end state. The rock. The roll. The return. The redo. And on, and on. The French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus saw this portrayal as emblematic of our condition, viewed as absurd. We strive; we fail. We try again; we fail again. We’re born, we work hard at an education, and then at a life, and when we finally get to the point high enough on this mountain to have some real wisdom, we roll back down and die. And of course, there are religions that tell us we’re then born again to roll that rock back up another hill.

So, I asked my friend, absent all the hideous background information on the mythical character that might these days qualify him as a certain political party’s next nominee for high office: How can he be thought heroic?

He quickly told me about Admiral William McCraven’s excellent graduation speech which has been turned into the book, "Make Your Bed." McCraven talks about Navy Seal Training, and how the first lesson is to make up your bed in the morning and to do it perfectly. That reminded me of a conversation I had with my college roommate many years ago. I asked, “Why don’t you make your bed?” He said, “I’d just have to do it all over again the next day, and over and over. What's the point?” I mentioned the conversation to my wife and she said, “With a lot of people, it’s cleaning the sink, an equally endless task.” Or else, sweeping the floor. Or, you-name-it. Consider for contrastive pondering a parallel: “Why didn’t you eat anything today?” Answer: “I’d have to do it all over again tomorrow. What’s the point?”

Some things are just going to need to be redone or repeated. There are very few actions in our daily lives that are “one and done" forever. But, let’s get back to Admiral McCraven. He says this about making your bed:

<<The wisdom of this single act has been proven to me many times over. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right.>>

With a lot of great football coaches, regular practice isn’t often about learning fancy plays and developing great strategies. It’s about blocking, tackling, running, and catching. “What are we going to do today, Coach?” – “Block, tackle, run, and catch.” – “What about tomorrow?” – “The same.” When I was an undergraduate, the UNC tennis team was often number one in the country and also known for how much they ran in practice, around and around the track and in wind-sprints. You’d think they were the track team. They’d run and run and run and run. And in a big tournament, near the end, when their opponents could barely move or breathe, they still had gas in the tank, from all that basic, simple, repetitive running.

So I thought about Sisyphus. Not mainly about his greed and deception and awful behavior as king, but about his endless task after those years. And then I saw the connection. Hubris. Pridefulness. Ego. There are endless mountains to climb for the undisciplined grasping ego. Nothing is ever enough. You roll the rock up the hill and then you have to do it again. You’re only as successful as what you’re doing now. Yesterday is gone. The world you always feel a need to impress has just one question: What have you got for me today?

Whether 100 days or 100 months or 100 years into his punishment, even Sisyphus may have gotten the message. The bloated ego can never be satisfied. The desperate quest of getting to the top of the hill never ends.

So let’s imagine our man has had an epiphany, a “mountaintop experience” on one of his trips up, or down. He realizes how foolish he had been, how evil, how duped by his own endless, self-defeating self-deceptions. And he takes a new attitude, maybe like a Navy Seal. Each day, making up the bed perfectly is a task worth doing. It’s a job in which you can take pride. It has a beginning and an end, each time. It doesn't have to lead to anything else to be worth your work. But it most often does, anyway.

But wait. What about rolling a rock? Let's get creative: Does Sisyphus do exactly the same thing every day? Well, on a superficial level, he pushes the rock up for the first time only once, and for the second time only once. He rolls it on Monday, then on Tuesday, and maybe from the front of the hill and perhaps then the side. He may angle it up like the stripe on an old Barbershop pole. It could be that he shoves it all the way with his arms once, then with his shoulder the next trip. He next uses his feet. Maybe he backs it up, inch by inch by foot by yard, or meter, depending on the metrics of Hades. He very likely becomes the best rock roller of all time. Those 10,000 hours are now ancient history. He's the Master. He can do it in so many different ways it’s mind-boggling. He zens out at some times, just feeling his breath and the feet in his shoes, and at other times he sings while he shoves, then maybe recites ancient poetry. He makes up stories. He prepares to sing again, or talk to the birds. You can even hear him at a distance saying, “I dedicate this roll to Hera, for putting up with Zeus.”

Maybe he rolls it because he has to, only until that magic moment when he rolls it because he wants to, and that’s a major change. Perhaps he begins to roll it as an object lesson for all the rest of us, as a cautionary tale on one level, and an inspirational story on another. You can imagine his thought, as he projects it out to us: "No matter how many times this stone rolls down, I’m on it. I’m pushing it back. I won’t be defeated. Ever. And neither should you. You’re as free as your attitude and your choice to persevere. And: So am I. We can push on, as often as it takes. And is it without meaning? Who says? I hereby give it meaning. Watch me."

So. Who is a hero? One who works for the good of others and never just his own narrow ends. A hero engages in arduous or dangerous activity for the sake of other people, for their good, for our benefit. And maybe after a life of the opposite as a king, old Sis finally got the message and changed his tune to do exactly this.

When I was talking to my wife about the rock and the roll, I said, “Can you imagine weeks and months into this business how amazingly fit and STRONG this guy would have become?” She said, “How about the pain?” Yeah, maybe he’d be sore, aching all over. But he’d have the chance to work through it, right? No pain, no gain. Maybe that's a part of it, too. So, yeah, he could have become a strange and powerful hero with the inner judo, the spiritual alchemy that we all often need.

For Make Your Bed: https://amzn.to/36rpE88

The McCraven video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBuIGBCF9jc