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.

The Joy of the Journey

There’s a special joy in doing what you’re meant to do. 

This week, so far, I’ve travelled to Colorado Springs for a talk at the great Broadmoor hotel, speaking to 450 business owners. The hotel itself is spectacular, and I always seem to be put in the West Building, which is quiet and beautiful, with serene views outside the window of my suite. To get to the main building, where I had dinner last night with one of the top speaking agents in the country, a really great individual who also has an unexpected and interesting background as a songwriter, with tunes, so far, in eighteen films, I had to walk on a path bisecting a scenic lake, mounting a gently sloping footbridge in the middle, surrounded by mountains. The temperature was perfect. The evening was magical. 

Who knew that being a freelance philosopher could put me in so many wonderful places, where the glories of nature are on such magnificent display? And the people I meet along the way enrich my life immensely.

And then came the talk, the speech for which I had made the journey. I had forty minutes, a relatively short time these days for philosophy, but it was ethereal. We pondered, we analyzed, we laughed, and we explored the wisdom of the ages on one of the most important topics of all - how each of us can have our best impact on the world in the short span of years that we have, and how we can have true success, deeply satisfying and sustainable success that fulfills us, in everything we do.

It was a treat to represent the great philosophers, east and west, and to add my own interpretive frameworks. And everyone who was there went away with a laminated wallet card on the ideas we talked about. I’ve given out these cards on each of my topics, for more than twenty years. I’ve probably handed out millions as little gifts. And as a result, people stop me in airports and hotels, and in other places, and pull out their wallets and show me the card that they say they got six or nine or twelve years ago at a talk they heard me give and still remember. What a kick! Those little laminated wallet cards are almost the paper version of tweets, but they last, and can be carried about and kept and referred to again and again. The way tweets stand to blogs, these little cards stand to books, and have a special magic all their own.

My talk at the Broadmoor was, as such a thing almost always is, a joy, What Emerson would have called an ecstasy, and an honor. In the whirlwind of time allowed on a busy meeting day, we ranged through space and time, appropriating the insights of the ages for our own lives, and thinking anew about what we want from our time, and our efforts. 

It’s always a new experience for me. I never memorize talks and hit the play button in front of an audience. I do like the great jazz guys and improvise around a framework. I surprise myself. I sometimes say things I’ve never even thought before, but in that moment, I realize a new truth and pass it on to others.

Now, I’ll have two days at home, and then a quick trip to Florida, to philosophize again, for a small group of executives who make sure the lights stay on at such places as Google and NASA, operations where power reliability is crucial. We’ll get to talk about the life wisdom that’s also powerful and always reliable. And that will keep the lights on for them, as it does for me.

I tell you this today in hopes that you are also, in your own way, participating in the joy of living your proper mission and adventure. And if you haven’t quite found that yet, let me encourage you that it awaits you and can be both lived and loved.

So examine your own experience. You’re here to do great things, and to have great joys. I want that for you.

Today.

Our Desires

"Of our desires, some are natural and necessary; others are natural but not necessary; others, again, are neither natural nor necessary." Thus spake Epicurus.

This is something worth thinking about. We all have desires. And many of them properly lead to goals. But not all of them. There are some desires that should not be pursued. Many people make themselves miserable through a failure to understand this.

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus had a way of helping us to classify our desires. Some are natural and necessary. We should have them and must pursue them. Others are natural but not necessary. It’s perfectly fine to pursue them, but it’s also no disaster if they go unsatisfied. The last class encompasses those that are neither natural nor necessary. We don’t have to satisfy them, and it’s not even natural for us to pursue them. Too many of our desires in the modern world fall into this last category.

Epicurus wants to free us from the tyranny of the unnatural and unnecessary things we chase. There's nothing natural about fame. There's nothing necessary about it. Yet, people sacrifice all for it. There's nothing natural about having more resources than you could ever use. There's certainly nothing necessary about it. Yet, people aspire to it, risking what they do have in lotteries and in relentless jobs that take away their lives for the remote promise of windfall gains. 

The philosopher wants to help us to understand our desires better, so that we can manage them better, for our own good, and not allow them to manage to ruin our lives. Use his categories to enhance your own thinking today. It's both natural and necessary to do so!

Love

Love is the spirit of compassion, care, and forgiveness.

It unfolds in service to others and the best growth of the self.

It is the deepest and only wellspring for true greatness in life.

It seeks the best in others, and for them, while cultivating its own garden well.

To live without it is a struggle. To live with it is a better struggle, in the warm light of hope.

Love is first a commitment, then an attitude, then a belief, then a feeling, and then everything.

Love conquers all. Eventually.

Love transforms all. Now.

Love is the transcendent source of all good things.

It is the only enduring form of strength.

It is the sole source of peace and happiness.

To love is to live in full.

A Happy Life

What is happiness? What makes for a happy life? Go to any big bookstore, and you'll find lots of authors tackling the question. Ring all those books up at the register and you'll likely end up very unhappy at the total.

The roman lawyer and stoic thinker Seneca once wrote: "A happy life is one in harmony with its own nature."

An unhappy person is out of step with herself.  A happy person experiences a large measure of inner harmony.  She lives in accordance with her own highest nature.

In his strange film Zelig, Woody Allen long ago masterfully caricatured the chamelion-like tendency that many people have to fit in. We dress in the right style and eat at the right places, drive the appropriate cars, talk in the lingo of those around us, and do as we’re expected to do, all in a misplaced search for happiness. The only reliable formula, Seneca believed, is to live and act in harmony with your own best nature. He believed, first, that there is a universal human nature that should be respected in all that we do.  But he also wanted each of us to be true to who we uniquely are, at our potential best - with our own talents and abilities honed in a way that's right for us, but also put into service to others.

Where are the tensions in your life? If you take an inventory of your own obstacles to happiness, I think it's likely that you’ll find places where you aren’t being true enough to your deepest and highest nature. The good news is, you can make the changes you need to make to live and act in a way that is more natural for who you are and distinctively can be. It is, after all, your nature. Embrace it and work with it. That's the path to happiness, according to the philosopher.

What Few Understand About Wisdom

Through the millennia comes a recommendation:

"Make wisdom your provision for the journey from youth to old age, for it is a more certain support than all other possessions."

That's a quote from the ancient philosopher, Bias of Priene. But maybe he was just biased, you could be thinking, if you're cleverer than it's good to be. No, he was simply right.

And many people these days don't quite get the importance of wisdom because they misunderstand what it is. It isn't the memorization and mental retention of catchy aphorisms or epigrams. The wisest among us isn't the person who can come up with the most quotes, like that one above from Bias of Priene. Wisdom isn't the same thing as recitation. A bird can be taught to recite quotes. It isn't even a matter of theoretical knowledge at all, as if there's a certain number of insights about life, a discrete number of wisdom facts, and to have wisdom is just to have learned them all.

And, most of all, wisdom isn't the ability to think and say obscure sounding things that can be interpreted by others as profound. What then, is it?

Wisdom is a skill set involving perceptive discernment, healthy emotion, and appropriate action.

It took me a while to come up with that, which is probably the wisest thing I've ever said about wisdom.

That's why it's impossible to come across a wise man or woman who always acts like a fool. If a person is foolish, then, to that extent, he or she isn't wise. But again, it isn't an all or nothing matter. It's not like the proverbial light switch, either on or off. It's more like a spectrum. You can grow wiser. When we call someone wise, we don't mean to imply perfection, only a preponderance of insight and appropriateness in judgment, emotion, and action.

The fact that wisdom is a skill set is good news. Any skill can be cultivated. Some people seem to be born with an innate endowment toward such skilled behavior, but hard work and practice can bridge the gap. And it's important for us all to cultivate this skill set throughout our days, because a fully good and happy life is impossible without it.

Wisdom, then, is not to be found just in words, but in lived insight. The words that best convey those insights are merely markers pointing to the skills we all need to acquire through their help. The sayings of the wise are our breadcrumbs along the path of full living.