The Goodness Guarantee

There are very few guarantees in the world. One of the rare ones is that if, from a perspective of basically true belief, you try to do good or try to do evil, you're guaranteed to succeed. Let me make it clear what this means.

The single condition for this guarantee is that you have mostly, and at least roughly, true beliefs about what's good, and what's evil. You don't have to be a master of ethical insight, but have generally accurate and non delusional views of what's right and wrong, at a simple and basic level. Then, the guarantee kicks in. If you're trying to do good for the world, beyond your own narrow interests, in your pursuit of a goal or in your treatment of another person, then, whether you succeed in accomplishing exactly what you're attempting or not, your effort to do good is itself a form of good. In even trying to do good, you've brought a dose of good into the world.

Likewise, and conversely, if you're trying to do evil in the world, of any kind, in your pursuit of a goal or in your treatment of another person, then, whether you succeed in accomplishing exactly what you're attempting or not, your effort itself is a form of evil. It is evil to try to accomplish evil. 

To sum up, armed with a basically correct grasp of good and evil, then you get a rare guarantee. When you try to do good, you actually do good. When you try to do evil, you really do evil. And this is true regardless of circumstances. Because of that truth, something important follows.

There's aren't many such guarantees in life. When you try to make a lot of money, there's no guarantee that you'll succeed financially. If you try to get famous, there's also no guarantee that your intent will be realized in any form. Likewise for the pursuit of power, or status, or any other external thing distinct from good or evil.

So, therefore what should we make of this realization? Our conclusion is crucially important, and potentially even life changing.

Consider this. One way not to waste your time and energy in this life is to seek first and foremost a goal that's guaranteed. That leaves two options. Whatever we do, we should either seek to do good, or to do evil. But seeking evil, as Socrates long ago pointed out, is in itself wrong and, in addition, will just make your world a worse place for you. We should not seek evil. Therefore, the opposite conclusion follows quickly: We should always intentionally seek to do good, whatever the particulars might be. 

This conclusion then comes with a cosmic promise. Your effort to make a positive addition to the world will itself be one. And then, everything else is gravy. Or icing on the cake - depending on whether you prefer the savory or the sweet, each of which is available to the seeker of good.

First, seek to know what is good and what isn't. Strip off false beliefs, and escape illusion. Then, the job is clear. Determine, whatever you do, to do good, and good will follow. Even if you're somewhat mistaken in your understanding of what the good requires, a sincere and humble pursuit of the good is more open than any other mindset to correction about what it truly entails. That way, in seeking to do good, you position yourself to both do good and become better. And I have just one question: As a fundamental starting point, what could be better than that?

When to Take a Risk

"And he found out that if he wanted to fly, he first had to jump."  - The Little Paris Bookshop, 141.

"If you don't take any risks, life will pass you by." - The Little Paris Bookshop, 188.

A few days ago, I told the story of being stuck in a Costco store for an hour after the intended day's shopping was done. I just had to wait. And rather than let either frustration or boredom have a run at me, I decided to take positive action and explore the books and the wines in the shop. As a result, I made some wonderful discoveries - the big, engaging supernaturalist novel by David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks, and a wonderful new book by Nina George called The Little Paris Bookshop, which is set mostly on a river barge that's been turned into a bookstore, and is really a story about risk and love. And, oh, yeah, there was also an amazing 2010 Bordeaux red for $16.95 - a vintage where you'll often pay hundreds of dollars a bottle. But $16.95? I took the risk. And it was really nice.

Risk.

When I chose to leave a tenured full professorship at Notre Dame to launch out on a mission as a public philosopher, people said two things to me that gave me pause, and actually kept me up for a couple of nights: "Do you realize all that you're giving up?" And: "How do you know you can sustain this new adventure?" They were asking me to consider the clear sacrifices I was making, and the lack of guarantees I had about my new venture. That was 20 years ago, this month.

Those are two questions that can always be asked about anything new. And they should be pondered. What are you giving up by doing this? What are you getting by doing this?

Whenever you leave one thing, or form of life, or comfortable way of engaging the world, and take up something new, there is, presumably, both risk and reward. You should indeed reflect on both.

There's a general truth in life: No risk, no reward. It's of course the cousin of "No pain, no gain." Every time we commit to anything new, anything that involves a new path forward, we risk our hearts, our status in the eyes of others, sometimes our finances, and of course, always, possible failure. Whenever there's a fork in the road that's unmarked, and we choose to choose and keep moving, we risk picking the wrong path, one that won't be right for us, in the deepest ways. But risk is inescapable in life. Given that truth, we want to take the best and most reasonable risks we can, given who we are and what we most properly value - however crazy they might seem to onlookers. What does your heart tell you? What does your head say, as well? And can you get them to agree? If you don't take any risks, life will certainly pass you by.

Reasonable risk contemplates the ration of risk and reward, as well as whether worst-case-scenario possibilities would still allow you options to move forward in a different way. Some risks have possible downsides that would clearly end your adventures on earth. In fact, many do. Some are worth that risk. Others aren't. Some risks could potentially wreck havoc, while still allowing you another chance in the game. And in each such case, you should make sure you're fully committed to the potential rewards before launching out in the face of such risk. But since, in the most general sense, some form of risk is really unavoidable, we should indeed be prepared to embrace the risks that seem right for us, the ones that can potentially grow us and our positive impact on the world, starting with those fellow citizens of the world who are closest to us.

Life is a dynamic flow that at best involves protecting some things and letting go of others, as we move and change and grow. Risk is about release, but it's also about reaching out for something new and great.

The New York Times and many other news outlets recently ran glowing obituaries on a remarkable man, Nicholas Winston, who, as a young 29 year old clerk at the London Stock Exchange, visited Czechoslovakia, saw a need, and did some amazing things to save the lives of 669 Jewish children from the growing Nazi threat, and despite the tremendous risks he took, lived to the ripe old age of 106, from which vantage point he could see the 6,000 descendants, and counting, of those he saved. When he was asked to reflect on his choices, he said, "Why do people do different things? Some people revel in taking risks, and some go through life taking no risks at all." His risks had consequences for good that will go on forever. Yours can, too.

We should all be willing to take the risk, however big or small, that can have great consequences for good. We should consider what we're releasing, and what we're reaching for, and when conviction propels us onward, we can listen to the concerns of others without letting those worries stop us from taking the risk that seems right.

The Weave of Our Lives

We're given raw materials, every day. What tapestry do we use them to weave?

My wife and I were in Costco the other day to get me some new sunglasses, and also to buy a cart load of household staples. She wrote a check to pay for the sunglasses and then realized that it was her last. We couldn't buy the cartload of stuff unless she went home and got more checks. My Mastercard and Visa were not Ok. She asked if I would wait with the cart. I quickly calculated that it would mean probably an hour of being stuck there with nothing to occupy my time. And I had stuff to do. But I quickly blocked out those thoughts and said, "Sure, Ok. You go. I'll be here looking at books or something." She suggested I also wander through the wine section. I still couldn't quite believe I was about to lose an hour of my life, but I've learned, most of the time, not to let useless negative emotions bubble up and take over. You never know when something that looks bad may produce something good. And, boy, did that ever happen. 

The raw materials - An unexpected hour by myself in Costco. The challenge: What would I weave?

First, I found two great books I had never heard about, and bought both. One, I've just finished, a 624 page opus that's almost impossible to describe - The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell, author of the Cloud Atlas, that was recently made into a movie. It traces the life of a girl, Holly Sykes, from her home in England and family that she abandons at age 15, to run away and live with her older boyfriend, who, it turns out, has already dumped her before she gets to his house with a bag of her possessions and big dreams of love. When the book ends, we've seen threads woven in and out of her life, into her seventies, and up to the year 2043 or beyond. If I were pushed to say what the book is about, I'd venture this: It's an exploration of what spiritual powers may lurk mostly unseen behind the facades of everyday life. It's about how many of us have glimpses of something else, under the surface of things, whether we want to characterize our experiences as telepathy, or precognition, or in some other way. Occasionally, there's a voice, or perhaps even voices. Now and then there might be a sense of leading, or guidance. Maybe we have a quick flash of what is to come. In the book God and the Philosophers, I tell my own such story. And in Philosophy for Dummies, I tell others. Mitchell shows how these things enter Holly's life and how she deals with them.

It's hard not to be fascinated by a book that purports to pull back the veil of the ordinary, and show glimmers of what might be out there, or in here, beyond. Mitchell is an excellent writer, and the book is strangely compelling. There are meditations throughout on such things as power, and death, and meaning - great stuff for philosophical readers like me. But there also turns out to be more of a supernatural thriller story waiting in the wings than you might ever imagine at the outset. There end up being passages that have a sort of Harry Potter flair, but for older readers. The end is a bit dystopian for my tastes, however realistic, given current world politics and environmental degradation, but the road to get there was pretty fascinating.

And, yeah, I also got another book during my wait at Costco, one that I'll start today - The Little Paris Bookshop, by Nine George, a bestseller in Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Netherlands that just made it to our shores. Apparently, it's about an old bookseller who gives people books to help with their lives. I'll report on it later.

And I would be remiss not to mention my few minutes in the wine section. My wife and I had just watched Red Obsession, on Netflix, which is about a spectacular year in Bordeaux, when the conditions were perfect for great wine. That was the year many newly affluent Chinese discovered the top Chateaux there and began bidding up the price of the wines beyond all reason. But in Costco,  I found one of those wines, of that year's vintage, that was not at all a crazy price, but a super low one. I bought it, and was amazed at what you can experience from that year, for under $20. I may identify it later, once I've gone back and bought more.

So that time at Costco that was almost sure to be a wasted hour, that I assumed would feel like three or four hours as I waited and waited? It felt like ten minutes, and produced books and a wine that have already enhanced my life. Plus, we have enough paper towels to last through the century.

It's amazing how a new thread, however it at first looks, may end up enhancing the weave of our lives.

Preparing For the Big Next

We have no clear idea what's next. I mean, after this life. Really.

We speak of heaven, and "the next adventure" but we have for this inevitable end that each of us will meet the most extreme dearth of detail regarding any important thing imaginable. That's why life after death books sell so well, and it's why psychics and clairvoyants stay in business. 

One thing seems likely to me, having studied this for decades. It will matter then what we do now. We should treat each other in this life as well as we possibly can. For theists, it's an obligation. For atheists and agnostics, it's a bold dramatic gesture. For all, it's an exercise of radical freedom, achieved with difficulty - not to react slavishly and reciprocally to what others do to us, but to set new standards for what those others need to have done for them. Each of us is called to be a pioneer of elevating action. Each of us is called to heroic grace.

We should treat others exceedingly well, despite what they sometimes do to us, not just because of what they are created to be, but because of what we ourselves are created to be. The fact is that we deserve the effects of such actions as those we ought to perform. Many great thinkers, such as Plato and Shakespeare's Hamlet, have understood this. We all need to, as well.

The relationship between the now and the hereafter is simple. The now is limited. We know that. And it will affect whatever hereafter there is - even from an atheistic perspective, for what is now created and done will never cease to have been, forever into the future. Every act is eternal. The full story of reality is vastly and everlastingly different, depending on what we do now, day-to-day. There's always the possibility of demeaning behavior or elevating action - it's left to be our choice. What then will we do?

Kindness and Respect

What's more important, kindness, or respect? Are they equals, or is one subordinate to the other?

Ok, in case you're thinking "Who cares?" or "What difference does it make?" consider this: When you prioritize kindness in your dealings with others, you may act differently from what you would do if you prioritized respect. For example, many people often withhold what they consider to be difficult truths, or facts that might upset, frighten or worry a friend, or family member, or coworker, in an attempt to be kind. Late in the Harry Potter stories, Albus Dumbledore pretty much admits to Harry that one of his greatest mistakes was to do this and keep certain things from the young boy that he should have told him much sooner.

When we withhold difficult truths from someone who might genuinely want to know them, however hurtful or disturbing they might be, we are not respecting the other person as a mature spirit, or soul, capable of dealing with difficulty. We might say we're doing it to be kind. But we're not showing the ultimate of respect. When we truly respect another person, we tend to be more forthright and honest. We'll also certainly try to do this, to be truthful, with kindness, so it isn't a matter of choosing one rather than the other. But it's a matter of which guides which.

Think for a moment about the relationship of these two qualities, kindness and respect.

Kindness without respect is either paternalism, or is the mere outward appearance of the caring virtue and not its reality, but rather more a form of manipulation, or else a mere cultural habit to smooth out the bumps of human relations.

Respect without kindness can be a sort of formal and almost grudging sense of at least rough and partial equality in some crucial regard. But without the warming influence of true care, it's by itself rather cold.

The ideal, in my thinking, is to pair respect and kindness in our treatment of others, but with respect always being the senior partner, so to speak, or the priority, overall. Kindness is of infinite value, but is always to be felt, and shown, as a way of respecting another person. Respect is, in this perspective, always in the lead. So, if I'm right in this conclusion, and you think that withholding some crucial information from another person is indeed an act of kindness on your part, you should ask yourself whether it also, first and foremost, shows full respect to the other person, as an equally valuable and autonomous decision maker with a right to know anything that would impinge importantly on their lives, and able in their own way to handle their emotions and reactions to the truth.

At least, this is what I got in my last dip into a swimming pool. Sometimes, first thing in the morning, before the heat of the day, I'll get into the pool and move slowly back and forth in three to four feet of water, in a sort of zen walking meditation, and the other morning, while doing so, these were the thoughts that at one point spontaneously emerged. I hope they're right. Because of the priority of my respect for you, dear reader. Thanks for your own reflection on the matter.

You Got To Want It

What's necessary in order to be really good at something? Well, the right talent, or set of talents, for one thing. And lots of work, or practice, for another. But still, there's something else.

Let's ask a really different question. How should you react when someone wanting to help you suggests or even recommends you for a new job, position, role, opportunity, or goal that doesn't strike you as quite right? Your friend/fan/helper/coach/mentor/agent is excited about the new possibility, but you're uneasy, or unsure. You don't feel an inner fire. Sometimes, it's great to stretch outside your comfort zone. And yet, you should always listen to your heart. Here's an example. A Hollywood agent in the 1950s has discovered an attractive young woman he wants to put in the movies. Good things are happening for her already. A prominent man in the community, a bold-faced name in the papers, someone having his picture taken all the time, wants to marry her. The agent is himself relating what happened next, out in Los Angeles:

Then wham! The Story of Dr. Wassall. You see that picture? Cecil B. DeMille. Gary Cooper. Jesus. I kill myself, it's all set: they're going to test her for the part of Dr. Wassell's nurse. One of his nurses, anyway. Then wham! The phone rings." He picked a telephone out of the air and held it to his ear. "She says, this is Holly, I say honey you sound far away, she says I'm in New York, I say what the hell are you doing in New York when it's Sunday and you got the test tomorrow? She says I'm in New York cause I've never been to New York. I say get your ass on a plane and get back here, she says I don't want it. I say what's your angle, doll? She says you got to want it to be good and I don't want it. I say what the hell do you want, and she says when I find out, you'll be the first to know.

That's O.J. Berman talking to our narrator, the upstairs neighbor of Holly Golightly, in Truman Capote's short novel Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Holly's words ring true: You got to want it to be good. It's true of acting, and of almost anything else. In considering a new opportunity or possibility, you have to ask yourself, "Do I really want it?" Can I envision it happening? Does it stir me up? Would it be fulfilling and fun? If not, it's probably not right for you, at least, not now. But if so, if you do want it, if it lights a flame in you, then you have one of the main conditions for success - an emotional commitment.

Life is too short to concentrate our energies on things we really don't care about. Find something you want, and pursue that with your whole heart. And if you're like me and are already doing it, keep at it!

Hemingway, You, and Me

Life coaches now tell us to believe in ourselves, organize our lives better, and remember to breathe. Medieval life coaches would whisper in people's ears, "You're going to die. Remember your mortality." What was up with that?

I just finished reading Ernest Hemingway's famous novel, A Farewell to Arms. An American has gone to Italy in the First World War, to help the Italians fight the Austrians and Germans. This man, the narrator of the story, drives an ambulance and other vehicles near the front. He's badly injured, meets a nurse, falls in love, receives a medal for heroism, and months later returns to the front. So far, the story tracks the life of the author. Then, through a series of unexpected small situations and accidents, our narrator becomes separated from his unit, and is wrongly suspected of desertion. He escapes an imminent execution out in the countryside only by diving into a river under fire. He reunites with his love and, now on the run, they manage with great difficulty to get to safety in Switzerland, where she goes into labor with his baby. Fortunately, they're able to enter a major hospital for the delivery. The story is full of twists and turns, ups and downs for the two of them.

At that point in the narrative Hemingway goes far beyond confronting us with the crazy and sometimes scary vicissitudes of life, as seen in the adventures of the soldier and his great love, and begins to rub our noses in the fickle inescapability of death in this world. The last pages of the book are so bleak in articulating the author's deepest attitudes, the whole thing could have been called, "A Farewell to Meaning and Hope."

This wasn't, of course, the only time Papa H took on the topic of mortality. Many months ago, I quoted here from his other novel, The Sun Also Rises. Just eleven pages into it, there is this brief conversation, worth repeating, that starts with Robert Cohn, Princeton graduate and amateur boxer, speaking to his old friend Jake, the narrator of the novel, in a bar – where, it seems that, interestingly, philosophical reflection about life often takes place:

“Listen, Jake,” he leaned forward on the bar. “Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”

 “Yes, every once in a while.”

“Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we'll be dead?”

“What the hell, Robert,” I said,  “ What the hell?”

“I'm serious.”

“It’s one thing I don’t worry about,” I said.

“You ought to.”

As we all know, but, like Jake, tend not to think about very much, the life adventure we’re on right now is a limited-time offer. This is an interesting point of reflection for all of us who are already in mid-life or - like me - beyond. But it’s an important fact for any of us, however young or old. Are we making the most of our time? Are we using our talents in the best ways, and taking advantage of the opportunities that come to us each day? Are we enjoying the adventure that we have, to the extent that we can? Or are we letting ourselves be held back by habit and worn down by our own inner reactions to things that are outside our control?

The answers to these questions often turn on another one: How well do we handle change in our lives, day to day – the little, unexpected events, and the bigger disruptions; the challenges and the opportunities? Do we resist almost all change and regret it, or are we creative artists with it?

As the bluntly philosophical Robert points out for Jake and all the rest of us, there will come a time when further change in this world is impossible for each of us – maybe thirty-five years from now; maybe longer; and maybe much sooner. We never know. So why not make the most of this incredible journey while we can? Great things are possible for us, with the right approach to work and life.

Hemingway himself may have taken a very negative attitude toward the challenges of life,  but he did pretty well for himself in his chosen profession, despite the many ups and downs he couldn't control, until he chose exactly the wrong action on the day that ended his adventure.

We shouldn't follow his negativity of attitude, or many of his choices. But we do benefit from being reminded of the churn and fragility of our situations throughout this life. We don't find ourselves in an easy world, or with endless time. We're clearly in a place of challenge. But that just means we need to develop all our strengths and the most positive attitudes we can in order to flourish and prevail, within the parameters given us. Ultimately, that can provide us with a Farewell to Anxiety, and a Farewell to Fear.

The Unencumbered Life

Are the things we own blessings or burdens? Actually, do we own our stuff at all, or does it own us?

The New York Times ran a wild story this weekend about a French tech entrepreneur living in the US who has had a very unusual mid-life crisis. With an estimated net worth of 100 million dollars, Fabrice Grinda came to feel that all the great stuff he owned had become a burden that was actually keeping him from the more important things in life. So he decided to downsize radically and experience an unencumbered existence. He moved out of his huge mansion that sits on 20 acres of land in New York state, got rid of his $300,000 McLaren sports car, released his $13,000 a month apartment in the City, gave away tons of stuff, and kept only what he could fit into a roller bag suitcase and a backpack. He decided that he'd simply be a free spirit nomad and go live with his friends, one at a time, enjoying their company, rather than all that stuff. Having shed his physical burdens, however, he quickly became a major burden to each of those friends.

It seems that the wealthy man didn't do his own laundry, or make his own bed when he stayed with friends. He liked to talk loud, stay up really late, and eat everything in their refrigerators. He ended up giving all of them their own crises and learning as a result that the unencumbered life wasn't as easy as he had imagined.

This past week, I read several short novels by John Steinbeck, including the very funny Tortilla Flat, and the almost equally amusing Cannery Row, both of which are about groups of poor but festive characters in and around Monterey, California, in the early days of the twentieth century. They had no regular jobs, often slept in the woods, or in old, run down buildings that others provided, and managed to "find" food and wine on a fairly regular basis. They were scoundrels with hearts of gold. They lived off the generosity of their neighbors, but somehow thought of themselves as the real community benefactors. Their unencumbered lives gave them a special freedom, at least in their own minds. As you read their stories, you can't quite decide whether they present an extreme yet attractive ideal of the free spirit, or are really just completely irresponsible social parasites, living as slaves to their own peculiar instabilities and passing appetites, while depending on the charity, or gullibility, of others to support them. 

Both the stories of Steinbeck and the peculiar tale of Fabrice Grinda raise the question: Are the things we own indeed blessings or burdens? Do we actually have possession of them, or do they have possession of us? Are the many responsibilities of ownership to be avoided or embraced?

You may not be surprised to hear that most of the great practical philosophers have said, "It depends." On what? Attitude and intent. Your proclivities, enjoyments, and tolerances. I've known people with four or five big houses. They seemed unburdened by the responsibility. They knew how to manage the complexity. They thoroughly enjoyed what they had. And it didn't at all appear to constrain their freedom. There are, of course, also big  moral issues deep in the background, behind all lavish lifestyles, matters of global scope and existential perplexity, but my friends have seemed unburdened by those, as well. We can't solve all the world's problems. But we can solve some of our own.

The point of responsibility is to grow us as souls. Our commitments, to people, endeavors, and things, form us. We can make bad commitments or good ones. How do they function in our lives? That's the central question. It's all about functionality. Can we do great and valuable things with the people, endeavors, and things in our lives? Do they serve to enrich us, or to burden us? The things we own need to be maintained, repaired, protected, and, of course, used. And we all differ as to where the point is that this becomes a problem rather than something we can enjoy. We typically don't discover our limits in such matters except by crossing them and finally seeing them from the other side. That's part of what keeps fantasy alive for those who haven't reached their limits, yet.

Throughout history, ascetics have believed that the path to salvation lies in ridding ourselves of all our stuff and then opening ourselves to the spirit. But as a philosopher, I believe that the second, and ultimately important, activity does not depend on the first. Physical things can become a spiritual obstacle, but they need not be, in proper measure and with the right role in our lives.

The Oracle at Delphi proclaimed, "Nothing in Excess." What counts as excess for you? Are you living on the far side of it, and suffering from that? Do you need to make some adjustments? Fabrice Grinda came to believe he needed to make a radical change. But like many, he went too far, and has been schooled, as a result, in moderation. I guess that's hard when your finances tell you anything's possible. But regardless of what our net worth might whisper to us, many good things are possible, and they depend on our own discernment, a function of wisdom. It's the path of wisdom to choose properly. Don't let a culture of materialism dictate your life and put you in chains. And it's just as important to avoid false fantasies of freedom. Pick your own proper way. And that, ultimately, depends on the Oracle's second main injunction, "Know Yourself."

When Things Go Wrong

We live in a world where things often go wrong. In fact, you can divide all of your life into three basic kinds of time segments:

1. The time when you're waiting for something to happen, wanting it to happen, and perhaps doing all you can to make it happen,

2. The time when it either happens, and you're glad, maybe even elated, or perhaps relieved, or else,

3. The time when it was supposed to happen and didn't, and you're either sad, or mad, discouraged, or even worse.

In the book by Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, published in 1922, which I wrote about yesterday, there's one very interesting story. The young man Siddhartha is working for a very successful and wealthy businessman. The rich man is always worried about something, or angry when anything doesn't go right. Siddhartha is never worried or angry. He treats business like a sport to play, and in a very pure way, where he simply enjoys the playing, without any concern about who wins or loses. And because of his attitude, he wins much more often than he loses.

One day, he makes a trip to a distant town where he's hoping to purchase a crop that he and his partner can then resell for a major profit. But when he arrives at the town, he learns the deal has already been made, with someone else. Rather than reacting with sadness, anger, frustration, irritation, regret, resentment, concern or worry, fuming that he's wasted all the time and energy of travel for nothing, he quickly turns nothing into something. He meets the people of the town and gets to know them. He visits with them, eats with them, and plays with their children. He has a wonderful time making new friends with those who will probably now very much want to do business with him in the future. His older partner wouldn't likely have done any of this, but would typically have stormed off in a huff, furious that he'd missed the great opportunity he'd pursued.

A CEO once told me that it's his job to worry. And from what I could see, he does it very well. But is that really a mission critical job? What does his worry accomplish that simple planning, checking, and exercising vigilant care couldn't do? I can't see how the worry, the tension of anxiety, adds anything to the mix of productive endeavor. Most negative emotions, in most situations, are the same. Our hero, Siddhartha, by not worrying or allowing any negative emotions to overtake him, was easily able to turn nothing into something. He showed how we can all be opportunistic in a very positive way, at those times when things initially don't seem to go our way, and, in fact, in almost any situation in which we find ourselves. We can deal positively and creatively with whatever happens, and make the best of it.

And I can't think of anything better than that.

Who People Are

I've been reading a lot of Young Adult (YA) fiction recently, just to see what it's like - books such as the Hunger Games trilogy, the Divergent trilogy, The Bell Jar, and three titles by John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. It's been a great ride. And I've especially enjoyed the story telling techniques of John Green. I loved the characters in his tale about young cancer kids, The Fault in Our Stars (made into a major motion picture), but really disliked the bleak philosophy that he chose to put in, underlying it, a world view which was too easy for the narrative, and in my view, unearned. An Abundance of Katherines is about a road trip two friends take, driving the interstate from Chicago, and they end up in Tennessee. One of them has only dated girls named Katherine. Until now. Hence the title.

Perhaps the most interesting of Green's books is Paper Towns (soon to be released as a major motion picture), set in Orlando. A group of high school seniors is approaching prom and graduation. The narrator is one of them, and is smitten with a girl in his class he's known since elementary school. But he's a geek, and she's super popular, and he mostly views her from afar, until these last days of school, when she suddenly includes him as her driver and support on a long night of revenge pranks aimed toward the boyfriend who has cheated on her, and the girl who lured him away, along with anyone who likely knew and didn't tell her what was going on. She turns out to be a master of the grand gesture and the intricately magnificent prank. She's courageous, intelligent, over-the-top creative, and stunningly beautiful, and our narrator falls deeply in love with her. Or does he? She suddenly disappears, leaving home and school with no explanation, but she sprinkles what look like clues around the neighborhood, using Woody Guthrie lyrics, Bob Dylan songs, and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as sources of code and dark hints that seem to point toward an impending suicide. There is a desperate search on the part of the narrator and his best friends, a wild road trip from Orlando up I-95 to New York State, and unexpected discoveries that surprise the reader as much as the kids.

The main theme of the story seems to be as important as it is simple.

We often think we know who people are, and in reality we've just been misled by surface appearances. We come to love, or admire, or respect, or resent, or despise mere caricatures that we mistake for real people. We judge books by their covers, people by their appearances, and situations by their most obvious, and often misleading, interpretations. We think we know, when we don't. We rush, then jump, to conclusions in ways that can eat up our time and mess up our lives.

The book's narrator learns, and shows us, the wisdom of not rushing to judgment or letting our emotions dash about on their own, disconnected from the true realities to which they should be responding. I came away from the book with a renewed sense of the importance of pausing, waiting, and looking twice before passing judgment too quickly on anything that catches my eye. Not a lot in this world is exactly what it at first seems.

Wisdom is not easily misled by surface appearances. Wisdom digs deep. It embraces truth. It can wait to see what's what.

Paper Towns was a fun read, and insightful. You might enjoy it as a light summer book. Click on the title to see it on Amazon.

Big Trees, Deep Roots

The other day, I spent the afternoon on the wide front porch wrapped around a beautiful house that was built in 1830. A great breeze cooled us as my family and I watched boats glide down the Intracoastal Waterway, and gazed on the homes of Wrightsville Beach, along the Atlantic Ocean, just across from us. Some of the oak trees on the property were amazing - with trunks so thick you couldn't get your arms around them, and soaring into the sky. There was even a tree house on the one acre property, built high in a spreading oak in 1904, and with a spiral metal staircase rising up to it. 

The house had stood and the trees had grown through nearly two centuries of coastal storms, as well as sunshine. And both the storms and the beautiful days had contributed to the beauty we experienced.

I was reminded of a statement once made by one of my favorite stoic philosophers, Seneca, who wrote this in first century Rome, in an essay called "On Providence":

Why, then, do you wonder that good men are shaken in order that they may grow strong? No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing, it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely - the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley. It is, therefore, to the advantage of good men, to the end that they may be unafraid, to live constantly amidst alarms and to bear with patience the happenings that are ills only to him who ill supports them.

As Florida Scott Maxwell wrote in her incredibly wise little book The Measure of My Days, the things that we most resist and dislike, the things that cause us the most worry and pain, are often the very things that strengthen and deepen us the most, if we do our best to respond well. The storms of life can work a magic in us that transforms us into the people we're capable of being. Remember that in your next storm. Put out deeper roots, and grow tall.

Redemption

I'd never read Truman Capote. It's hard to have grown up in the twentieth century and not have come across and read anything by him. But just the other day I picked up the Modern Classics book, A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, and The Thanksgiving Visitor, largely because I noticed it on a shelf in my house. He was an amazing writer.

In the story about Thanksgiving, the narrator is an eight year old boy who has been relentlessly and cruelly bulled by a twelve year old boy in his class, a young man who has failed grades, and comes from a background of failure. Our narrator, Buddy, lives with some older relatives, several sisters and a brother, in Alabama, and is closest with a lady in her sixties, Miss Sook, he calls her, who is in many ways like a child. Her simplicity causes her to favor the company of young children. But it also helps her to see deep truths that normal people would miss. This comes across in all three stories, and struck me deeply as I read.

Because of an act of kindness she does for Buddy's tormentor, the sort of favor he's never received from anyone, apparently, he changes. He becomes a better person, in contradiction to all his previous behavior. The story reminds us that almost anyone can be redeemed, or transformed. But it rarely happens apart from an act of love and kindness.

We tend to think in the opposite way, that bad people deserve bad consequences. But sometimes, a small act of acceptance, and respect, and care, can change a heart. The author Truman Capote suffered much in his life. And because of that, he has some lessons to pass on to the rest of us. Redemption is possible. Change can happen. But if it's radical enough, it has to be helped along by acts of love, which themselves are radical enough to make it happen.

Our lesson is simple. It's important to be able to rise above things, and even act in love toward someone who seems not to deserve it. That way, you just might help make something radically good happen.

Image and Reality

I turned on the radio the other day, and the first words I heard on my local NPR station were something like this:

Yeah, well, when I started to get better known, and, really, sort of famous, somebody told me my wife was worried it would all go to my head. As soon as I heard that, I had my people call her to reassure her. For some reason, it didn't work.

I had to laugh. In my own adventures as a public philosopher, I've even had such experiences. I think it was after doing some television commercials for Disney, and an appearance on Regis and Kathy Lee, back in the day of its peak popularity on ABC, followed by a session with Matt Lauer on the NBC Today Show, that my wife gave me a little blue button to pin on my shirt that said, "Almost Famous Person." I think she wanted both to celebrate those improbably experiences with me, and to remind me diplomatically that I was still solidly on the "ordinary person" side of the line in our culture of fame and instant celebrity.

My workout partner sometimes goes to GoodWill stores to look for old books. He recently gave me a novel set in North Carolina and UNC Chapel Hill, beginning in 1954, and then spanning a couple of decades, called Everybody's All American. It was published in 1981 by the prominent sports writer Frank Deford. It's about a great UNC football player who becomes a legend, and almost a myth - The Grey Ghost they call him. He's much larger than life because of his natural talents and tremendous exploits as a running back on the football field. People treat him differently. His girlfriend is the most beautiful woman anyone has ever seen. Everyone also treats her differently, both because of her physical attributes, and of course, since she's with The Ghost. They are a couple who bring larger-than-life glamour and a certain electricity with them wherever they go.

The Ghost, Gavin Grey, never seems quite comfortable with the way people relate to him during his glory days. And yet, when it eventually ends and all goes away, he's desperate to return to those times, or to recreate some measure of it all. He goes to the pros. He flourishes, but then he's injured. They retire his jersey. And he falls from Olympus. He finds quickly that he just can't deal with ordinary life. He shows that he's become addicted to the legend - to the excitement and the action, and especially to the glory of doing something with his distinctive talents, and doing it exceptionally well. This addiction then spirals into others and eventually takes him down, in an act of tragic desperation.

What does a teacher do without a class, a judge without a courtroom, a doctor without patients? Most of us have a situation in our lives where we feel useful, helpful to others, and appreciated for what we do. If that situation comes to and end, as it does at retirement, or for empty nesters, with the departure of a child, or perhaps when business wanes, how do we fare? Are we able to reinvent ourselves and launch into a new adventure, appreciating what's past, but looking forward to what's ahead? Is the source of our self image and our self esteem deep enough to withstand a loss of great affirmation and any positive attention we've enjoyed? Or have we become addicted to something in ways we ourselves may not easily identify or understand? 

The plight of the college star who graduates, or the pro athlete who retires young, of the musician whose records are no longer the hits they once were, or the actor who now doesn't get the parts he long enjoyed - these scenarios are well known. Deford does a great job in his book of describing one, in a compelling story of loss and diminishment. But smaller versions of the same problem can come into any life. We all experience hills and valleys. We need to learn to live happily in the valleys, as well as high on the hills. Life is all about ups and downs. Without an inner balance, a center of philosophical equanimity, and a sure place for our own self understanding, we can suffer greatly from those times when the tide turns and the spotlight shifts.

What the Grey Ghost needed to realize, and what we all benefit from knowing, is that the true values of life amount to an inner game that may or may not be manifested in outer recognition or affirmation. We can enjoy that outer good when it comes, but it's best to do so without needing it or becoming addicted to it. This resilience of spirit isn't easy to attain. But those who have it are greatly blessed.

The Magic You Can Do

More than sixty years ago, Walt Disney looked at an ordinary orange grove and saw DisneyLand. Later, he gazed on some remote swamp in Florida and caught a glimpse of DisneyWorld. What are you looking at right now and not seeing?

Aristotle believed that the great oak naturally lives in the small acorn. It takes vision to see it. But that's not all. The alchemy of human creativity can go far beyond what's natural, and expected. The world is a warehouse of raw materials for our creative magic. It's not always easy to recognize the materials that are right for you and then to collect them together. But the right vision can help you to see how.

The great creators, like all artists, learn how to look, and how to see. Shake up your ordinary ways of viewing your surroundings. Try on a different perspective. Engage in "What if" musings. Stretch the borders of the expected. You may see things you've been missing - whether among the orange trees or in the swamp.

It could be that your very own DisneyWorld awaits, right now, lying magically within some setting that you've been seeing as just water, grass, mosquitoes, and gators that just is what it is, and that you can't do anything about. The people like Walt Disney, and Steve Jobs, help us to understand that the ordinary is all around us, just waiting to be transformed. The extraordinary can be yours.

Bouncing Back

A few years ago, I wrote a book called The Stoic Art of Living, which had the subtitle "Inner Resilience and Outer Results." The more I had read the ancient Roman stoic philosophers on the ups and downs of life, they more I had come to appreciate the quality of resilience as crucial to success in an uncertain world.

In a book called, Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, author Andrew Zolli defines this quality as “the ability of people, communities, and systems to maintain their core purpose and integrity among unforeseen shocks and surprises.” I see it as a psychological tendency to bounce back from challenges, difficulties, and obstacles. The resilient person absorbs "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," as Hamlet put it, and bounces back with a positive attitude and renewed action toward his or her goals. 

We can cultivate resilience in our lives in many ways. The stoics had mental techniques a couple of thousand years ago that work today as well as they did then. One friend says that when big trees of misfortune fall across his path and block the way forward, he says to himself, "It's time to get out the chainsaw!" A Roman would have thought of his ax. A simple go-to image can make a difference, and turn around your emotions.

One particular ancient image can be helpful here. The debris of difficulty will at times fall like mounds of trash into almost any life. Many will feel smothered and give up. But if your spirit burns brightly enough with the fire of enthusiastic commitment, that debris is just more fuel for the fire. The amount of garbage that could smother a small flame will be consumed by a great one, which will then grow bigger. Difficulty can actually feed your determination. It's most often up to you.

The inertia of resistance typically pushes back against great new things, and creative people. A resilient individual lets this become a badge of honor, and uses it to fuel even greater efforts. So burn brightly, and enjoy the benefits of resilience that can result!

There's hardly anything in this world as satisfying as bouncing back from difficulty, challenge, and adversity, and attaining a level and form of success that can surprise and delight you.

Curiosity Has a Magic

Curiosity has a magic that's equal parts attention and desire.

It means you care, and makes you observe. Your mind is alive. Your perceptions are heightened. You now have a quest, however big or small.

Curiosity shines a light into the darkness. It chases away shadows and illumines what's hidden. It reaches out and feels its way forward. It's a collector of endless gifts.

It's a birthright. It's the push that makes the unknown to be known. Uncertainty piques it. Certainty ends it. Its job is to move on, farther down the road of possibility of what can be done and discovered.

Both delight and danger begin with curiosity.

Curiosity is the engine of innovation, the cradle of creativity, the air that genius breathes. It's fragile in some, and robust in others. Can it be cultivated? Can it be enhanced?

I'm curious.

I am.

Go-Givers Beat Go-Getters

Marc Lore, an entrepreneur and co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, and chairman of Jet.com, an e-commerce startup meant to challenge Amazon, recently wrote this:

At 22, I evaluated my first job based on what I could get out of it. But I have since learned that you can achieve much greater success if you focus on what you can give. Ultimately, I have realized that success is not a measure of your salary, title, or degree, but the impact you have on others and the collective happiness of the people you touch.

I've been lucky to have that attitude throughout my whole career. When I went to graduate school in religious studies and philosophy, it never even occurred to me to ask anyone how much careers in those fields paid. And it's a good thing I didn't! When I hit the job market with a double PhD from Yale in 1980, starting salaries for professors were ridiculously small. My children wore hand-me-down clothes from other professors' kids, who had done the same thing. We were in it to give, not to get. I wanted to tackle the big questions, and come up with new insights I could benefit from myself, and then give to other people. I learned in those years the power of giving.

Now, we're all learning it, through new research, as well as in our broader cultural experiences. In the book Give and Take, Wharton professor Adam Grant does a great job of showing how givers can prosper exceptionally well in the long run and actually become the most satisfied receivers of all.

In everything we approach, we should ask what we can give, first and foremost. Then, we may be amazed at what we can get, as a result. It's not the motivation, but the wonderful side effect, that those who give most prosper most deeply.

The Bell Jar Danger

 A friend recommended that I read Sylvia Plath's 1963 novel, The Bell Jar, as an example of an early and quintessential piece of Young Adult Literature. Plath was a gifted poet at a young age, but had struggled with getting her work published. One magazine rejected her 45 times before it accepted one of her poems. She then wrote this novel under the sponsorship of The Eugene Saxon Fellowship affiliated with Harper and Row. But when she submitted the final manuscript, the publisher rejected it, calling it "disappointing, juvenile and overwrought." It went on to publication initially in England, and it subsequently become a rare modern classic, read throughout the world. Plath even posthumously received a Pulitzer Prize for her collected poems.

The protagonist of The Bell Jar is a college-age woman named Esther Greenwood. We get to know her first while she's on a fellowship in New York City, working during the summer for a famous women's magazine, and being treated to gala openings, parties, and celebrity events. The "girls" she works with are portrayed with that distinctive and witty chatter often seen in movies made during roughly the same period, in the 1950s and early 60s. You can clearly hear the rapid fire delivery of clever dialogue exchanged between the young ladies visiting the magazine. In the course of the story, Esther descends from Bright Young Thing With a Promising Future to psychological madness and a serious attempt at suicide. After a period of confinement in an asylum and a series of electro-shock treatments, she eventually seems to be returning to some semblance of her old self, however fitfully and slowly. But the story ends right before she's set to be released from the institution and launched back into normal life. The author herself famously committed suicide about a month after the book's first publication in the United Kingdom, and it was quickly seen as autobiographical.

I'm writing about it today because of its main image - the bell jar, a common piece of laboratory equipment at a certain stage of modern science that was shaped like a dome or a bell, and most often made of clear glass. It could be used to create a special atmosphere for plants, or a weak vacuum when most of the oxygen was removed from it. As she returns to clarity, Esther sees herself in her madness as living in a bell jar, with little atmosphere, where it's hard to breathe. But then she insightfully extends the metaphor to the college girl she knew in her dorm, gossiping, playing cards, and living an endless round of parties and boys that's cut off from the real world outside the artificial atmosphere of the campus.

What struck me most about the book is the bell jar image and its wide applicability. It's very easy for any of us to get stuck in our own bell jar, with an artificial atmosphere that we take to be real, but that actually cuts us off from the broader world around us. The bell jar can be many things - madness, or superficiality, obsession, or desire, or something professional and work related that gets out of control. Years ago, the executives at Enron and several other high profile companies were living and working in their own bell jar. So were many mortgage officials and traders, just a few years back, and they were as a result the people whose work plunged us all into a deep and long recession.  

A bell jar is created around us when we allow something to cut us off from the real sources of meaning and insight that are to be found more broadly and more deeply in life. There is a spiritual sickness and even a kind of death that can result. A life can spiral out of control. A business can crumble. Self destruction can ensue. We all know of leaders who've created around them an echo chamber, cutting themselves off from any fresh breeze of truth. They're in a bell jar of their own making. 

Any person, or group of people, can be endangered by a bell jar that results from their attitudes and actions. Are you in one? Is your company or community?

The bell jar is a serious danger that we're all well-advised to avoid. Don't let anything become your bell jar, and cut you off from the fresh air of life and wisdom and love and meaning that you could and should be breathing. Keep on your guard. It's hard to see at first when one descends around you. Its transparency, or invisibility, is especially insidious. And that's why it's such a common trap. When you allow yourself to escape the confines of any such bell jar that threatens to constrain you, you benefit from a rush of fresh air, and get enough of an independent perspective to recognize the jar for what it is, and stay out of it, as a result.

Richard Branson on Second Chances

A number of CEOs and prominent individuals in the culture were recently asked what advice they would give their 22 year old selves, if that were possible. Richard Branson, the founder of The Virgin Group, said something very interesting about how we view ourselves and others - and, especially, how we react to the mistakes that other people have made in their lives. He wrote, at his present age of 64:

I am not the person I was 42 years ago. I am not even the person I was two years ago. We all change, we all learn, we all grow. To continually punish somebody for the mistakes they made in the past is not just illogical, it is plain wrong. 

He advises his early self, and any of us who will listen, to be a person who embraces the possibility of change, both in yourself and in others. He says:

We all deserve a second chance. Next time you have the opportunity to give somebody their second chance, don't think twice.

I know I've needed second chances, and sometimes more chances than that. Maybe you have, too. It's good to remember this when we consider our attitudes toward others. When we give people the chance to change and grow and improve, we enable ourselves to benefit from what can result in their lives, so that our mercy, forgiveness, and even embrace of them can enhance our own lives as well as theirs.

Here's to second chances! And more. And to Richard Branson's bit of life wisdom.

The Fault in Our Thoughts

I wrote a couple of days ago about discovering the Young Adult mega hit novel, The Fault in Our Stars. I had heard about the author and his legendary editor, and just wanted to see what the two of them had come up with that was such a blockbuster. I first noticed the exceedingly advanced vocabulary of the main characters, the 16 year old Hazel and her 17 year old boyfriend, Augustus. Today, I want to look briefly at their thoughts about life and the world.

In a cancer support group for young people, before Hazel and Augustus had actually met, the leader asked the group what they most feared. Augustus, the new "hot boy" in the room who had already caught Hazel's eye, answered, "Oblivion." Hazel could not contain herself and lectured him, as she recounts:

“There will come a time, when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let along you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this” - I gestured encompassingly - “will have been for naught. Maybe the time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be a time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.” (13)

Augustus introduces himself, and they fall in love. Who could resist a girl with such an attractive worldview? I'm kidding. Hazel's words reflect a very famous and bleak passage in philosopher Bertrand Russell's old essay, A Free Man's Worship. Augustus later says to her:

"I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.” (153)

He even later reports a middle school science teacher's worldview with these words:

“You still secretly believe that there is an element of magic to this world? It’s all just soulless molecules bouncing off each other randomly.” 220

Hazel, toward the end of the book, writes: 

“We live in a universe devoted to the creation, and eradication, of awareness.” 266

Here's the problem. We know consciousness and conscious awareness first hand. We have ample experience of it. We have absolutely no experience of the eradication of awareness. By definition, we can't. And we have no compelling evidence or proof of any sort that any instance of human consciousness, or animal awareness, for that matter, is doomed to extinction. But the fashionable nihilism of this captivating book relentlessly assumes the most reductionistic implications of modern science, with hardly a speck of acknowledgement that a hopeless, grim worldview is, as philosophers say, "severely underdetermined" by the facts we do have.

Biological life in this world surely ends. And all the bodies with brains, and the means of expressing the awareness that has been mediated through those brains, eventually cease to function. But we actually have no idea what happens to the consciousness that has occurred in connection with the functioning of those brains, from these facts alone. Reductionism holds that there is no existence of consciousness apart from the functioning of complex brains. But that is just as much an article of faith as anything can be.

At one point, the slightly older Augustus actually reveals that he suspects there is Something, or Somewhere for us after death. Hazel is quite surprised to hear this coming from such an otherwise obviously smart guy. She says:

“I’d always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement.” (168)

And yet, her father later says this to her, after admitting he doesn't quite know what to believe about such ultimate issues as afterlife:

“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it - or my observation of it - is temporary?” (223)

And that's about as positive a view as is ever expressed in the book. Augustus, though, seems to have glimpses of something big, and important, and heroic about our life under the admittedly challenging conditions that surround us. At one point, he says:

“Everyone wants to lead an extraordinary life.” (169)

And he seems to suspect, deep down, that, maybe, any heroism or extraordinariness that we do attain in this world connects up to something bigger, something he can't quite define or describe. And I suspect that he's right.

In my view, the contemporary fault in our thoughts is to merely assume any such suspicions are no more than wishful thinking, and that nothing more is possible, beyond the physical matter and energy that we can discover through our physical tools of observation. The flaw in our thoughts is to embrace such a bleak and reductionistic worldview as unavoidable, when the real mysteries of consciousness themselves may be small apertures into far greater mysteries that can invite us to rethink our lives more deeply. Anything that prevents our trying is a deep fault, and flaw, indeed.