The Deadliest Jobs

The Business Insider just ran an article on "The Ten Deadliest Jobs in America." Most didn't surprise me at all. Roofers sometimes fall. And it's dangerous to work on high power electrical lines. Voltage, in that setting, is not your friend. Long haul truckers struggle with exhaustion, and with all the bad drivers on the road. But out of the top ten most deadly jobs, the THIRD most fatal was "Airplane Pilots and Flight Engineers." Now, as a frequent airplane passenger, that bothers me. A lot. When fishermen have a problem (#2 Most Deadly Job) the fish with them are already goners. When loggers have an accident (#1) the trees on the truck are already dead. But commercial airplane pilots? Their problem is our problem.

Long ago, I was afraid to fly, and for many years. But after nine years of completely avoiding airplanes, I suddenly started to fly again, to give talks around the country, and in other parts of the world. People who knew of my former phobia, colleagues at Notre Dame then asked me, "Wait. Do you suddenly think it's safe to fly?" I answered, "No, I just suddenly think I'm supposed to do it."

Our task in life is not to stay perfectly safe. That's impossible. Our job is to reasonably employ our talents for the good of others as well as ourselves. If that involves, as it has for me, as many as 400 to 500 airplanes a year, well then, Ok. But I do sincerely wish the pilots of our nation had a safer job. I really do. I care about them. You probably do, too - even if you just fly a few times a year and, hopefully, even if you don't.

Metaphor Alert: Philosophers are a little bit like airline pilots. When we go down, a lot of other people do, too. Bad ideas can ruin lives. So that's why I've always been as careful a thinker as I could be, giving people the best ideas I can find and clarify. I test philosophies before I speak or write on them. I make sure they're reliable. Then, I can safely share them.

I'm determined and dedicated to the good of everyone who listens to anything I write or say. My commitment is that we can all fly some truly friendly skies together.

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.

Go Outside!

“To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.” - Jane Austen

If you're like me, you don't go outside enough. I read inside. I write inside. I speak to groups of people inside. I go to a gym and workout inside. Why do we even call them workouts? They're typically work-ins. I normally eat, drink, and sleep inside. Then, there's the television. It's inside. And it often keeps me in when I could be out contemplating the heavens, gazing at the stars and feeling our smallness in the grand scheme of things. 

And we wonder why the greatest life wisdom often comes down the centuries to us from long ago. People spent much more time outside then. And it made a difference. In fact, many wise voices from the past advise us now to get out more.

“Never a day passes but that I do myself the honor to commune with some of nature’s varied forms.” - George Washington Carver

I'm think I'm going to make it a practice to get out more, to feel a few minutes of sunshine on my face, to enjoy some communion with sky and grass and trees, to sit and watch the birds fly by, and listen to the geese honk as they often pass over my backyard. Whenever I do it, it reconnects me to the fundamental things, and the real rhythms of life.

I did that recently, for hours. I sat outside and communed with nature. Nature communed back. I felt refreshed, rejuvenated, renewed.

On a beautiful day, it can be an energizing experience, even for a few minutes. And then, even after a rain, there can be a special something in the air, and on the ground.

“The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.” - E.E. Cummings

Why don't you give yourself the gift of more time outside? You don't have to hike the Appalachian Trail, or go climb a mountain. A few minutes in the air, and under nature's dome will do you good. Reconnect. And see if it doesn't inspire new thoughts and feelings.

Pat Conroy's Novels

I just came across a bunch of Pat Conroy novels on a shelf in my study and stood pondering them, and thought maybe I should write a little something here about him and his books. As we enter the summer season of reading big books on vacation, maybe one of his should accompany you down to the beach, or wherever you go to relax. I mean, of course, along with one of mine. 

I like Pat Conroy a lot. And I like his books. I had the chance to sit and talk with him for quite a while one night, just the two of us, and came away with the feeling that he's a really good guy. I then heard him speak to a big group of people and was really impressed with his talk. He was funny. And moving. Just like his books. Born and raised and educated in the south, he's a man who paid attention growing up and stocked his mind and heart with the stories of this distinctive region that he’s been sharing with the world for many years.  

He wrote his first book while he was still in school, and then followed up with a string of best sellers that continues to this day: 

The Water is Wide – a heroic year of teaching on a small island off the coast of South Carolina, now the basis for two great movies,

The Great Santini – growing up in the home of a fighter pilot, and having to fight for any small measure of independence and dignity while surrounded by violence, prejudice, outrageous demands, and some surprising sides of love,

The Lords of Discipline – the experience of a southern military school: hazing, torture, friendship, self-mastery, hope, betrayal, and honor,

The Prince of Tides – one family’s struggles with tragedy and madness, much of it in the midst of great beauty, along with one man’s attempt at making sense of it all,

Beach Music – the gravitational force of family and how hard it is to achieve escape velocity from place and blood, no matter what you do,  

My Losing Season – where basketball meets the rest of life,

And even a cookbook that people with culinary talents I don’t have say is one of the compelling cookbooks of our day. There are other titles, as well, but those are the ones I know.

Pat Conroy’s themes are as universal as his sense of place is particular: The experience of adversity, the power of friendship, the complex cauldron of family in which we’re all formed, the incredible lure of the low country with its rich display of the wonders of nature, here at the edge of America where I live. You can experience shock and trauma on one page of a Conroy book, and find yourself laughing out loud in the very next chapter.  

Some of the best reading times I’ve ever enjoyed have been in Pat Conroy’s books. I’ve read them even when I really should have been doing other things. I’ve relished every one, and I’ve even taken notes. You see, Pat Conroy is a good philosopher – an astute diagnostician of human nature. But, most of all, he’s a master of stories.

Whenever I’m reading one of his books, I think I appreciate my family and friends a little more, I breathe the fresh salt air of my town a bit more deeply, I linger outside a touch longer to watch water birds move across the sky, and I get really hungry. The descriptions of food in Pat's books are pretty amazing, which is possibly why he had to do a cookbook for us, to help satisfy at least one of the cravings his pages create.

So: Do yourself a favor, and try out one of his books, if you haven't already. Or grab one you haven't read. It's sure to be a great summer read.

Action, Opportunity, and Impact

We all know that personal action is required to take advantage of opportunities in life. Otherwise, they lie inert for us and then dissipate. But there's also a deeper perspective available. In Adam Bryant's New York Times column "Corner Office," Lori Senecal, Global CEO of ad agency C. P. &B. and CEO of the MDC Partner Network said something interesting this week while reflecting back on her own graduation from college and going for her first job. She got an offer and decided to take it without even realizing what all it involved. She comments:

That was a time when I embraced one of the philosophies that I go back to a lot today, which is that action creates opportunity. I didn’t know what the nature of the job would be, but I knew that if I took action, other possibilities would appear, and they did. Ever since then, I’ve often thought about action creating opportunity.

Bryant later asked her what advice she would give to new college graduates, and she said:

I talk to them about action creating opportunity. So dive in, and great things will come of it. The other thing I like to focus on is the importance of impact. You have to learn to prioritize the impact opportunities rather than just being busy. There’s an infinite amount of things that you can do, but focus on the things that will catapult the company and your career forward.

Action and opportunity - action and impact: Two vital connections. Taking action in reasonable ways, in ways that are right for us, creates opportunities, and then among those that arise, we should choose to act further on the ones that will have the greatest likely impact for good on the world, our businesses, and our own careers. Well directed action is the key, at both levels.

This is the philosophy I call activism. It's up to us to take action. Do things that matter, both by creating new possibilities, and by having impact. This is nice advice to keep in mind, not just for recent graduates, but for all of us along life's way.

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.

Where's Your Cow or Goat?

I believe we all have a spiritual need to feel useful, to take action to make a difference in the world, on however big or small a scale. And I also think that this provides us with an important hint as to how we should approach each day.

In a recent New York Times article, Nicholas Kristof reported on some new studies on whether philanthropic giving really makes a difference, long term, for people living in poverty. It turns out that the most effective giving involves a cow, or a goat, or chickens. Seeds also help. What doesn't help much, it seems, is money. It's all about a certain way of giving hope, through an opportunity for action.

When impoverished people are given a useful animal, one that can provide milk or eggs, as well as a form of companionship, and almost a sort of partnership, they become more active generally in their lives. They work more, they take more odd jobs, they have a new form of hope. They've been given the possibility of an activity, a usefulness in their own lives, that can make a difference for how they and their families live. And this is a form of giving that works. You know the old adage about giving a man a fish, or teaching him how to fish. Research now bears this out in more ways that we might have imagined.

And this provides a hint for all of us. How much time do you spend wishing things were better, or simply regretting the way things are? Most of us perceive a gap between where we are and where we'd like to be. And it bothers us. We worry about it. Or we even resent it. Sometimes, we feel hopeless to change it. Imagining how things could be better can almost take the wind out of our sails, if we stay passive in those imaginings.

But here's the insight: We all need a cow or a goat or some chickens. We need seeds. But then we need to plant the seeds. It's not merely having a cow, but taking action and milking it. It's not just the companionship of chickens, the camaraderie of the coop, but gathering the eggs that makes a big difference for impoverished people.

And here's something universal. We all need to feel a sense of control over our destinies. Desperately poor people given a cow develop that sense and experience hope. They're given a path, something they can do to feel some measure of control over their destinies. We all need that.

It seems to me that we all have a spiritual need for a sense of usefulness, and control, and action. We need to feel that we can begin to close the gap between what is and what could be. For me, the cow, or goat, might be my personal library, or my computer, or my website. I can read and discover. I can write. For you, it might be the same thing. Or something about your job could be it. Or a friend may provide you, through your relationship with him or her, that metaphorical goat, or those chickens you need. But remember that you need to take action.

When we see opportunity, we feel a glimmer of hope, and that combined with real actions, however small, can create a path forward.

What's your cow? What's your goat? Where are your chickens? When we clearly identify our opportunities and act on them daily, we begin to close the gap and move into our proper future with the feeling of hope that will help to get us there.

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.

Your Heart's Desire

Are you following your heart's desire?

Do you have any big dreams? If not, then why not? And if so, then are you also doing as well as dreaming in pursuit of your desire?

As I've mentioned before here, I grew up in an 800 square foot rental house on the outskirts of Durham, NC. We had small shelves of books in various rooms. And we often made trips downtown to the public library, which seemed to me as a boy like a magical place. My father was a high school graduate and lifelong reader. He always had a book in his hands, when he wasn't working at one of his many jobs. I recently rediscovered a book of his that had long been hidden away on one of my bookshelves. It was a boxed edition of a small format volume, with beautiful artwork on the box. Just inside the back cover was my father's signature, and a date: June 9, 1959. The book was Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, first published in 1958. It was written by Paul Gallico, who was born in 1897 and was, to my knowledge, the first participative sports journalist, once actually knocked out in the ring by the heavyweight boxing champion of his time.

This wonderful short book is about a cleaning lady, or "char woman," in London, presumably in the 1950s, a Mrs. Ada Harris, who one day sees two ethereally beautiful dresses in the closet of one of her employers. She's never come across such beauty in all her life, and is astonished at the fabrics, colors, and workmanship of these garments. The lady of the house explains to her that they're both Christian Dior creations. On the spot, this older, working class widow forms an overwhelming desire to own a Dior dress for herself. She knows that she will never have an opportunity to wear such a thing - not within the tight strictures of her plain and simple life. But if she could just buy one and have it in her possession, and be able to gaze on it now and then, she feels her life would be complete.

She soon discovers that the price of such a dress is four hundred and fifty pounds sterling, more money than she can believe. But she's undaunted by the apparent impossibility of her heart's desire, and right away forms plans to gain this elusive object of her dreams. She saves a little. She enters sporting lotteries. She bets on a dog race. But as soon as she gets a little ahead, she's thrown back to square one. Still, she keeps her dream alive, and sacrifices both comforts and entertainments to save as much money as she can. She sits down to figure out on paper how long it will take to put away such an amount, making as she does the equivalent of about forty five cents an hour for her daily labor. The author writes:

Mrs. Harris had never in her life paid more than five pounds, roughly the equivalent of fourteen dollars, for a dress, a sum she noted down on the paper opposite the utterly fantastic figure of four hundred and fifty pounds.

He adds that she would not for a moment even have considered a dress costing fifty or sixty pounds. The Dior, however, was something on a level of its own. It was set apart, extraordinary, awe inspiring. He writes:

But the very outrageousness of the sum put it all into a wholly different category. What is it that makes a woman yearn for chinchilla, or Russian sables, a Rolls-Royce, or jewels from Cartier, Van Clef & Arpels, or the most expensive perfume, restaurant, neighborhood, etc.? It is this very pinnacle and preposterousness of price that is the guarantee of the value of her femininity and person. Mrs. Harris simply felt that if one owned a dress so beautiful that it cost four hundred fifty pounds there was then nothing left upon earth to be desired.

Years pass. Our lady eventually saves enough to fly to Paris for a day, and visit Christian Dior, to buy a dress. But she discovers that, even with the full amount of cash in her shabby old purse, such an acquisition isn't as simple or easy as she had hoped. She's at first shunned by those she meets at the cathedral of couture, as oddly out of place, unsettling, and unworthy of their notice. She doesn't belong in such a high end designer's showplace. But one haughty lady who serves as the manager of the enterprise eventually comes to notice the authenticity, independence, and fierce desire burning beneath Ada's awkward and untoward appearance. And, without giving away any of the amazing story that ensues, I want to tell you that in the dogged and impossible pursuit of her heart's desire, she ends up helping several other people to attain theirs. They see something in her spirit that helps them in their own challenges. She sees into their hearts and takes action, with small suggestions, that make all the difference for their unfulfilled dreams. There are twists and turns in Paris that I never expected. And on our hero's return to London there is the biggest surprise of all. As a result, her life is changed, in the end not by a dress, but by the adventure of seeking it, the things that happen along the way, and the realizations that all of it brings into her life.

The author wants us to understand the true value of pursuing our heart's desire. Whatever it may be, however worthy or unworthy it may seem in itself, if our quest for it is difficult and challenging enough, and if we engage in it with an open heart and authenticity of spirit, then throughout the pursuit we can often have the chance to do a form of good in the lives of others, as well as in our own, that we never could have imagined.

My father's copy bequeathed to me. I'd summarize it like this: One woman in pursuit of beauty, finds truth, goodness and unity abounding. In quest of her heart’s desire, she helps others to gain their own. Even a tragedy at the end becomes a wondrous gift.

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.

Lessons From The America's Cup

The other night, I had a chat at the Eagle Point Golf Club with Russell Coutts, the man who has won more America's Cup Yacht Race victories than any other captain in the long history of the sport. I had first met him several years ago, and heard him speak about the challenge of bringing together great team members from various parts of the world and then winning against the top competition from around the globe. On that occasion, I first showed him my little laminated wallet card on The 7 Cs of Success, and he read through the conditions carefully, and then looked up at me and said, "This is what my guys do to come together and win."

As a reference, here they are. For true success in any difficult challenge, we need:

C1: A clear CONCEPTION of what we want, a vivid vision, a goal clearly imagined.

C2: A strong CONFIDENCE that we can attain the goal.

C3: A focused CONCENTRATION on what it will take to reach the goal.

C4: A stubborn CONSISTENCY in pursuing our vision, a determined persistence.

C5: An emotional COMMITMENT to the importance of what we're doing.

C6: A good CHARACTER to guide us and keep us on a proper course.

C7: A CAPACITY TO ENJOY THE PROCESS along the way.

It's amazing that philosophers thousands of years ago could grasp what it takes to win an America's Cup, or a National Championship, or a World Series, or an Olympic Gold Medal. I've had top athletes across sports tell me how surprised they are to see in The 7 Cs formula the ideas they've followed intuitively in order to attain the success they've had.

In speaking with Russell Coutts the other night, two related things came up. First: Our implementation of The 7 Cs has to be relentless in the face of difficulty and failure. In the latest America's Cup, the Nespresso team was ahead of Team Oracle USA by a whopping 7-1 score, with only one more point needed to beat Russell's guys. But his boss, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, had summed up what he had learned in the tech business by telling Russell, "NEVER GIVE UP." 

Russell said that when they were down 7-1, his guys never lost their confidence, but that the captain of the adversary boat, the Nespresso team, started worrying that something would happen. Then, it did. It's like the famous tightrope walker, Karl Wallenda, whose wife reported that earlier on the day he fell and died, she heard him say, for the first time ever, "I hope I don't fall today." And, he did. Confidence can be that important. And so can what we focus on.

Russell also talked about nerves before a race. The best people get nervous energy from the fact that they care, that they're committed. Confidence doesn't require a blindness to the challenges you'll face. In fact, to the contrary, a realistic estimation of the difficulty in any given task allows for powerful confidence, and a focused concentration on what it will take to overcome and prevail. Oracle USA did overcome and prevail, in what The Wall Street Journal called possibly the greatest comeback in the history of sports.

Like Russell's teams, I like to sail The 7 Cs. I hope you do, too.

Twitter Can Make You Stupid

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, Twitter can make you stupid, irritable, and tired.

For some years now, there's been a new understanding of the brain as in one important sense like a muscle. Constant use in processing information or making tough decisions depletes its energy and degrades the quality of its function. Because of this, you shouldn't appear in front of a judge right before lunch, or at the very end of the day, if you can avoid it. I'd avoid it altogether, but still, judges tend to be more reasonable and lenient first thing in the morning, or just after a good meal, which replenishes the depleted glucose stores in their brains that are then once again available for peak neural function, as well as fairness, justice, and kindness.

Ok, so back to Twitter. The Post article reported that, on average, we're exposed to and process five times more information every day than people did just twenty years ago. Add to that an ongoing stream of social media and you get a serious overload, even independent of what you're reading on Twitter or deciding to say there. It's not just the endless stream of Kardashian tweets. It's simply the constant exposure that can wear you out, even in short bursts, or in sessions lasting less than the common length of "Always On." The scientific claim is that people who check their phones incessantly for texts, emails, and their Twitter stream become mentally compromised, although I'm sure other experts would flip that claim around. If you're smart enough, wouldn't you avoid that in the first place? Maybe not.

Here's the problem: The more unimportant stuff that we think about and decide about, the less well prepared we are for handling the crucial stuff. No wonder meaning of life issues get neglected when there's always a new tweet on how you can lose weight/market yourself better/improve your public speaking/get a raise/get a deal/ or get more Twitter followers if you'll just click on this link, and give us your email address for THIS FREE DOWNLOAD THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

The cognitive psychologists interviewed for the Post piece are just coming up with one more reason why we should follow the advice of my friend Bill Powers in his book Hamlet's Blackberry, and wisely moderate how we use our communication devices, giving ourselves the breaks that we so richly deserve. To be or not to be, out of the stream - that is the question.

So: Give yourself a break now and then. Jump out of the stream and dry off. Bask a bit in the warm sun of peaceful calm. Avoid the new stupid.

That's real Twisdom.

Tom Brokaw on Luck

Parade Magazine recently ran a nice little article on the role luck has played in the life of newsman Tom Brokaw. He says some things of which we all need to be reminded.

I've long said that a rational person can be an optimist by being an activist. Unlike with slot machines or roulette wheels, the odds in life are something we can often change by taking action. Brokaw says this:

I believe you make your own luck. My motto is ‘It’s always a mistake not to go.’ So I jump on the airplane, try new things—sometimes I get in way over my head, but then I think, I'll work my way out of this somehow. A big part of making your own luck is just charging out of the gate every morning. The thing I love about living in New York is that I never fail to get up in the morning and think, Something adventurous is going to happen today. The energy is operating at full throttle all the time. And if you want to be lucky you’ve got to go out and take advantage of it.

This is what I call the activist approach to life and luck. The more I do, the luckier I get. There's a new adventure awaiting. But it won't wait forever. So go for it.

Brokaw has a new book out on all this. It's called A Lucky Life Interrupted: A Memoir of Hope. Check it out. It may spark something adventurous.

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.

Life Purpose

Arthur C. Brooks recently wrote in the New York Times:

In a 2009 study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, researchers interviewed 806 adolescents, emerging adults. and adults about their purpose in life. A key finding of the study was that being able to articulate a life purpose was strongly associated with much greater life satisfaction than failing to do so. In contrast, purposelessness — no matter how closely tied to worldly prosperity — generally defines a hamster-wheel life, alarmingly bereft of satisfaction.

What struck me from this statement, first of all, is that, on this particular study, it didn't even matter what you had articulated as your life purpose - some purpose was better than none. Imagine, then, the level of satisfaction that can result from a truly meaningful life purpose, and one that's deeply right for you.

What is your purpose? Can you put it into words? According to the study cited, that in itself can make a difference in a positive way. And the clearer you are about your sense of purpose, the easier it is to assess potential goals, business opportunities, and even social activities. If you're vague about your sense of life direction, meaning, and purpose, it becomes difficult to know what to say yes to and when to say no, apart from momentary feelings. But temporary feelings aren't always our best guides to long term good. A sense of purpose is a great guide forward.

What's yours?

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.