A Most Remarkable Book Signing

I recently had the great joy of speaking to nearly 600 Indiana judges, hosted by their Chief Justice and the Indiana Supreme Court, pictured above. After a lively hour of philosophy, a lot of the honorables stood in line during their lunch hour, trading food for philosophy, to buy a copy of The Oasis Within and have me sign it. The conversations we had as a result were amazing.

Judges confront daily the most troubling problems of our society, and most often the people causing those problems. They face difficulty, tragedy, and the entire range of human emotions played out in their courts. It has to be emotionally exhausting. And the workload never lets up. They don't have a hard week followed by a light load. It's endless. And the wonderful irony is that, surrounded by the greatest threats to societal disorder, they play such a crucial role in maintaining the order that allows for a flourishing culture. And, as you can imagine, it's never an easy job. Then, in their spare time, as if they have any, they do volunteer work in their communities. I was inspired just being with them.

One man recalled having heard me speak 21 years ago. He said the meeting occurred at the lowest period of his career and life, and that the hour had been just the inspiration he had needed. And now here he was, all those years later, flourishing and loving his work.

Another remembered that same event, all those years ago, and thanked me for in that talk having gotten him excited about philosophy, which he has read now for over twenty years. He works with addicts and tries to impart to them the best wisdom for living. He snatched up a copy of the new book as perhaps just the thing he needed to share with those he counsels.

The judges' enthusiasm for the new book was great to see. The Oasis Within is about inner resilience, outer results, and so much of the wisdom we need in navigating a challenging and often gratifying world. I look forward to hearing from the judges as they begin to read, ponder, and use the ideas in the book. It's a rare book signing where you see so many new books go out the door with so many avid readers who are in a position to use its ideas for great good in their communities and in their lives.

If you have a chance, thank a judge for all that they do! I sure took the opportunity I had to do so.

The Man With the Thousand Dollar Bill

I have a good story and an ethical conundrum for you today.

My father built some of the early radio stations throughout the southeast US in the late forties and early fifties of the last century. He wasn't ever the money guy, just the expert hired help who knew how to set up a radio station, find the right person to put in the electronics, get a guy to build the tower, and then call on all the local businesses to sell ad time on the new station before it went on air.

In the course of working in small towns in North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, he met some real characters along the way. One guy he told me about when I was growing up was a man who always dressed very nicely and carried in his wallet only one thing: a one thousand dollar bill. He took my dad out to eat several times in small restaurants and diners and it was only on the second or third occasion that he told my father his special trick.

He never had to pay for a meal. Ever. He had done this for at least a year. He'd go into a local joint, looking like a million dollars in his sharp suit, order a meal, and at the end, when the check came, he'd get out his wallet and open it up, and then exclaim: "Well, my goodness. Would you look at that? All I have is a thousand dollar bill? Can you change it?"

The waitress would be shocked. She'd ogle the bill, and exclaim, "Goodness Gracious!" or some such Southernism, and call the cook, or owner over to see. They'd then continue to exclaim.

The man would be so apologetic. "I usually try to carry something smaller than this! I'm so sorry!" The locals would be simply stunned.

"Is that real?"

"Yes, ma'am, as real as it gets!"

"I've never in my life seen such a thing!" Everyone would examine this rare specimen of US currency. It would be like seeing the Hope Diamond in person. And then whoever was in charge would inevitably say, "Well, it's just a treat and quite an honor to see a greenback like that. I bet you only come across those in New York City or Hollywood!"

"And hardly ever there!" our character would knowingly remark.

"Well, look. Dinner's on the house! We just appreciate you coming in today. I wish my wife was here to see this. It's my treat."

"You don't have to do that."

"Heck. I can't change that anyway. And I'm just pleased to have a fellow like you come into the joint and grab a bite. It's been a great pleasure to meet you and talk to you. Let it be on the house."

"Well, if you insist. That's quite gracious of you. And, next time, I'll try to have a more ordinary collection of bills in my wallet." They'd then shake hands, all around. And the character would leave, with one of the restaurant's mints in his mouth, or a toothpick in his teeth.

Now, the question: Was this guy's action ethical? Was he ethical? Or was what he was doing wrong? Please explain your answer.

I'll have the graded copies back to you next week. Class dismissed.

What We Celebrate on Labor Day

Each year, we set aside a day to celebrate an aspect of our lives whose importance is often underestimated, or even badly misunderstood. On Labor Day, we’re meant to commemorate work, as well as those of us who do it, and all who have done it long before us. What we’re being called upon to celebrate isn’t a necessary evil – an unfortunate and arduous requirement for simply gaining the resources it takes to live in an increasingly costly world. Work isn’t the sort of thing we can and perhaps should regret every other day of the year, but then get away from it to, paradoxically, raise a glass and praise it for just one twenty-four hour period, annually. We’re meant to be celebrating on this day a good thing, even a great thing, that’s worth celebrating on every day.

Aristotle taught us long ago that we are all essentially goal-oriented beings, and that this facet of our nature is deeply connected both with individual happiness, as well as with what we often think of as the living of a good life. We all need things to do, work to accomplish, and goals to achieve. Without some form of work, whether externally compensated or not, we just can’t flourish in the fullness of our nature.

At its best, work is even a spiritual activity. It’s an expression of our souls into the world around us, an endeavor that ideally allows us to improve some aspect of the world, however slightly, on each day that we labor. And, of course, in working to enrich the world, we deepen and enrich ourselves in a great variety of inner ways, regardless of outer consequences. Through our work, we can become wiser, more insightful, hardier, and more capable. We can enlarge our capacities, expand our relationships, and deepen our sense of ourselves.

The good work of any person benefits, however indirectly, every person by improving the stage on which we all act out our individual dramas. We’re, all of us, connected, even though that’s a truth whose reality is sometimes hard to detect. But it’s a truth that allows our work to have an impact far beyond what we might realize, on any given day. And that’s something to be celebrated, indeed.

Happy Labor Day!

Becoming More Intuitive

In every field of endeavor, there are innovators who naturally seem to pioneer new ways of doing things. There are individuals who are known for their endless creativity. They are often also people who, over and over, seem to be in the right place at the right time to make the right connections to do great things. The rest of humanity struggles, but these golden individuals, as if touched by the divine, seem to flourish effortlessly.

There are two things to say about such people. One is that their trajectory of success isn't typically as smooth or as easy as it seems. Such people tend to work very hard. And they long have. Because of that, they've attained a level of mastery in their field that's unusual. And this allows their work to have exceptional results. Like the metaphorical swan, all still and serene above water, they can seem to be at ease, but their hard paddling below the surface is what gets them across the lake.

And yet, there is a second thing to say, even more important than this.

These people tend to be highly intuitive. They don't just depend on normal "rational" thinking. And they don't feel a pressure to do everything the way everyone else does it. They listen to their heart, or maybe it's something beyond their heart.

The ancient Greeks talked of a spirit or muse. The Romans spoke of a guiding genius, not in you, but outside you, that's available to help you. However we conceptualize it, there seems to be an avenue of knowing and doing that's in some sense spiritual in nature. Accessing it requires us to get beyond our normal thought world, to reduce our mental chatter and clear out the clutter that otherwise blocks us from something deeper, and open ourselves to this powerful guidance. Sometimes it happens in extreme circumstances, during times of great danger. A switch flips. A strong clarity arises. And we're transported to a new level of being, feeling, thinking, and doing. It more often happens when there is preternatural calm within, a quietness and emptiness that allows itself to be filled. A supreme focus can facilitate it. A  great relaxation of the body, or a repetitive engagement of it, as in walking, or jogging, can at times create just the right soil, fertile for new ideas to be noticed and planted and to grow.

In a small meeting room yesterday at the large pharmaceutical development company PPD, I talked about how I have discovered my own best intuitive work. I told my story of unexpectedly coming to write eight novels in a period of four years, after forty years of authoring nonfiction philosophy books.  In this unexpected adventure of becoming a novelist, I've learned how to relax my body in order to disengage the normal flow of my conscious mind. And this is when the magic can happen. I think we all have that ability. And we can use it in whatever we do. Why don't we do so more?

My new book, The Oasis Within, begins the epic story whose main characters have taught me almost all I know about becoming more intuitive. I hope you'll also have a chance to learn from them as I have, and that it will have as big and deep an impact for you as it has had for me.

The Insights We Need

I was talking with my friend Jack yesterday. He's in his 20s, from Pittsburgh, and is an actor. He's been in several short films and is getting ready for work on his first feature. When I saw him, he told me that he had just started reading my new book, The Oasis Within. I was pleased. Then, I was especially happy to hear him say, "It's really great. I'm just in chapter three and I've already come across a bunch of things that I need, insights I can use right away."

I was very glad to hear that. I told Jack that one of the main characters in the book, a seventy-year old Egyptian man named Ali, had taught me more than any other mentor in my life. The fact that he's fictional doesn't seem to detract at all from his wisdom and effectiveness as a teacher. Over and over, what he says just knocks me out. It will be the perspective, or image, or insight I've needed in order to make sense of something in my life, or to take the next step forward.

Jack surprised me by saying something else I had not expected, despite hearing it before. He commented, "In some ways, what I've read so far reminds me of The Alchemist." That's of course the classic little book by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho that's sold over 50 million copies. So, it's good to hear someone make a comparison. Actually, when I had just written The Oasis Within and the next bigger novel that follows it, I was still trying to figure out what was going on with this unexpected, exotic movie in my head and this stuff that I was writing down in transcribing it all. I sent what I had to a former philosophy student of mine who is a highly acclaimed thriller novelist (not many people have each of their books praised to the highest by New York Times reviewers) and I anxiously awaited his reaction. He wrote me, "This is The Alchemist Meets Harry Potter Meets Indiana Jones." I was excited and hoped he was right. But he also said that what I was writing was different. He surmised that the books seem to contain all the wisdom we need for living a good life, even a great life. That comment resonated deeply. The characters in the books were teaching me, guiding me, giving me just what I had for so long needed. I had to wait until I was entering my seventh decade of life to learn all this stuff at the level Ali was teaching me. But it's never too late. And the truly exciting thing is that I get to pass it on now to people who are much younger, like Jack, and perhaps even younger still.

I've read The Alchemist three times - once when it first came out, a second time when my former student compared The Oasis Within to it, to make sure I wasn't unconsciously channeling or copying it, and a third time recently, to make double sure how it and my book are related and are distinct. The books are actually very different in lots of ways. But there are indeed points where they touch. I've come to appreciate one theme in The Alchemist that I didn't realize was also in my book until I read Paulo's famous text for the third time: In our lives, things often look worse before they get better. Right before something great is going to happen, something bad can intrude, as if to test or challenge us. The question is: How do we react? So if you're in a difficult time now, the good news is that it's often a doorway, or portal, to something great. Knowing that can help you to keep the attitude and the spirit that may be needed to make it happen.

Yesterday, Jack and I talked about one of the philosophical ideas revealed early on in The Oasis, the principle of the two powers: Almost everything in this world has two powers, a power to harm and a power to help. It's often up to us which of those powers comes into play. Even bad things have two powers. Of course they can hurt us. But they can often also help us, depending on how we use them, and what we do with them. Growth requires struggle. As Ali himself says to describe his own practice and attitude, "We can't control the day, but only what we make of the day. And we'll always make the best of whatever comes our way."

If you have a chance to snag one of the early copies of The Oasis Within, and have the time to begin reading soon, like Jack, I'd love to hear how it resonates in your life. You can contact me here, in a comment, or through the Contact page at www.TomVMorris.com, or using my email address, also on the Contact page. I'd love to learn from you what you're learning from the desert as described in the book.

Can You Be The Hero?

What does it take to be a hero? On a train, in a crowd, or in the quiet of your office? If you're ever in a situation of great peril or stress, can you step up and be the hero?

Lots of popular books and films are about apparently ordinary people who are thrust into situations of danger and step up to act courageously. Think of Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, Tris Prior in Divergent, or the Bruce Willis character in all those old Die Hard movies, An ordinary person is pushed into an extraordinary situation and steps up. 

I've just published a book called The Oasis Within, which is the prologue volume to a new series of novels where one of the main themes is how we can be prepared for greatness. One philosopher who has read that first book has written me that it's the first portrayal of a hero that really digs down deep into how a grounding in the right wisdom can equip any of us for more heroic action. 

There's an interesting article about this in the New York Times. Professor David Rand with his colleague Ziv Epstein studied 51 winners of the Carnegie Medal for Heroism and came to a conclusion that surprised them. The overwhelming majority of heroes who act to save another person or to otherwise do what needs to be done in a tense and pressure filled situation, do not deliberate or think it through carefully before doing anything, but instead act instinctively, intuitively, and fast.

There's an old saying. "He who hesitates is lost." That seems to apply to many situations of great value and risk. We often think of ethics and morality as all about rational decision making, as if the moral agent must first weigh all the values involved in a situation and then choose which to prioritize and pursue. Wrong. The late Iris Murdoch, philosopher and novelist, wrote a fascinating little book called The Sovereignty of Good. In it, she says that, typically, at the moment of moral decision making, the precise moment we choose this or that, the decision has already long been made by what we've been doing, valuing, thinking about, feeling, and paying attention to, in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years preceding that moment. Most big decisions, and especially those involving some measure of courage or boldness, aren't deliberated at all, but simply arise out of who we are, or what we've become prior to the point of action. We do this or that because we are already committed to this or that, or because we already are this or that. 

Our actions show who we are. They arise from within, and in a way that can be quick and intuitive.

The Americans on that high speed French train recently didn't hold a short seminar on the costs and benefits of all the possibilities and alternative potential responses available when they noticed the guy with the gun. They saw it and somebody said "Let's go." They took action. That's normally the trajectory of heroism. It sees a need and acts to meet the need. So, when you find yourself deliberating extensively over some choice, weighing the pros and cons, chances are that you're not getting ready to be a hero. The hero simply sees and does. The lesson for us is then simple. We need to be preparing ourselves carefully to do the right thing instantly when such a situation arises.

Are you paying attention to the right things, day-to-day? Are you valuing the truly best things? Are your feelings guided by real wisdom? Do you have enlightened commitments, or is the culture getting under your skin a little bit, to encourage selfish superficiality, personal aloofness, or short term ease? We become what we habitually do, in the life of the mind, the emotions, and in our actions. Today, you can begin to create the moral hero within who will act fast and instinctively tomorrow. Or you can deepen and reinforce the good tendencies you already have. It's up to you.

The Diary of Walid: On Thoughts, Feelings, and Difficulties

This is our second day of sharing excerpts from "The Diary of Walid" at the end of my new book The Oasis Within. This thirteen-year-old boy notes down at the end of the day what he's learned from his uncle or from what he's experienced since he woke up. In doing so, he's following the example of Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, who asked himself every evening, "What have I learned today?" and took down notes in answer. Those notes became the amazing book The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a bestseller throughout the centuries that provides great wisdom for living. By reflecting and writing, however briefly, we can clarify and solidify the insights that events can provide us, if we pay attention. In this time of tumultuous stock market events, Walid's insights can speak to us powerfully.

Many things have two powers – they can be helpful or harmful. It’s often up to us which role they play.

Most situations also have a double potential, for good or ill. We would be wise to keep that in mind.

It’s important in life to pay attention all the time – to look, listen, and learn.

We should discipline our thoughts and feelings, then listen when they suggest that something’s not right.

Most dangers in the world will provide us with some kind of warning, if we’re alert and aware.

Emotions, like most other things, can help us or harm us. We need to learn when to act on them, and when to resist them for a greater good.

Great things are accomplished by great thoughts. Our thoughts can be very powerful.

A good attitude about difficulties, combined with a wise perspective, can help us overcome any trouble.

We should be more surprised when things don’t change than when they do. If we expect change, we can deal with it better.

We shouldn’t worry about what we can’t control. We should focus on what we can control and make the best of it.

It’s important to live fully each day.

The Diary of Walid: On Inner Peace

From the Appendix at the end of The Oasis Within, these are excerpts from a diary kept by the thirteen-year-old Egyptian boy, Walid, as he's crossing the desert in 1934 with his uncle Ali. At the end of the day, he writes down things he's learned from what he's heard, seen, and experienced.

An oasis is fun, safe, and relaxing. We can carry an oasis within us wherever we go, an inner place of calm and refreshment, by using our thoughts well.

We all have in our minds something like an emotional telescope. If we look through the end everyone uses, things will seem bigger than they really are. But we can flip it around and look through the other end. That will make things appear smaller and less threatening. So whenever anything looks big and overwhelming, say to yourself, “Flip the telescope!”

Almost anything needs interpretation. That’s where freedom begins.

Whether something is a big deal or not often turns on how we see it. If you think it’s a big deal, it is. But you can change your mind on many things and shrink them down to size.

Wisdom for life is about seeing things properly. It’s about perspective. This gives us power, because it brings peace to our hearts, and then we can think clearly, even in difficult times.

If I live most fully with my heart and mind in the reality of the present moment, I will feel better and be more effective.

Things are not always what they seem. In fact, they often aren’t.

Whenever life brings us a storm, we should use what we have, stay calm, and move quickly to respond well.

An oasis within us is a place of peace and power in our hearts.

We can learn the most from the most difficult things.

We can’t control the day, but only what we make of the day. We should always try to make the best of whatever comes our way.

The Forgotten Ideal of Maturity

There's an old ideal that we seem to have forgotten throughout much of our culture. What I have in mind is maturity. Say the word now and people think: Senior Citizen, old age, wrinkles, slowing down, and worse. But it wasn't always that way.

Maturity. What is it? Actually, I think maturity is a quality, or characteristic comprised of many others, like, for example: Compassion, Kindness, Consideration, Equanimity or Inner Peace, Wisdom, Prudence, Perspective, Practicality, Honesty, perhaps a proper Awe regarding existence, and what some call "Hardihood" - the ability to persist in the face of difficulty, a capacity to endure hardship without constant complaint or a feeling of victimization. A mature person is not quick to anger. Such a person isn't careless with actions, thoughts, or feelings. Maturity rises to a level of appreciation and gratitude concerning all the good and beautiful things in life, while accepting the existence of limits and imperfections in the world. A mature person may want and work hard to change and improve the things around them, but they won't wallow in irritation, resentment, and frustration about those things that need changing.

For most of history, throughout most civilizations and societies, people have regarded maturity as something to aspire to, hope for, and respect. In past times, many would often actually try to act more mature than their age might indicate should be expected. That occasionally happens still, but in very limited contexts, as for example when someone is trying to get his or her first job. But immaturity, by contrast, now seems to nearly rule the culture. We see lots of people acting less mature than their age would lead us to expect. Turn on a reality TV show. Or consider standard political behavior. Or, you could just simply listen in on conversations in your favorite restaurant or bar. 

The ancient philosopher Diogenes was said to walk around everywhere during the daytime, carrying a lighted lamp, or lantern. Asked what he was doing, he liked to say, "Looking for an honest man." In our own time, he would have nearly as endless a trek looking for real maturity.

A clarification is needed here. We're a youthful culture. We celebrate the young and a great many of the things that young people like. Many of us try to keep such things in our lives. And that can be very good. It's perfectly possible to be youthful without being immature. There's an important difference. I knew a famous scholar at Yale, a world renown historian, who at the age of 89 was stunningly youthful, and lots of fun, but not at all immature.

Immaturity is wrapped up in ego, a sense of entitlement, a lack of responsibility, and a tendency toward anger, as well as an inclination to delight in the flaws and sufferings of others. Immature people are prone to whining, resenting, and feeling slighted when others aren't suitably celebrating their specialness. Immature people throw fits and tantrums, regardless of age. They also tend to be as callous toward others as they are fragile in their own sense of need.

When you consider immaturity closely enough, you come to understand why its opposite was for so long an admired ideal. And it makes you wonder how we ever got so far away from an appreciation of what it is to be truly mature.

Maturity is about proper growth and exemplary health. We should encourage it in others and seek to enhance it in our own lives. If you disagree, that's perfectly fine ... for a poopie head.

The Oasis Within

Today I have a great official announcement, unofficially posted on Facebook and Twitter yesterday. A new era has come! And a new way of being a philosopher has arrived with it.

In February of 2011, after a breakfast of toast and coffee, I suddenly had the most vivid daydream of my life. An old man and a boy were sitting under a palm tree, at a beautiful desert oasis, talking. They were in Egypt. It was 1934. And their conversation was really great. I was intrigued. It was all so real, and so different from anything I had ever experienced. I have a robust imagination, but nothing like this. As the movie played in my head, I ran up the stairs to my study to start writing it down. The boy, age thirteen, was with his much older uncle, and it seemed that they were crossing the desert with friends from a small village in western Egypt, on their way to Cairo. I wrote until the vision passed, and I posted the few pages I had written out, as a transcription, on The Huffington Post. Right away, I got lots of enthusiastic emails. "What is this? This is great!" I didn't know what it was.

The next day, the movie started up again. And I wrote down everything I saw and heard. This went on for weeks, and then months. The characters talk about such things as inner peace, the challenge of change, the dynamic nature of balance, how things can help or harm us, the true power of the mind, the hidden structures of our world, the importance of wisdom, the elements of human nature, the necessity of love, the requirements of success, and the world’s strangest gift of all - uncertainty. I could be almost anywhere, doing almost anything, and I'd have to grab a pen and paper and start writing. Pretty soon, I realized that I had an entire book. It was called The Oasis Within. I knew that because I woke up with the title seared in my mind. Yeah, it's all strange. But interesting strange. And it was the most fun, by far, that I've ever had writing - or doing anything as a philosopher.

The story continued. A second book, much bigger, appeared, as if it were already fully formed in every detail and I just had to get it in that movie form so I could write it down, as well. I never had to make up anything. And I never did. It all just came to me, in a rush. It was like drinking out of an open fire hydrant. It was all I could do to type fast enough. Egyptian names, historical references, stuff I didn't know anything about at all - but at the end of each day, I began to research what I had seen in the movie, and all sorts of odd details turned out to be true of the time and the place. How was this happening? I had no idea. The first book, it turned out, was a fascinating conversational prologue to what was now obviously a much longer action, adventure, and mystery novel full of comedy, romance, politics, crime, and, most of all, philosophy. I was seeing a deep worldview developed by the characters in what they did and said.  It really blew me away.

The second book was more than twice the length of the first one. Then, the movie picked up again - there was a third, even bigger, book, and a fourth one, and on and on. Book eight came to a wild culmination, and the movie projectionist, whoever it is, then took a break. I was nearly a million words into the most unexpected adventure of my life, and what I now think of as the culmination of my work as a public philosopher interested in understanding as much as I can about what we're doing in this world, and how we can do it best. I learned more from the movie than I had at Yale, UNC, and Notre Dame combined. But they had all prepared me well for this wild and unexpected journey.

One friend, a former student, who is a highly acclaimed novelist, read the first two books in draft and said, "This is The Alchemist meets Harry Potter meets Indiana Jones." That was encouraging. And the first edition of the first book just came out in its first form - a really beautiful paperback. The hardcover version, and an ebook, are due out within a week or two. But the paperback is now there, waiting for you, at Amazon, hoping you're curious. The hardcover and the ebook will be available through any bookseller, and also very soon. But if you want to see the opening chapters in the new adventure right now, the journey that has changed my own life for the better, please go, click here, The Oasis Within, and read and tell me soon what you think!

To quote one of the characters, "Much is yet to be revealed."

Patient Waiting

Patience means waiting. But waiting doesn't necessarily mean not doing. We all understand the former. And yet, few seem to grasp the latter.

There are times when we need to be still and at peace, take a break, and rest from our work, while simply allowing the world its turn to play a role in our endeavors. Every quest for achievement in the world is a partnership with powers that go beyond our own. And often it takes patience to allow our partner to do the work that we can't do alone. We have a phrase, "Watch and Wait." We've done all we can. We've tossed our little toy boat into the stream. Will it float? We await the results.

Waiting. It's something we might do in repose, on a beach, in a hammock, or utterly relaxed in a comfortable chair. We can wait on a yoga mat, or even while taking a nap.

But waiting does not have to be an utterly passive state. It's not the same thing as being inert, frozen, now helpless, and without options for action. "Waiting" is a verb. And it can connote all sorts of different actions. 

Waiting. It's a good time to pray, or play, or otherwise turn away from the focus of activity that has otherwise occupied us. A cook puts a pot on the stove. And then it's the pot's turn to boil. Sometimes, the cook can merely turn away to chat, or check email, or sit and sip coffee while gazing at the garden outside. Waiting can take many forms. And, of course, in some of those forms, the cook can stay quite busy in the kitchen.

Waiting often means preparing.

You've done all that you can do to get the project out there into the potential client's hands. Now, you wait. What does that require? Well, it can mean preparing for the positive go-ahead you hope to receive, and in this way playing a different role in the process, getting yourself ready for the success you want. There will be a next step. So, while you wait, you prepare for whatever is next. Waiting here takes the form of preparation. And at other times, it can mean just turning your attention elsewhere, while allowing the water to heat.

So, in the most general sense, there are two forms of waiting. One does involve resting. But the other involves a different form of doing. Either can help equip you for whatever is to come. But neither will serve you well if it's heavily spiced with hot anxiety. And that, for many people, is the problem. 

You're awaiting a decision. It could go either way. Uncertainty mixed with desire produces anxiety. Or you're awaiting a result that's not uncertain, but is not as yet in hand. Anticipation mixed with desire, or the very different aversion of fear, brings another form of anxiety. There are many ways in which waiting is fraught, tense, and hard. But, fortunately, there are two solutions to any such anxiety.

First, you can emotionally release the situation, whatever it is. Shed it. Let it go. Find a zen peace within. Trust God. Or reconcile yourself to the constant vicissitudes of the cosmos, as the stoics did. They believed that hardly anything is as good as it seems or as bad as it seems, so we should all just calm down. They understood that the discipline of waiting is largely the skill of governing our emotions well. But they also understood something else that's vital.

We all have to learn how to turn our attention from what we can't control to what we can control. And that's often facilitated by engaging in some new, and even slightly different, activity that engages our minds and hearts while we wait. Maybe it's in preparation for the result we want, or the one we'd prefer to avoid, or both. At other times, it's another activity altogether, perhaps one that has nothing to do with the focus of our concern. That doing then becomes a useful and happy distraction that can ease the worry, or the anticipation, which otherwise can be so tough. Action can displace agitation. And action can be the form that waiting takes.

If you have trouble waiting for things, analyze what exactly the problem is, and then take the proper action to solve it. For as you see, action can be just what waiting needs.

Blogging By Ballpoint Pen

I'm sitting alone in a hallway outside the ballroom of a great resort where I'll be speaking in a few minutes. The session before mine is running long. So, I wait. Most people would be on their iPhones now. I'm just relaxing. And in my relaxed state, I get an idea - which happens pretty often. So, I reach into my speaking bag, where I carry laminated wallet cards, Snickers Bars, an extra pair of glasses, some hand sanitizer, and other assorted necessities for being in front of a lot of people, and pull out that rare tool of bloggers - a Bic pen.

I usually leave my iPhone back in the hotel room. Whenever I can, I choose to be untethered to it all. It's not like I'll ever have mere seconds for the launching of a philosophical missive. My communication connection to the world isn't ordinarily a thing of great urgency. Plus, being unplugged allows for more contemplation. And inner peace. I'm not listening for the next notification ding and poised to reply that instant. I'm at ease. And my blogging tool in this instance isn't distracting me constantly with other options for its use and my attention. Of course, life can't be all ink and paper, all the time, or you wouldn't be reading this. But it still can be, sometimes. And those times are special.

My use of a pen isn't about smart phone avoidance. It's about moderation. And in our connected world, moderation is something we're forgetting, to our detriment. At the holiest spot in ancient Greece, the Oracle at Delphi, two vital pieces of advice were inscribed in marble:

Know Yourself.

Nothing in Excess.

These are great reminders of two basic necessities for a happy and flourishing life. And our frantic pace make both difficult for us to live out, day-to-day. My ballpoint pen helps me slow it all down, get back in touch with some deeper thoughts, and clear my mind for what's ahead.

Ah. There's the applause. The session's ending. I'm up next.

Now it's time to go have a little fun dishing out some of the great wisdom from the great thinkers. But, of course, in moderation.

This blog post powered by Bic.

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A Good, Virtuous Character

The New York Times Book Review recently asked two writers, Thomas Mallon and Alice Gregory, a question about characters in novels that's often been discussed before. It was posed like this: Can a Virtuous Character Be Interesting? The most common, received opinion is that a scoundrel, scalawag, deviant, or miscreant is much more interesting to read about than a normal garden-variety good guy. The argument usually given for such a view is simple. Imagine this story: A guy is born into a great and psychologically healthy family, he grows up around good friends, attends a fine school, is very nice himself, graduates from an ideal college, meets the perfect life partner, and lives happily ever after. It would not be the typical page turner. "Wait. I have to finish this chapter. Somebody just nicely asked our hero to pass the salt and I've got to see what form of graciousness he displays to comply!" 

We're often drawn to flawed characters. For one thing, we may see in them, on full parade, various traits that we've felt in ourselves and rightly suppressed. It's instructive and sometimes even fascinating to witness them fully developed and on display. In a related way, truly despicable characters in fiction make us look not so bad, after all, by contrast - which is surely one of the reasons reality television shows are so popular. And then, in another way, we may enjoy the insight that such portrayals can give us into the souls of people we actually have to deal with now and then outside the realms of novels.

Most good writers can provide long lists of baddies who have been more interesting to read about in the history of literature than almost any of the goodies. But should writers aspire more, and work harder, to depict goodness rather than focusing on so many types of evil?

Alice Gregory has something worthwhile to say about it all. She writes:

A truly radical 21st-century novelist wouldn’t ask us to see ourselves in made-up villains, and then, hopefully, revise our opinions of the real ones in our own lives. Rather, they would ask us to see the arduous and often acrobatic effort that goes into living a life of common decency. They would coerce us into believing that virtue is interesting and fun to think about and far more dazzling to encounter than malevolence.

In her 1947 book “Gravity and Grace,” Simone Weil wrote: “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

I think that's well said, both by Gregory and Weil.

I've just finished the most unexpected adventure in writing, over the course of my entire life, A movie started playing in my head one morning about four and a half years ago, and I immediately rushed to write down everything I was seeing and hearing. It was the most amazing process of writing I've ever experienced, and quite different from the rational and heavily planned creation of a nonfiction book of philosophy. The movie kept playing, and an entrancing prologue book, recounting a trip across the desert in Egypt in 1934, quickly came into being, and has been followed by seven subsequent much longer novels, so far. The prologue, The Oasis Within, is a short book just shy of 200 pages, and is going to be announced here soon, as it will be published within the month.

The Oasis Within, and its novel series that follows, are all my favorite books I've ever written. And the main characters are all very good guys. They display everyday virtue in dazzling ways. They do confront evil, and great danger, many times, and in wildly varied forms, but they are themselves great people I'd love to know. And they're the opposite of boring. In fact, they may be the most fascinating characters I've ever been introduced to, in any story. But maybe that's just me. And they confirm richly Alice Gregory's point.

I'll announce it here when the first of the eight books laying out their story is available. It will be very soon. A twenty-first century novelist is about to do something very different. 

Friendly Encouragement

How often are we tempted to pressure people to get better at what they're doing? How much do we actually do it? Maybe we push. Or we pull. We criticize and lay down the law. We demand. Some of us may even threaten. Well, not me. And, likely, not you. But it's too common, isn't it?

We want to get better, ourselves. We want to grow. And we want our kids, and our colleagues, and our employees, to get better, as well. But can we push and pull and force it?

Consider a garden. The plants aren't growing fast enough for you. You're wanting more. What are you going to do, grab them and pull? That's obviously not going to work. And it won't with people, either.

People grow best with friendly encouragement and guidance.

Yeah, I know. There are some people who don't respond to friendly encouragement or guidance. So why do you have anything to do with them? Move on. Or move them on.

Friendly encouragement is one of the best things we can give good people.

So: Encourage someone today. Help them fly higher.

The Purpose of Fear

One of the greatest pieces of advice ever given is this: Seek to live from love, not from fear. Over the long run, a few important things are true. Love expands us. Fear contracts us. A life mainly guided by fear is a small, shrunken substitute for what it could have been. 

But most of us can't completely avoid the experience of fear. And in this world, we probably shouldn't, anyway. So. In order to deal with it properly, we need to know its purpose. And here's a surprise.

The purpose of fear is to make us act. It's not to make us freeze.

Think about it: How many times do we ever find ourselves explaining someone's tremendous success in a challenging situation by saying, "She froze. That's why she prevailed."

The deer in the headlights doesn't escape danger by becoming motionless. The purpose of fear is to motivate action - often avoidance, sometimes preparation, always a new level of focused concentration. When we're trying something new where great gains or losses are at stake, fear will often arise. It's a certain form of emotional energy. The question then becomes: What do we do with it? Sometimes, it properly makes us stop and think and then proceed no farther. Often, it makes us stop and think and then proceed better. Courage can listen to fear but doesn't misunderstand it as nature's ultimate Stop Sign. Courage can be counseled by fear, but is never undermined by it.

When you next feel fear, let it make you act. Don't react in paralysis instead. Act. The right action may be a higher level of thinking, which, after all, is an action in its own right. Or what's called for could be a matter of physical movement. Fear isn't always our enemy, simply something to be overcome. It can be a stimulus to act properly, with consciousness, and focus. It can guide us to adapt, adjust, and act well.

It always signals the unknown. And the unknown is where the amazing can be found.

Just don't let fear stop you from acting at all. And remember, still, that the highest motivation is love. And perfect love, as we're told, casts out fear, even if it first feels it, and listens, and acts - it just never lets fear be the final word.

The Man in the House Down the Street

Sometimes, you can sense bad things coming. On other occasions, they just appear.

I’ve mentioned here that I recently read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. It’s now one of my favorite books. Harper Lee is a great, natural storyteller. She creates a vivid sense of time and place and character.

If you’ve read the book or seen the movie, you know that down the street from the Finch children, there’s a scary house that kids avoid, the Radley home. Rumor has it that there’s a man who lives there, a son of the owner, who is a recluse. The kids call him Boo. They’ve never seen him, and yet they fear him with a thrill of fascination. Their curiosity about him is intense.

I grew up with my own version of the scary house down the street. Most of the homes were small - 600 to 900 square feet, and sitting on narrow lots that were deeper than they were wide. The tiny ranch-style houses sat close to the road, and typically had back yards adjoining woods or fields. Across the street from me, and three or four houses down, was the Barbee home. The man and woman living there had a son we rarely saw, because they had “sent him away,” as we were told. My mother explained that he couldn’t hear or speak, and that he had some sort of mental troubles. So, most of the time, he lived in an institution of some sort. But now and then, it was also explained by our parents, he would be kicked out of the place, because of extremely violent outbursts, and he would end up back home for weeks or even months at a time. Our mothers warned us to stay away from that house, because they didn’t know when Butch might be there. And no one knew what would happen when he was.

Unlike Boo Radley, we had occasionally seen Butch on his furloughs home. He was about twenty-five years old and was built like a college football lineman, only bigger. I had once actually witnessed him pick up his father’s car to express his displeasure at something. He lifted the front bumper with a mighty roar, and I saw the front tire come up off the ground. I was on my bike riding by and couldn't help but notice. And he was rumored to be even stronger than such a display might indicate. He was maybe five feet, ten inches tall, with a hugely muscled body, and a square scarred face, topped, appropriately, by a short butch haircut that was dirty blond. My mother had said many times that his parents couldn’t control him and often had to call the police to come and help. At this point, they knew to send multiple officers. He had once actually knocked his mother across a room, and his father had no option but to go after him with a baseball bat, to stop his rampage. “Did you hear?” We’d say to friends when we had a new story of this sort jangling our nerves. “Did you hear about what Butch did?”

When my friends and I, at age eight or so, rode our bikes down the street, and Butch was at home, he’d now and then be out front in the driveway working on a car. He apparently had mechanical skills. If he looked up, we’d sometimes be brave and wave and even smile, and he would now and then wave back and grunt, or even make some sort of howling sound that unnerved us more than a little. Like the kids in Harper Lee’s story, we were both afraid of and attracted by the specter of this strange creature. We wanted to understand him more.

I had actually walked up close to him in his yard a couple of times when he was bent over the hood of the old car, out front. Both times, he had heard me, and when I got close, he slowly turned and straightened up to look at me. Once he smiled. Another time, he just glared. And that was an almost unearthly experience. I held up my hand in greeting and slowly backed away. But he disappeared again shortly after that, and we didn’t see him for a while. The neighborhood grew calm. He almost dropped out of mind.

There was an old abandoned house down the street that was boarded up, and had been for years. It sat back farther away from the street than most houses, and behind it was a short hillside that fell away from its high cement block foundation. It seemed almost balanced on the top edge of the little hill. One day my friends and I decided to explore it, and found an unlocked door. It was late afternoon. I was with three other boys, all between the ages of seven and ten. And I was the oldest. The house was scary inside, just because it was empty and a little decrepit. And of course, when we entered and the creaky door closed behind us, somebody had to whisper that it was maybe haunted.

As we crept across the floor, we were listening hard for ghosts and spirits, somehow assuming that paranormal inhabitants would surely make a noise. I can’t imagine how we got the courage to open any of the closed doors inside the house. But we did, room by room. There was a door in the back that had once opened onto a high porch, but now no porch remained. My friend Steve turned the knob and pulled it open. And we all gasped or said “Whoa!” when we saw that there was nothing but air beyond it, and ground far below, falling away as the hill immediately behind it dropped at a steep grade. We then closed the door, mostly, when someone discovered a bathroom and called to the rest of us in a loud whisper. There was an open toilet in it that was badly stained and filled with dirty water. We were all standing in the doorway of the room, grossed out by the sight, when we heard the front door that was now behind us and around a corner creak again. Then there were slow footsteps. We all froze. Suddenly, a figure filled up the hallway behind us in shadow. It was Butch. And he was not smiling.

Somebody got out the words, “Hey, Butch,” and held up a hand in a hesitant attempt at greeting. Our visitor was silent and showed no reaction. He walked toward us, and pushed a couple of us aside to see what we were looking at. He went into the bathroom and saw the old toilet full of dirty water and then turned back to us. He was smiling. He pointed at my friend Steve who was close to where he stood, and then at the toilet and made a motion with his hand as if to drink a glass of water. Steve looked confused and said, “What?” And Butch repeated the motion. This time, he jerked his pointing hand toward Steve, and then at the toilet, and he did the drinking motion again. He was not smiling now.

Butch then made a sound, like a low guttural roar. He pointed at Steve once more, and held the gesture. The poor kid shuffled his feet across the warped linoleum floor, and, to my amazement and horror, he bent down at the toilet, got on his knees, and lowered his head into it, where he made drinking sounds, splashing the filthy, brackish water.

The rest of us couldn’t believe what was happening. I felt cold inside, and started to tremble. It was almost like a low-grade electric shock passed through me. Butch then tapped Steve on the back and gestured for him to get up. His face was dripping wet. And he looked more scared than anyone I’d ever seen. He wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve repeatedly as he rose to his feet, and stumbled over and squeezed himself into a corner of the small room, apparently afraid to even try to leave.

Our tormentor didn’t point and motion with the next kid, but just grabbed his shoulder and pushed him toward the toilet. The poor guy resisted a little, and broke the now oppressive near silence by saying in a low voice, “No Butch! No! Please! No! Don’t do this!” He then held both hands out in a gesture that clearly asked the man to stop. And for his efforts, he had his head shoved down hard toward the open cesspool and into the foul liquid. We could hear him crying right away, as his face jerked back up from it, again splashing whatever was in the bowl. His hands were all over his face, wiping and slapping it off, as if he had bees after him. He jumped up and ran out of the room, sobbing, tearing through the house and out the front door. We could hear him slam it open as he escaped to run home. Butch didn’t seem surprised, or angered. He didn’t move to chase him. He had no reaction at all. It didn’t even enter our minds that the boy would run home and tell his mother, and that she would get help to intervene, and that it would be too late when she did.

My third friend got the same treatment as the second. No signs of instruction, just force. He whimpered and cowered and suffered the same dark baptism into the depths of what was now becoming for us a nightmare beyond anything we had ever imagined. He was then jerked up by his shirt and forcefully shoved into the corner with skinny Steve, who stood perfectly still, apparently too shocked and afraid to move or speak.

Then Butch stared at me, with no expression on his face at all. I just looked into his eyes, and I can’t remember that I showed any emotion, either, except perhaps for the disbelief and disgust I felt at what was being done, along with the natural fear the situation evoked. For some reason, because I had met his eyes and held the gaze, he continued to glare at me, and didn’t grab me right away. Seconds passed. He slowly pointed at the toilet. I shook my head no. I didn’t say anything. I just shook my head. He pointed at me again, and pointed at the toilet. I shook my head no again. He looked at me, stone-faced. And he slowly shook his head in a yes movement, as if he understood and accepted what I had attempted to convey.

And then he moved toward me and grabbed my left arm and surprised me. He pushed me out of the bathroom, and down the hallway. I didn’t speak. And he made no sounds or further gestures. He was shoving me to that back door that opened out to empty air and a big drop to the ground. It was like he knew about it. I suddenly realized what might be coming. When he had me right up to the door, just to the side, he pulled it open, all the way. He then pointed at me again, and made a movement of his pointing hand and arm that said to me “Jump.”

It was pretty far down to the ground, and a scary thing to contemplate, for someone of my age. I shook my head no again. He made the movement once more, with additional emphasis, and now with a fierce and determined look on his face. I shook my head slowly again to indicate a determined refusal to comply. I’m glad, in retrospect, that I showed no emotion. He seemed to respect my stoic refusal to comply with his suggestion. And the next thing I knew, I was off the floor and then in flight. He had picked me up and thrown me hard from the doorway and out into the crisp fall air where I had a moment or two to register my plight as I plummeted briefly out and then down to the ground, which at first seemed even farther away than it had looked.

I hit hard, and it hurt intensely, but because of the steep downward incline, I rolled and, from a deep survival instinct, I shot out of the roll and into a run sideways across the hill toward home, as fast as I could go. I wasn’t about to stay around and see what might be next.

I was afraid to tell my parents what had happened. I kept silent. I didn’t want them to get involved with a grown man who acted like a monster. I was afraid of what might happen to them. It never even occurred to me that when I made my exit, there were still two kids in the house with Butch.

It took the rest of the afternoon and evening for me to calm down and get over what had taken place. I knew that it could have been much worse – much, much worse. And that was part of what was so unnerving. But, of course, good can come from bad. And we all subsequently experienced at least some version of that on our block.

We never saw Butch again. And, strangely, we didn’t hear him mentioned again by any of our parents. We never learned what had happened to him. I think his parents moved away shortly afterwards. And we could then ride our bikes up and down the street without any worries about what might lurk inside the shuttered windows of the one house that had always given us pause. And yet, the newfound peace of the neighborhood could not undo the effects of our unexpected time with Butch. I never felt comfortable with heights again. And my good friend Steve, years later, put a gun in his mouth, and ended his earthly memory of the day.

Our Philosophy of Language Matters!

I posted a version of this blog during the campaigns of 2016. But I think it's important to revisit it now that we're hearing from supporters of our new administration, and members of it, about "alternative facts" and truth being just something "in the eye of the beholder." We need to understand the two different views of language in order to see what the new administration is trying to do.

In the upcoming days of the new administration, we're apparently going to hear a lot of people distorting the truth, and actually lying to us. Of course, that's no revelation. It's already been happening. And it's unfortunate. But we come across this a lot in business, as well, and in any other area of life where something of value is at stake. And there's an important reason that distortion and lying is so widespread at present. It may surprise you.

There are two very different philosophies of language out in the world. Which one we operate by matters. The noble view, on my analysis, holds that the overall two-fold purpose of language is to connect and cultivate. It connects us first with reality, and with each other, and even within ourselves, in a variety of ways. And it cultivates us, or develops us as human beings, in just as many ways. This view of language is focused on linking our words to truth, beauty, goodness, and unity—the four transcendental values of ancient philosophy. We can call it The Spiritual View of Language. At its best, language connects and cultivates the spirit.

Going back in human history and prehistory, language has always had many uses - for example: to warn, call, express, exclaim, inquire, infer, inform, and create. It's also had a deviant use, interestingly dependent on these more straightforward uses. It can be employed to deceive. But that's a secondary and parasitic use. If language had not already first been used to inform, warn, and express, for example, it could never have been used to deceive. The reason is simple. In deceiving, you're pretending to inform or express, or warn, and so on, but your use of language departs from the expected connection with truth that those uses ordinarily presuppose and convey. At the same time, you're depending on your listener to simply assume that you are sincerely informing or warning, and so on. But to the contrary, you say what you know to be false. You warn when you know there's no real danger. You express an anger or an empathy that you don't actually feel. The primary uses of language had to be established and accepted in order for any twisting of them into deception to work.

If you hold the Spiritual View of Language, you're going to see deception as something forgivable or appropriate only at the extremes of human behavior—in competitive games or sports, and in life or death situations. In games or sports, when we're outside the normal spheres of life, and we're playing, however hard, it's ok to bluff, or fake. We don't morally judge the quarterback who fakes a run but passes instead. But secretly deflated footballs are something else. There are rules within which the deceptions can take place.  In basketball, a great fake under the basket shows not corruption but skill. Certain such forms of deception are fine. And in situations of life or death, it's normally thought to be strongly preferable to use deception if that's the only way to avoid an act of killing or being killed, or maiming or being maimed.

In game situations, we've suspended "normal life"—whereas, in life or death situations, we've arrived at an extreme, on the other end, beyond normal life, where an intensity of conflict or likelihood of severe bodily damage has gotten so bad that a lie or a deception can be not only excused, but actually demanded in order to prevent something much worse and potentially irreversible. Lying in politics or business doesn't normally qualify—to put it mildly.

But there's another philosophy of language altogether and it's the one that now tends to dominate highly partisan or extremist politics, and even some business circles. It's a view that the primary purpose of language is to gain, exercise, and hold power—power over people, situations, and things.

On this Machiavellian view, language isn't tied to truth, beauty, goodness, or unity. It's not a spiritual vehicle for connecting and cultivating ourselves. It's a cruder tool. It's about manipulating. It's all about getting others to do your bidding. On this view, language is about crafting perceptions, and evoking those beliefs and feelings in others that will open doors for you and feed into your own purposes. It's a clearly ignoble view of language. And it's as parasitic as deception is in any of its forms. If most people didn't hold, at least implicitly, what I'm calling the Spiritual View of Language, no one could hold this Manipulative View of Language and make it work. The manipulators pretend to be doing the things that the rest of us expect them to be doing—truly informing, accurately warning, honestly expressing, and so on. But they're often only pretending to do such things, at least much of the time. They'll actually seek to show a concern for truth, beauty, goodness, and unity now and then, when they believe it's their interest to do so, but only to fortify their basic strategy of manipulation. They want power. And they talk to get it and use it and keep it.

We all need to persuade other people, and help position others to see the value of our projects and propositions. But we can do that by connecting and cultivating, rather than by manipulating. And that's the only path of honor. It's also the only one that's sustainable, long term. Those of us who hold the Spiritual View of Language can use our words in all sorts of creative ways, to inspire, enthrall, or entertain. But if we ever catch ourselves manipulating another adult human being, we need to do a philosophical self-check. Is our context that of a game or sport? Is it truly like war? When too many people start to think of politics or business as primarily a game, or a sport, or as the equivalent of war, there comes to be a subtle and secret shift in how they think of language. As a result, we all suffer.

Who knew? Our philosophy of language matters!

The Importance of Optimism

"We Need Optimists." That's the title of a front page Sunday Review essay in the New York Times this week by Arthur  C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of the new book, The Conservative Heart. He starts off with a quick story. His son had made a really bad grade on a test. After a parent-teacher conference about it, Arthur's wife broke the silence in the car by saying, "At lease we know he didn't cheat." That glass is always half full for the optimist, and ready to be topped off.

Brooks reports recent psychological studies that indicate optimists are generally healthier than pessimists, and more resilient in the face of setbacks. Optimists also self-report greatest levels of perceived happiness. In my own analyses of human performance, I've learned that optimists tend to have a more complete form of access to all their resources, inner and outer, than pessimists.

If optimists are, generally, healthier, happier, more resilient, and more resourceful, then why wouldn't everyone seek to be one?

Well, first, there's The Cautionary Tale of the Irrational Optimist - the many examples that almost any of us can produce of people whose enthusiasm for life and their own ideas makes them oblivious to problems, obstacles, and the real probabilities of a situation. This is the mindset so thoroughly critiqued by Barbara Ehrenreich in her scathing book, Bright-Sided. But to be an optimist, you don't have to be a simpleminded idiot or a stubborn fool. In fact, it helps greatly not to be either. You can be a realistic optimist - and that turns out to be, not surprisingly, the best kind there is.

A realistic optimist moves forward with eyes wide open, seeing obstacles, understanding challenges, and yet maintaining a determination to be creative in solving all problems. The realistic optimist never just hopes for the best, or blithely assumes the best, but works hard to make the best happen, in full realization that it may take longer than it should, and be harder to accomplish than anyone could have imagined. But it's precisely the element of optimism that fuels a hopeful and persistent struggle forward. Optimists don't prematurely give up, or surrender, in their efforts to create good things. And optimists like me promote the optimistic mindset, just like I'm doing now. Why? We really believe it works and that it can work for you.

Of course, pessimists want to convert us all to their alternative way of thinking. And I've always wondered why they even try. Don't they have to believe they're unlikely to succeed? They are pessimists, after all.

Martin Seligman, in his classic study, Learned Optimism, argues that you don't have to be born sunny side up. You can become an optimist. And you can benefit greatly from adopting this pervasive attitude.  Plus, if you're already moderately optimistic, you can enhance that proclivity.

I just know you can.

I really do.

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?

Life Skills

How skilled are you? Do you seek to identify, acquire, develop, and improve the most important life skills, in an ongoing way? 

We often think about success, and even happiness, as if it's mostly about talent and luck - what you're born with, and what comes your way, completely apart from your control. But obviously, this is a passive and even fatalistic viewpoint. We don't get to choose our talents, or innate levels of talent, and we can certainly position ourselves for luck to strike, but we can't call it down from the heavens. It happens, or it doesn't. That's inherent to the concept of luck.

I've come to realize that this common way of thinking is both wrong and terribly unhelpful. Life success is more about skill than it is about either talent or luck. A skill is something that can be learned and developed. Riding a bike, swimming, dancing, and golf all involve skills. You don't start off in life innately knowing how to do these things well, but you can learn, and you can get better with time, effort, and deliberate practice.

A lot in life is like that. Goal setting is a skill. Listening well is a skill. And because of that, great conversations tend to result from the cultivation of a skill, or a set of skills. Building and maintaining confidence is a skill. So is the mental act of concentration. Building a business, or a career, is all about cultivating the right skills and using them well.

I've come to think that building a life of fulfillment and happiness is like that, too. There are skills to be learned and cultivated. They are things we can get better at doing, as we seek to improve. But if we have a passive mindset, we won't even try. To me, the exciting thing about the concept of a skill, and especially the idea of life skills, is that once we have the concept and begin to apply it, we can change our lives for the better, and improve greatly. We begin to see little things everywhere that we can work on in our emotional and behavioral repertoire. And as we become more skilled at doing the things that count, that elusive partner called luck seems to find us more often, and treat us much better.

For good books related to this, books that will help you to understand this more and develop your own best life skills, go get Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin, and Mindset, by psychologist Carol Dweck.