Relationships Rule The World

There are two fundamentally different approaches to work and life - a transaction mentality, and a relationship focus. I've written about this before, but a review might be helpful. 

The transaction approach to work and life concentrates just on the sale, the deal, the event, the accomplishment. A relationship orientation focuses on people and getting to know them, helping them, and encouraging them. The great philosopher Martin Buber spoke of the "I-Thou" relationship, and the "I-It" alternative. What do we primarily relate to, people or things? Do we treat people like the amazing and valuable souls they are, or as if they were mere things to be move and manipulated?

The irony is that with a relationship mentality, you end up with far more satisfying transactions than you get with a transaction approach to life. The transaction guy loses relationships, and many valuable transactions, as a sad consequence of his focus. Transactions are immensely important. That just show how valuable the vastly more important relationships in the world are.

Be a relationship person. Then, enjoy the great transactions that result. Priorities matter. So does focus.

Hope

Years ago, someone said to me, "People love your talks so much because you don't just give them philosophical insights and practical ideas, you give them hope." That's stayed with me ever since. I hope it's true.

We all need hope. And yet, we often find ourselves without it, in some context. Things go badly. A difficult situation arises. And we feel helpless to do anything about it. When we feel helpless, we soon begin to feel hopeless, as well. And there's a reason for this.

In a psychological experiment which makes me glad I'm not a psychologist, a thermostat, or climate control mechanism, was installed in a factory. People for the first time could walk over and set the device, raising or lowering it. Finally, they felt a sense of control over their environment for the first time. Morale went up. And if I'm remembering this well, so did their work performance. People felt better about their jobs. And yet what they didn't know is that the control wasn't connected to anything but the wall. Yeah. A philosopher wouldn't do that. But here was the conclusion: Even a false belief that we have a measure of control improved our emotions and performance. When we don't feel any sense of control, or even influence over a challenging situation, we lose a measure of hope.

I prefer to give people hope through truth, not illusion. But what exactly am I giving, and how can I be in a position to do this at all?

Hope is not the same thing as belief. When we hope for a better future, we're not necessarily believing that the future will be better, only that it can be. But the state of hope goes beyond that. The possibility conviction is joined to an attitude of positive expectation, again, different from actual belief, but closely aligned to it. Like belief, hope can be rational or irrational. And like belief, its status as such is connected with matters of evidence. But hope looks beyond actual belief, and beyond the existing evidence, to wait expectantly for a better future.

The New Testament speaks of Faith, Hope, and Love. Faith is about trust. Love is about commitment. Hope is about patient expectation and positive values. We're told that love is the greatest of these things, because with the right commitments, faith and hope can flourish. And when you think about it deeply enough, you quickly realize that we can't do great and creative work without faith, hope, and love.

How then do I give hope to people? By bringing them the wisdom of the ages for how they can improve their lives and business endeavors. I give people tools - old tools, and great ones that have proved their worth over centuries of use. And I show people how to use them. Then, they expect more strongly than ever the better future that can be theirs, in personal or professional things.

And their response - and for some of you readers, I know I can say "your response" - loops back to undergird my own hope for the future that we all need. Thanks, as always, for reading. And thanks for any comments.

Good Limits

We all live with limits. And yet, we love words and phrases like 'Limitless' and 'No Limits!' and 'Without Limits!' There are movies, T shirts and businesses that choose such phrases as names. It can seem like a great ideal, and a liberating thought. But let's think a little more deeply.

We need to make a distinction between artificial limits, or false limits, and real ones. We wrongly think we have many limits that we don't have at all. And we impose on ourselves artificial limits all the time that hinder and hold back what could be our genuine excellence, and a more expansive experience of life.

I've been having some related thoughts come to me this week. Let me lay out a few here, together, aphoristically, for your consideration.

Artificial limits are weaknesses. Natural limits are strengths. They give us structures to build on, and a form to build within. Some can be extended, and expand the borders of our strength. Some can't, but form the often hidden foundations for who we are and can be.

All limits give form and structure. To live without them would be impossible - it would be to live without any form or structure. But to live with too many limits, or the wrong ones, restricts you, constrains you, and holds you back needlessly. It shrinks your life.

You have to free yourself from artificial limits to find your natural and empowering structures.

The right limits liberate and give you a place to stand.

The limits that are freeing and empowering are those that arise from the shape of your distinctive talents, your best choices, and your highest commitments.

My dogs have a big fenced in backyard. They often go to the fence and poke their noses through the uprights to bark at another dog, or a jogger, or almost anything. The fence limits them. But it protects them as well. And it gives them the power to move and play vigorously without fear. It provides them an expansive area in where they can't be harmed by cars, or other dangers.

That's almost a trivial example. But it shows in one small way that not all limits are bad.

The best limits come from your wisest decisions, the ones that chart your proper path forward in life. You can't do everything. You shouldn't even want to. Some things are just not right. Others aren't right for you, at least, not now.

When we shed the wrong limits and embrace the right ones, we flourish. If that's a new thought, I hope you can use it well.

Too Much

When was the last time you ate too much, drank too much, exercised too much, watched too much bad tv, or worked too much on something that ended going nowhere?

We have all these clever aphorisms like:

Too much is never enough!

Too much is impossible!

Too much is wonderful!

Too much is just right! 

And these little sayings are admittedly all clever, and all sound good in the right context, but are also mutually inconsistent, which is, of course, warning signal. Clever isn't always a sign of true, although it's often mistaken as such in our world. 

How about too much paperwork? Too much information? Too much food in your mouth, or way too much stuff for your carryon to hold?

I just had an epiphany in the bathroom of the Airbus A319 I was flying on Wednesday morning from Jacksonville, Florida to Charlotte, North Carolina. The seatbelt sign was illuminated, and I’m not usually an in-air rule breaker, but too much white and red wine, capped with too much Jack Daniels the night before at a party had led to too much black coffee that morning, which resulted in too much of a need for the Airbus facilities, mid-flight, and all of that resulted in my standing up for too much time in violation of the captain’s sign. But as soon as I had slipped out of my comfortable window seat 2A and ducked into the little lav, then, zap, I had my morning revelation.

Here’s the insight. Too much leads to too much.

Too much libation and getting up much too early requires too much java which leads to too much time in the restroom during a bumpy flight. Too much weight in the gym leads to too much back pain, which leads to too much Advil, and too much recovery time in the bed. Too much is trouble.

And maybe that’s why the ancients said “Nothing in excess.” In fact, the famous Oracle at Delphi had two things carved in marble. "Know yourself" and "Nothing in excess." I've reflected before in a blog on the relationship between these two pieces of advice. Each one helps you with the other.

Of course, you can't have too much self knowledge. Whatever you can get will be useful, and it helps you know what counts as too much, in anything else.

Spot in advance what's too much for you, and then find a way to stop before you cross the line. That's the path of virtue which, in Greek and Latin, meant strength. It should today as well.

And there's no such thing as too much strength. So, therefore:

Know yourself. Do at least almost nothing in excess. Be strong.

Patience

For most of my life, patience has been a monumentally aggravating virtue. I like to make things happen. I like to dream it, do it, and then move on to the next thing. I work hard at projects, and pursue them with determination, persistence, and as much creativity as I can muster. And then I like to see my efforts come together and work, producing the fruit of achievement. I bask in the warm glow of a job well done and go looking for the next one.

When I get excited about an idea or a project, I become a curator of great energy. It seems to come to me from all directions, get inside me, and demand to be used. I surf on it, run with it, and even fly because of it. Then, occasionally, things don't go as expected. Not right away, at least. And sometimes, not even considerably after the "right away" phase has long gone. What's this? The world is not responding to my bright idea and hard work? I'm being made to WAIT?

Patience has a very different energy signature from striving and working hard. For most of my life, I had no real conception of how to make them go together. I was always pushing, running down hallways, making call after call, with almost a frantic pace that finds youth to be such fertile soil. But as I've gotten older, I've come to a bit more of an understanding of patience.

The world is an infinitely complex buzzing web of intersecting interests, energies, and events. It's hard to fit a new idea, or invention, or discovery, into the speeding traffic of what's already on the highway. You sometimes have to sit on the on ramp and patiently wait until the time is right. Then you can safely merge into the stream of ongoing things that are whizzing by.

Impatience doesn't want to wait - ever. But waiting can be just as important an activity as doing. A great baseball player doesn't step up to the plate and let impatience goad him into swinging hard before the pitcher even throws the ball. That would be crazy. And if he even swings a moment too soon, he can miss the opportunity and the ball. Patience is all about acting when the time is right. It's about waiting until the proper moment arrives. It involves the ability to be at peace and give the world time to get ready for your great new idea or project. It's most of all an attitude. And it's powerful.

Impatience is all about ego and that spoiled child inside that wants its way now. Its companions are frustration, irritation, and anger. Patience is a form of inner peace. It's about wisdom. Its companions are serenity and assurance, a confidence that doesn't require immediacy. It isn't in a hurry. It understands that great things take time.

I always wanted to have a better understanding of patience. But I had to wait a long time to get it. It was worth the wait. And most things of value are.

The Benefits of Age

I'm really glad I'm not twenty years younger. I bet you are, too. Unless maybe you're 100 and wish you could have a do-over for everything since your eightieth birthday. 

There are advantages to age if you live with your eyes wide open. Experience can be a great teacher if we let it work for us this way. Of course, I'm sure there are some people who are just as foolish at forty as they were at twenty. I feel really sorry for them. I was in many ways an idiot in my twenties. I was a high functioning, intellectual idiot, but an idiot all the same. I had to grow into a measure of wisdom. And I learned it in my head long before it fully made the difference it should have made in my heart. Making enough mistakes helps. It can humble you, and open you to new avenues of growth and inner transformation. Learning what doesn't work can be great preparation for an eagerness to know what does.

Today, April 13th, is my birthday. I was born on Easter Sunday, 1952. That makes me 63 years old, or young, as my friends like to console me by saying. And I'm fine with it. I think I'm finally starting to really understand some things, some important things. I have an expansive awareness about life and the world that I lacked even a few years ago. So if you feel like you're mystified most of the time, and are making mistakes left and right, hang in there. The wisdom you need may be just around the next corner. If you let experience be your teacher, and allow other wise people to give you guidance, you can age into new vistas of understanding and delight that you could not even have imagined twenty years ago.

So stay open, stay eager to learn, stay tuned in to what life has to teach you. Let today and tomorrow provide you with some of those genuine benefits of age. And, Happy WiseDay to you.

The Size of Your Life

I live in many ways a small, snug life. And I'm happy in it. But one of the hardest things in the modern world is to be content with the size of your life.

People contact me all the time to tell me about their grand plans, their world-historical ambitions and dreams that will likely play out on a stage so big that the earth itself will seem too small to support it all. And even our own galaxy, in contrast, may appear to be a bit modest and out of the way for the immense grandeur that is to transpire, if their goals are realized. 

This has been going on for decades. Really. My wife says I'm some sort of a magnet for grandiose dreamers. I don't know why. I do enjoy hearing of their ambitions. I deeply appreciate unfettered enthusiasm. I love thinking big. But as I listen to the various magnificent plans, I always wonder: "How?" And sometimes: "Why?"

Most days, I work at home. And most of my day involves working on very little things. I realized long ago that if I was going to personally change the world for the better, it would have to be very slowly. And so now, on the brink of my 63rd birthday, you've got to give me credit for sticking to my own plan and sense of timing. I've been slow, indeed. The world is not yet, it seems, quite changed in the way I've intended. Maybe I've planted a few seeds over the years that will germinate. And it could be that the results of those seeds will go far beyond anything I can currently imagine. But then again, if not, that's fine, too.

I've come to suspect that there is a way in which the smallest lives can be among the biggest, and what play out as the biggest may often be missing out on the real adventure. You see, surface appearances don't tend to be reliable guides to deeper realities. There may be a spiritual transvaluation of values that's always going on. Focus on the right things, and your life, however humble it seems, is in reality infinitely expansive. Chase the wrong things, however grand, and you've shrunk it down to a pinpoint of value. And then, in the realm of the right things, any little action can have ripples that don't stop. My hyperbolic dreamers, by contrast, often aspire to the role of demi-gods, and want to make huge waves that could end up with the effect of a tsunami.

So, my thought for the day, if I actually have one here, is to enjoy, relish, and value the small things in your life. Maybe you are changing the world, whether you're advertising it in huge letters of skywriting for us all to read or not. Maybe your small is really big.

Small is good.

Animals: Our Mystical Colleagues

In this week’s American Scholar, in a column on books that have influenced people's lives, a weekly piece called “Reading Lessons,” Sy Montgomery, the author of 20 books on animals and nature, discusses a book he once read that was formative for his career. And he quotes and comments:

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” Henry Beston wrote in his 1928 classic, The Outermost House. “For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.”

This week’s writeup is on a book subtitled “A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod.” Montgomery goes on to say:

Beston brought to his observations of the natural world all of his talents—not just his intellect, but his emotion and intuition as well. His book is, to me, a blueprint for how to open your soul to creation, how to see animals in a new, humbling, and revelatory way. 

A lady has helped us manage our home for nearly twenty years. Our dogs know when she leaves her own house across town to come to ours. Our cat has trained us in various ways to do what he wants us to do, and when he wants us to do it. How much do animals understand? What’s their thought and feeling world like? When I ponder this intensely enough, it makes me want to be a vegetarian. We’ve even had a group of wild deer years ago show that they knew when the kids would come home from school each day, and gather behind our house to wait for their daily afternoon treat of dried corn. Who was their timekeeper? Who called the meeting? One day, when we were late, the boldest of the deer, a young one, came across to our back deck, and walked up the steps to peer into the door, presumably to find out what was delaying things.

I’m sure you have your own stories. What is our place in nature, really? How much could we benefit and learn by opening ourselves to new insights? What do we need to learn from our mystical colleagues, the animals?

Maybe you should ask your dog or cat.

A Celebration of Transformation

Easter is a distinctive holiday. It's a celebration of transformation - from death to life, mortal to immortal, defeat to victory, illusion to truth. It's about the most powerful force in or beyond the universe displaying an undying concern for the worth of each person. It's about redemption, second chances, and the triumph of love in the end.

It's also, of course, a holiday and a message surrounded by controversies of all sorts - what are the historical arguments for resurrection, or the philosophical possibilities of such a unique and fundamentally revelatory event? And what about all the organizational, political, ethical, and social issues that swirl around the diverse community of people who are celebrating this day?

As a philosopher, I like to avoid distractions when a big issue is at stake. So I'd recommend a few minutes today of meditating on the core issues of transformation and the potential power of love in our lives, in everything we do. A holiday such as this can easily be lost in its trappings. Or it can act as an aperture to allow us to view things differently. And this one, in particular, gives us all an opportunity to think deeply and arise with new insight, boldness, and compassion for our fellow creatures.

We're ultimately not here to be overcome, but to overcome with creative love.

Happy Easter.

I'm an Optimist!

I’m an unusual philosopher in several respects. First, I have no beard, toga or tweed jacket. Second, I don't work at a college or university, where most of us are safely confined. But my focus today is on the fact that, even stranger, I’m an optimist.

Survey the history of philosophy and you won’t find many of us smiley faces in the mix.  Thomas Hobbes was no barrel of laughs with a rosy view of things. Schopenhauer was perhaps King of the Pessimists. Kierkegaard was often referred to as "the gloomy Dane." Sartre is famous for his characteristic statement that “Hell is other people.” Ouch. And, you know: Check the news. The world is full of problems - overflowing with difficulties. So, how do I manage to be an optimist, swimming against so strong a tide? Why, for that matter, should anyone with a mind at all be an optimist?

First, I should qualify my confession. I'm often a short term pessimist but always a mid-to-long term optimist. Short term, any crazy thing can happen. Given time, though, things will work out. That's my view. And because the long and mid term encompasses the short term, I'm - all things considered, in the end, and ultimately - an optimist. So I choose the metaphysical smile.

Here's the thing. The same problems exist around the world that always have. But the evil practices and stupid things going on now more widely condemned than ever before. And yet, they still exist. Enlightenment is a rough and curving road, with many back turns and hills, and detours along the way. And of course, as one especially insightful individual once said, “There will always be wars and rumors of war.”

Human aggression seems to be so deeply embedded in our nature that no reasonable person could ever expect it to disappear. Renowned physicist and Expert on Many Things Stephen Hawking recently said that aggression is the greatest threat to our continued existence that there is. As an optimist, do I then think it will just go away? No. But I believe it can be redirected.

Right now, as in all the rest of our history, human aggression is directed primarily toward people. And I don’t think we need to end it. But we need to redirect it toward problems rather than people. If we could get especially the young men around the world and their supporters to go after the problems we all face with the energy and aggression by which they fight and go to war, the world would be a better place pretty quickly.

We don’t need a world with no aggression. We need a world of aggressive problem solvers. And that’s a good thing. In a wise and prescient novel, The Thanatos Syndrome, the late Walker Percy envisioned a place where drugs were put into the water supply to reduce aggression and hostility. The unexpected side effect was that many other things were reduced as well, including creativity. It’s nice to dream of a world where no aggression at all exists. But a more reasonably expected one is where it’s redirected. Will it ever happen? Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, I remain an optimist. The world is full of problems like this, but I'm convinced we're here to be problem solvers.

The Strangeness of It All

What was the first truly unsettling thing you learned in school? Other than how babies are made and enter the world. For me, it was being told that the sky isn't really blue and the grass isn't really green. Nothing is actually a color. It's all in our minds.

Say what?

That striped dress burning up the internet recently? Gold and white. No, black and blue. No, bronze and white. Actually, nothing. I think that factoid freaked me out more than anything else in my early education. And then along came the philosophers with their distinction between primary qualities that are inherent in things and secondary qualities like color that aren't.

Imagine how blown my mind was when I started reading physics and even some of the most solid primary qualities like extension seemed evanescent. If you don't already know about stuff like entanglement and superposition, and you Google it, you end up going "What?"

We ordinarily think we have a lock on what the world is all about, and how to navigate through it. But with a little meditation on the true strangeness of it all, I open up in new ways. We're surrounded by mystery and uncertainty. And I think that makes two things important. First, humility. Second, boldness. As Socrates insisted long ago, we don't know as much as we think we do. Humility is appropriate to our condition. But equipped with minds and bodies as we are, we must be here to do stuff. And: Since we dance in the great unknown, we might as well be bold.

Create freely. Do well. And why not bring love into the material world like it really matters? In a cosmic existential reality where the physical environment around us looks less solid all along, love just might be the most solid thing around. Amen?

A New World Order

We live in a world order that seems to have come to us out of prehistory. It's in the air we breathe - along with a lot of other stuff that's been produced by it. It's the motivational structure behind what most people do, most of the time. It's a world order that's all about position, power, and possessions. It's been responsible for most of the achievements, discoveries, and inventions throughout human history. But it's a recipe for resentment, aggression, and conflict. It's a zero sum mindset - those who want more have to take from others, who end up with less.

An old friend from college, Ed Brenegar, recently visited for part of a day, on a pilgrimage to see several east coast friends before he moves soon from Asheville, NC to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We sat and talked for hours about philosophy, life, and the spirit. We reflected on this old world order of position, power, and possessions that's beginning to look spiritually threadbare and not merely problematic, but actually self destructive over the long run. And we ruminated on what would be a better alternative - a spiritual vision of creativity, contribution, and service where our aspirations are guided more by love and compassion than by lust and acquisition. We wondered together if we're in a time of transition from one to the other, or whether a better world order of care and concern is just a dream.

What motivates you? Is it just a desire for position, power, or possessions? Or is it something more, something deeper and more lasting? There is something better for us, something calling out to us that will not at all diminish our drive to create and improve, but will put it onto better foundations. There is, of course, nothing wrong with position, power, and possessions. They're all great things, if used well. But they should never be the sole motivating forces in our lives, or the metrics by which we measure value. There is, indeed, something more.

Extraordinary People

A few days ago, I just finished writing a second draft of a little book about the philosophical underpinnings of the extraordinary success experienced by Apple founder Steve Jobs. Then I found out that this week a new book is being published about him, a biography that might correct some of the impressions we all had when reading Walter Isaacson's authorized tome. The new one is called Becoming Steve Jobs. And it promises a more rounded portrait of a man who didn't just scream at people, but was a more complex character who changed modern life for all of us. I look forward to it.

Then, hours later, I read an article about Elon Musk, the young developer of PayPal, Tesla cars, and SpaceX, a guy who's just started with his own entrepreneurial magic, and may be the real life version of comic book and movie character Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man. Elon has taught himself physics, astrophysics and many other things, while most of us where sitting on the sofa and watching The Voice or Modern Family.

I was once in one of Henry Ford's former homes right outside Detroit. The caretaker was talking to me about how Henry used to sit around with his buddies Thomas Edison and the tire guy Firestone and dream up new ways to change the world. What can we learn from such people? 

We're not all world transforming visionaries. But we can all have visions for our lives and the world around us. We can accomplish more than we might suspect. And all that stands between us and the legacy we can create is habit, inertia, easy comfort, and distraction - all things that can be overcome with just a little effort.

We might not invent a new technology, or revolutionize industries, or fly people to Mars. But if we try, we can create more extraordinariness around us than we might ever have imagined. The magic is in us. That's why we're here. We just have to act like the pioneers we're meant to be, in whatever domain and on whatever level. Whether the results will get into the national papers and onto the covers of magazines isn't the test of our worth. We can feel whether we're doing what we're here to do. If you don't feel it, then give yourself the chance to dream and do. And then value your creative best by the right standards.

The Examined Life

I recently quoted Socrates. "The unexamined life is not worth living." He believed that self examination is a key to wisdom and virtue, to getting our bearings in life, and to moving forward in the right direction.

And I agree. But we need to balance his insight with our own. "The unlived life is not worth examining." We can't spend all our time in front of an existential mirror. We need to get out of the  self reflective head space in order to go out into the world and do something great. Self examination can be very helpful. It's necessary. But too much self reflection can gum us up.

A high school jazz teacher once told me how often he walks by a practice room and hears a student playing much better than he would have thought possible, but that if the student becomes aware of him outside the door, the performance will go dramatically downhill at once. The student becomes too self aware of his own playing as an object of assessment. Excellence in many endeavors requires rather a sort of self forgetfulness, almost a thoughtlessness that is possible only because of all the prior thought and deliberate effort that has paved its way. We need to get out of our own heads, and free ourselves from too much self awareness if we are to be our best at anything.

As a public philosopher, I'm at my best when I'm least self aware. In a room speaking on a topic I've been asked to address, the true magic happens when I completely forget myself and become almost one with the room, the people, and the ideas flowing through my brain. I'm not apart from the experience, observing it. I'm just having it. I'm almost being it. And that's not a time at all for self examination.

So, like many things in life, self awareness, self reflection, and self examination can be great, and vitally important, when used properly. But we also have to know when to put those tools down and just live. Then, we also need to know when to take them up again - but that takes a measure of wisdom, which is basically the skill of living well.

Our Mistakes

We're humans. Given a chance to screw up, we will.

That's a quote from Brent Scowcroft, former, and outstanding, Director of National Security for presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush. In a recent New York Times BooK Review Essay on a new biography of Scowcroft, the reviewer Daniel Kurtz-Phelan begins by saying:

In foreign policy, every success is just the start of the next crisis.

And isn't it that way in life, generally? We plan, work, strive and achieve, just to be confronted by a big problem we didn't see coming. And, along the way, we screw up. 

"Mistakes were made." That could be an epitaph for the human adventure. And how do you deal with mistakes or screw ups? Do you descend into the valley of despair, self-recrimination, and toxic guilt? I hope not. Just as much as I hope you don't just continue to dash blithely forth, oblivious to what you've done. 

Mistakes will be made. It's the human condition. The real question is whether they'll be continued, or at least interrupted by a proper response. Can we be learners? Will we be resilient? Even Sisyphus got back down to heave the stone again.

Give yourself a break. But don't let that prevent you from learning. We all make mistakes - sometimes whoppers. And we all can learn. There's a way to be a short term pessimist and a long term optimist. That's what I've been for a very long time. Any crazy thing can happen in the short term. But I'm very optimistic about the big picture.

This is actually a nice posture to adopt. Most critiques of optimism are actually objections against the viewpoint that can't tolerate any pain, and deludes itself to see sunshine in everything. I see sunshine, but not as a delusion - and mostly as a disinfectant of our stained mistakes. It's precisely my long term optimism that allows me to be a little pessimistic in the near term, and be prepared for almost any bad thing to happen. I'm ready for it. And I'm prepared to change it into something good.

How about you?

Friends and Flaws

A friend of mine has been reading my new novels in draft. He's probably read the first two books three or four times at this point. And the other day, he gave me pages and pages of typos he'd found. Really? I was certainly surprised. I've probably written, re-written, and edited these books at least six times through. And I had failed to catch some basic typos. 'They' was where 'the' should have been, 'if' and 'it' and 'is' got interchanged a few times, 'everyone' was doing without its 'y' - and other such things.

Why hadn't I seen these typos myself? I had been over the books so carefully. I had read them out loud. And still, I needed a friend to spot those tiny flaws that remained. Why?

The answer, as we all know, is simple. We often see what we expect to see, rather than what's there. And especially in the realm of the familiar, our eyes can be glazed over by our best intentions and hopes, or by prior habits and beliefs. The closer something is to us, the harder it is to see clearly. That's why we need friends, with different blind spots, habits, beliefs, and expectations to point out our flaws. Of course, enemies are eager to perform such a service. But they're as likely to be wrong as we are, or even more so. They're blinded by their resentment, or jealousy, or whatever has their tail in a knot. We benefit the most when friends are willing to look at us, or our productions, closely, and with good will, and help us to improve what we're doing.

The friend who has been reading my new productions has been one of the greatest encouragers I've ever known. "You're sitting on a goldmine with these books!" "I wish I had been able to read these in my twenties!" This gentleman, a business creator and former CEO who retired at age 43 to travel and compete in track and field events (often ranked number one or two in the world in shot put or javelin) has been a real friend to me. He's read my books looking for flaws, and has praised them along the way more than any of my other books have ever been praised. And at the same time, he's found those typos, and overly long sentences that needed to be cut down, and words where I was doing a British spelling, not the main American one. With nothing but good will, he's spotted the problems that allowed me to improve the final product immensely.

I suspect this can happen not just with book manuscripts but with issues of personality, character, and activity in the world. We all need friends who can help us see what's invisible to us, and thereby give us the chance to improve. The most effective self improvement may, after all, require the help of others. And that doesn't surprise me at all.

Give Yourself a Break

Dear Reader: I hope you give yourself a break now and then. You work hard. Life calls on you to do so many things. I know. I had a busy day, even though, yeah, I'm a philosopher, so keep that in mind. Nonetheless, a lot's going on this week. So I gave myself an hour this evening to just relax.

I sat out back on our upper patio. The lower patio adjoins a raised brick fish pond. From where I was, I could look down on it, and the great trees all around. I sat on a thickly cushioned chair, put my feet up on another one, and lit up a nice Nicaraguan cigar. I poured a small glass of Macallan 12 year single malt. And I just enjoyed my little piece of our beautiful world.

During the hour, three pairs of ducks flew over, honking goodbye to the day. I watched an industrious squirrel work on a truly impressive nest, high up in a tall magnolia tree. One of his friends chirped encouragement.

It was 82 degrees today with low humidity here at the coast. As the evening cooled, I watched pink and orange streak the bright blue sky above me. I enjoyed the solitude immensely, but also wished I had one of our periodic retreats going on and I could share the moment, and the goodies, with some brother and sister philosophers. I imagined us out on the deck of the nearby resort where we hold our sessions, overlooking the whitecaps of the ocean rolling in to lightly touch the broad sandy beach.

Don't forget to do something now and then to elicit those brain waves that make for transcendent rest and relaxation. I don't light up a cigar very often, or sip a malted beverage. But when I do, it's a special occasion. Give yourself your own version soon.

Self Doubt

Someone asked me to reflect on self doubt. And I was going to, a week ago, but I had doubts.

Confidence is a good thing, so self doubt is a bad thing, right? Well, it turns out not to be so simple, like much else in life.

Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." He encouraged frequent and honest self-examination. How am I doing right now, as a blogger, a public speaker, a philosopher, an author, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a neighbor, a friend? How am I doing as a human being? The result of an honest self examination in any of our roles or activities can be one of either affirmation or doubt. We might conclude, "I'm doing great." Or: "I'm good. I just need to hang in there a little longer and success will be mine." Or we could see that, "I'm not doing so well in this. Maybe I'm outmatched. This might not be the challenge for me right now." Or the conclusion could be, "I'm on the right track but I need a little help in order to get the outcome I want."

Self-affirmation can be healthy. But then, so can self-doubt. People sometimes chase the wrong things, things that are not right for them. People can also drift in a direction that's not desirable. Self doubt can slow them down and turn them around. It can be a stimulus to additional work and learning. Or, it can be the bane of your existence.

Like almost anything else in the world, our evaluation of self doubt has to turn on the question of how it functions in our lives. Do we experience it in healthy doses, or in a pathological way? Is it an occasional phenomenon that helps us, or a default position that always nags us and even holds us back? Does it result from real self knowledge in the present, or from unresolved issues in the past?

Psychological research shows that proper doses of self doubt can lead to important efforts to improve. It can stimulate collaborations ("I don't think I can do this alone") and needed work in developing new knowledge or skill sets ("I don't yet think I know all that I need to know"). But it can't be allowed to dominate in a life. It should not be the overall tonality of our existence. We're not in the world mainly to refrain from things, but to do things, and to accomplish things. In case doubt is getting in your way, and not allowing you to be and do all that you would like to achieve, I have one piece of advice. Doubt your doubts.

Weather

I was driving to the post office over at the beach in a light rain. I found myself thinking, "Wow, bad weather." But then I caught myself immediately and asked, inwardly, "Why is it bad weather? Why isn't it just weather?"

Well, there are some things you can't or don't do when it's raining, I told myself. It's an exclusionary form of weather. But then I saw a guy jogging, his shirt soaked through. But he wasn't running to get out of the rain. He was simply running in the rain.

Ok. Maybe rain isn't bad weather. Maybe it's just weather, like warm sunshine with a light breeze across the water. We may favor one sort of weather to another. But it's all just weather.

"Say that to the people who were in Boston this winter," the voice in my head reminds me. Yeah, some extreme weather requires that we manage our activities better, or even perhaps refrain from a certain range of possibilities, until the weather changes, which it always eventually does.

And as I continued this little mental dialogue, I came to realize how many things we label bad without a really good reason. It is what it is. And that's sometimes a useful thing to say, or think. We adapt. We adjust. And we know that things will change.

How often do we get all worked up with thoughts like "This is awful" when those thoughts are as useless as they are false? I got home and said, "It's raining pretty hard now."

And my wife said, "The new plants really need it. It's great."

And I was glad I had that talk with myself.

Greed

What would the world be like without greed - Greed for power, money, status, fame, stuff, experience, or love? A reader recently posed this question. So let's reflect on it. Greed is a potent source of action. It powers ambition and achievement. It moves people to take a risk and persist. It can even elicit creativity. It gets people up in the morning, and keeps them working hard through the day, and even into the night. In the hit movie Wall Street, the star character Gordon Gekko famously proclaimed, "Greed is good." 

But is he right? A philosopher like me would say that greed is not only unnecessary, it's unhealthy and toxic. It's not good at all.

Desire is a good thing, when attached to good purposes. Greed is an excess of desire. Aristotle had an interesting analysis of virtue as the mid point between two vices, or extremes. Courage, for example, is the mid point between the extreme of too little, called cowardice or timidity, and the excess of too much, known as rashness, or temerity. Likewise, perhaps, a healthy form or degree of desire is a mid point between the too-little of apathy, and the too-much of greed. Desire is necessary for ambition and achievement. Greed isn't. In fact, greed enslaves and corrupts people. And this has been recognized by the wisest thinkers, east and west. It's the maximal extent of what eastern philosophers call "attachment." It's bad for the soul. And it isn't for even a minute good for business.

Greed is about getting what you want, not about making the world a better place. It doesn't actually support the full range of creativity or curiosity you might at first think it would, but just focuses on getting the most it can the quickest way possible. It's willing to do great damage to others to get its own way. And it's sometimes surprised by the consequences.

The greedy tend to go too far, burn bridges, alienate others, and violate all known ethical codes. They become captivated by things they don't need. They get obsessed by things and habits that will distort their lives. They lose all balance and discernment. They bull their way into situations that will ultimately make them unhappy. They corrupt their own souls.

I was asked this question just a few days ago by a reader of this blog: What would the world be without greed? My answer is simple. It would be a much better place. And, Yo, thanks for asking.

And readers: Feel free to make other suggestions. I desire them, but promise you I'm not greedy. I'll share.