Kaleidoscope

What if the world's

a kaleidoscope?

As it tumbles around

and the patterns change,

we stare, entranced.

The transformations

surprise us.

And some bring delight.

And the light

makes it all sparkle,

scintillating, bold. 

Then, one day,

we discover

we can put it down,

this small tube,

if only for a moment.

And see the source

of all the light

beyond.

Goals and Guiding Purposes

This week, I’ve shared some Weight Room Wisdom, accumulated from my daily workouts with friends. Now, granted, most people in a gym are typically in just another version of Plato’s Cave, working on appearances. But in our group, we tackle serious realities as well. I have one more story I’d like to share, from this week’s workouts.

Between sets of bicep curls, I was talking to a friend, Tim, about his career. He’s a very successful entrepreneur, living in a beautiful gated community, and getting ready to relocate to St. Kitts for an exciting new adventure, in his early fifties. Right out of college, he worked for a big maker of scientific instruments. And he was a great success. But the more he sold, the more pressure he came under. The sales manager would congratulate him on his spectacular results and set a target for 30% more sales for the upcoming year, even when it became nearly impossible to attain without sacrificing everything else in his life to the altar of More.

At 28, Tim decided to start his own company, largely to give himself the freedom to spend more time with his young family. The first four years were hard, but then success came, and it came in abundance. There was more to do, more to think about, and as the business expanded, his time gradually shifted back into something like the grind he had left. The natural thing for an entrepreneur who has struggled and is finally making money is, of course, to take full advantage of that fair wind and set new goals that will generate even more money, avidly pursuing the opportunity  to “make hay while the sun shines,” as the old adage has it.

But Tim realized what was happening and did a values check. What are my life purposes? What do I care about most? What really matters to me above all else? It wasn’t just more and more money, attained as quickly as possible. It was a balance that was right for him, with plenty of time for family, as well as a flourishing business. So he made some adjustments, and didn’t stop being successful, but stopped being pulled from his prime values.

That’s too rare in our time. For many decades, motivational speakers have talked about the importance of having goals, almost as if it doesn’t matter what they are, as long as we have some. And we’re told to dream big, which is good. But the problem often becomes that people dream what their surrounding culture dreams, whether it’s right for them or not. They set goals based on their most immediate desires, rather than according to their deepest values and highest purposes. And when you do that, attaining your goals can actually make your life worse, rather than better. Tim realized this, and made sure that his values and purposes, his deepest beliefs, always guided him in business. He eventually sold that original company and started a new one in a different field, and had great success again. And he did so by keeping his guiding purpose in view.

It’s a good reminder for us all.

With that in mind, have a great, productive, purposeful day.

Weight Room Wisdom: Part Two

A few more recent insights from my daily time in the gym:

Lesson Four: Perspectives can work, excuses won’t.

One day, while we were still in the weight room, but as we were getting ready to leave, my workout partner Don packed up and said, “Ok. Great workout! See you tomorrow.” I replied, “Well, I don’t know. It’s supposed to rain really hard tomorrow.” He said, “Not in here.” I had to laugh.

There’s a lesson to be had in that response. By our attitudes, we can magnify or reduce the significance of obstacles that come out way. Why should we ever do anything to magnify the problems and inconveniences we face? And yet, it’s every bit as common as it is irrational and self defeating. Excuses are easy. We should do our best to avoid them, and take a more pro-active attitude in whatever challenge we face. We always have the freedom to adopt a more useful perspective on any tough situation than appearances alone might suggest.

Lesson Five: Two of the most liberating words in the world are: “So what?”

On another day recently, Don introduced me to a powerful personal philosophy embodied in the two words: “So What?” He told me about a recent time when he got to the gym with shorts and T-shirt but realized he had forgotten his workout/running shoes. He first thought was, “Oh, no.” But then, he immediately reversed course and said, “So what?” And he got to it. If you’re not wearing two thousand dollar handmade Silvano Lattansi brogues, go work out anyway.

So, suppose you show up at an event and discover that, through no fault of your own, you’re improperly attired. So what? Go on in with confidence. You get to a meeting and realize you didn’t bring some paperwork you had wanted to have. So what? Don’t stress out. That helps nothing. In any situation where a valuable goal is in play and a challenge or unexpected difficulty arises, this is a great inner response. When we learn to shed the dread, we up our game and improve our prospects for positive outcomes.

I’ve learned that The “So what?” Philosophy can work in many useful ways. You’re hesitating to make an important call or send a crucial email. You may get rejected, or worse, ignored. So what? Do it anyway. You’re trying something new and worry that you might fail badly. So what? Failure is more often than not a necessary prelude to success. Of course, such an application of the “So What?” Philosophy doesn’t depend on believing that nothing really matters, only that so much of what we fear and worry about doesn’t.

As an addendum, hours after I wrote this, Don showed up for the daily workout and discovered in his car that he had left his gym bag at home. He had on long pants, his work shoes, and a golf shirt, the outfit he had worn for calling on clients that morning. His attitude, once more: So what? He found a dirty balled up t-shirt in the car, put that on, and had a good workout.

Lesson Six: It’s important to have fun.

In the weight room, we work hard, but we also have fun. My friend Don is 51 and surfs many times a week, and skateboards, and fishes, and bowls, and plays golf and tennis, planning all this around his work, so that there’s always plenty of time for fun. How many of us do that? As he said to me the other day, “Most people our age seem to think they’ve grown out of the fun stuff they enjoyed earlier in life and have to give it up. Why? We should always have fun, as much as we can.” That seems to be a great life philosophy, and even one you could build a beer commercial around.

Have fun in your work. Have fun at home. Have fun whenever you can. But, you might worry, maybe the serious people around you will think you’re crazy.

So what?

Weight Room Wisdom: Part One

I’ve picked up some big insights at the sports center that I visit daily for the very different purpose of picking up heavy weights and putting them back down again. Or maybe I should say that I’ve picked up new perspectives on some things that we all sort of know, but need to be reminded of, now and then, and vividly see in action.

Lesson One: When you work hard to be strong, unexpected benefits follow.

I’m 62 years old. When I was a youth of 58 and a half, I decided to get serious about exercise, and especially weight lifting. I started working out two hours a day and did that for a year, before I had to cut back to an hour or so a day.  Life has its demands.

A month into my new routine, a guy came up to me one day and said, “You make more noise than anybody else in here.” I replied, “Yeah? You should have heard me get up in the mornings and walk to the bathroom before I started doing this.” I’d been nothing but one big ache of stiffness and pain in the early mornings before I launched into my new routine of serious weights. And, within weeks, all that tightness and soreness just vanished, as an unexpected side effect of what I was doing.

My new friend then said to me “You’re the only person in here I see really working hard. We should work out together.” And we have now, for three years. In addition, I’ve developed friendships with fellow lifters who are at many different stages of life - in their teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond. How often does that happen these days? The weight room has become a social club and mutual support society, where we talk about life and philosophize each day, between sets. We get stronger. But we also get wiser together.

Lesson Two: We need encouragement in our lives - to get it, and to give it.

My workout partner is Don Sharp, a guy who’s lifted weights seriously since his teenage years. He’s a dedicated surfer, skateboarder, disc-golfer, tennis player, regular golfer, bowler, fisherman, and runner, among other things, and is more physically active every day than anyone I’ve ever known. He said he came over to talk to me that day in the gym because he could see that I really cared about what I was doing. I was completely committed, and going all-out. He wanted to be around a kindred spirit. And now, due to his constant encouragement and informal coaching, I’ve done things that I, on my own, would have thought  impossible.

Let me give you an example. I had never done the common exercise called bench press. But one day, I saw a guy about my age benching 85 pounds, ten reps, and so I tried it and realized, “Ok, I can do this.” It quickly became my favorite part of a workout. You get to lie down to exercise. Always good. And every day I did it, I’d try a little more. I’d up the weight, or the reps, or the sets. Don would say “Good job!”, "Come on - you got it!", "Doing great!" and often, “Let’s go higher today! You can do it!” And we did. Spurred by all the encouragement, I got lots stronger.

I recall vividly the first days, after I got into my sixties, that I benched 300 pounds, and then 305, and 310, and now at age 62, 315. It was in large part due to Don’s ongoing challenges and encouragements and congratulations for my successes and failures. Once, it was all I could do to get 10 reps at 200 pounds. Now I can do 40. It really astonishes me.

And, along the way, I've learned something profound about encouragement. I had never been congratulated on failing before. But for three years now, whenever I’ve tried for a higher weight and initially not gotten it, Don enthusiastically congratulates me for trying. He reminds me that, “Very few people even try.” And he points out, again and again, that trying and failing at something new is the most common first step to nailing it later. The process of success has already begun.

The power of our words and our thoughts is amazing. I’m trying to watch what I eat this week. In six days, I’ve shed five pounds. I sometimes feel unpleasantly hungry, but say to myself, “Ah, the feeling of success!” Early stages of any worthwhile process can often seem unpleasant or difficult. We can misstep, and fall down, and fail. But how we think about these things can make a huge difference. When we encourage ourselves, and each other, in our efforts, whatever we’re doing is easier. Don has reminded me of the power of encouragement. I now make sure to encourage him in turn, and myself. It makes a big difference.

We all need encouragers in our lives. And we all need to be encouragers for others. We need to remind the people around us how important their efforts are, and how difficulties and even failures can be stepping stones that are worth congratulating. That’s how great things can happen.

Lesson Three: We become like the people we’re around, in unexpected ways.

I’ve certainly become much more physically strong because of my time at the gym, and some of the other guys there have clearly become more philosophical. I pay more attention to what I eat. And I take advantage of little opportunities throughout the day to go on a quick walk, or drop and do some pushups, or a set of sit-ups in the middle of the workday. When I was only around professional philosophers, I pretty much just pondered a lot.

Don is in food sales. Tony has a car repair shop. Chip’s retired. T Ryder’s a headhunter for Silicon Valley. There are doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, CEOs, students, and people of so many different talents, all there to get stronger. We keep each other going. We learn new things almost every day. Most of the guys are younger than me, but just by being around them, I think I’m catching up. 

Who are you around? What are you picking up? What are you becoming, as a result? We easily forget how much the phenomenon of “social tuning” means in our lives. Kindred spirits kindle great things.

Tomorrow, I'll share a few more of my weight room epiphanies, beginning with a funny and powerful perspective on excuses thanks to my lifting partner, who has no time for them.

The Two Doors of Opportunity

There are at least two doors into any house, the front door, and the back door. Something similar is true for any structure of possibility or power.

The front door is all about the way things are officially done. The back door is all about the way things are really done. The front door is guarded by rules. The back door is guarded by relationships.

In the spirit of our architectural metaphors, this observation gives us a window in to the nature of opportunities.

Whenever you seek to do something new, there will be a structure of some sort that you'll need to enter, a pre-existing place you'll need to dwell in, for at least a while, in order to get started. It could end up being a permanent residence, or could serve as merely a transitional space. Most who identify where they need to go next will seek to enter through the front. But few ever manage to gain access that way. Knowing someone who is already in that house can get you invited around to the back and welcomed with a smile, while the crowd waits out front.

You see this played out all the time, in any field. Relationships rule the world. And that's a basic insight most of us have early on in our careers, but sometimes come to forget in our strategies and actions later on, especially in times of creativity or transition, focused as we might be, on other things. Those who remember it well can have access to many mansions.

The term 'networking' is such a poor, heartless, bloodless word for this, as drained of its vitality as it is redolent of mechanistic imagery. My favorite book on the role relationships can play in our work and in our lives is Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi. It's a feast of insights about how the spirit of true relationships - genuine, authentic relationships - can animate anything we do and provide us with the way stations, as well as more permanent homes, for whatever it is that we desire to do.

My quick recommendation of the day is that we should all review our tendencies with regard to our relationships. Do we tend that garden regularly, or allow it to languish, uncultivated?

If you have a way of keeping up with people, or connecting more deeply, I'd love to hear it, either here or by email. And tell me how how it's helped you or others get welcomed into that back door.

Business as Art

My friend, fellow philosopher, and founder of Whole Foods, John Mackie, was interviewed by Oprah for her show, Super Soul Sunday, that aired yesterday, June 8. Go look for it online. It's a great conversation about love, passion, community, and the soul of business. Listening to John yesterday reminded me of something.

Last week, I mentioned a view that I'm growing into, the perspective that business is a form of art. Our work, whatever we do, can be a work of art. It can be productive of beauty, across many dimensions, it can be eloquently expressive, and it can, of course, be useful and valuable, all traits, as I see it, of art. And, like artists, we can experience moments of immense frustration in our craft as well as times of exuberant satisfaction.

Since first pondering the ideas that became my book The Art of Achievement, I've thought about our lives overall as works of art - every action being a stroke on the canvas, a chip in the marble, a turn in the dance, an improvised line in the music. And it's making more and more sense to me that this should be our central governing metaphor regarding business. It's all about creation, and expression, and bringing good things into existence that others can enjoy.

For a long time, our governing metaphors for the world of work have been sport and war. And that's easy to understand, on a certain level. But a predominant use of such metaphors has been insidiously detrimental to the development of modern commerce and corporate behavior. 

John and his friend Raj Sisodia wrote an important book a couple of years back called Conscious Capitalism offering an alternative conception of business that departs from the normal paradigm pretty radically, and reorients our business thinking from centering around mainly acquisition to focusing on primarily contribution. Greed gives way to good, and ambition is enhanced by aspiration.

In this blog, I'll be reflecting further on these issues, now and then, in the coming months. In my book If Aristotle Ran General Motors, I wrote about what I call the four foundations of greatness: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity. I'm beginning to reflect more on how these transcendentals should govern and power our work. For a variety of reasons, we now have a nice chance, in the early years of this new century, to grow a new paradigm for capitalism, for business, and for our daily work. I think we should do all we can to promote it and use it well. 

Owning a Space for Success

Whenever I'm going to give a talk, almost anywhere around the country, I try to get into the venue early, before anyone else is there, and feel the space. Seeing the space is important. But feeling it is even more crucial. For that, I have to use my imagination. What's it going to be like in the front row? In the back row? Off to the left, or the right? What am I going to have to do to fill this space and make sure everyone is involved and engaged?

Sometimes, I'll have a chance to actually go around the auditorium and sit in various places. I always did that the day before a new semester at Notre Dame, during my years as a professor there. I'd go into the auditorium, where, the next day, I'd greet three hundred new students. I'd sit in the front row, the back row, off to the side, in the middle, and just contemplate. I'd imagine what it would take to capture the attention and interest of the student in that seat. And then, the next day, I'd try to do it.

One evening, years ago, I stood alone in the middle of the Mecca, in Milwaukee, where the Bucks played basketball. The next day, I was going to speak to thousands of smart people, who would fill the seats, not for hoops, but for philosophy. My first few moments were intimidating. The space was dark, cavernous, and a little scary. I saw a sign that said "Exit" and that's exactly what I wanted to do - to leave the building, make my way back to the airport, and take the first flight home. How was I going to fill such an enormous place and keep everyone interested?

I decided to take charge of my thoughts and imaginations. I said to myself, "Tomorrow, I own this place. For one hour, this is my house. I get to decide what happens during that time. This is the place where ideas will flow, fun will be had, and hearts and minds will be recharged with positive energy." I didn't say it to myself as if I hoped that all this would be true. I said it as if I knew it would be. And I could instantly feel my emotions changing from anxiety to anticipation.

Emotionally, I like to take ownership of a space where I'll be working. If I can't get into the place ahead of time, I may look at photos of the building, and use my imagination even more. From doing my thing many times in big convention halls and sports arenas, and even an NFL stadium, I've learned the importance of owning a large space. But it's really no different in a small space. Do you have an important meeting coming up? If so, is there any way you can access the room in advance? Doing this allows you to feel the space and fill the space, project yourself into it, and imagine everyone else around the table, or throughout the room, smiling, or nodding, or connecting with you in some positive way. It creates a comfort factor, and an energy edge. It's almost magical, and even nearly spooky, how well this works. But, whatever else is involved, going into a place where you'll be "performing," and getting there early, allows you to take some of the unknown out of the equation. Smile. See yourself succeeding there. Then, you have a great head start on the event. When you own it, then you can use it well. It's up to you.

Success, Failure, and Mastery

My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.

- Mizuta Masahide

I just read a deep book on success, failure, and mastery – The Rise, by Sarah Lewis. It begins with that quote, which I love.  My barn has burned down at least a couple of times, and the moon has always given me new light for what I needed to build next.

The Rise is one of those books that you have to read more than once, and ponder, and review. But of course, as C. S. Lewis once said, if a book isn’t worth reading twice, it wasn’t worth reading once.

We live in a time when success is almost defined as celebrity, or status, or excessive wealth. Sarah Lewis helps us to reorient our thinking around the concept of mastery, and the process that develops it. And it’s the process that seems to be her real interest, because the process of growing in mastery of anything inevitably involves uncertainty, courage, failure, persistence, and struggle. We’ve demonized failure, when we should understand that it can actually be one of the higher angels of progress. Lewis tells story after story that show this. It’s hard to feel deep satisfaction in our work, or in our lives, unless we take on difficult challenges and take our lumps as we fight our way forward. Certainly, we should work with joy – that’s something I’ve always urged. But we haven’t really understood joy until we’ve reconciled it with life’s struggles. Otherwise, what we mistake for joy is just a superficial giddiness.  Authentic joy, deep joy, can sustain us in the battles of life, and it is precisely those battles that tear down and take away whatever superficialities are blocking us from the real thing.

Lewis writes about the great masters in any field and how they think about challenge and failure, and then gives it a personal twist when she says: “Many of the things most would avoid, these individuals had turned into an irreplaceable advantage. I still remember a shudder when I sensed a knowing as sure as fact – that I might only truly become my fullest self if I explored and stayed open to moving through daunting terrain.”

Life is supposed to be a series of adventures, and adventures by their very nature can be quite daunting. They involve uncertainty, fear, risk, and often pain. But they also bring our best hope at becoming what we’re capable of being and experiencing the fulfillment that alone accompanies the quest for our own personal forms of success.

Lewis says that, “The pursuit of mastery is an ever onward almost.” The beauty of it is that there is a sense in which it’s never quite attained, in its idealistic perfection. And yet, those whom we rightly call masters are just much farther along the curve, more advanced in their adventures, than is common to see.

She quotes Michelangelo as having prayed, “Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish,” which, in modern times, would strike many as heresy. Aren’t we supposed to accomplish more than we could possibly have desired? Our modern icons and titans of success have surely achieved more than they ever could have dreamed. Isn’t that our model?

The paradox easily melts away, because no one goes to places they haven’t even dreamed unless they’re always hoping and striving and looking for that next adventure, that unexpected opportunity, that one more thing as yet untried. And, in the end, it’s not about celebrity, or status, or financial wealth – it’s about a form of wealth that goes far beyond any of that, and is to be found only in the pursuit of our proper forms of mastery.

I may be writing more about Lewis and her book here at TomVMorris.com in the coming days. I'm still living with it, which is what you should do with a truly good book. Come visit and reflect with me.

My Million Dollar Mystical Experience

This week, as I mentioned two days ago on this blog, I had a mystical experience. And I want to recommend that you go and do likewise. I think it will be great for business.

A recap: I had just worked for two weeks to launch this new website and blog, and my head was buzzing with technical details, as well as the normal philosophy of life stuff that provides my own inner elevator music every day. I was taking an afternoon exercise walk, when, suddenly the grass and dirt beside my feet came alive in a new way. It was as if a firmly established mask slipped from the face of normal reality, and I caught a glimpse of what was behind it all. A thought came into my head, forcefully. As I recounted in that earlier blog post, I heard myself saying: "It's just so weird to be alive, and conscious, and walking like this on the earth." In that otherwise ordinary moment, the sheer unexpected strangeness of existence washed over me. 

And I've had some new thoughts on it this morning. Plato had an image for our everyday consciousness. He believed that we're all like men in a cave, deep below ground, chained to the floor, and watching shadows parade across a wall, illusions that we take for realities, having known nothing different. The philosopher, he says, is anyone who manages to break his chains and get out of the cave into the bright light of the sun and see things as they really are out in the world. He then returns to the cave and shares the remarkable news with his former fellow captives, urging them to liberate themselves as well, and join him in the light. Many scoff. A few respond. And those are the ones who become philosophers, too.

Plato's ideal of a leader was what he called "a philosopher king” – a person with position and authority who, by virtue of his own personal liberation from the deceptions of appearances, shadows, and illusions, would be able to use that authority powerfully well.

I've been in and out of Plato’s Cave a lot in my life. I have to admit that, on some of my trips back into the realm of illusions, I stay too long, entertained, mesmerized, and sometimes forgetting what I've seen and learned outside it all.

My little mystical experience this week reminded me of all that. When ordinariness unexpectedly peels off the face of your day, and you glimpse, for even a moment, the utter strangeness and wonder underneath it all, you can't help but pause, and take note, and reorient yourself. And I'm convinced that such a reorientation can have huge implications for business.

There are two largely unconscious models for business in our time. One, that it's all a game, with its own rules and referees, cheaters and winners and fans. We play it. We watch it. We keep score. 

The other model for business is that it's really supposed to be a work of art, a creative endeavor productive of real beauty, across many dimensions. This is the model I argued for in a 1997 book called If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soul of Business. The book had a surprising impact in its day, among a certain group of business leaders, but not widely enough, although there are signs that this is changing. But, in the meantime, gamesmanship certainly rules in our day, down here in the cave, where speculative spelunkers are richly rewarded and widely applauded for playing their games shrewdly and making their killings in the market, regardless of the other implications of their actions. 

The vast majority of the people who merely play the game do so, I suspect, at least in part, unaware of the fact that this is how they're approaching their work. But others are different. They engage in what I call Existential Gamesmanship. They consciously, self-reflectively think of it all as a game, signifying nothing beyond itself. They then choose to play it as they like. They keep score with every metric that strikes them as appropriate. And, so, they fill their lives.

A mystical experience such as the small one I underwent this week can, oddly, have either of two results. When you’re struck, really powerfully smacked awake, with the utter strangeness of existence, perhaps meditating as a consequence on the unimaginable size of the cosmos, the seeming eternity of time, or the fragile contingency of your own life on this small planet, precariously hurtling through space, you're often brought up short to reflect on what you're doing with your life, and what, if anything, it all means.

There are certainly those who conclude that there is no meaning, or, to put it another way, that everything is meaningless in the vast indifference of the cosmos, and that anything in life is just, at most, a game. These are the Existential Gamesmen. They often seem to operate in a void of values, except, of course, what's required for any good PR that might help with the game.

But there's an entirely different reaction to the realization of the strangeness of existence, one captured by Rudolph Otto in his famous book Our Idea of the Holy. It's the response of deep and abiding awe. Existence can be considered as an amazing, unmerited gift. Life is a gift. What then will we do with it? This response to the extraordinariness of reality moves people in a very different direction.

This second group of people in business and the professions and, actually, doing any form of work, often think of themselves as something like artists. Life is a vast studio for creativity and love.

Nobody really knows the full story of why we're here, despite many revelations and intimations, but many of the wisest people ever to walk the earth have suspected, or even felt sure, that it's all about creative love, or loving creativity. The bold among them suggest that there is no other reason a universe, or multiverse of universes, could or should exist at all. But, whether we're the unanticipated products of an immense blind process who appear for a blink in this tight, radiant bubble, or rather are intended agents of innovation lured into existence by the ultimate creative love, we can choose to treat anything we do as art. We can think of ourselves as artists.

And that choice can make the mystical glimpse of realization, that quick peek out of the cave, into a million dollar moment, or much more. As our current experience of business start-ups that blend design, service, and sometimes wonder, is revealing anew, it’s oddly the artists, more than the gamesmen, who win in the end.

Business is art. And it isn't just art for art's sake. It's art for our sake. Anyone who is still chained down in the cave and doesn't see that has failed to grasp what could be one of the most beautiful forms of strangeness of all.

Starting The Day With Nature

My wife invited me to join her outside this morning for breakfast. It was a perfect temperature. The sun was shining brightly, already warming the cloudless, clear blue sky, but we were in refreshingly cool shade. Water bubbled and gurgled nearby. The birds were enjoying their normal chaotic chorus of morning cheer. Our dogs were on a silent hunt for green lizards in the plants and gardens around us.

There's something about the freshness of the morning outdoors. It clears my head and, augmented by a little black coffee, or a lot, prepares me for the day.

Like most people, I spend most of my working hours inside. But philosophers really have no schedule on normal days, so I can take breaks frequently and go outside. And I recommend that heartily. So much of our lives now is spent indoors - for most people, it's an endless cycle with various repetitions from the house to the car to the office to the gym to the office to the car to a store, or maybe a restaurant, and then back home, with only the briefest interludes of fresh air and any contact with nature. One of my favorite things to do is to get into a pool, mid morning, or zen walk in the neighborhood for a couple of miles, right before dinner, just taking it all in. You don't have to be Thoreau to realize the importance of a little nature dip every day.

Nature has this way of awakening creative thoughts. I was once in a pool at a resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, the day before I was to give a talk to a large group of executives, and I had to jump out of the water, run into the spa building nearby, and ask for as much paper as they could give me. Armed with legal pads, I returned to the pool area and sat and wrote three book chapters that had suddenly poured into my head as I relaxed under the desert sky.

One of my favorite things is a walk on the beach nearby, at low tide, on the firmly packed sand. The sounds of the waves and seabirds form a background soundtrack for what almost always becomes either a rush of creative thought, or a refreshing meditative experience.

How do you get a small dose of nature each day?

The Wonder of It All

I was taking a walk in the neighborhood this afternoon, and suddenly noticed the strip of grass next to my feet, glowing a nearly luminous green, almost fluorescent in the bright, late day sun. At the same moment, the thought occurred to me: "It's just so weird to be alive, and conscious, and walking like this on the earth." The sheer unexpected strangeness of existence washed over me. Then I had to dodge a Hyundai sharing that existence.

You shouldn't for a second think that, because I'm a philosopher, I have thoughts like this all the time. I don't. Most of the day I spend awash in the vital trivia of everyday life, like most people - catching up on the news, mulling over whatever is the most recent sports or entertainment scandal that's on everyone's minds, letting the dogs out and back in, feeding the cats, or throwing them a ball, which, like dogs, they love, as long as its made of crumpled up paper. I read. I write. I exercise. I ponder what would be good for lunch, then later shift my concerns to dinner.

One morning, my wife and I had both woken up, but neither of us knew the other was conscious until, maybe, I moved, and she said "Are you awake?"

"Yeah, for a while now."

"Me, too. I was just lying here thinking about the problem of evil."

"Oh," I said. "I was thinking about what would happen if you microwaved dog food. I mean, would they like it?"

I'm not on the cosmic wavelength all the time. But occasionally, the sheer wonder of the world taps me on the shoulder. And then I marvel for a few minutes. Before I go back to doing whatever it was that I was doing before.

And yet, today, the wonder lingered. And another wonder formed. I said to myself, "I wonder if we'd all treat each other better if we did more to keep in mind the amazing, incredible, wonderful strangeness of being here in this world, on a tiny planet, hurtling through space together. Could metaphysics assist our sometimes limping manners and morals?

Socrates said, in his time, that the least important things, we think about and talk about the most, and the most important things, we think about and talk about the least. We should turn that around.

Ponder the awesome, bizarre, beautiful gift of life for a bit today. Or, the next time the universe taps you on the shoulder, give it a few minutes to reawaken your soul.

And, if you have a second, tell me about your latest cosmic experience.

A Philosopher's Blog

Welcome to my new website and new blog! I chose the address TomVMorris.com for several reasons. First, there are other people on the web named Tom Morris - the pretenders!. One likes philosophy and writes about it now and then. I think he's a brit. There are also several people named Thomas Morris. There might even be another Thomas V. Morris, the name I used for my academic writing years ago, abbreviating my middle name of Victor. In my various social media experiments, I've been tomvmorris. So, I thought I'd stick with that. But you can call me Tom. I hope you'll enjoy this new blog, which will be a place where I talk about what I'm thinking and reading and doing. And, at every step, I'd love your comments, your interaction, and your own thoughts.

Whenever the mood strikes, I blog for The Huffington Post. Here's my homepage there. On my other website, MorrisInstitute.com, you'll find longer essays than are normal for contemporary blogs, under the Weekly Wisdom section. I'm going to launch a new venture by blogging here at least a few times a week. Before now, I've spent most of my writing time researching or composing books. The question I have is this: Books last. Will blogs?

A new translation of the classic book Beowulf has just been published,  a project that J.R.R. Tolkein worked on in his youth, but never with the idea in mind that it would be printed, or made available to the public. He just wanted to understand our oldest and most famous Anglo Saxon epic poem, and what he accomplished in his work on that text as a young scholar laid the foundations for his own famous Hobbit adventures, along with, of course, the great trilogy The Lord of the Rings.

Will any current blogs endure like Beowulf has? Probably not. Most books don't. But positive impact doesn't depend on centuries of reading and study. If I write anything here that can give you a needed new perspective on your work or life, I'll feel like blogging is a useful thing for a philosopher like me to do. But I want this to be a two way street. So, please, give me your comments!

On, Beowulf, by the way, I wrote about the previous big translation by Seamus Heaney on my Institute website here. The story of Beowulf is one of the great inspirational and cautionary tales ever told. Beowulf himself was a great warrior, and a supremely accomplished individual, who became a leader, and in that new role, didn't realize that he needed to develop some new competencies. His position of responsibility demanded in important ways that he learn how to teach others and partner up with them, collaboratively. But his pride and habits prevented it. Though his circumstances changed, and so did his strong body, as he aged, he never changed in the way he did things, and because of that, he set himself up for his own demise, in a battle with a dragon he could not overcome alone.

Beowulf was extraordinarily strong and incredibly skilled. But one of the most important skills of all ends up being the skill to change. And one of our greatest strengths is our network of collaborative partnerships. The fearsome warrior missed out on both these important things.

For a vivid cautionary tale that's highly instructive, snag a copy of the book, Beowulf. Many good translations are available in paperback. You may be amazed at how this classic speaks to you.