Philosophical Wants and Needs

We want to be entertained. We need to be enlightened. We want catchy and clever. We need deep and profound. We want what's new. We need what's old. 

We want simple and easy. We need insightful and tough. We want quick. We need lasting.

We pursue our wants and often neglect our needs. So, then, the philosopher who hopes to serve those needs has to address the wants, as well. Otherwise, we may not notice, or listen. But, as just indicated, our wants and needs can be quite different. Of course, they can also at times overlap. We want our needs to be met, or at least, those we're aware of having. We need some of our wants to be met, as well. But apart from that, these two things can diverge greatly.

The marketplace of ideas is full of people catering only to wants but neglecting real needs.

I realized something early in my efforts to serve people well. The key for the true philosopher who would be of help to others is to dive deep, think hard, and then distill the wisdom that's there to be found into nuggets of insight that sparkle and work. That's the philosopher I try to be. And it's why I have fun with the serious, play with the profound, and try to make philosophical tools as memorable as they can be.

I want and need to be of service this way. And yes, whenever wants and needs come together, powerful results can ensue.

What do you want? What do you need? Do you have your priorities right?

Mistakes

We all make mistakes. Even with the most information we can gather, the greatest care in planning, and the best of intentions, we make mistakes. That's simply a part of what it is to be human.

But this is just as important. The world can forgive most mistakes. Most reasonable mistakes aren't completely self destructive. They're part of the process. And the world is typically even more than forgiving. It actually often rewards our mistakes in an interesting way. I talked with a man the other day who admitted making a great many mistakes in his career, and his account of them was both very funny and telling. What didn't work, or even went terribly wrong, often set him up for what did work, and worked magnificently.

We're here to try things. As Emerson said, "Life is an experiment." Make as many good experiments as you can. Sure, many will be mistakes. But from them we can learn. And they can often have oddly good consequences we never could have anticipated.

This adventure we're on can never be completely planned. It just has to be lived.

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.

The Fault in Our Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hazel, toward the end of the book, writes: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Fault In Our Stars

In the New York Times the other day, I read about a famous Young Adult book editor at Dutton who gives her authors 20 pages of harsh critique on their manuscripts, and they cry, and then revise, and get bestselling results. She has more bestsellers, apparently, than anyone else. John Green, author of the mega hit book The Fault in Our Stars, now a major motion picture, as they say, is one of her authors. And so when I saw his popular book on a used book table in an airport bookstore this week, I bought it to find out how mega bestselling books are written - something a philosopher would not know. I promise you that. And I read it on the airplanes of the week.

The book is good. I recommend it. It's a story about two teenagers in Indiana who have cancer and fall in love. The girl, Hazel, who is 16, loves a book once written by a reclusive novelist who now lives in Amsterdam. She's read it over and over. She meets a boy, Augustus Waters, when he visits her support group for cancer kids. He's hot, so they talk, and he decides to read the book she loves so much. And then, Spoiler Alert, he uses his "Wish" (for very sick kids to have special experiences) to taker her to meet her hero, the author of her favorite book, in Amsterdam. They find that the man is quite different from what they expect. But despite their disappointment in that main facet of the trip, love blossoms. Then: Someone dies. And the nature of our universe is prodded and pondered.

It's a surprisingly philosophical novel. And, again, I liked it. But do you remember how the characters in the hit tv show Dawson's Creek used to talk like graduate students, instead of the high schoolers they were supposed to be? Ok maybe you didn't watch. Well. These characters, the girl 16, and the boy 17, talk and think more like exaggerated versions of Ivy League professors.

Hazel, the girl, speaks with words like: veritably, decrepit, horrifically, toroidal, disheartening, dysmorphia, incessantly, feign, taut, catastrophic, hamartia (the ancient Greek word for sin), gutted, ludicrous, flummoxed, gratuitous, luminous, and indefatigable, as well as in phrases like “waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles.”

She thinks, and narrates to us, with words like rapture, sedentary, ferocity, tenuous,  misnomered, elicit, coterie, irreconcilably, succulently, malevolent, encroached, transfigured, commiserate, cloyingly, prematorium, eponymous, irrevocably, rotundity, labyrinthine, and lumen, and also in phrases like “the tears not like tears so much as a quiet metronome,” and “existentialist experiment,” and “a bodily sovereignty,” and again, “existential curiosity,” and “a quantum entanglement,” and “the sound of a parent’s annihilated voice,” and “depraved meaninglessness,” as well as, finally, “the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering.” Do sixteen-year-olds ever actually go around talking and thinking like this, anywhere other than the Indiana of the book?

Augustus, the 17 year old boy, and former high school basketball player, speaks with words like sacrality, trope, perseverant, eviscerated, and self-aggrandizing, and with phrases like “The day of existentially fraught free throws,” “the men and women who wait like Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot,” and “awash in the nobility of sacrifice,” and again, “awash in the metaphorical resonance,” or “the Whitmanesque revelation,” and “the terrible ferocity,” and “the incessant mechanized haranguing.”

But they also curse in really normal curse words, and Hazel often agrees with Augustus in the new faddish phrase, "I know, right?" And she eventually describes her formerly admired novelist as "the world's douchiest douche." (184) So there is quite a dynamic spectrum of language represented in the book.

Hazel's really popular fashionista high school friend, Kaitlin, uses phrases like "preemptive dumping,” and “lascivious details,” and speaks of “unconscionable” luck. And then she buys lots of cute shoes.

Parents occasionally speak professorially, but not nearly as well as the kids. A nurse gives an abstract of the news that sounds like something Jon Stewart might do after getting his own PhD in pop culture.

The prose of the book is sometimes really really aggressively MFA (Master of Fine Arts degree). And some of the ideas are, as well. But it's all very clever, despite striking me as incredibly unrealistic. Of course, maybe that's just me. I've never been around kids who ate dictionaries for breakfast and alphabet soup for lunch.

But I think the author does a good job of bringing up some big issues about life, death, disease, afterlife, consciousness, fairness, fate, and honesty that we all need to contemplate. I think I will contemplate them with you some tomorrow, or the next day. If you've read The Fault in Our Stars, let me know what you think.

So maybe I know now, indisputably, irrevocably, and inerrantly, if not sublimely, what it takes to write a Number One New York Times bestseller. I've got to practice my prolixity, at least enough for the inexorable to occur.

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.

The Rut

You're in a rut. I almost know you are. At least a little. Because most of us are like that. You have lots of habits, ways you do things, and things you do, daily, or weekly. Most of our habits benefit us in some way or we wouldn't have them. But they can also tie us up and hold us down. And so I have some advice.

Get out of your rut. For just a little bit, in a small way, stick your head above the habits that define your normal stuff and catch a glimpse of what's out there. I often do this by reading a different kind of book, something I wouldn't ordinarily try. In the past week, I've read one by a famous movie producer, The Curious Mind, and a fascinating young adult novel that was surprisingly full of philosophy, The Fault Is In Our Stars. They get me out of my rut and spark all sorts of new ideas. 

A few days ago I helped instal a fence. Now that's way outside my rut. And I really enjoyed it. I haven't otherwise done any fencing since 1982, which is a long time ago. I got outside my rut, and I had a new experience that was deeply satisfying.

Watch a TV show you wouldn't normally view, or go see a film that's outside your normal parameters of moviegoing. It's still good to avoid junk. But try something new. Talk to someone you've never talked to, or about something different. I meet people on airplanes all the time, and have conversations that I sometimes remember years later. It's all about the little act of stretching beyond what you normally do. You never know how a little rut-desertion, if even just for a few minutes, might spice up your day, and give you just that nudge of energy or creativity you need.

Integrity

Integrity. It's one of those words we all think we understand, and yet, when asked what it means, we might find ourselves stumbling out partial answers. It's about character and being ethical. It's about doing the right thing, or aligning yourself with the side of good. It involves telling the truth, and keeping promises, and being dependable. Right? 

Well. These are all implications of integrity. But what, actually, is it?

The word comes from the same etymological root as integer, meaning a whole number. And there's a big clue. Integrity is somehow about wholeness. It's about not compartmentalizing your decisions and actions, walling off some from the rest of who you are. It's about acting with the wholeness or entirety of your beliefs and values, in every choice. 

But wait. A thoroughly bad guy, an immensely corrupt character, a murderous terrorist could act in every choice with and from the wholeness or entirety of his insane beliefs and perverse values, but we wouldn't call him an individual with integrity, would we? No. Of course not. Because integrity isn't just about consistency. It's a moral concept. And there's our second clue.

A rascal, criminal, or deranged psycho can be consistent in his actions, throughout the range of his conduct. That is to say, his actions can be consistent with each other, and with the false beliefs and skewed values he holds. But to have integrity, you have to display wholeness in another sense. You need the wholeness of health. Integrity is about moral health. And that's about more than just mere consistency among your actions. Your choices and action have to also be consistent with objective standards of health that are independent of your own thoughts and feelings - that are, in a metaphysical sense "out there" in the world.

What are those standards? I suggested years ago in the book If Aristotle Ran General Motors that they're Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity, understood properly. If your life, thought, and actions are all consistent, or at one, with Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity, then you are a person of integrity. You have integrity. Or better, it has you. Because there's an important sense in which you don't really possess it until it owns you. You can be good in fits and starts - a mostly good character, a decent soul, overall, even a kind person most of the time, but if there is not a higher calling that you've said yes to, in a deep and abiding way, perhaps because you really don't see any reasonable alternative, then you aren't yet a person of integrity.

That's a high standard. But that's because it's what integrity is all about. Most people admire it from afar. Some actually live with it. Many are apparently blind to it, and just don't get what the big deal is about it. But I'm convinced that it's tied in deeply with not only what I call "true success," but also true happiness, contentment and fulfillment. It's also a part of what it takes to make your best possible mark on the world.

Are you living with it? many of us try to embody it in at least most aspects of our lives, at least most of the time. But it calls us to live it wholeheartedly, fully, and consistently across everything we do. It's a high calling, and a hard calling, but it's the one true path to the best life we can live. As such, it's well worth working hard to attain.

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.

Emergency Wisdom

A car in front of me on a major street today caught my attention. It was a white Ford Explorer tricked out with orange stripes like an emergency vehicle. And it also had round reflectors built into the tail gate. Or were they flashing lights? Above the license plate, there was a very official looking sign, where EMT or POLICE might otherwise be. It said CHAPLAIN.

I couldn't help but be jealous. If I could just have one like that but with the sign instead saying PHILOSOPHER. Can you imagine? I sure could. I'd be driving down the road and the radio would squawk. "Logic Emergency on Front Street. All Philosophers Respond." I'd hit the lights, and of course the siren, and the gas. Out of the way, everybody. Sage coming through. I'd screech up to the address and dash out of the car. City police would be holding the door open for me. I'd run up the stairs two at a time, and there it would be: a guy splayed out across his desk, with his computer flashing some sort of error message. A detective would be standing there, and he'd look up at me and say, "It's a conceptual catastrophe."

I'd say, "What have we got?"

The gumshoe would reply. "I think we need some Aristotle."

I'd look more closely and say, "No! It's too late for that! Only Kierkegaard will do!" And, with a Leap of Faith, I'd use just the right aphorism and summon the guy back to life, and conceptual clarity. A gasp would go through the room, and I'd suddenly notice all the other people huddled over at the side. They'd start cheering and clapping. Someone would run up to me and gush appreciation and words of praise for what I had just accomplished.

"No Ma'am. No need to thank me. Just another day for a hard working philosopher."

As I came out of my stoplight reverie, I realized why things don't work like this. Oddly, most people go in search of wisdom only when they confront a catastrophe, or disaster that has arisen from unwise decisions. Wanting to avoid the flames of irrational self immolation, they desperately look for insight. And they might find a piece of wisdom here or there that can save them. But philosophy is much better as a powerful preventative medicine than as last minute emergency treatment. It's better applied in small doses throughout our days and decisions. Then, we can most likely avoid cataclysmic personal disasters, at least of the existential sort.

So: Don't wait for trouble. Seek wisdom now. Remember, I don't really have the flashing lights and siren. It was just in my imagination. Then again, the chaplain in town apparently does.

A Plan With Urgency.

Leonard Bernstein once said:

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

That's really good. I like it. What you need is not (1) a plan, and (2) all the time in the world. What you need is a plan and not quite enough time. Why?

You need a sense of urgency about your plan and your ability to execute it. Plenty of time makes a sense of urgency hard to create. Not quite enough time gets you going and keeps you at it, while you glance at the calendar and check your watch.

That's the secret insight of procrastinators. They put things off until they have the magic of not quite enough time. Then they bear down with focus and intensity. Some wait until actual desperation sets is. They do whatever it takes to get the fire blazing high.

I'm not recommending procrastination - not yet, at least.

I'm agreeing with the famous director that a great plan and a time squeeze can be a magical combination. I sometimes give myself an artificial deadline for a project, and get all worked up about how in the world I'll get it done in that amount of time. I don't let myself think of the fact that I've just made up the deadline. I convince myself it's real and important. And it is important if it gets me going full force. And because I'm pretty good at convincing myself of things, I hit the accelerator and take off! I get stuff done.

And I'd love to say more, but: There's not quite enough time.

Tempus fugit!

Harmony: Part Two

Go buy all the individual parts of a Ferrari, thousands of them, down to the nuts and bolts, and the cans of paint needed for that glossy finish (which are you, red, black, or yellow - or maybe dark blue?), and then pile all those parts in your driveway. You won't as a result have a great car that you can take for a spin around the block. You'll just have a big pile of stuff. The parts have to be connected and then have to work together well for you to have a functioning classic high end sports car. They have to perform in harmony.

I wrote about harmony already this week, but felt that another post could be beneficial. Two Part Harmony seems apt, after all. In the previous post, I pointed out that a whole of any kind (a face, team, or as here, a car) can be greater or lesser than the sum of its parts, and that the secret sauce determining whether the parts are augmented or diminished in their assemblage is harmony.

Harmony is something we hope for, in our lives, our businesses, and our families. At work, we try to gather the best people we can, and then hope that they'll act harmoniously toward shared goals. But of course harmony should be sought from the start, and not just desired in the end.

Don't just hire for individual talent, or even greatness. Hire for diverse, dynamic fit. Hire for harmony. Some companies do it already. They have job candidates interviewed by the people they'd be working with. Everyone has an eye on the issue of harmony. How will we work together? Will we mesh?

Harmony is often used as a synonym for consistency. But it may go even deeper. Imagine two guitarists playing all the same notes in perfect rhythm. They're consistently matching each other, note-for-note. Now imagine them playing in harmony. When I was in grad school at Yale, I used to go down the road to a great guitar store every afternoon for an hour or two and play with an outstanding studio guitarist named Tommy. He had taught me Chet Atkins style finger picking. I'd play a song, bass and melody, and he'd play in harmony with what I was doing. The sound that resulted was amazing. What he was doing was far more than merely playing in a way that was consistent with what I was doing. It was enhancing the sounds immensely.

Think of the spices in a great dish. You want more than consistency. You want them to work together and mutually enhance each other harmoniously. That's what we want in life and in our work. Think about what that means right now in what you're doing. How can you introduce more real harmony into it? How can you play it to make it sing?

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.

Harmony

Many years ago, when the movie "10" starring Bo Derek aimed to portray a woman who was so beautiful she was a "perfect 10" in all ways, a national news team decided to try an experiment. They searched fashion photos, movie star pictures, and many other sources to find "the perfect lips" and "the perfect nose" and "the perfect eyebrows," and so on, for chin, hair, ears, and cheeks. They said they would photo shop them together and present the truly perfect woman. The result was not at all what they had intended.

In sports you can do the same thing. Bring together the best basketball center, the best guards, the best forwards, and you won't necessarily have the best team. Thinking otherwise commits a classic philosophical error called "The Fallacy of Composition." Or in another phrase, the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Or lesser. 

Why? Harmony.

Harmony is an important ingredient in greatness of all kinds. Do you have it in your life? In your work? Among your actions? In your family? On your team? It's a key to beauty and excellence.

Passionate Pursuit

As I look back over the trajectory of my life, from the high perch of being on the verge of 63, I see that the times when I've had the most fun and gotten the most done were the times when I was the most passionate in pursuit of an idea, or project. My enthusiasm propelled me forward. It woke me up in the morning, and got me going. It gave me energy. It sustained me through the day. It opened the doors of possibility all around me that would otherwise have remained closed, and sometimes locked.

When I was a professor, and writing articles and books like a maniac who required no sleep, people would often ask me "Do you just work all the time?" My reply would most often be: "No, no. Not at all. My life is long periods of indolence punctuated by intense bursts of activity. I get so excited about what I'm working on that I can't help but get things done. Then I go take a nap."

But passion waxes and wanes through a life. You're not always surfing a high wave of energy. If you find yourself right now astride your board in calm water, just waiting for the next wave, and nothing's on the horizon, you can do something about it. You can yourself stir up the waters. It all starts within. Make your own waves. In life, unlike in the ocean, it's possible. It works. It's always better to feel the breeze in your face as you ride a big wave, as you go new places and do new things. It will kill the lull if you can feel the love. You can renew your inner passion.

We're here to make things happen. Pursue passionately what's right for you!

Today.

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.