The Courage to Be.

In 1975, my next door neighbor Paul was a very famous architect, a graduate of Harvard, the University of Berlin, and the Bauhaus. He was in his 70s and an avid skier. He was a handsome man in great shape and with a lively mind. I had seen his homes in books of modern architecture.

I would go visit him frequently. He asked to borrow my books about Wittgenstein. We loved to sit and talk philosophy and modern design. I liked to play on his tennis court. My wife and I took care of his chickens when he and his young Chinese wife traveled. They lived in an old New England farmhouse that had been added onto time after time. It was an architectural mess. He was an architectural marvel. And he was my favorite unofficial mentor.

But then we had to move out of the one bedroom "mother in law" apartment in the big house where we lived outside New Haven. The husband of the family owning the home had disappeared for a year, only to show up one day in a crazy disguise. I didn't recognize him at all, but his kids yelled out "Daddy!" Weeks later, men in dark suits and Ford LTDs arrived to take boxes of things out of his part of the home. And soon, we had to move a mile away.

I later heard that Paul had been diagnosed with cancer. I tried to figure out what to say to him before I visited. I couldn't come up with anything. I was afraid to visit without good words for him. I thought I had to have answers. I postponed seeing him. I procrastinated. I was busy. I was in graduate school at Yale. I thought of him often, and put off what I thought would be a very awkward visit to a man who had been so full of life. Then someone told me he had died. Waiting for words was one of the worst mistakes I had ever made.

Don't wait for words. Don't wait for answers. Go to people in need and just show you care, words or not. People need love more than answers. People need you.

Sorry, Paul. I was an idiot. Actually, I was a coward. But I didn't understand that at all. I do now. And I've developed a little more courage, the essential courage to just go forth and be. I don’t have to have all the answers. But I do have this one. And now, all these years later. I have the courage to admit my weakness and to say thanks for the lesson. I still love you, man. I finally realize what it takes to show that to others.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity: Just the right thing at the right time.

We often mean by this something like the sudden and meaningful intersection of otherwise apparently unrelated causal streams of events to provide needed help or insight at an important time. A God wink, some say. It could be a small thing or a big one. It could be encouraging or revelatory or both. It could help you along the way, or stop you right before the brink of a cliff. It might lead you to a new path, or keep you on the one you've been walking, despite a time of adversity and pain.

Meaningful coincidences. Do you have any of these in your life story? Have you ever experienced synchronicity, where the right thing happens improbably at just the right time? Or do you experience such things a lot?

I'm starting to think about this more. Let me know if you have this phenomenon in your life.

Success, Failure, and Effort

The most important distinction in this world isn't between success and failure, but effort and inertia. Forward movement counts. Destinations can change as we learn and grow. But growth requires movement. And that depends on effort. So rev it up and go.

Mistakes and Transformations

Subtitle: The Heroic Hester Prynne

Have you ever read Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter? Some of us may have read it in school, before we were prepared to squeeze all the wisdom like a great juice out of it.

I just read it anew, and was amazed. I had just enjoyed Hawthorne's other well known story, The House of the Seven Gables, a couple of weeks ago, and I have to admit that I didn't look forward to The Scarlet Letter, fearing a bit that it would be a dull moralistic tale. But I was so very wrong. Hawthorne is a keen observer of human nature, and a real philosopher.

The book dives deep into such issues as morality and hypocrisy, shame and courage, vengeance and forgiveness, self identity and redemption, and does so in ways that relate to each of us now, in our own time and lives. Hester Prynne, publicly shamed sinner, ends up being the hero of the story, displaying great inner strength and our deep ability to do good for others, despite how they might despise us in return. Our own alchemy can then in the end work surprising transformations in the lives of those others. Mistakes can be woven into the cloth of success for ourselves and others.

It's a great, great book. Some random quotes.

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. (14)

Mighty was their fuss about little matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers! (16)

It is a good lesson—though it may often be a hard one—for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world’s dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. (25)

The page of life that was spread out before me seemed dull and commonplace only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. (34)

When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. (110)

It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit’s joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false,—it is impalpable,—it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself, in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. (128)

"Then I consented to a deception. But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side!" (169)

And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. (227)

My page numbers are from the Barnes and Noble edition, but for an easily accessible edition, click HERE.

Noble Failures

Sometimes, we fail through no fault of our own. We try something and it doesn’t go as planned. It may be the overall economic environment, or local conditions. Or it could be that the enterprise is undermined by someone with money and connections whose plans are contrary to our own.

This is the aspect of our common condition explored in the delightful little novel, The Bookshop, written by Penelope Fitzgerald, a British lady who first published, I believe, at the age of 60 and went on to win several awards for her short books, including the prestigious Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

I happened across this gem at Costco, where I was loitering after the purchase of three forty-two pound bags of kitty litter and pondering the wisdom of trying a $7.99 bottle of Kirkland Bordeaux with a beautiful black label. I got the book instead. It was more pleasant that I reasonably could have expected with the Bordeaux.

It’s about a lady who opens a book store in a damp old haunted house in a small town on the coast of England, a place that hasn’t had a bookshop before.

I offer here some nearly random free samples, which you won’t get with the Bordeaux, although, there were some tiny sausages being cooked up and offered for tasting in another part of the store. Our lady referred to below is a Ms. Florence Green.

She drank some of the champagne, and the smaller worries of the day seemed to stream upwards as tiny pinpricks through the golden mouthfuls and to break harmlessly and vanish. (20)

Will power is useless without a sense of direction. (37)

Back in the shadows went the Stickers, largely philosophy and poetry, which she had little hope of ever seeing the last of. (43)

He might be grievously disappointed, possibly after a lifetime of disappointments. (92)

“Understanding makes the mind lazy.” (101)

She looked with shame at the rows of patiently waiting unsold books. “You’re working too hard, Florence,” Milo said.

“I try to concentrate—Put those down, they’ve only just come in and I haven’t checked them. Surely you have to succeed, if you give everything you’ve got.”

“I can’t see why. Everyone has to give everything they have eventually. They have to die. Dying can’t be called a success.” (133)

For the book, CLICK HERE. And enjoy. Cheers.

The Power of Emptiness

Sometimes, when you face a fraught situation or a complex problem and feel like you need to think about it more and harder, what you should do instead is stop thinking at all.

Clear your head. Get out of your own way. Let it go. Empty yourself. Create room for the needed insight to arrive. And then, perhaps, as if by magic, just the idea you've sought may come your way, and without all the effort you would otherwise have expended in vain.

A Short Dog Tale

The World as It Is. A car sped down a rural road and what looked like trash was thrown from the window. The farmer mowing nearby stopped his work and walked over to pick up whatever paper had been thrown into his field so that the mower wouldn't shred and spread it everywhere. It wasn’t paper, but a puppy just a few weeks old, covered with bruises and now with a newly broken tail. The astonished man picked him up and took him home. A friend of his sent a picture to a friend of mine named Doug who immediately adopted him and called him Miller. That was two years ago.

Recently, Doug and Miller were at Lowe's Hardware and Miller pulled hard at his leash to get to a lady standing near an end-cap. Doug pulled him back in surprise. It was odd behavior for the ordinarily well behaved dog. They found their item and got in line. Miller pulled again and this time moved around behind Doug, who then turned to see what was going on. It was the same lady. Miller was instantly sitting next to her with his head leaning on her leg. She was crying.

"I'm so sorry." Doug had no idea what was going on.

"No, no. I had to put my dog to sleep a few hours ago."

Dogs know a lot more than we think. They understand and feel in ways we sometimes can’t even imagine. Honor the animals in your life.

And maybe ask them, "How's the stock market going to do tomorrow?" And let me know.

The opening picture above is of the puppy himself on his first trip to the vet! And now two years later, the comforter: A truly good dog.

What I do.

“One of the most properly human studies is the study of what is most properly human.”

- My last waking thought before sleep.

Last night, I was almost asleep, but my mind was trying to figure out the right category for what I’ve been doing in my work for the last twenty five years. In philosophy, you’re always working in a sub-discipline. It’s the same in other academic specialties. In physics, you might be working in particle physics, on the very small, or in cosmology or astrophysics, studying the very large. In philosophy, you might work mainly in metaphysics, examining the ultimate structure of reality, or epistemology, focused on the nature of belief and knowledge, or in ethics, or aesthetics, or social and political philosophy, or logic, or the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, or the philosophy of law. For my first two decades as a committed philosopher, encompassing graduate school at Yale and my job at Notre Dame, I was working in the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. And it was a great experience. But I came to feel a new sense of calling, to a new adventure of ideas, and since then, I’ve been on a quest to discover the practical side of philosophy that relates to life and work in the world.

It was odd. There seemed to be no set label for what I’ve been doing. I’ve often said I was working in practical philosophy, but that’s really just a big part of what I do. I discover conceptual tools we can use all the time. But there is more to it. And then last night, right before sleep would have claimed my thoughts and transitioned me into the realm of dreams, where anything can happen and I might find myself flying in a helicopter over my home, which took up one part of the evening, or saving the world from a terrorist plot (a task that occasionally requires far too much of my attempted slumber). But right before the light of normal consciousness would go out for the night, it occurred to me that I am creating, or rediscovering and perhaps naming, an ancient domain of philosophical concern, based on the search for wisdom that has to do with every major aspect of human life this world. What I do is philosophical anthropology.

For centuries, nearly every serious philosopher did it. Much of Aristotle’s Ethics is actually philosophical anthropology. And the stoics are known for it. Seneca wrote essays on happiness and anger and solitude and grief and success. Emperor Marcus Aurelius is an exemplar of it. So is Ralph Waldo Emerson. But there are many others who have done this in the past. When I began to do it in the late 1980s, I couldn’t find any other contemporary philosophers who seemed to be on the same quest. I was alone in the wilderness without a map or a compass. But there is an excitement about being an explorer, and perhaps a bit of a pioneer. I had enjoyed a measure of that feeling in my first specialty, when I was a young philosopher right out of grad school. No serious philosophers had been working on distinctively Christian topics for a very long time, and while studying the incarnation myself, I urged on others to join me and tackle such issues as the trinity, the atonement, redemption, sanctification, distinct Christian ideas of God, and on and on. The terrain of my new calling in philosophical anthropology was quite different. I now studied such things as success and partnership and happiness, greatness and failure and leadership. And each topic opened up into many more. I flew by the seat of my pants. I followed my nose. But that juxtaposition sounds strange. My pants had no aroma whatsoever, I should quickly assure you. I slashed at the underbrush to clear a trail. Yeah, we'll go with that metaphor. It was a vast wilderness where well trained philosophers seemed to have abandoned camp, but it had been taken over by pop psychologists, and motivational speakers, and a great many flimflam men.

There was counterfeit wisdom everywhere. My job was to be a detective and dig deep and discover what’s real, while rejecting the bogus and careless and false. And in the past few years, I’ve seen more philosophers begin to come back into the area. Most who have done it take a historical approach and study the stoics, or some other past source of wisdom on our general life adventure. My process has been different. I consult as much of history as possible, and dig into great literature as much as I analyze explicitly philosophical tomes of the past. But I also talk to real people in every walk of life, in every sort of work, across economic and social levels, and facing nearly every issue of our day. As a result of over a thousand public presentations, and often working with audience members afterwards, I’ve come to hear people’s hopes and dreams and worries and fears. I’ve seen magnificent success and terrible tragedy, abject failure and deep joy, meaning and suffering, foolishness and wisdom that might surprise you. And that has put me in a distinctive place to make a difference for more people in our time. It’s the greatest ride ever. And I’m glad that you read little bits and pieces here of what I’m discovering and thinking day to day, like this. Thanks for joining me in the adventure.

The Three Conditions: A Test

Thoughts I had today at a stop light.

In principle, in the abstract, there are three possible conditions you might be in on any given day.

1. Things could be good.

2. Things could be bad.

3. Things could be neutral—neither good nor bad.

So, in principle, at any given time, you could be in the good zone, or the bad zone, or the in-between neutral zone.

But here is where things get interesting. There are people who think that when nothing good is going on, then that's bad, and so there's no neutral zone after all. Let's call these people the hard to please. And there are others who think that when nothing bad is going on, then that's good. And so for them, there is no neutral zone either. Let's call these the easy to please. For each of these personality types, the theoretical neutral zone totally disappears. It vanishes. Poof. There is no in between.

And I bet you're one of the types. So: Which are you? And why?

I wanted to think about this more, but the light changed from red to green. I never saw the yellow.

Faith, Hope, and Love

Faith, Hope, and Love. And the greatest of these is Love. - Paul, getting it right. First Corinthians, 13:13.

I had a professor in college who talked a lot about seeing with the eyes of faith. We need more of that. Not the talking part. The seeing.

We also need to see with the eyes of hope. And that's hard sometimes. But to the degree it's hard, it's necessary.

And we most of all need to see with the eyes of love. View the people and things around you from the best and highest divine perspective. Appropriate a sliver of God's Love for us. Let it reflect and refract through your own interpretations, infusing them and lifting them up. See others in such a way as to lift them up. See yourself that way.

Seeing through the eyes of faith, hope, and love is definitely better for those who manage it. It's better for the world whenever any of us does it. And it gives a wonderful example to others. The eyes of faith. The eyes of hope. The eyes of love.

Happy New Eyes.

Hills, Valleys, and Hope

If I recall him correctly, the absurdly prolix philosopher Hegel posited that history proceeds by a dynamic undulation of thesis, antithesis, and then synthesis: One extreme arises, then an equal and opposite extreme crops up, when next a mediating compromise comes to be. And it all then repeats.

Some simply speak of history being a pendulum swing, from one outrageous excess to its opposite, and then back and forth. There are cycles. There are seasons. Others who talk of hills and valleys suggest that when we find ourselves in a deep valley, we should prepare for our ascent up the next hill.

We are now in a deep valley. So it's a time to prepare and plan and look forward with that most threatened and resilient of human qualities, hope. But hope, in its fullness, isn't a passive fantasy or a refusal to be realistic; it's an active goad to real action. So in this season, in this cycle, in this antithesis and far end of the pendulum swing, have hope. And begin to think of how you will help us all to climb the next hill, where we may be able to see a new sunrise on its way.

The Quest for More

A Thought While Reading a Book on Aristotle’s Understanding of Happiness:

It seems to be distinctive of human beings that we are always in search of more: More money, more affection, more success, more status, more love, more accolades, more stuff. Even those who praise simple living and seek to find new ways to simplify their lives, and who seem by contrast to live in pursuit of less, are really often in their own manner on the lookout for more—more ways to trim and cut and do without, always seeking novel ideas for living with less and less. It’s for them even a quest for more less.

It's a temptation to think there's something intrinsically wrong with the desire for more, as if it bespeaks a discontent of the soul. But what would ever be wrong with a desire for more wisdom, more growth, more chances to do something good, more spiritual depth, more opportunities to show real love? What's needed is discernment. What are healthy needs for more, and what aren't? A wise and good life finds the right balance of more and less, more or less.

Lessons on Life

I just finished my second reading of a wondrous and even numinous book, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. I loved it in 2004. I got much more out of it on this second time through.

An older minister in the small town of Gilead, Iowa has a young son through an unexpected second marriage. His first wife died in childbirth, and the baby also passed shortly afterwards. Decades later, in his sixties, he unexpectedly married a younger woman and then had a child, a son, when he was about the age of seventy. The book is a long letter he’s writing this boy in his sixth year, sharing his life and insights in a way that he is sure time will prevent his doing in person. He has serious heart trouble and may be in his last days. So it’s important to him, even urgent, to get into this letter anything he’d want to share with his son when the boy is older and can use some guidance about the deeper things in life, as well as on some of the simpler and most magical things.

Our writer, the Reverend John Ames is worried about a younger man who has come back to town after many years away. He is the son of the reverend's best friend, and as such begins to visit Ames' home, play with his son, and talk with his younger wife in overtly friendly ways. The wife and son seem utterly charmed by this charismatic guest. But Ames knows that in the man's adolescence, he displayed terribly bad behavior and morally irresponsible ways. And now our writer wonders what his intentions are toward his young wife and new son. This inner struggle intrudes itself into the overall flow of the work in fascinating ways, and ends up giving us one of the biggest revelations of the book that may be needed in our own lives. But so as not to ruin the suspense, I won’t mention what it is, except to say that it took me back to a theme in many of Jane Austin’s stories, and in the New Testament, and in a vivid and powerful way.

I’ll share some other sample passages, while recommending the book to you strongly, as a joy and potentially transformative read.

On writing:

“For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn’t writing prayers, as I was often enough.” (19)

On Ego:

When the Lord says “You must become as one of these little ones,” I take him to mean you must be stripped of all the accretions of smugness and pretense and triviality. (30)

On Making the Most of Life:

When my father found his father at Mount Pleasant after the war ended, he was shocked at first to see how he had been wounded. In fact, he was speechless. So my grandfather’s first words to his son were, “I am confident that I will find great blessing in it.” And that was what he said about everything that happened to him for the rest of his life, all of which tended to be more or less drastic. (35-36)

On Philosophy:

I got pretty good at pretending I understood more than I did, a skill which has served me throughout life. … I get much more respect than I deserve. (39)

On the Luminous Reality of People:

When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the “I” whose predicate can be “love” or “fear” or “want,” and whose object can be “someone” or “nothing” and it won’t really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around “I” like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else. But quick, and avid, and resourceful. To see this aspect of life is a privilege of the ministry which is seldom mentioned. (44-45)

On the Human Face:

Any human face is a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. (66)

On Our Flaws:

These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you’re making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice. (98)

On What We Now Call Covetousness:

I believe the sin of covetise is that pang of resentment you may feel when even the people you love best have what you want and don’t have. (134)

And later:

I don’t know exactly what covetise is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else’s virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it. (188)

On Forgiveness and the Parable of the Prodigal Son:

It says Jesus puts His hearer in the role of the father, or of the one who forgives. Because if we are, so to speak, the debtor (and of course we are that, too), that suggests no graciousness in us. And grace is the great gift. So to be forgiven is only half the gift. The other half is that we can also forgive, restore, and liberate, and therefore we can feel the will of God enacted through us, which is the great restoration of ourselves to ourselves.

On Adulthood and Enjoyment:

Adulthood is a wonderful thing, and brief. You must be sure to enjoy it while it lasts. (166)

For the amazing book click HERE.

The Piano Tuner

Adventure. The new. The unknown. Courage. Discovery. Personal Transformation. What people seem to be and what they truly are. These are some of the unexpected themes in a wondrous book I just discovered and read, called The Piano Tuner and written by Daniel Mason, published by Knopf in 2002.

The story takes place in the 1880s. The British are fighting to subdue Burma. A brilliant surgeon takes up residence in a remote fort, a small beautiful village, really, far from civilization, and seems to have uncanny success in bringing peace to the area of warring tribes. He leverages his success to request that the government send him an Erard piano, which is shipped and carried to him against all odds. But a piano in the jungle will have problems. So he asks for a piano tuner from London to come repair it. Thus our story begins.

What was supposed to be a three month trip from London to upper Burma solely for the purpose of fixing and tuning a rare piano turns into so much more than a brief writeup could even hint at. It’s a remarkable book on the human spirit, music, beauty, and the uncertain journeys of life.

Do yourself a favor: Grab it! Read it!

For the book on Amazon, click HERE.

The Old Man and the Sea

I just finished reading Ernest Hemingway’s little book The Old Man and the Sea for the first time in my adult life. I’m sure I had to read it in high school but remember nothing of the experience. I can imagine, however, the average student of that age saying, “We had to read this stupid story about this stupid old man and his stupid fish. It was all so stupid.”

And maybe for the young, it is. But not for those of us who have lived a bit more. It’s of course a story about a poor old fisherman in Cuba that was first published as a book in 1952 and won a Pulitzer Prize, as well as being cited in Hemingway’s Nobel Prize for Literature citation awarded two years later. First printed as a magazine article in Esquire many years before, it has haunted readers for each decade since.

The old man, Santiago, seems to have run out of luck. He’s in a dry patch. He has not caught a fish in 84 days. But he’s determined to go out and catch a big one. So he ventures out in his little boat much farther than is normal, out to where the biggest fish may be found. And after a time, he eventually hooks a huge Marlin who pulls him and his small boat farther away from land for three dqys. They fight and struggle and all the old man’s knowledge and skill are put to the test. Can he have the success of which he has dreamed? Can he endure all that is required? It's hugely difficult, but the answer is yes. The fish finally succumbs and is lashed to the boat and the old man heads back toward land with dreams of the glory and the needed practical income that will result from such a huge and perfect specimen, bigger than anyone has ever seen. It may even be a life changing accomplishment.

But the old man is out on the water alone. He has not brought along the strong boy who is his friend and who often accompanies him on fishing trips. During the extended struggle with the giant fish, he often wishes he had brought the boy with him to help. Another pair of hands could have been so useful. But he struggles mightily and prevails all alone and is glad. Yet, his solitary success is quickly followed by a new challenge. Sharks descend on the huge Marlin he has caught and the old man is limited in what he has with him to use to defend the catch. Thinking of something he could have brought with him, and should have brought along, he finally says to himself words that flow down the decades and into all of our lives:

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is. (83)

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Or if you forgot to prepare for your adventure with sugar and water, is there at least some vodka around that you could use?

Santiago fights the first shark that attacks with a harpoon. After losing it, he lashes a knife to an oar and does battle with the next sharks who come. When that’s also gone, he begins to club at the predators. And eventually he is out of options. The thieves of the sea take more and more chunks out of his magnificent catch until there is nothing left but the spectacular spine and bones as a trophy of success and testimony of subsequent failure. He has lost what he had fought so hard to gain.

When he returns, exhausted, demoralized, bruised and cut up, he sleeps and the boy takes care of him. After they talk, the boy says: “Now we fish together again.”

The old man replies, “No. I am not lucky. I am not lucky anymore.”

“The hell with luck,” the boy said. “I’ll bring the luck with me.” (92)

And then they begin to discuss what they will need to bring along with them to be properly prepared for anything they might face together.

And that’s a perspective and trajectory we all need. Great effort is sometimes followed by failure. Even great success can wither on the vine. Don’t let disappointment stop you, however deep and desperate it might be. And never just wait for luck. Bring the luck with you. Take action. Partner up with someone who can help boost your spirits and aid your cause. Prepare. Move forward once more. Remember: There is always a new dream and a new chance and many fish in the sea.

For the book, click HERE.

A Dose of Goodness

I just finished reading Willa Cather's novel, My Antonia for the first time. It's rare that I close a book with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. The story, first published in 1918, is about a group of friends and neighbors in a small farming community in the Nebraska prairie during the nineteenth century. But more that that, it's a book about the beauties, wonders, sorrows, and transporting, transient joys of life that, paradoxically, can form us forever.

In our time of public ugliness and strife, it's nearly magical to be transported to a simpler time and place, and welcomed into lives that can remind us all of the most elemental possibilities for goodness in the world.

For the novel, click https://amzn.to/2CWjcuo

My Morehead-Cain Weekend

I had a weekend with the most remarkable people. It was the 8th triennial Morehead-Cain Forum, bringing together over 700 Morehead-Cain Scholars from across the nation and around the world. Originally funded by John Motley Morehead III of Union Carbide fame, the Morehead-Cain Foundation exists to bring great students to UNC Chapel Hill and pay all their expenses, launching them into summer adventures and building them up during the academic year as the people they're capable of being.

No one in my family before me had ever been to college. We had farmers, truck drivers, and mechanics in the family. I grew up in an 800 square foot rented house on a street that had ditches rather than sidewalks. It seemed that most everyone on the street worked for one of the two tobacco companies in town, Liggett and Meyers or The American Tobacco Company. The dads came home in their khaki uniforms at the end of the day, weary of work and ready to rest. Durham High School nominated me for what at the time was called simply The Morehead Scholarship, now The Morehead-Cain, and I went through a local interview, a regional, and a final interview with prominent people in business, government, the military, and academia asking me hard questions about myself, my plans, and my world. My mother told me there was no money for college. The scholarship paid for everything, absolutely every expense I had, and being a Morehead got me a free six years of graduate school and a double Ph.D. at Yale, which led to a teaching career at Notre Dame and an unexpected adventure after that as a public philosopher, worldwide. Not bad for a poor kid who had been facing extremely limited prospects, and due to the trust put in me by the great people of the Morehead-Cain.

Every three years, we Morehead-Cains have an amazing weekend together full of talks and panel discussions, impromptu conversations that are utterly mind-blowing, and incredible meals. Last year, we ate dinner on center court of the Dean Dome and one of our group who founded Ancestry.com spoke, right before another of our cohort, a wonderful Broadway performer, sang. This year for our Saturday night dinner, we completely took over the UNC Football Stadium, ate in the Blue Zone where all the donors and celebrities and top leaders watch games through the huge glass walls, and then we went out into the stadium under a clear Carolina Sky in the crisp of the evening to hear another of our Morehead-Cain cousins, as we now fondly refer to each other, NC Governor Roy Cooper, speak about public service, right before a band of more cousins performed. Coop, as expected, was funny, energetic, and inspiring.

The 2018 weekend as always was full of wonder. I got to hang out with people who have made major contributions to almost every facet of modern life, across industries and nations. One old friend is about to revolutionize safety margins in medicine. Another cousin as a young woman had ridden a bicycle across Asia and some of the middle east, over closed borders and through forbidden wastelands and she lived to tell the tale. The cuz next to me at dinner told me about his 3,300 jumps out of airplanes and his subsequent heart attack. I would have had 3,300 heart attacks. Entering the men's room, a young man came up to me to say, "I read everything you write on Twitter and really love it!" I asked his name and occupation. Global Research and Optimization for Twitter. Well, then. A wonderful couple called me over to their table at another meal, and then another later in the weekend. He's the Chief Product Officer for GoDaddy, the people who host my websites, and most of the world's websites. I met a young cousin who is bringing baseball to Egypt for the first time. He showed me a picture of kids swinging bats in front of the Pyramids. I met a man whose house was built in the 13th century, but whose barn goes back much farther in time. I walked across campus and talked and laughed for half an hour with one of the most creative television directors in England, who tried to film his new comedy about Brits moving to Florida in my own town of Wilmington NC, but it was too expensive for their production budget. It turned out that it was cheaper to recreate Florida in Southern Spain. I talked to the Editor of Outside Magazine about her history of selling stories to Netflix and other movie and TV companies. I had a whirlwind conversation with a UNC senior who says she wants to solve global warming. And I think she might be able to.

And then, as in all the other Forum Weekends I've attended over the past twenty-some years, I got to give the closing talk for this magical weekend, to all those astounding people, which itself was an out of this world experience. And afterwards, on the drive home, in the words of the narrator in Willa Cather's novel, My Antonia, "I was left alone with this new feeling of lightness and content."

The young man, Jim Burden, goes on to say:

"I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep." (pages 19 and 20).

Amen. And it's a bonus to be a part of something entire that partakes of sun and air and goodness and knowledge while we're here. May more of us find communities of the like minded who can help us flourish, be our best, do our best, and experience that elusive state of dissolving and yet also empowering soul flourishing we often call happiness.

For more Willa Cather: https://amzn.to/2CWjcuo

Flying High

Wilbur and Orville Wright were two small town bike mechanics with a dream. Everyone said they were “nuts” and “crackpots” and even people who knew and liked them as people could not figure out why they were “wasting their time” chasing an absurd impossibility. Man would never fly. It was ludicrous. But they were determined and worked hard at their dream, despite frequent setbacks, mistakes, accidents, and trials and miseries beyond anything they had ever imagined.

They might feel disappointment for a moment or hours, but the next day were back hard at work. Resilience, persistence, an attention to detail, and a courage that would not give up began to have their effects. But on one difficult day, Wilbur had been worn down and actually said that the dream might not happen for a thousand years. And then, within a year or two, it did.

But even when they were successful, most people didn’t believe it. They were ridiculed, castigated, demeaned, and called liars and worse. And yet they kept their heads up, maintained their inner poise, and kept working to improve their flying machine, pushing it to greater and greater accomplishments. When finally their success was public and undeniable, they became huge celebrities, which brought big financial payoffs, but actually got in the way of their work. And still, they found ways to persist and fight through fame as they had fought through infamy and failure.

Even though Wilbur died of typhoid fever at the age of 45, he left a lasting legacy that changed the world for us all. Orville carried on but it was never the same as the great partnership they had enjoyed, in bad times and good times. It’s a great lesson and encouragement to any of us who dream impossible dreams and struggle to bring to the world the best we can create. It helps to find a great partner who can share the dream, the work, and the eventual results. And when we face turbulent strong headwinds, we should remember what Wilbur once wrote in his notebook: “No bird soars in a calm.”

For more, go read The Wright Brothers, a great book on these guys by David McCullough.

https://amzn.to/2ExMdhQ

A Reflection on my Novels and What They Reveal

I’m editing the final book in my series of philosophical fiction, set in Egypt in 1934 and 1935. As I’ve said here many times, the stories simply came to me as a mental movie, playing in my mind’s eye and ear for five years, with all the dialogue and details already there. The story chose me to tell it. It was out of the blue. My job was just to write what I was seeing and hearing.

And yet, somehow, mysteriously, the books are all about me. I hope they’re also all about you. But I just came to realize that they’re about my deepest hopes and dreams and values and aspirations. They’re about my fears and joys and uncertainties and suspicions. They’re about weakness and strength, wisdom and virtue, friendship and animosity, uncertainty and hope, life and death.

The stories are all quite particular, but the lessons are universal.

And I’m bringing these tales into the world very differently from the vast majority of my books. Instead of contracting as I have for my nonfiction books with a Doubleday or Penguin to publish many tens of thousands of copies and place them into bookstores nationwide, announcing them in big circulation newspapers and magazines, as well as on radio and television, I created my own imprint, found the right people to help in this endeavor of love, and have published them in the new format of print on demand for paperback and hardcover, with the two basic ebook formats also available. That has allowed for something I’ve never been able to do before.

First, I have total control of what goes into print, including the great cover art done by my daughter. And there is something else. After the prologue to the series, The Oasis Within, was available for about the first six months, I realized I wanted to re-edit it. And I was able to, right then. I didn’t have to wait years, until 20,000 or 50,000 copies of the original edition had sold and that many people had bought less than the best I could do. I could make the improvements right away. And the same thing happened with The Golden Palace. Less than a year into its life, it got a new paragraph on the first page, and dozens of small changes throughout that enhanced it immensely. I had never been able to do that with a book before. And as readers have written me about their experience with these novels, their insights have helped me in editing subsequent books. There has been a feedback loop I’ve never had before. And it’s made the books better. This should be a universal experience for writers and readers.

The one problem is that I don’t have a national promotion and marketing machine behind these books. So they have to find their readers on their own. And they are, but very slowly. My workout partner told me today that he just finished The Mysterious Village and really loved it. I was so glad to hear and told him that he’s probably the fourth person to get that far in the series! I was exaggerating a little. But just a little. It will have been worth the seven years of work so far, and the rest of the eight years I anticipate, for them to have a few great readers whose lives are enhanced and maybe even transformed by the stories. And of course, it would be even more gratifying to see even more people enjoying and using the books for the renaissance of understanding about wisdom and virtue, life and death, that they can potentially provide. They’re about success and failure, struggle and victory, defeat and persistence, and the power of committed partnerships along the way. They’re about leadership and love, and staying on your path even when it’s hard, and giving others what they need as you also discover your own deepest needs and gifts. The stories are about so much. And they reveal so much.

In all my philosophy, business, and life nonfiction books, I tell stories from my own experience. You get to know my kids, my wife, as well as friends and neighbors and both the silly things and the deeper things that I’ve encountered along the way. And in the novels, there are no stories about my life. Yet, somehow, they’re the most autobiographical of anything I’ve ever done, the most deeply revealing, and if I had written nothing else ever, I would want to leave them for my kids, and grandkids, and anyone who might be interested in the experience of a philosopher meandering from the mid twentieth century into these first days of the twenty-first, and trying to get his bearings for making the world a slightly better place with the ancient wisdom that’s exactly what we need now.

For the series, go to www.TheOasisWithin.com.

Misplaced Loyalty: Ego Centered Leadership and Its Demise

There is a phenomenon that we see around some corporate leaders and others in high social leadership positions in our time. An ego driven personality can weave a web of promises and appeal to the real values of good people in a way that's wholly deceptive and ultimately self defeating. His or her rhetoric and promises create a loyalty in others who then seek, in the classic mode of confirmation bias, to retain their belief and hope in the face of ongoing and disconfirming evidence, but can manage it only for a time. Then the truth prevails.

In about 2015, the Muse gave me a part of my epic novel series that will be published in October. In the forthcoming book, The Magic Ring, there is an immensely greedy and power hungry man named Santiago who has inspired his followers with his lofty claims about greatness. On page 396 we begin to see misgivings form in the mind of one of his top followers, a Miguel Abad, as he begins to ride into Cairo, Egypt on a hot day in 1935, with a few others on camel. He is thinking about his leader and teacher.

<<Miguel had been attracted at first to the man’s brashness and lofty rhetoric about what the world needs. And then he had been sufficiently enticed and lulled into acquiescence by promises of greatness that he had long ignored the small warning signs and feelings of ambivalence that continued to crop up in his heart. Like all men, he was a master of self-deception and rationalization, and had long deceived himself, as Santiago had sought to deceive him. In fact, he had been living proof for years that no one else can fool us unless we are willing first to fool ourselves. And that’s how we become fools, indeed.

Deep down, Miguel knew that there was instability in his teacher, and basic untrustworthiness, but he had long masked this knowledge from himself, pretending that everything was fine and that the glories of their collaborative triumph in the future would make all things right. But the thefts of the animals had deeply bothered him. And now, many things cumulatively had been troubling him about the current mission of revenge they seemed to be pursuing. Where was this taking them? What was the outcome to be? How would any of this benefit the followers who had entrusted their lives to this man who now ultimately seemed to care about no life other than his own?

Miguel was still going along, and to all outward appearances seemed loyal. But inwardly, he was experiencing a combination of doubt, anger, and a growing sense of rebellion against what he had been caught up in.>>

For the books in the series leading up to this one, with an extended adventure about leadership, go to www.TheOasisWithin.com

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