Courage and Cowardice in The House of Mirth

Wow. I just finished reading Edith Wharton's classic The House of Mirth. It follows a young woman, Lily Bart, through her energetic and often successful efforts to ensconce herself well within the most elevated echelons of high society in New York at around the turn of the previous century. The insights of the story about success, happiness, wealth, reputation, and status are deep and lasting. It's an incredible book. And, what an ending! But no spoilers here are to be feared. The main lesson I took away from it is how common and awful and damaging cowardice is in human life.

Many of us have times when we refrain from speaking up as needed, or doing the right thing, the hard thing, and the best thing, out of cowardice. But it's often terribly hard to admit that, and why? Again, cowardice. It's a quality that hides itself with itself. The word has such a demeaning negative connotation that no one wants to use it of themselves, even to themselves. But sometimes, the first spark of courage is the frank recognition of cowardice.

When I've been courageous, most often great things have ensued. When I've been ... the other thing ... events have not tended to go so propitiously. And that's just a way of saying that the fears ingredient in cowardice tend to be self defeating in their unintended consequences, a matter which is both ironic and noteworthy.

Cowardice is just the momentary state of being overcome by the feared consequences of an action that we believe to be right, or demanded of us. The problems with it go even beyond its self undermining tendencies. First, it typically depends on an overheated imagination, an inner mental vision of consequences that's often very wrong in its projections, either about what would happen if we did the brave thing, or about how we'd make it through those troubles that we envision as following from it.

Second, individual instances of cowardice, moments of failure in this regard, tend to create a habit of allowing its fear nature to hold us back. And with a strong enough habit, you have a disposition or an ongoing character trait that you don't want to have. No one seeks to be a coward.

The morally preferable alternative of courage isn't about doing dangerous things, or living on the edge. It's only about being able to do what's right, even when it's challenging or difficult, or when it may have some personally unpleasant consequences. Courage is guided by higher values. Cowardice is never the path to happiness or success. Courage often is. And that's a deep lesson in many works of illuminating fiction, including The House of Mirth.

Don Quixote and Our Job Daily

What if every human life is of infinite value? What if the billions of the billionaire and the cultural accolades of the celebrity add nothing at all to his or her intrinsic worth? What if we're all here for creative love and loving creativity, and the results of each of our actions aren't to enhance our own value at all, which is impossible, but are meant to lift up the lives of those around us and add to the sum total of good in the human and animal earthly adventure? What if the deepest truths are after all spiritual, and that the small things can mean the most?

I'm on page 500 of my second reading of the classic and first modern novel, Don Quixote. It's a comic tale that's all about the deepest human delusions and our desperate efforts to win praise, glory, and honor. It's all about 21st century contemporary politics and business, and the various sicknesses of the heart to which we're vulnerable. Don Quixote was right that the knight errant wandering the world is to right wrongs and save the innocent. He was wrong not to see that this is the job for each of us, but guided not by the heated imagination of grandiose delusions, but rather by the wise imagination tutored by truth and goodness. What if we could all see this? What a difference it could make!

Get the best translation of the book here.

How To Do Things With Words

I called my wife's cell phone and she answered "I'm at Rhodes Jewelry with Wayne Rhodes, negotiating …" (for all non-Wilmingtonians, it's a top high-end shop, and she was with the owner). I didn't know if I should respond like 90% of the men I know and say, "Uh, Oh," or simply, "Oh, No!" - or whether to go the way of wisdom represented by the shrewd 10% who know what they're doing and respond, "That's great, honey, really great! Say hi to him. I hope you have a wonderful time there!" Instead, I told her to tell him that, depending on how the negotiation worked out, I could just bring him my car as a trade and walk home.

"Uh, Oh," versus "That's great." Our words matter. And they send signals beyond their obvious content.

I've begun this post with a title that reflects the name of a famous little book in linguistic philosophy, by the British writer JL Austin, that was one of the classics of its time, many decades ago. Austin wanted to remind us that linguistic acts, or speech acts, can do more than one thing at the same time. And it's good to remember this in our fraught political time.

When my wife ways, "It's hot in here," I know not to just agree with her and perhaps lament the truth of what she says. I know to get up, walk into another room, and turn down the thermostat. When I say, "It's hot in here," she may simply remind me that I know where the thermostat is. Our reactions are different but both show we understand that more can be going on in such a statement than the mere declaration of fact or perceived fact itself. There is an implicit request or suggestion for an action or series of actions that underlies the saying.

Politicians and their words do that all the time. Journalists talk of "dog whistles" when a political figure by his choice of words or retweets means to be signalling someone of something that's best unsaid. But those same political figures are also most often seemingly unaware that their other words and statements in other contexts send multiple signals beyond their propositional or clear linguistic content. Austin and others have called this "conversational implicature" to distinguish it from logical implication. The lesson for us all is to be careful in what we say and how we say it, for many listeners may hear things we never intended, and before we know it, things are happening that we may or may not have invited with those words, and we're on the way to turn down the thermostat.

Yesterday, The Beatles, and Me

The Movie Yesterday and My Very Own Beatles Story. No. Really. Well, sort of. "Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to, Irish Green Fields ... [Sing along now]." So. I had a great relationship with the Notre Dame Marching Band. I had taught lots of its members Intro to Philosophy, where we had tons of fun. In fact, one semester, I was worried about the second exam in that huge class. Lots of students had done poorly on the first exam, and I knew they'd be nervous. I had to change the atmosphere. So, once the hordes had taken their seats in the large auditorium and we were ready to hand out the hundreds of exams, lots of doors suddenly banged open in the back, scores of young thinkers swiveled around to see what was going on, and the Notre Dame Marching Band came into the room, playing the famous fight song! The Freshmen jumped onto their chairs, yelling and clapping and singing along. The song ended in a thunderous ovation and the band left. It was shocked, happy pandemonium. And everyone scored higher on that exam. Everyone.

But that's not the story I want to tell. I had just written the first rock and roll fight song for a university, called The Fightin' Irish Are Back, to celebrate our new coach Lou Holtz turning the team around and returning it to its legendary greatness. I had talked to previous championship coaches like Ara Parseghian and Dan Divine to get the lyrics just right. Champion sportswear had decided to make up a special T Shirt to celebrate the song, with a big version of the mascot Leprechaun on the front, playing my sunburst 1964 Fender Stratocaster rock guitar with my initials on the headstock: TVM. The front of the shirt would say The Fightin' Irish Are Back. The back of the shirt would announce: Bringing Back the Rock and Roll. I would assemble a studio band and record it soon. An NBC Affiliate would do a music video. It was all planned out. But then that October I got a call from the famous Coach Holtz himself. He had heard about the song. He asked me to wait a year to release it. I asked why. He said, "This year, we'll have a winning season, but next year we'll win the national championship, so if you can hold it for a year, it can be our celebration song." I said, "I will if you will." And that was football history. National Champions: 1988.

But that's not the story I want to tell. I had written out the song and decided I wanted to start it with a guitar solo borrowing from the classic Notre Dame Fight Song. I'd call the Band department and get permission. They were my buddies. It would be no problem. So I told them my plan and that I probably needed written permission to use part of the famous tune they played all the time. "Boy, Professor Morris, your song sounds great! But we don't own the rights to our fight song."

What? "Who owns it?" The band guy said, "Paul McCartney." Whaaaaaaat?

He had bought it as an investment. So I had to talk with his lawyer in New York to get the permission I needed. A Beatle owns the rights to our fight song. Notre Dame has to pay him every time it's played in the stadium. Yep. SIr Paul's attorney turned out to be a nice guy. He said to me, "We'll give you seven bars of the song for free. But if you use one note beyond that, it will cost you more money than you can even imagine." I used exactly seven bars. I sang and played the guitar part and we had great musicians to fill out the band. When it was mixed in my absence, another musician had come into the studio and listened and said, "How the hell did you get Boz Scaggs to do a Notre Dame song?" Yeah, that was me. Boz Tom. And so we released the recording just in time for the championship season and the song was launched with the T shirts and Regis Philbin played it on his national morning show and danced to it, and whenever you went to a game you could hear it on the radio and on boomboxes around the stadium in lots of the tailgate parties.

And so, I know from first hand experience how utterly remarkable it was for Paul and Ringo to give permission to the new movie Yesterday to use SO MANY of their songs. MUCH more than seven bars. There's a reason you never hear Beatles songs in movie, soundtracks or on tv commercials. The rights are that dear, that controlled and pricey. But then, one movie comes along and does the impossible and uses song after song after song. Paul and Ringo loved the concept and made it happen. Relationships do rule the world. The seemingly impossible can happen. After all, the Beatles did. So if you see it or have seen the new film and agree with me that it's a remarkable movie, I wanted you to know how remarkable it really is that it got made at all. The gang who wrote and produced it had the luck of the Irish for sure. And, there's only one thing left to say.

Hey, Dude: Go Irish!

PS: Someone just posted on FaceBook a low tech digital conversion of the original tape, with its cover and liner notes pictured. Just so you guys will know that I'm not just making this up. Ha! So for The Fightin' Irish are Back, go here and turn on your speakers loud:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnO3awjlFi4&fbclid=IwAR3VlLIUPNjqPeIM0ylICixMM5PB3wq243oD5QMoge81AWRMW0572CoW3II&app=desktop

Yesterday

My workout partner and his family treated me to a movie last night. When we got to the multiplex, I realized I was really tired from not enough sleep the night before. I was dragging. We showed our tickets and were told go to to Theater 3. There it was, down the hall. Here's how tired I was: When we got to the door, the sign above it said, "6:40. Yesterday." And I promise I actually thought: "Wait. We're a day late???"

So yeah. Yale PhD. Philosopher. Idiot.

The Movie Yesterday (now in both senses of the word) was amazingly good. It woke me up fast. And I was enthralled. Forget the 2.5 stars you may see. Go to it. Let yourself experience it. It's an incredible thought experiment on culture, ambition, morality, music, business, and life. It's vivid, well acted, and chock full of great tunes, as you might imagine. It's a love story, a buddy caper, a meditation on happiness and success and so much more. And don't worry, it's actually showing Today and Tomorrow at a theater near you.

Main Life Regrets

Main Life Regrets:‬ Buying too much stuff. Believing too many people. Being an idiot more than once. Often mistaking appearances for realities. Rationalizing. Confusing the easy way with the right way too many times. Saying yes to things deserving no and no to things deserving yes. Working too much. Not speaking up. That pair of bell-bottomed pants in 1970. Not bringing my own inner calm and joy to enough situations needing it. Thinking I looked dapper in a bow tie in 1990. Second and third servings.‬ Believing for even a minute that it's possible to live well with no regrets whatsoever. Thinking I could convince any other person to avoid completely any one of these things.

We can redeem our mistakes by learning from them. My philosophical conclusion is that it’s not just Ok but good to have regrets, as long as you don’t have them in a way and with an emotional intensity that you’ll … regret.

If you think a friend would benefit from my own little blush of honesty here on this issue, please pass this on to spark him or her. It’s never too late to adjust course and learn. Those who are wise do now what those who are otherwise never think to do.

My Father's Advice

My father was a country boy who didn't act or sound like one, and a high school graduate who read all the time. The few books he owned were mostly by philosophers. He led me to believe that there’s more to life than meets the eye, and that we cal all know more and do more than we think. He gave me some great advice about life that has helped me every step of the way. Here's a small sample.

Do a job as long as you love it and you think you have something distinctive to contribute. If either of those things changes, you need to make a change.

Life is supposed to be a series of adventures. Each one is preparing you for the next one in ways you sometimes can't even imagine. Be open for what's coming.

When you learn how to relax your body, you'll learn how to relax your mind.

Never forget the small joys of childhood. Never outgrow your eagerness to play. Try to have a little fun every day.

The Power of your mind is greater than you know. Learn how to use it. Quiet your racing thoughts. Turn down the volume. Then, the deeper areas of your mind can percolate upward and tell you what you need to hear.

Nature can be our best classroom. We can learn from its ways. But to do that well, we have to get outside and pay attention to what we see in the smallest natural things. And we have to remember that nature is not just around us, but also in us, too.

Take your time. Patience in your work allows your art, whatever it is, to grow and reach its capacity for beauty and usefulness.

Go fly a kite. Skip a stone across some water. Use a Yo-Yo. Try target practice with a sling shot. Build something just for fun. Your childhood is still inside you and needs a little care and attention now and then.

You never have to ask "What do I want to do for the rest of my life?" You just have to ask "What do I want to do next?" The rest of your life will take care of itself.

Read good books. Life is too short to read bad books, and too important and challenging not to read books at all. Invest in yourself. Read good books.

Six Ways of Doing Philosophy

Six Ways of Doing Philosophy.

There are six ways of doing philosophy—as we philosophers like to describe engaging in philosophical thought and discourse. We do philosophy. It's primarily an activity, more than a collected body of thought. What's been done before helps us to do it now. So we read it in order to do it well. But now, to the six ways.

First, there is an important distinction between theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy. Both modes are based on analysis, but in theoretical philosophy, analysis is tested mainly by argument, and in its practical mode it's tested mostly by action, observation, and further reflection. Theoretical philosophy focuses mostly on intellectual understanding, whereas practical philosophy turns our attention to issues of human achievement and well-being. The theoretical side has largely dominated most university philosophy departments for nearly a hundred years. It's technical, formal, and uses lots of insider terminology that's meant for precision and efficient debate, but that often fails to serve its proper purpose. As a result of those qualities, it can seem esoteric, abstruse, and quite divorced from the day to day challenges of our lives. Practical philosophy, by contrast, features issues that impinge on us all as we seek to live good, successful, and happy lives in a world that frequently challenges such intentions. At its best, the important enterprise of theoretical philosophy informs, undergirds, and guides the practical endeavor. At its worst, it merely disdains and dismisses it.

Then, within the domain of practical philosophy, there is the big scale and the small scale. Big scale practical philosophy focuses on the most fundamental questions of politics, economics, scientific practice, and the general structures and dynamics of societies as they change and develop. Small scale practical philosophy, by contrast, concerns itself for the most part with the aspirations, challenges, and accomplishments of individual lives, friendships, and partnerships, as well as addressing questions of what it is to act effectively and well in private or public organizations, whether they are governmental or not. Small scale practical philosophy focuses on such issues as how to live successfully and well, what happiness is and how it fits into human flourishing, how best to deal with change and difficulty, what it is to attain and use the rare gift of self knowledge well, handling properly the vicissitudes of emotion, and the ongoing challenge of how to accomplish good things together.

Having begun my career as a philosopher deep diving into the theoretical side, I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly in the practical domain, immersed in the small scale issues, with an eye toward their broader implications.

And now, after many books of practical philosophy generously and hopefully classified as nonfiction, I've discovered the mode of philosophical fiction, and a greater joy in doing philosophy than I've ever experienced before. To see how it goes, if you haven't already, visit the website, www.TheOasisWithin.com!

In the Face of Indifference: Thrive.

Do you remember the comedian Rodney Dangerfield? “I don’t get no respect” was his slogan, and it was a signal that he was about to tell us a very funny story in a sentence or two about his latest humiliation in the ongoing history of his ill treatment by the world. Hootie and the Blowfish may have been the rock version of Rodney. An executive at their own record company called their hit album that sold millions of copies and shot them into fame and fortune, “unreleasable.” Coming between grunge and the biggest wave of rap, critics panned them as uncool and worse.

Let me quote today's New York Times:

<<Even in the years before Hootie, an earnest and deceptively easygoing roots-rock band, became a global pop phenomenon, there were indignities. The South by Southwest festival turned them down, year after year. Record labels sent stiff rejection letters.>>

And now the sentence I love:

<<Still, Hootie persevered, thriving in the face of indifference.>>

There’s our sermon for today, brothers and sisters. There’s our slogan. You feel like Rodney and Hootie? You don’t get no respect? Persevere. Thrive in the face of indifference. The world ignores you? Persevere and thrive. You’re viewed as so very uncool? P&T. You’re different, you don’t fit in? You're trying something new? You're going against the grain? As my friend David Rendall says in his fun book The Freak Factor and now proclaims from stages around the world, what makes you weird may just make you wonderful, whether everybody else recognizes that or not. As one of the band says, “We didn’t wear the right clothes, we didn’t have the right look, we didn’t portray the right thing. And when you do that, you’re just going to get dogged.” Then he adds the magic: “We didn’t sell out. We were true to ourselves, you know?”

They had some hits and were big for a while and got plenty of criticism and then the world moved on. They pretty much disappeared. And now they’re back. And the New York Times is celebrating them with a huge article and proclaiming them always to have been very underrated. I think that’s right. And, as a philosopher, I’m sure that their distinctive inner attitude is underrated. Be yourself. Persevere. And in the face of indifference, yeah, that's right: Thrive.

For the article, click HERE.

George Eliot, Me, and You

A Great Book is a Great Teacher. I just had the most amazing experience of living among a village full of interesting people in England in and around 1830, thanks to George Eliot’s masterful novel, Middlemarch. You probably know that GE is the pen name for Mary Ann Evans, a psychologically astute author whose characters can teach us deeply about our common life, as well as our individual motivations. She helps us to understand the depth and power of rationalization and self deception in the course of any life, however noble or corrupt it might otherwise be. She schools us on ambition, and goodness, and the opinions of others. And so the story of her characters can serve as a wonderful cautionary tale to any of us. Some prevail. Others fail. Just like as in real life. But the really great thing about novels like hers is that you get to see people inside and out, and come to appreciate more deeply how complex the relationship can be between motivations and manners, or inner intent and outer words and acts.

The paperback version I read this past week was 838 pages plus notes, so it wasn’t a fast experience, but it was completely mesmerizing. I lived with Eliot’s fascinating people for days. And it was hard ever to put the book down. Even the best of her characters have their weaknesses and problems, as do we all.

I can’t tell you how many notes I took while reading. You’ll get insights about ignorance and folly, life and ambition, vices and vanities, money, self knowledge, failure, business, confidence, goodness, and so much else. Give yourself the joy of this incredibly wonderful book. Let its insights be no longer hidden from your own view. Visit it and come away deepened.

For the book, click HERE.

Some Sample Passages:

Something to Avoid

… that self-satisfaction which was the last doom of ignorance and folly. (34)

Money

He had always known in a general way that he was not rich, but he had never felt poor, and he and ho power o imagining the part which the want of money plays in determining the actions of men. Money had never been a motive to him. (179)

How Much We Filter Out and Miss

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and he squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity. (194)

What We Think of Others

“I believe that people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are,” said Dorothea. (733)

Life

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

Words and Life

The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.

Business and Meaning

After a wife warns her husband not to price his supervisory labor too cheaply, he responds:

“No, no; but it’s a fine thing to come to a man when he’s seen into the nature of business; to have a chance of getting a bit of the country into good fettle, as they say, and putting men into the right way with their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building done—that those who are living and those who come after will be the better for. I’d sooner have it than a fortune. I hold it to be the most honorable work that is.” (403)

Small and Great

Small is Beautiful: One of the most important insights any of us can have is that it's possible to live a truly heroic life on a small scale utterly outside the glaring, blaring global media complex, and to do lasting good for many of our fellow human beings, not in massive numbers and all at once, but over time, one by one.

There can be a special purity, a nobility, a distinct glory in the life of the small fish in the small pond who brightens up the prospects of each day and shows those in his or her proximity the wonder of greatness that can be and can thrive amid the ordinary run of things. This is where the real magic is.

One of my favorite characters in George Eliot’s deep and engaging novel Middlemarch begins the story full of promise, lives through various disappointments to her dreams, rises above the slings and arrows of her changing fortune, and finally, in the end, living in outwardly diminished circumstances, does her own form of wonderful good for her fellows in small and constant ways and clearly becomes the ultimate hero of the story. Eliot writes:

<<Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.>>

For Eliot’s magnificent novel, click HERE. Then, go do your own good in small and lasting ways on this precious day we’ve all been given.

The Slings and Arrows and You

The Vicar of Wakefield. Today's Great Book was amazing! I found a hard copy at a used book sale and had no idea the treasure I had discovered! Written by Oliver Goldsmith and first published in 1766, it's chock full of lessons and encouragements for us today.

There may be no better and more entertaining novel about appearances and realities, along with the ups and downs of fortune, and how a proper worldview can sustain us through anything. The Reverend Charles Primrose and his family seem to have a wonderful life. Then something bad happens. Something worse follows and they are greatly reduced in their means. And yet, their happiness translates well into their new and much more modest circumstances. Until something else bad occurs and something worse follows yet again, but it's just the prelude of the truly disastrous, which serves as mere prologue to the unspeakably awful. And so it goes. If you have read Phil Knight's account of trying to create the shoe company Nike, in his book Shoe Dog, and have gone away thinking "No one ever had such a string of bad luck as that poor man," then you haven't read The Vicar of Wakefield.

I promise it will surprise you many times and in the end bless you deeply. And more than that. Some excerpts:

It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view, are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition. In the first case, we cook the dish to our own appetite; in the latter, Nature cooks it for us. (48)

Conscience is a coward; and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent, it seldom has justice enough to accuse. (67)

(Ok a longish one)

‘Both wit and understanding,’ cried I, ‘are trifles, without integrity: it is that which gives value to every character. The ignorant peasant, without fault, is greater than the philosopher with many; for what is genius or courage without an heart? An honest man is the noblest work of God.

‘I always held that hackney’d maxim of Pope,’ returned Mr Burchell, ‘as very unworthy a man of genius, and a base desertion of his own superiority. As the reputation of books is raised not by their freedom from defect, but the greatness of their beauties; so should that of men be prized not for their exemption from fault, but the size of those virtues they are possessed of. The scholar may want prudence, the statesman may have pride, and the champion ferocity; but shall we prefer to these the low mechanic, who laboriously plods on through life, without censure or applause? We might as well prefer the tame correct paintings of the Flemish school to the erroneous, but sublime animations of the Roman pencil.’

‘Sir,’ replied I, ‘your present observation is just, when there are shining virtues and minute defects; but when it appears that great vices are opposed in the same mind to as extraordinary virtues, such a character deserves contempt.’

‘Perhaps,’ cried he, ‘there may be some such monsters as you describe, of great vices joined to great virtues; yet in my progress through life, I never yet found one instance of their existence: on the contrary, I have ever perceived, that where the mind was capacious, the affections were good. And indeed Providence seems kindly our friend in this particular, thus to debilitate the understanding where the heart is corrupt, and diminish the power where there is the will to do mischief. This rule seems to extend even to other animals: the little vermin race are ever treacherous, cruel, and cowardly, whilst those endowed with strength and power are generous, brave, and gentle.’ (77, 78)

The less kind I found Fortune at one time, the most I expected from her another; and now being at the bottom of the wheel, every new revolution might lift, but could not depress me. (111)

“I ask pardon, my darling,” returned I; “but I was going to observe, that wisdom makes but a slow defense against trouble, though at last a sure one.” (130)

“Our happiness, my dear,” I would say, “is in the power of One who can bring it about in a thousand unforeseen ways, that mock our foresight.” (140)

“Oh, my children, if you could but learn to commune with your own hearts and know what noble company you can make them, you would little regard the elegance and splendor of the worthless. (143)

“Almost all men have been taught to call life a passage, and themselves the travellers. The similitude still may be improved when we observe that the good are joyful and serene, like travellers that are going towards home; the wicked but by intervals happy, like travellers that are going into exile.” (143)

“With such reflections I laboured to become chearful; but cheerfulness was never yet produced by effort, which is itself painful.” (152)

The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man that comes to relieve it. (186)

For the book, click HERE.

The Lessons of Dracula

“I vant to drink your blood.” No, that’s not in the famous Bram Stoker book Dracula, nor is it necessarily the subtext of a certain contemporary individual’s political rallies that, nonetheless, do feature the color red. If you haven’t ever read Dracula, you’ve missed out on a great experience. It’s an extremely well done story, and it’s not even very explicit or gory, at least to a modern sensibility. It’s just an engaging suspense story.

I’ve come to think of classic literary monster tales as great metaphors for the most difficult challenges we face. You can find deep insight in Beowulf, in how he pursues and takes on the monsters, and in Mary Shelley’s great novel Frankenstein, in how the title character creates one.

In all these stories, in one way or another, we learn about the power of partnership and collaboration. That would be my main takeaway from the account of Count Dracula, who represents a great evil that can’t be defeated by any one person working alone, but can be confronted most effectively by a team of likeminded people in partnership. for a shared purpose. Interestingly, that was Aristotle’s account of what it takes for the greatest human goods. And the morals of the story for us are simple. Be willing to face any challenge. Don’t go it alone. Gather support from people you trust. Then, no matter how daunting the odds, you stand your best chance of success. I recently reported throughout social media on my reading this week of The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas’ wonderful romp amid swordsmen of seventeenth century France. The same lessons came through it as well, loud and clear.

Dracula is cleverly written as entries from various characters’ journals and letters and telegrams. But it’s so well done as to read smoothly and without any confusion. You sample various points of view in a way that enhances the drama and suspense.

My favorite actual quote may be: “As I came along the corridor I saw Mr. Morris looking out of a window.” (248)

Other notable reminders:

“We learn from failure, not success!” (129)

“Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles,; and yet when King Laugh come, he makes them all dance to the tune he play.” (188)

Here was my own pet lunatic—the most pronounced of his type that I had ever met with—talking elemental philosophy, and with the manner of a polished gentleman. (251)

“He is finite, though he is powerful to do much harm and suffers not as we do. But we are strong, each in our purpose; and we are all more strong together.” (337-338)

It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. (344)

“Friend John, to you with so much of experience already—and you too, dear Madam Mina, that are young—here is a lesson: do not ever fear to think.” (364)

And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money! What can it not do when it is properly applied; and what might it do when basely used! (381)

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The Three Musketeers

Wonderful! Amazing! Incredible! Why did I not read this book DECADES ago?

I just finished a first reading of Alexander Dumas' great book The Three Musketeers. And as I read the last word on page 700, I was like the early young Harry Potter readers who wished the book could be twice as long! Friendship. Honor. Courage. Intrigue. The Unknown. Strategy. Unsheathe your swords, my friends! All for One and One for All!

In this story of nonstop action and insights into human nature, you'll be astonished at how well political machinations and tactical deceptions are portrayed. As a reader, you'll come away armed in a new way against the devious schemes of others. In fact, toward the end of the book, we find almost a novel within the novel depicting what may be the greatest villain I've ever come across, and this embodiment of evil is a woman with every physical and spiritual advantage apart from goodness. What burns within her soul makes her powerful beyond anyone's expectation. And you come to wonder whether she can ever be defeated.

The greatest wisdom of the book is in the story's many insights about dealing with Machiavellian characters. How do you protect yourself? How do you prevail? First, with friends, partners, confidants you can trust. And second, well, read the book to find out. I think of it as vastly superior to the thin swill too often published nowadays on navigating the difficulties of a sometimes harsh corporate culture.

Throughout the book there are nuggets of insight to spark your own thinking. I'll append a few below. My pagination is from the Barnes and Noble Classics Edition.

Of one thing I must warn you. Be careful in your comments, here, friends, for one untoward word or careless gesture may require the response demanded by the honor of a gentleman. En Guarde!

For the book, click HERE.

Some sample passages:

Obstacles

A weak obstacle is sometimes sufficient to overthrow a great design. (20)

Fragility

 “I was just reflecting on the rapidity with which the blessings of this world leave us.” (337)

Difficulty

“That is rather difficult, but the merit of all things consists in the difficulty.” (338)

“Eh, gentlemen, let us recon upon accidents! Life is a chapelet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink.” (526)

Fortune

“Fortune is a courtesan; favorable yesterday, she may turn her back tomorrow.” (410)

Opportunity

“Time, dear friend, time brings round opportunity; opportunity is the martingale of man. The more we have ventured, the more we gain, when we know how to wait.” (465)

 Philosophers

“But then, philosopher that you are,” said D’Artagnan, “instruct me, support me. I stand in need of being taught and consoled.” (325)

Advice

“People in general,” he said, “only ask advice not to follow it; or if they do follow it, it is for the sake of having someone to blame for having given it.” (387)

Grandiose Ambition

“I am at the age of extravagant hope, monseigneur,” said D’Artagnan. “There are no extravagant hopes but for fools, monsieur, and you are a man of understanding.” (441)

On Too Many Public Speakers

He not only talked much, but he talked loudly, little caring, we must render him that justice, whether anybody listened to him or not. He talked for the pleasure of talking and for the pleasure of hearing himself talk. (91)

Wisdom and Energy

Toward the end of Thomas Hardy’s wild and wonderful story, The Mayor of Casterbridge, the title character reflects on what he’s come to think of as a trick the gods play on us: When we’re old enough to have the wisdom to do great things, we no longer have the energy it takes to do them. And thus the big things we need most rarely get accomplished by us.

We can call this phenomenon the principle of “Wisdom-Energy Age Reversal,” or WEAR.

In our youth, we’re full of energy, or what Hardy refers to as “zest,” but we have very little worldly wisdom to guide our abundant capacity to act. Then, by the time that many decades of experience may have schooled us well in the ways of wisdom, we lack our early measure of energy to achieve the things we have come to see would be great. This is why so many of the big things that do get accomplished in the world seem to lack an appropriate measure of wisdom, and why the old and wise among us are much more apt just to critique and complain than to actually rectify the many wrongs around us. It's a principle that indirectly counsels us to enter into partnerships and collaborations that span the spectrum of age.

I love Hardy’s books, largely for his characters and his masterful storytelling. But he’s often thought of as a pessimist, and this principle on wisdom and age can explain at least a portion of that worldview. Given the fact that he wrote a century and a half ago, I’d say that this part of his philosophy at least might be said to WEAR well, on into our day.

For a truly enchanting story that displays the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as food for thought and that shows, among many other things, how secrets and lies never provide a sound path in life, read this delightful book.

To find it, click HERE.

The Wrong Road to Success

A Sentimental Education.

Decently smart people can do indecently stupid things. An intelligent and attractive young man from a country town near Paris moves to the city to find wealth, fame, and love. But it never seems to occur to him that he might have to do or be something of merit in order to deserve any of these things.

Frederic Moreau becomes a clever manipulator of others to further his own aims, and demonstrates what a life is like with no inner core or reliable sense of what’s right. He’s fickle, undependable, and greedy. He falls in love with a married woman more than once and finds himself living parallel secret lives with his various lady friends, all in his efforts to advance his own interests in fortune and status. Revolutionary events begin to swirl around him and it’s never certain who can be trusted. Ambition drives everyone else in his circles as much as it does him. Lust and despair alternate in his life, causing giddiness one minute, and grim hopelessness the next. When he does come into money, he wastes it on showy extravagances to impress those around him as he seeks to heal an inner need that can never be satisfied in such a way.

At the end of the story, he sits with his one remaining friend, the companion of his youth who had become a lawyer in order to prevail in politics, and they reflect on their lives.

<<They'd both been failures, the one who'd dreamed of Love and the one who'd dreamed of Power. How had it come about?

"Perhaps it was lack of perseverance?" said Frederic.

"For you maybe. For me, it was the other way round, I was too rigid, I didn't take into account a hundred and one smaller things that are more crucial than all the rest. I was too logical and you were too sentimental."

Then they blamed it on their bad luck, the circumstances, the times in which they'd been born.>> (462)

Frederic never came to realize the inner man he had neglected to his own great detriment. He never understood the role of character or true commitment in life or love. And in that blind spot, he prefigures many in our own time.

The Joy of Minds Together

Looking back over the past 30 years as a public speaker, I've enjoyed every audience for its own distinctive merits. I love the small groups for the intense intimacy and give and take. I love the medium sized groups of a few hundred for the ways in which the chemistry in the room works. I love the bigger groups of 2,000-5,000-10,000 for their immense emotional waves of resonance and the sense of helping so many focus at once on things that matter. One idea in 10,000 minds at one moment, in the same room, is an amazing experience. Here's a photo I just found. I have no idea who it is. But it's the sort of room that I would always view in advance, to anticipate the challenge, opportunity, and energy on tap. Before getting on the stage, I'd silently pray for every person, and then go philosophize with them. My goal has always been to plant seeds that would begin to germinate right away, and produce unexpectedly great fruit for years to come.

So, whenever I’m in someone else’s audience, I try to make myself good soil for the great seeds that they may seek to plant. And if I experience with them the joy, I try to contact them with appreciation and perhaps a story. Teachers should be lifelong learners. And philosophers always welcome partners. Thanks to any of you who have shared the experience of ideas with me. And if you haven’t, yet ever want to, I’d warmly welcome your thoughts! We are greater together than we are apart.

Greatness, Danger, and Courage

Like most people, I knew of the author Antoine de Saint-Exupery because of his famous petite children’s book The Little Prince. I had to laugh today when I went back to re read this small prose poem many years after I first encountered it, and thought anew that it read like it had been written by someone under the influence of ample and exotic pharmaceuticals. But it’s sold over 140 million copies worldwide and is often described as one of the most beloved books of the twentieth century. It turns out that it isn’t the only book inspired by his years as a pilot flying from Europe to Africa and across other parts of the globe in the early days of manned flight.

I had never read any of Saint-Exupery’s other books until now. His memoir Wind, Sand, and Stars is stunningly exceptional. If you had asked me whether I might be interested in a book about early airline pilots delivering the mail and an occasional passenger between France and Northern Africa in the 1920s and 30s, I would have thought that to be a little far afield of my normal fascinations and concerns. But what a surprise! This is a book about adventure and life. It’s about fear and courage and commitment. It’s about focus and meaning and love. It’s about making our way through a world that’s often terribly harsh and then also lovely beyond words. It’s about our nature and our condition. As I read, it occurred to me that the book would be an ideal companion read to my own short novel, The Oasis Within, due to not only their shared stories about the Egyptian desert, but also their truly surprising overlap in deeper themes and insights.

Saint-Exupery sees all of us as something like the dispossessed members of a royal family, a royalty of the spirit that too many of us have left behind and sadly forgotten as we make our way in the world. He sees a spark of greatness in us that we need to fan into the flames that are meant for us, within our souls. You find this view intimated in several passages and informing many others. In one place, he’s reflecting on the life of a slave who has been kidnapped into service and is happily doing his job well. Saint-Exupery writes:

<<This man before me is not weighed down with chains. How little need he has of them! How faithful he is! How submissively he forswears the deposed king within him!>> (110)

In a later part of the book, we come across this statement:

<<If a particular religion, or culture, or scale of values, if one form of activity rather than another, brings self-fulfillment to a man, releases the prince asleep within him unknown to himself, then that scale of values, that culture, that form of activity, constitute his truth.>> (175)

We are all, in his view, royalty of the spirit. And we too easily lose our feel for this origin and destiny. One stormy morning early in the book, our guide is on his way early to an airfield for what’s to be his first piloted flight with the mail. He’s riding a bus with other men who are going off to their own apparently dreary office jobs in town. He listens in to what strikes him as their banal and mindless chit chat. In it, he catches a glimpse of the prison that is their daily lives and, musing on it, he directs his thoughts to one of the men, addressing him with sympathy and concern:

<<Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as a man. You are not the dweller upon a errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.>> (11)

In another passage on how most people seem to live, he exclaims:

<<How shallow is the stage on which this vast drama of human hates and joys and friendships is played!>> (67)

We shrink our lives from what they could have been, from what they’re meant to be, into a small shadow of their potential. We play out our days in what we consider the safest place we can find to hide, and so we miss the greatness we could have inherited. He says:

<<With more or less awareness, all men feel the need to come alive.>> 219

Our poet pilot believes that our happiness will never be found in solitude, but in community, in friendships and partnerships together. Early on, he remarks:

<<Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in the warmth of human relations.>> (29)

Each of our lives is a part of a bigger picture. And it’s crucial for us to see that picture well.

<<It is only when we become conscious of our part in life, however modest, that we shall be happy. Only then will we be able to live in peace and die in peace, for only this lends meaning to life and to death.>> (222)

Some of Saint-Exupery’s deepest insights are to be found in his remarks on danger, fear, and courage. He first thinks of danger not as just a feature of flying in his time, be as a pervasive truth about the world and mentioning the desert bandits, or razzia, to be encountered in North Africa, he says:

<<We might believe ourselves secure; and yet, illness, accident, razzia—how many dangers were afoot! Man inhabits the earth, a target for secret marksmen.>> (92)

No matter what we confront in this life, our philosopher believes we can handle it. He even thinks that the extreme concepts of horror or terror never apply within the immediacy of experience, but only after the fact, and on the part of those who merely see or hear about the dangerous or harrowing incident that can be lived through with courage. He says, aphoristically:

<<Horror does not manifest itself in the world of reality.>> (49)

He always says:

<<Nothing is unbearable. Tomorrow, and the day after, I should learn that nothing was really unbearable.>> (147)

In fact, he views our hardships as providing a necessary condition for our deepest and highest growth. He writes:

<<But men are like this: slowly but surely, ordeal fortifies their virtues.>> (197)

He also believes that danger can bring us together in a distinctive way. He’s seen it and lived it. In fact, the deepest friendships evolve over time and endurance and memory:

<<Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.>> (27)

Saint-Exupery believes that we best make it through the hardest challenges and the worst situations by means of a focus that will not be shaken. One of his friends, a man named Guillaumet, had survived a harrowing ordeal and Saint-Exupery was subsequently offended that some journalists portrayed the man as if he were something like a careless insouciant rebel who merely laughed at danger. He saw his friend’s approach to the traumatic much more deeply. He says to us:

<<There exists a quality which is nameless. It may be gravity, but the word does not satisfy me, for the quality I have in mind can be accompanied by the most cheerful gaiety. It is the quality of the carpenter face to face with his block of wood. He handles it, he takes its measure. Far from treating it frivolously, he summons all his professional virtues to do it honor.>> (30)

This is the focus that allows us to move forward in the worst circumstances. He quotes his friend Guillaumet himself as having said, “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.” (38)

Saint-Exupery writes:

<<And I thought: If we were to talk to him about his courage, Guillaumet would shrug his shoulders. But it would be just as false to extol his modesty. His place is far beyond that mediocre virtue.

 If he shrugs his shoulders, it is because he is no fool. He knows that once men are caught up in an event they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

 Especially if it is scrutinized with Guillaumet’s lucid gravity. Guillaumet’s courage is in the main the product of his honesty. But even this is not his fundamental quality. His moral greatness consists in his sense of responsibility. He knew that he was responsible for himself, for the mails, for the fulfillment of the hopes of his comrades. He was holding in his hands their sorrow and their joy.>> (39)

In all things, we can grow through our ordeals shared with our fellows, through the bad times and the good. Finally our advisor says of another friend named Mermoz and the craft of flying, or any craft in our lives:

<<This, then, is the moral taught us by Mermoz and his kind. We understand better, because of him, that what constitutes the dignity of a craft is that it creates a fellowship, that it binds men together and fashions for them a common language. For there is one veritable problem—the problem of human relations.

<<We forget that there is no hope of joy except in human relations. If I summon up those memories that have left me an enduring savor, if I draw up the balance sheet of the hours in my life that have truly counted, surely I find only those that no wealth could have procured me. True riches cannot be bought. One cannot buy the friendship of a Mermoz, of a companion to whom one is bound forever by ordeals suffered in common. There is no buying the night flight with its hundred thousand stars, its serenity, its few hours of sovereignty. It is not money that can procure for us that new vision of the world won through hardship—those trees, flowers, women, those treasures made fresh by the dew and color of life which the dawn restores to us, this concert of little things that sustain us and constitute our compensation.>> (27-28)

But I quote too much. The book overflows with poetic insight into the deepest truths of our lives. I recommend it highly.

For the book, click HERE.

The Ambiguities of Language

I was googling something about top public speakers today, focusing on various popular keynote speakers (my competition), and came across a Google question on my screen that gave me pause:

<<What are the best small speakers?>>

I thought, "Really? That's a thing?" I had instant visions of little people on stages all over America. I remembered one five year old boy in the news years ago who was a fiery gospel preacher.

Then I suddenly realized I had transitioned into the audio/stereo section of Google Results. Oh, Ok. Speakers. Yeah, I see. Klipsch. JBL. Sony.

And of course, this happens all the time in business and life. We hear something different from what was intended and then we keep running down that path without checking to make sure we heard it right or interpreted it as it was intended. Natural languages are useful tools, and are among the most useful we have. But we have to be aware of how we're using our words, and of how others might be using theirs. Context can be misleading. Perhaps even the smallest of speakers would urge caution as another useful tool.

Setting Goals: The Uncommon Advice

Aim High! Dream Big! Set Bold Audacious Goals!

We hear this a lot. But when we examine effective goal setting, we see something that hardly ever gets mentioned.

For every dream-goal, there should be do-goals. Ok, you want to make a million dollars, or 10, or climb Everest, or be the Number One person in your company or field, garner acclaim as Teacher of the Year, or have a book of yours on a bestseller list. That's fine. And with such an aspiration, you have a dream-goal that's big and impressive but does not depend wholly on you for its attainment. It requires the free choices of others to make it happen. Are they going to buy your book in mass numbers? Will they work hard enough to match you or outperform you in your professional metrics?

A dream-goal is big and not utterly within your control. A do-goal, by contrast, is the opposite. It's within your control, to the extent that anything can be said to be. For example, you can't guarantee for yourself 5 sales today. But you can do something to help make that happen. You can set a do-goal of 20 calls to qualified referrals. Or if your dreams are literary, you can set a do-goal of writing a certain number of days a week, and averaging 3 pages a day.

In our time, we're encouraged by all the people who most want to take your money to set and announce to others impressive goals, when we really need to be setting immersive goals—goals that get us down in the weeds of everyday life, where real success gets planted and grows, through our own ministrations. So, yeah, Ok, think big and strategic, but also think small and tactical.

Make sure your goals are rooted in self knowledge, situational knowledge, and represent the right values, being good for others as well as for you. And don't neglect all the dimensions of your life outside work. Pascal taught me that we need physical goals, intellectual goals, and spiritual goals, because we live life on all three levels. Career goals are fine and important but should not be our only goals.

Just let proper goal setting be your ongoing goal.