Pause

We live in some pretty remarkable times. Your smartphone is more powerful than any computer President Reagan had at his disposal. 

We can launch businesses while nestled in a corner booth at a coffee shop. 

And its easier than ever to start a campaign, community, or movement. 

But with greater opportunity also comes heightened risk and the need to pause before stimulus and response. 

Your Tweets, Posts, and comments are now there for posterity. A reactive moment, which reveals our less than best selves reminds us of our humanity but also of the need to take personal inventory before responding.

Take a moment, however hard, to pause before making a tough decision, reacting to the driver that cut you off in traffic, or posting your thoughts on a particular topic. 

Try coming back to the matter a few minutes, hours, or even a day after and see if you feel differently. 

In time, you develop the capacity to be led by reason rather than emotion. 

The Importance of Talking to Strangers

A year ago I found myself in Ljubljana, Slovenia of all places. As I approached a busy intersection, I asked a young woman on a white Vespa what I could expect to see if I kept walking. 

“Not much,” she said. “How long have you been here?” she asked. 

“A few hours,” I explained. 

“You’ve probably already seen everything,” she said, as I laughed. “I can show you around if you like.” 

Her name was Nina and she was a 26-year old teacher originally from a neighboring town. She had a beautiful abandonment of heart, a love of life that is a common hallmark of youth but hers was different. I sensed it would remain with her for the rest of her life. She reverberated with life almost as loud as her white scooter as we sped down narrow streets.

I told her how the last time I was on the back of a stranger’s scooter was while living in Shanghai as an English teacher. I was returning home from the bars on Maoming Lu one evening, watching the cab’s meter carefully, planning to be let off just before the fair exceeded the coins in my pocket. When I was finally dropped off I still had a mile and half to go at nearly 3:00 in the morning.

I noticed a man about to get on his motorcycle and somehow communicated I needed a ride. He rubbed his fingers together indicating money, I pointed to my fake Rolex watch, he gestured back to the bike and off we went. 

Never was so much said in so few words.

There I was, a 24-year old punk kid, riding on the back of a stranger’s motorcycle in one of the world’s greatest cities just a few hours before the sun would rise. And now, over a decade later I’d come nearly full circle.

We zipped past buildings and parks that Nina admittedly had very little knowledge of. “I can’t really tell you what these places are,” she shouted back to me. We made conversation, alternating which side to scream back to one another as we moved nimbly through traffic. 

Soon we found a spot just outside the Gallery of Modern Art. We sat across from each other and spoke spiritedly about Haruki Murakami, Maslow, travel, relationships, and what I could not miss before I left.

She also mentioned that Slovenians were not a patriotic people echoing exactly what Jurij had told me in the apartment just a few hours before. We don’t have that problem, I thought.

Soon it was time for Nina to run some errands. We agreed to meet up later in the evening. She wanted to introduce me to some of her friends and I suggested bringing Jurij along as well. We hugged as I thanked her for her kindness and generosity. 

“No problem,” she said as she put on her shiny white helmet. “You should always talk to strangers,” she said. 

I was sure glad I had.

A Mentor Like No Other

From the first moment I touched down in South Africa I kept hearing the name of a woman. “You have to meet her!  If not for Phumla there would be no Chintsa,” people declared.  

Who was this woman? I began to wonder. And how could one person play such an influential role in the lives of one community?

She could not have stood more than five feet tall and walked with a slight hitch in her step. Yet, what she lacked in physical stature she made up for with towering respect.  

In this school where teacher apathy was rampant and resources scarce she was the one figure I saw kids in all grades approach for help. Moments after finally meeting her, I too was a believer. 

In large part to Phumla’s efforts the Amathole District Municipality in East London had collaborated with Chintsa East to provide Waste-to-energy and renewable resources to this small K-8 school.  Compost consisting of vegetable, pig, and human waste was used to provide heat for the school’s stoves.  

Drinking water was reclaimed and used to properly flush toilets that were at one time a sanitation headache.  

Finally, rainwater collected in two man-made basins was used to water the school’s cherished garden.

I had answered the call for service many times but my time watching Phumla was different. I learned the artistry of caring. I admired how she saw people as opportunities rather than problems.  

She also taught me that a life of service was an honorable calling. I had never heard of Chintsa Village or even East London before my journey to South Africa. I would have never known about Phumla’s work had I not taken a chance to visit this part of the world.  

Yet, Phumla is not the only person in the world doing important work in her community. There are many like-minded and courageous people ready to meet you and offer their mentorship. The key is to take that first bold step.  

As a friend once observed, “You’d be surprised what you can get in life if you just ask.”

The Day You Become Complacent is the Day You Die

"If I am through learning, I am through." - John Wooden

There is more than one type of death. There is the kind never debated where hearts cease and breath no longer flows from our airways. 

Then there is the slow kind. The type of demise that is gradual and more subtle. We continue to physically inhabit time and space but with a dormant soul.

There are many people who look to be living but in actuality divorced themselves from life long ago. They are no longer immersed in living but enduring it.

I recently spoke with a family friend at a holiday dinner who told me he saw no point in getting up in the morning. He'd retired recently and no longer felt any sense of purpose. 

His remark made me think of the observation German writer Wolfgang Von Goethe once made:

"If you wish to draw pleasure out of life,
You must attach value to the world."

Too often we lose that value when what we allowed to define our very being diminishes, evolves, or disappears all together. With careful and deliberate introspection we discover it wasn't who we were to begin with but rather something we did. The human experience is far to complex and nuanced to be defined by one or any thing. 

One can't be casual when engaging with the world. It requires a commitment to serve, to grow, and to pursue not just learning but wisdom. The first helps at cocktail parties while the latter makes us better at life.

The Trouble with Great Books

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” ― Groucho Marx

We read to remind ourselves we're not alone. When we come across the right passage while flipping through the pages of a book there's a moment, however fleeting, that someone somewhere understands us better than we know ourselves. 

When we highlight, doggy-ear, or write about a feeling we were convinced no one else ever felt we're given a reprieve from our isolation.

But books can also inhibit us from sharing the insights we know to be true. We fear the likes of Seneca, Montaigne, and Jung have a monopoly on wisdom and as a result hesitate to share our own. 

The key is recognize these people, wise as they may have been, were also just PEOPLE. We musn't allow books, however great, to set boundaries on our curiosity or ability to think for ourselves. 

As Socrates said, "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing." 

Such a proclamation should offer both solace and at the same time be an invitation to share OUR deepest selves.  

The true artistry of conversation as the late Irish poet John O'Donohue observed is when you overhear yourself say something you didn't know you knew.

But we must first give ourselves the opportunity to do so by loving books, while not allowing them to place borders on our minds.

Someone Somewhere Understands

"What one society judged to be strange, another might more sensibly welcome as normal. Other lands may return to us a sense of possibility stamped out by provincial arrogance; they encourage us to grow more acceptable to ourselves." - Alain de Botton

I used to take a great deal of pride in my brooding. It sounds ridiculous but I once believed the obstacles and worries I felt were unique only to me. No one could identify with my complexity, my subtleties, what made me tick. 

Comical.

It takes a great deal of courage to be vulnerable. We risk ridicule or judgement. But sharing our pain can liberate us from the shame or embarrassment we may feel. 

I've heard it said that on the other side of fear is freedom. Only it's not about denouncing that fear but learning to co-exist with it and not allowing it to define us. 

When we search for the friend or community of people who we can talk openly to we have the great fortune of stumbling across those who know seem to know us better than we do. We take solace in that connection and find the freedom to offer what Montaigne called our "true portrait."

My hope is that 2018 is the year you feel empowered to share your true portrait and make the effort to connect with a group of people who find profound joy in your perfect strangeness and unconventional view of the world. 

Whatever you are going through know you are far from alone. There are people, lots, who can identify with whatever you are feeling. To think otherwise is short-sighted, perhaps even a bit self-indulgent. 

There are 7 billion people on the planet and thousands of years of human history. One should take enormous comfort that someone somewhere feels your struggle, your heartache.

By sharing our stories we can empower others through our experiences and make the world a little smaller. Isolation after all perpetuates our pain.

Find your tribe and commit to not spending another moment being false to yourself.

A Few Quick Thoughts on Happiness for 2018

I once heard an actor I admired reveal in an interview how he thought happiness was overrated. I remember the journalist sitting across from him nearly collapse, as he sat awestruck by the proclamation. 
   
But in some perverse way I actually understood where the guy was coming from. 

From Socrates to Freud, the remarkably elusive emotional state of well-being has been poked, prodded, and dissected for literally thousands of years. What is happiness and how do we all get more of it?

The most poignant observation of happiness I've heard in recent memory came from author and TV host, Rabbi Shmuley who said, "Happiness is a byproduct of living a life of meaning." 

In other words, happiness is not something you can actively pursue but rather the result of doing work YOU believe to be worthwhile.

Whatever your theory on attaining more mental contentment can we call agree there are a few vital ingredients to happiness?

Lucky for us, the ancient Greek Philosopher Epicurus thought so. 

Epicurus was born on the Greek island of Samos, roughly 270 miles from Athens. Perhaps best known for giving us words like, wait for it, "Epicurean," which refers to a person devoted exclusively to pleasure, the philosopher was also known for establishing schools and contributing his prolific doctrines on hedonism, pleasure, and materialism. 

But what did his philosophy entail exactly and is it accurate, or even fair to link Epicurus with only sensuality and self-indulgence? 

Or was there more to it?   

Unlike Socrates, whose main pursuits lied in uncovering the sturdy tenets of logic and sound argument, Epicurus's feelings on happiness evolved into appreciating something many of us already have but tend to overlook.

As Alain de Botton points out in, Consolations of Philosophy Epicurus valued the following above all else:

1. Friendship

2. Freedom

3. Thought

"Wealth is of course unlikely to ever make anyone miserable. But the crux of Epicurus's argument is that if we have money without friends, freedom and an analyzed life, we will never be truly happy. And if we have them, but are missing the fortune, we will never be unhappy."

Unfortunately, marketing, television, and even the circles we choose to surround ourselves with don't help a great deal in promoting those simple treasures. 

Instead, we believe material possessions to be valid solutions to wants we don't fully comprehend. 

In other words, we fail to understand our complexity, our delicate subtleties and as result look outside rather than in. 

Start 2018 by looking closer to the friends, freedom, and capacity for resourceful thought already at your fingertips.