Kyle Maynard reminds us what awesome looks like

Eric Johnson

I met Kyle Maynard briefly when he came to his freshman orientation at my university ten years ago. I was running the program at the time and have met thousands of students over my twenty-plus years working in higher education. But Kyle remains one of the most memorable and remarkable students I have encountered. He wouldn’t remember me, but he is unforgettable.

I knew of him even before he arrived on campus. I had read his admissions application and knew he had lived a remarkable life already at such a young age. Kyle was born without full arms and legs. Yet he had an extraordinary record of accomplishment throughout high school, including success as a member of his school’s wrestling team.

College orientation is filled with self-conscious freshmen nervously finding their way. Awkward moments abound. However, I watched Kyle light up every room he entered that day. He was gregarious and confident and eager to put others at ease. He moved in and out of his wheelchair and was the center of attention at the orientation dinner party. This young man, born without arms and legs, seemed more able and mature than his peers.

I sat next to Kyle at one of the orientation lectures. The speaker was the head of food services, and he was explaining the biometric scanners that controlled access to the dining halls. He launched into his usual joke that with the hand scanners, students would always have access to enter the dining halls even without their ID card, and he’d never heard a student complain that he had “forgotten his hand”.

Kyle leaned over to me and said, “Well, I guess he’s never met me.” And then he smiled and laughed.

Kyle has gone on to become an author and speaker and life adventurer. I was reminded of him recently when Tim Ferriss shared this amazing video about Kyle’s attempt to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

Most of us cannot imagine living Kyle’s life. Watch this video and let the petty complaints we have and lame excuses we make get crushed by the remarkable life Kyle is living. Thanks for being awesome, Kyle!

Begin now

Eric Johnson

Ira Glass did an interview with Lifehacker filled with details about how he works, his routines and tools. It’s a worthwhile read for insight into how such a prolific creator gets things done.

His final response is a compelling call to action for anyone who wants to make something:

Don’t wait for permission to make something that’s interesting or amusing to you. Just do it now. Don’t wait. Find a story idea, start making it, give yourself a deadline, show it to people who’ll give you notes to make it better. Don’t wait till you’re older, or in some better job than you have now. Don’t wait for anything. Don’t wait till some magical story idea drops into your lap. That’s not where ideas come from. Go looking for an idea and it’ll show up. Begin now. Be a fucking soldier about it and be tough. –Ira Glass

ht  Grant Huhn

No place like home

Eric Johnson

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Photo by lwpkommunikacio on Flickr

I delight in being in and around water. It’s a soul-satisfying joy to have my feet in the sand while gazing toward the horizon across the ocean. That first plunge into a swimming pool, wet and weightless, is bliss. Jumping waves with my kids or dangling my feet off a dock by the lake – so good. The feel of the sun on my skin with the sound of water rippling nearby uncoils pent up tension. I even welcome rain – mist or torrent, daylong downpour or quick storm. It somehow pitches me back into the real world.

The genuine comforts of touching the real world can get submerged in the artificial world most of us live in day to day.

Our time here is short. Heartbreak could be around the corner. Or joy. But this place is home and we should accept what is and immerse ourselves fully in the human experience. Too often we yearn to be somewhere other than here and now, or we live for what we hope will be some eternal reward. But life before death, that’s the challenge, that’s what is before us every day, every moment.

We are not strangers in a strange land, set apart from nature. We are of this world no matter how much we attempt to disconnect from it. Put your bare feet on the grass and know that you are in your element. Wade in the water; walk in the rain. Breathe in and breathe out in full awareness of the life force of this incredible planet. There’s no place like home.

Drew Dudley and “lollipop moments”

Eric Johnson

Life can turn in a moment. A seemingly small gesture, an act of simple kindness, can make a big difference. In a world of people busy distracting themselves, being present and attentive and kind has become a superpower. You can be a hero for others just by paying attention and caring.

I was reminded of Drew Dudley’s excellent TED Talk today and sent it to my student staff. It’s a call to be excellent in the little things that make up what he calls “everyday leadership”, to be kind and present and to acknowledge those who have made a difference for you. Awaken possibilities where you can and pay forward the kindness you have received. Consider the “lollipop moment” that inspired Dudley’s talk:

Dudley is a terrific speaker with a simple, yet powerful message. It doesn’t take much to be a transformational leader. No titles or degrees are required. No need to seek permission. Just look for opportunities, no matter how small, to be helpful and to be kind.

And what if you thanked those who created lollipop moments for you?

Consider picking one day each week to find someone to thank – Thankful Thursday, maybe. Call or write a note or send a text, whatever works for you. Think of a teacher or former colleague or an old friend or family member. Even a random acquaintance who might not know you personally or even remember your shared moment would appreciate being thanked.

“We celebrate birthdays where all you have to do is not die for 365 days, and yet we let people who have made our lives better walk around without knowing it.”

–Drew Dudley

And just thanking someone for a possibly forgotten lollipop moment might create a new lollipop moment given back to the original giver. You can change the world – which really just means changing a person’s world – simply by creating meaningful moments, moments of kindness and hope and courage.

 

Keep it simple, make it clear

Eric Johnson

A story from Ken Segall’s book, Insanely Simple, about his experience as part of the advertising team working with Apple:

At one agency meeting with Steve Jobs, we were reviewing the content of a proposed iMac commercial when a debate arose about how much we should say in the commercial. The creative team was arguing that it would work best if the entire spot was devoted to describing the one key feature of this particular iMac. Steve, however, had it in his head that there were four or five really important things to say. It seemed to him that all of those copy points would fit comfortably in a thirty-second spot.
After debating the issue for a few minutes, it didn’t look like Steve was going to budge. That’s when a little voice started to make itself heard inside the head of Lee Clow, leader of the Chiat team. He decided this would be a good time to give Steve a live demonstration.
Lee tore five sheets of paper off of his notepad (yes, notepad—Lee was laptop-resistant at the time) and crumpled them into five balls. Once the crumpling was complete, he started his performance.
“Here, Steve, catch,” said Lee, as he tossed a single ball of paper across the table. Steve caught it, no problem, and tossed it back.
“That’s a good ad,” said Lee.
“Now catch this,” he said, as he threw all five paper balls in Steve’s direction. Steve didn’t catch a single one, and they bounced onto the table and floor.
“That’s a bad ad,” said Lee.
I hadn’t seen that one before, so I rather enjoyed it. And it was pretty convincing proof: The more things you ask people to focus on, the fewer they’ll remember. Lee’s argument was that if we want to give people a good reason to check out an iMac, we should pick the most compelling feature and present it in the most compelling way.

Keep it simple. I often struggle with a “kitchen sink” approach when I speak, wanting to throw in everything that might be useful. But what is most important and how can I make that stick? What do I need to cut so that I can give more attention to what matters most? Make it clear.

And consider how many people use Powerpoint and fill their slides with multiple points. Lots of points, no power. One point per slide is much more effective.

Kill the bullet points. Hone your idea to the essentials, and craft your message with simplicity and clarity.

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My purpose

Eric Johnson

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My friend Megan was challenged in a sermon to ask three people she admires to answer this: “Why did God place you on earth, and what is your purpose?” So, she emails me with these questions. Of course, I’m honored that someone as wholehearted and bright as Megan is admires me and thought to ask me this question. I’m actually delighted by the challenge of thinking this through and writing down my thoughts. And I’m so overwhelmed by the question to have put this response off for many weeks. Sorry, Megan.

This is one of THE big questions, if not the biggest. “What’s your purpose?” Anyone who’s confident about their answer probably hasn’t given it enough thought.

At the moment (I’ll probably have a different answer next week) here’s my answer:

I don’t feel I was “placed” on earth. I used to feel I was here on purpose, carefully placed in time and space as part of a grand master plan. I no longer think that. Over time I’ve come to appreciate the overwhelming size of space and the phenomenal length of time, and I’ve realized our tiny, brief little lives don’t amount to much in the context of the universe as we now know it. (Insert existential angst here.)

I don’t imagine reality being a story that I am a character in. Instead, I feel more like a lucky winner of the biological lottery. To be a human born on Earth in the 20th century in a prosperous country to a remarkably happy family… That’s great good fortune.

While I used to find comfort in imagining I was designed for some divine purpose, it also was a burdensome thought. It was on me to figure out that purpose, to search for a calling that I was expected to pursue, to play a set role. And if I didn’t figure it out and play along I would risk mis-living my life.

What if my purpose simply is to fulfill my potential as a human being? What is a bird’s purpose? Or a tree’s? We humans, though, are blessed and cursed with a brain complex enough to ponder this and torment ourselves with too much thinking.

My purpose is to be the best human I can be, to live in harmony with the reality of the universe we find ourselves in. Harmony is the key, I think. Move in sync with the rhythm of life. Go with the flow of the way things are and resist only what is contrary to our nature and to our well-being and the well-being of others.

We are rational creatures – or we’re supposed to be – and we have an affinity for connection with each other and for an appreciation of beauty and meaningful patterns. Reason and rhyme. Truth and beauty.

I’m making it my purpose to live an excellent life, filled with truth and beauty and kindness.

What does that look like every day, though? How do I make my way through the daily dilemmas and mind-numbing monotony and the regular heartbreaks, big and small, of a typical human life?

I don’t know. I get a fresh start every day, though. Some days are just going to suck. Move on and try to make the next one better.

To be awake and aware in such a grand and incomprehensibly vast universe should be delight enough for me. And knowing how small I am in the big picture should ease the angst of worrying that I need to be a big deal and do big things for some higher purpose. Ambition is overrated. Living a good life is aspiration enough for anyone.

“Consider the lilies”, right? Maybe humans should play along with the rest of nature and fulfill our role without so much strain and thinking and worry.

Be happy and kind. Enjoy each day as much as you can. Do work you love, and if you can’t love your work, do it well anyway. Be as authentic a human as you can be, in the ways you move and think and work and play. Align your life with truth and beauty and seek to understand and express those values as well as you can.

The path is the goal. The climb, the quest, the narrative arc is an illusion, or at least a mismatched metaphor. This step, this moment is your life. Make it excellent.

“A man’s job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul.”–Leroy Percy

“To live your brief life rightly, isn’t that enough?”–Marcus Aurelius

Just getting started

Eric Johnson

Kevin Kelly has a post on Medium today that is a terrific kick in the pants for anyone who’s thinking all the good ideas have already been taken.

I’ve pondered before that things are just now getting good, that we are just getting started on our greatness.

Kelly posits the same thought, especially related to the internet and the snowball of technology our generation is starting to get rolling:

So, the truth: Right now, today, in 2014 is the best time to start something on the internet. There has never been a better time in the whole history of the world to invent something. There has never been a better time with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit/risk ratios, better returns, greater upside, than now. Right now, this minute. This is the time that folks in the future will look back at and say, “Oh to have been alive and well back then!”

We are living in a golden age of human history. It’s easy to be distracted by bad news and worries about the future. But we’ve got it so good compared to every generation prior to this one. The challenge before us is to imagine without limits the possibilities of what we can do and who we can become?

If not now, when? If not you, who?

Be audacious. Dream big. And take action. Let’s get something started that will make the wonders of this moment seem like a mere stepping stone to the glorious age to come.

 

Courtesy and kindness

Eric Johnson

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Kindness is the king of virtues.

Rage can win headlines and whip a crowd into a frenzy. A stadium roars in approval when a coach goes on a rampage against an official. A politician’s poll numbers will rise if she goes off on a sanctimonious rant against an opponent in a debate. “Look how tough I am” is often the message. Ego is at stake.

Anger is loud. Kindness is quiet.

It’s easy to give in to anger. It’s a powerful emotion. That’s why defaulting to kindness and courtesy, especially when righteous anger seems justified, when someone has done you wrong, requires great strength and genuine courage. Whenever I have snapped at someone (which, truly, does not happen often), the regret is immediate and painful.

Next time I feel I’m losing my temper or itching to rant, I need to catch myself in the act and find the strength to observe the emotion rather than venting it.

 

The near win

Eric Johnson

Reaching a goal can derail you. Accomplish it and then what? New goals, I suppose. But a life built around systems and process and thoughtful routines will bring more excellence and more consistent satisfaction than the ups and downs of goal-setting.

There’s something transcendent about striving, reaching for what you know may actually be unreachable. It keeps you hungry and sharp and makes you open to change and growth.

Success is an ending, and can leave you feeling lost on a regular basis. Mastery, though, is a pursuit. It’s a journey, not a destination.

I enjoyed this brief TED Talk by art historian Sarah Lewis, who champions the merits of the “near win”, of falling short, yet, or consequently, continuing to strive and improve and ending up further along than success would have propelled you.

Seeing this resurrects the desire in me to find some sideline activity that I can pursue in an attempt to achieve mastery. A hobby or craft or physical discipline that has no end other than a path of excellence.

By the way, I appreciated Lewis’s speaking style. Her stage presence is not effusive, not charismatic, and not quite conversational. But she’s quietly solid and impressively clear. It seems like it’s more of a spoken-word essay than a talk, but it works for her. This seems like who she is, and she clearly cares about what she’s saying and what she’s learned.

Seeing her on stage reminds me that there is no one best way for speakers to connect. Well, there is one way, and that is authenticity. That works for every speaker.

Daring in design, cautious in execution

Eric Johnson

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I’m reading Titan, Ron Chernow’s massive biography of John D. Rockefeller. Early in Rockefeller’s career, his approach to business is described as “daring in design, cautious in execution.”

That’s a good motto for undertaking any endeavor. Be bold with your vision. Go where no one has gone. Go bigger. Go better. Have the courage to be audacious with your plan.

Then pursue that vision with care and meticulous attention to detail. Be patient and plodding, even, as you painstakingly nurture and craft the small things that are necessary to make your big plan truly daring and worth talking about.

Apple works this way. Their vision is bold. They want to change the world with their products. But they are conservative with their execution, famous for patiently and secretly refining and iterating, unwilling to release anything that doesn’t meet their high standards, even if profit is assured.

The big picture is crucial, and having a daring goal can spark action and unleash possibilities previously unimagined. But it’s the execution – the follow-through and the commitment to the countless difficult decisions and unglamorous hours honing and reworking the details – that determines the destiny of the dream.

Dream your big dreams. Open to a blank page and put down those daring, scary ideas. Commit to the vision that most delights you, and then get busy doing the deep, detailed work necessary to make that dream fulfill its promise.

Inspiration will jilt you. Move on without it.

Eric Johnson

From Erin Rooney Doland‘s chapter in the excellent book, Manage Your Day-to-Day:

Leigh Michaels, prolific author of more than eighty romance novels, once said that “waiting for inspiration to write is like standing at the airport waiting for a train.” Conditions to produce one’s craft are rarely ideal, and waiting for everything to be perfect is almost always an exercise in procrastination.

Inspiration will leave you in the lurch and repeatedly break your heart. You still will love it and long for it and put up with its philandering ways. And you will wait and postpone good things in hopes that it will arrive any moment now.

The best way to summon it is to ignore it, play hard-to-get, and just start doing your work, whether you feel like it or not.

I aim to write something every day. Some days I wait and wait, longing for even a tiny nudge of inspiration, and the day gets late with no love from the muse. Then I just have to start writing something to keep that daily commitment, even if I’m sure what I write will be lame or trite or completely unoriginal. This is one of those posts.

Inspiration did not arrive, but I did.

Rob Lowe and Marcus Aurelius

Eric Johnson

Never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides – it’s another way of saying that there’s no upside to envy.

–Rob Lowe

My wife, Shanna, shared this Rob Lowe quote with me recently. (Yes, that Rob Lowe, the “brat pack” actor you remember from the 80s and more recently of The West Wing TV series.)

That quote is a nice bit of wisdom. When she read it to me I responded that it reminded me of a line I had just read in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.

And Shanna laughed.

She’s got a great laugh. She thought it was funny that she was quoting a Hollywood celebrity, and I was quoting a second century philosopher-king. She’s amused by my eggheaded eccentricities.

We’re a good match, she and I.

It’s a nice reminder that wisdom doesn’t have to be ancient to be meaningful. Nor does it have to come from a sage. And really, everyone, regardless of education or station in life, has a bit of Yoda or Mr. Miyagi or Marcus Aurelius (or Rob Lowe) in them, a unique insight on life that could only come from living their life, from seeing the world through their eyes.

Be open to insight and wisdom from anyone. And don’t judge yourself or be discouraged in comparison to the person you perceive someone else to be. Trust Rob Lowe on this.

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.

—

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

–Marcus Aurelius

Advice for getting started after college

Eric Johnson1 Comment

My first job out of college was on Capitol Hill, working on the staff of a member of Congress. I lived alone on the Hill and walked to work every day. There was no internet in 1987, of course, and no cable TV then, surprisingly, on the Hill. I didn’t have much money and didn’t socialize much. Dinner was often finger food from whatever Congressional reception was on my boss’s schedule for the night. My family was far away. I had friends, but it was a very introspective, often delightfully solitary, relatively distraction-free time in my life.

My primary pastime when I wasn’t working was reading. I spent whatever I could on acquiring books, mostly biographies and history. As I was beginning my adult life with audacious dreams of greatness I wanted to be instructed by the examples of the lives of great men and women. I particularly remember reading Plutarch’s Lives and biographies of U.S. presidents. A fun Friday night for me was browsing the shelves of a bookstore.

It wasn’t exactly a monk-like existence, but I often wondered if I shouldn’t have been more social and had more fun. Looking back on it, though, I realize it was a great way to begin forming my identity and learning to think for myself and being intentional about who I wanted to be. I wasn’t molded by peers or social expectations or distracted by frivolities. That alone time was worthwhile. Much of who I am now and the way I think was formed in those years as a bachelor with books.

I was reminded of this time in my life by a post on Brain Pickings. The author Florence King gives her advice to young people on getting started in their adult lives, and it sounds a lot like what I did:

Put yourself on cruise control and go into limbo for a year. I’m not talking about a neo-grand tour; don’t bop around Europe, you’ll just get in trouble. Nor am I talking about what your parents’ generation called “dropping out.” I mean forget about success for a while, get yourself an ordinary job, an ordinary place to live, and live without worrying about what Americans call, in uppercase, the Future.

Go somewhere different, but stay away from big cities. If you’re from a place you call “godforsaken,” go to a small city in another part of the country…

Get a dead-end job — they’re plentiful now because nobody wants them. Tell your employer the truth: that you’ll be around only a year or so, but promise to work hard. Keep your promise. Little triumphs are the pennies of self-esteem. If you do well in such a job and make yourself indispensable to somebody, you will realize Robert E. Lee’s farewell words to his men after the surrender at Appomattox: “You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from a knowledge of duty faithfully performed.”

Live alone, even at a financial sacrifice. If you have a roommate, the whole college uproar will just start all over again…

Read, read, read. When you don’t have to worry about passing exams on them, subjects you studied in school suddenly become interesting…

What I am recommending is traditionally called “finding yourself.” The difference is, there is no bohemian excess here, none of the “experiencing everything” that comprises nostalgia de la boúe. It’s productive, constructive goofing-off.

This was close to my experience of being on my own for the first time. I was in a big city but was not particularly living a big city life. I was alone, far from family and old friends, and I used that time to read and think and start figuring out what was important to me. I didn’t have a “dead-end” job. It was intense, yet fun, and I learned what it meant to do good work and to be part of a team. But it didn’t end up being the field I would devote my career to.

I remember about that time discovering the work of Joseph Campbell, the great expert on mythology and comparative religion. His influence continues to resonate with me. He told of a similar period early in his career during the Great Depression when he couldn’t land an academic job. He ended up living in an isolated place for a few years, and all he did was read. Campbell credits that quiet time in his life for the success he ultimately found in his work life.

I know what it’s like to be 22 and eager to make your mark, to prove you’ve “arrived” and are bound for something big. Our connected and distracting world today only makes this impulse more irresistable and more burdensome. But understanding that it’s the long game that’s more meaningful is so reassuring. Attempt to peak at age 60 rather than, say, 27, and you’ll likely be more awesome at 27 than you would have been playing the short game, trying to succeed fast.

Take the time to ease your way into your adult life, to ponder and reflect and get to know who you are and who you want to be outside of the expectations of your family and the influence of your friends. There’s no hurry, people. The future is arriving fast enough.

Write what you want to read

Eric Johnson

I’m reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson now. (Thanks to my friend, Jesse, for the recommendation.) It’s an epic fantasy novel (1,000 pages in this first of a planned ten book series) and not my usual reading fare. But I’m immersed in it and marveling at the compelling narrative and level of detail the author has created. Years ago, before the movies ever came out, I read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and felt a similar level of awe at the marvelous world an author can create.

Intrigued by this young author’s career, I found this interview with Sanderson and appreciated his approach:

I can only speak from my own experience, which may be abnormal, but I really feel that the times where I worried too much about the market were the times I wrote my worst fiction. And the times where I wrote: “this is what I want to read — this is what I’m passionate about,” I wrote my best fiction. And so that’s what I would advise.

That being said, I was very steeped in this genre. You can say what I wanted to read was very naturally an outgrowth of what a lot of what the fandom wanted to read because I was one of them. That’s why it worked for me. And I’m sure there are a number of people who are writing to their passion, and it just doesn’t end up catching on. I wrote 13 books before I got published, and at the end of the day I decided I would rather keep writing and never publish than give up writing or go do something else. And if I reached the end of my life and had 70 unpublished novels, I’d still consider myself a successful writer. That decision has driven me ever since and it’s worked out for me. -Brandon Sanderson

He’s writing what he wants to read and seems as if he would be content if he was never published.

That’s a good formula for work in general, not just writing. Make things that will delight you. Do your best, not for the chance for advancement or to impress bosses or to win some sales competition. Be awesome in all that you do whether anyone else notices or not. You will notice. And you will delight in the intrinsic rewards of work that shines regardless of any extrinsic rewards.

And that approach is more likely to produce quality work that does resonate and connect with others in a more meaningful way than trying to figure out what will sell.

Not your average bread and butter

Eric Johnson

Kottke shared this video today of a chef, Dan Richer, who is taking bread and butter as seriously as entrees:

I love his delight in his craft. He exudes joy as he talks about making bread and butter, and his passion for getting it just right is inspiring. You can roll your eyes that it’s just bread and butter, or you can admire that he cares deeply about doing something really well. (And butter is one of the all time greatest edible delights ever created. Please don’t tell me you eat margarine.)

Restaurants can get by just fine with average bread and butter. That’s what customers expect. But amazing bread and butter? Bread and butter that inspires short films? Richer is doing this for his own delight and for those he serves, but it certainly sets his restaurant apart from all the others that are fine with average. I would love to visit this chef’s restaurant.

Satisfactory is forgettable. There’s nothing heroic or inspiring about average. Why not make the thing you do, even if it seems basic or simple, as awesome as you can?

Near the end of the video, Chef Richer says this:

I’m like the anti-chef. I want to do less to something, and I want to put less on the plate. If there’s an ingredient that I can take off of the plate to make it more simple and more pure so you can actually experience the essence of what it is that we’re serving… That’s what’s special to me.

I am more wowed by simple elegance and clarity of execution than by complex and convoluted products and experiences. Simplify. Eliminate inessentials. Make the basics beautiful.

And eat butter. (Take it easy on the bread, though.)

Socrates: A Man for Our Times

Eric Johnson

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I just finished reading Paul Johnson’s Socrates: A Man for Our Times. It’s a quick read at 224 pages, maybe too quick. (By contrast, I’m currently reading Titan, the acclaimed biography of John D. Rockefeller. Titan weighs in at a massive 832 pages. No offense to John D., but Socrates easily is one of the most influential figures in all of human history. The page differential in these two books seems crazy.)

I was looking for a bit more depth and detail, but Johnson’s book is nice as an introduction to Socrates. He seems completely worthy of the acclaim he gets as the first and maybe the greatest of the world’s philosophers. His character was consistent with his philosophy, and he was greatly admired by seemingly all who knew him in his beloved Athens.

Socrates was not interested in philosophy as an academic pursuit but only in how it could be applied to daily life, to help people live better lives. He wouldn’t be likely to get a job in the philosophy departments at most colleges were he living today.

He fully and humbly embraced his own ignorance, and that makes him such an appealing character. He regularly claimed to know nothing and that he was just trying to find things out. From the book:

His one reiterated insistence was that he knew nothing. What he did feel he could do, and what was the essence of his ministry, was to help ordinary humans to think a little more clearly and coherently about what constituted good behavior, worthy of humanity at its best.

…

“He cannot teach Wisdom because he has none, and he cannot give birth to Wisdom any more than he can give birth to a child. But if someone else has Wisdom within him, or her, he can assist, by his questioning, and help them to give birth to the truth they carry within their minds and hearts.”

…

He seems to have felt he knew nothing about the things that really mattered. When his friend Chaerephon, while visiting the Oracle of Delphi, asked if any man was wiser than Socrates, the answer came: “There is none.” When told about this, Socrates was not flattered but puzzled. He eventually concluded that what the Oracle meant was that his wisdom consisted in knowing his own ignorance.

Considered to be one of the wisest men ever, Socrates thought of himself simply as someone who was only sure of how little he knew.

His approach epitomizes one of my favorite notions:

“He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. But he who knows he doesn’t know, knows.”

Socrates regularly challenged others, by words and by his own example, to examine their lives, to not just go through the motions. It’s easy to default to navigating your life on auto-pilot, but you’ve got a fabulously interesting mind and the freedom to inquire and explore. What a missed opportunity if you don’t live with intention and seek to craft for yourself a virtuous and excellent life.

For Socrates, ideas existed to serve and illuminate people, not the other way around. Here was the big distinction between him and Plato. To Socrates, philosophy had no meaning or relevance unless it concerned itself with men and women. It is worth repeating, and emphasizing, Cicero’s summary of Socrates’ work: “He was the first to call philosophy down from the sky and establish her in the towns, and bring her into homes, and force her to investigate the life of men and women, ethical conduct, good and evil.”

For Socrates saw and practiced philosophy not as an academic but as a human activity. It was about real men and women facing actual ethical choices between right and wrong, good and evil. Hence a philosophical leader had to be more than a thinker, much more. He had to be a good man, for whom the quest for virtue was not an abstract idea but a practical business of daily living. He had to be brave in facing up to choices and living with their consequences. Philosophy, in the last resort, was a form of heroism, and those who practiced it had to possess the courage to sacrifice everything, including life itself, in pursuing excellence of mind. That is what Socrates himself did. And that is why we honor him and salute him as philosophy personified.

Examine your life. Embrace not-knowing. Be as excellent as you can be.

Striving

Eric Johnson1 Comment

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If the most satisfying rewards are the intrinsic ones, striving for mastery, for artistry in your work, becomes a joyful end in itself. “Making it” is an illusion. You never get there. There is no there there. Imagine how dull life would be if you did “arrive” and just sat by the pool all day. I could take a week by the pool, mind you, maybe even two, but a life of leisure with nothing to strive for, nothing to keep you sharp, sounds miserable.

John Mayer expressed practically the same sentiment as Coltrane’s:

It’s only fun when you’re trying to get it in your grasp. It’s like, you know, once you catch it, throw it back in the water then catch it again. That’s really what I want to do my whole career. -John Mayer

Comfortable? Got it figured out? Time to get busy upping your game, mastering something new, starting from scratch, striving.

Well conceived, clearly said

Eric Johnson

I saw the quotation below in this article yesterday: Microsoft’s New CEO Needs an Editor.

“Whatever is well conceived is clearly said,
And the words to say it flow with ease.” -Nicolas Boileau

Many words and fancy words do not impress. They communicate, instead, a lack of clarity and likely an ill-conceived idea.

When my sentences keep getting more complex and tangled in paragraphs that need yet another paragraph to explain further, I should stop and rethink what I’m trying to accomplish. Go back to “Why?” and scrap it if I can’t come up with a clear answer.

Tolstoy called for us to be honest and brave and “to act and speak that your motives should be intelligible to an affectionate seven-year-old boy.” (I’ve got a seven-year-old daughter who is mostly affectionate. Tolstoy would nominate her to be my editor.)

Flow is the desired state. I might need to write my way into it and hack through adverbs and jargon to get there, but what I deem inessential should not make it past my Publish button or Print icon.

Share nothing that is not simply stated and easily understood.

 

 

“How do I move the needle?”

Eric Johnson

I enjoyed this video about screenwriter Dustin Lance Black’s writing process shawnblanc.net linked to today:

Black, who wrote the screenplays for J. Edgar and Milk, has a richly complex, yet clear and beautiful process for putting together his screenplays. Watching him lay out all those note cards on that giant table sparked memories, happy memories, of working on a research paper in college. I wrote an honors thesis in a religion class my senior year and used a similar process where I researched like crazy and then sorted my note cards like I was playing a delightfully challenging game of solitaire. I would rearrange and discard and rethink and see it all eventually unfold into a meaningful narrative that flowed logically and came to a satisfying conclusion.

Black has a clear commitment to digging deeply into a subject, doing meticulous, even excruciating work, and taking his time to let the story come to him. And he’s willing to let go of ideas he loves to better serve the story.

I find a similar workflow works for me in light table view in Keynote. It’s the digital equivalent for me of a table full of note cards. Analog or digital, there’s much to value in a process where you can see the big picture of a story or a project or an idea and make connections and rearrange and discard to better serve the narrative arc.

Do the hard work. Dig deep for details. Spend the time necessary to know your stuff. Then zoom out and find the big picture. That zoomed out perspective might show you a completely different direction than you had originally expected.

Of course, the big picture, the point of your work, has to begin and end with “Why?” Black says just this at the beginning of the video:

“That’s where I start, taking an idea, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, and figuring out why. Not just what you’re going to tell, not that it’s entertaining or interesting. But why are you telling that story? What is the purpose of that story? For me it’s always, How do I move the needle? How do I change the culture? Now.”

We all want to “move the needle”, to do something worth talking about, to make a difference. I’m inspired to invest in a crisp, new stack of note cards and get busy crafting a story worth telling.