Aperçus

Explorer: the person who is lost. (We need people who are comfortable with the idea of being lost.)


"Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow!" What exactly did Steve Job experience at his end?
He had written: "Death is very likely the single best invention of life.... Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life ... because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important." ~Steve Jobs, October 5, 2011


Death, Happiness, and Leadership  The death of Steve Jobs has brought to light his Socratic side, the conviction that a good life is about preparing for a good death. (See The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo.)

From Socrates to Steve Jobs, the art of living comes down to this: living as though you will soon die. With the urgency to get things right, you will simplify. You will have increasingly peaceful, positive relations with fellow human beings. You will be a better listener and friend. (You will finally succeed in living the Golden Rule.) You will quit trying to control people and situations you cannot. (You will finally succeed in living the Serenity Prayer.) You will not take another's foul mood so personally. (You will finally be more adept at letting go of perceived injuries.) Since you want to leave a positive legacy, you will challenge yourself to make people feel that their life is better because of their encounters with you. No backbiting, no negativity, no whining, no complaining: just good words about people, about our stories, about the work we do, about the opportunities to grow amid struggle, and about our vision for -- and actions consistent with -- a better life for all whose lives we are privileged to touch. Ironically, the approach of death can focus us and make us happier.

Considering how death focuses the mind, I want you to undertake a little thought experiment. Try to imagine how this notion of the art of living impinges on the art of leadership. If you were to ask leaders what they'd do if told they had only five months to live, they no doubt would focus on their relationships -- with children, spouse, family, and close friends -- exactly what Steve Jobs did. Now, if you were to ask leaders what they would do if told they had only five years to live, they would still tend to the primary relationships in their life, but they would also try to contribute something that they would be proud to leave behind -- some expression of the best of their gifts. This larger horizon would concentrate their efforts on legacy, on how they'd want to be remembered, and they no doubt would do something great.

Since none of us knows when we'll die, what's stopping you from giving the best of your gifts to humankind now? You just may become a happier human being and leader if you live with more urgency to get your relationships and work right. ~Gleaves, October 6, 2011

The soul and the afterlife. How can the idea of the soul make any sense when the surgeon and mortician cannot locate it? For an answer I rely on C. S. Lewis. Somewhere he wrote that every need we have as an organism can be satisfied by a corresponding object that exists to fulfill the need -- or else that need would not make any sense. So: when we are hungry, there is food; when we are thirsty, there is drink; when we want sex, there is a person with whom to have sex. Even the Darwinian rationalist must admit that the idea that needs would evolve without objects to fulfill them is nonsensical.

What about the need human beings have for moral perfection and perfect communion with other human beings. We know that we cannot fulfill the need in this life. No normal person achieves moral perfection to his or her satisfaction. We remain hungry and thirst for betterment. Why would such a need have evolved in Homo sapiens if there were not some thing to satisfy it -- if not in this life, then in an afterlife? Our personal experience and the wisdom of the sages suggest that our desire for moral perfection can only be achieved outside of time as we know it. This understanding provides a reasonable basis for belief in (1) the afterlife that is needed for us to achieve the moral perfection for which we hunger; (2) a moral order that is before us and above us since it existed before we did; (3) the existence of a divine being who created and orchestrates the entire ensemble; and (4) the reality of the soul -- that spiritual, non-material part of our person that yearns for moral perfection and perfect communion with other human beings.



Owning one's past -- the good and the bad. A good attitude that I heard a young woman express: "Terrible things happened to me. It's past and there is nothing anyone can do about it now. The tragedies are a part of my life and experience. They made me who I am. I wouldn't be who I am without those experiences. I would not have learned what I have learned and become a better person. So I accept them. They give me a unique perspective."

“Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.” ~John Wesley



"The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity." ~Jacob Burckhardt

Here is a good way to evaluate your organization's diversity. It's the David Horowitz test: If in each presidential election everyone votes for the same president, then your organization is not diverse. 

The meaning and handling of nostalgia. If you think about it, nostalgia is usually a vagabond. The object of our pining at any given stage in life is rarely a permanent resident in our mind. A week ago I felt a touch of sadness when looking at photographs of my early married life with young children. But then I realized that the young man in the photographs, in turn, pined for things that are now long since put away. At the age of 56, I am not nostalgic about the same things I was when I was 26. So rather than feel sad about something we possessed in the past that is now lost, we should try to train our minds to be quieter: We should turn the sadness to gratefulness ... feel grateful that we have lived a life in which we had such a good experience in the past that we can cherish it later.... It also occurs to me that God has designed our life in the river of time so as to make it impossible to nail down the things that give us wonderful feelings. Otherwise, we would "settle" in a (probably flawed) memory. God does not want us to make an idol of our memories. He does not want us to make an idol of fleeting good times in the present. He wants us to settle in nothing less than Him. (July 30, 2011)

Why the cult is the basis of culture. "[John Senior] understood that Christian culture is the seedbed of the Faith. Though the Faith can (and does) endure amidst a culture antithetical to it, it cannot flourish under such conditions. Archbishop Lefebvre, in a statement Dr. Senior loved to recall, told him, La messe est l’Eglise [The Mass is the Church]. In The Restoration of Christian Culture, Dr. Senior elaborated on this most important truth preserved by the courageous archbishop:

"'Whatever we do in the political or social order, the indispensable foundation is prayer, the heart of which is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the perfect prayer of Christ Himself, Priest and Victim, recreating in an unbloody manner the bloody, selfsame Sacrifice of Calvary. What is Christian culture? It is essentially the Mass. That is not my or anyone’s opinion or theory or wish but the central fact of 2,000 years of history. Christendom, what secularists call Western Civilization, is the Mass and the paraphernalia which protect and facilitate it. All architecture, art, political and social forms, economics, the way people live and feel and think, music, literature ―all these things when they are right are ways of fostering and protecting the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. To enact a sacrifice, there must be an altar; an altar has to have a roof over it in case it rains; to reserve the Blessed Sacrament, we build a little House of Gold and over it a Tower of Ivory with a bell and a garden round it with the roses and lilies of purity, emblems of the Virgin Mary ―Rosa Mystica, Turris Davidica, Turris Eburnea, Domus Aurea, who carried His Body and His Blood in her womb, Body of her body, Blood of her blood. And around the church and garden, where we bury the faithful dead, the caretakers live, the priests and religious whose work is prayer, who keep the Mystery of Faith in its tabernacle of music and words in the Office of the Church; and around them, the faithful who gather to worship and divide the other work that must be done in order to make the perpetuation of the Sacrifice possible–to raise the food and make the clothes and build and keep the peace so that generations to come may live for Him, so that the Sacrifice goes on even until the consummation of the world.'

"Elsewhere, Senior explained that not all of these elements of civilized human life have to preach the Faith explicitly, but they should echo it in their order and beauty, and even (especially!) in their simple elegance. John Senior was not an advocate of luxurious living or empty aestheticism; he was a troubadour of simplicity, a virtue reflected in his subtle austerity. Though his boyhood dreams were of cowboys and poets (and both were realized), Dr. Senior found his vocation as a teacher. To his tribute, he became a latter-day Socrates to countless young men and women...." ~from Robert Wyer,"Magister Johannes: A Tribute to Dr. John Senior" (July 30, 2011)

The good emotions are like our muscles -- you want to train them rigorously to be strong, flexible, and capable of endurance. The bad emotions are like our waste -- processed briefly, then expelled from the body. So training the emotions is a good thing, but it is not enough for the good life. To switch metaphors, emotions are like ocean waves nearing the shore. Waves never cease. You are either up and happy in the sun, or down and slammed into the rocks. Since emotions are always in motion, they are not a stable source in which to ground our being. To cultivate true, lasting, well-being, one must go to a source deeper than the emotions. Our true consciousness is in the depths beneath the emotions. We have intimations of this deeper consciousness when we are detached from anger, overreaching desire, envy, resentment, gossip, worry, anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame; when we are in the presence of the sublimity of nature; when in prayer or meditation we sense the holy presence of God. This deeper state has been described by Socrates (in his last days), Old Testament patriarchs (think of Moses and the Burning Bush), Jesus (in the Gospel of John), the Buddha, and Christian mystics (what Basil Pennington has called centering prayer). (July 24, 2011)


Wisdom and freedom. Human evolution requires the free will to make mistakes. It is mistakes that can -- and should -- lead to wisdom. "That idea is thrashed out better than anywhere else, I think, in Dostoyevsky's parable of the Grand Inquisitor, which is told in Chapter Five of his great novel, The Brothers Karamazov. In the parable, Christ comes back to earth in Seville at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. He performs several miracles but is arrested by Inquisition leaders and sentenced to be burned at the stake. The Grand Inquisitor visits Him in his cell to tell Him that the Church no longer needs Him. The main portion of the text is the Inquisitor explaining why. The Inquisitor says that Jesus rejected the three temptations of Satan in the desert in favor of freedom, but he believes that Jesus has misjudged human nature. The Inquisitor says that the vast majority of humanity cannot handle freedom. In giving humans the freedom to choose, Christ has doomed humanity to a life of suffering." And yet, it is the suffering that leads to wise thoughts, words, and actions. ~Gregory A. Petsko


Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every possible moment with love, grace, and gratitude. ~Denis Waitley 


The pursuit of happiness. What is happiness (individual vs. civic emphasis)? How is it achieved? At the end of Sophocles' play, Antigone, the chorus instructs us in the happiness we seek. Happiness is (my paraphrase) not power, profit, prestige, pleasure, or pride in getting our way. The main ingredients of happiness are virtue and wisdom. How do we become virtuous and wise? For most of us, punishment and suffering pound the foolishness out of us. Suffering schools us until we learn the lessons we need to live the good life. Experience teaches that wisdom mostly comes from keeping a clear conscience, worshipping God rightly, and learning from mistakes, our own and others'. If we are mindful of these things, we have a shot at being happy. We are smart about "the pursuit of happiness." 


A classic ... is timeless and timely. A classic is a classic not just because of the great respect posterity accords to it, but because its great themes and language continue to speak to us today. It gives us more sustenance than journalistic efforts.


Whether confronting something new or revisiting something old, go through a little litany:
(1) As a student of reality, ask if it is true -- but then ask, What is truth? How you can defend truth to the relativists and skeptics of the postmodern age who reject traditional, authoritative, or privileged assertions; the best one can make nowadays is a "truth claim."
(2) As a student of morality, ask if it is good -- but then ask, What is good? How you can defend virtue as such when most of the old norms have been seriously chipped away or blown up.
(3) As a student of art and music, ask if it is beautiful -- but then ask, What is beautiful? How you can defend it as such when postmodern art tries not to be balanced or symmetrical but to shock and jar us into new awareness.
~prompted by Howard Gardner, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed.


To hold a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. (For a way to get over resentment and restore peace, read this essay.)


Friendship increases our happiness by doubling our joy, and decreases our sadness by dividing our grief. ~Cicero, De Officiis 

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Freud's disarming answer to the question of how to be happy: Lieben und arbeiten (love and work).


Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd (Welsh for "The Truth against the world" -- Frank Lloyd Wright's motto)


"Harassment" and "sexual harassment": It is today's Mann Act -- too often invoked on the flimsiest pretexts to go after people who do not conform to the crushing orthodoxies of ideologues.


Hank Meijer: "People usually remember America First as an isolationist, anti-Semitic movement. Actually it was a bunch of elite college students who wanted to avoid being drafted in a European war."

American Cemetery in Colleville, France

A woman returned from her much older brother's grave near Omaha Beach (the American Cemetery in Colleville), telling her family how moving the experience was. "Now that you know the loss, you have grieved like the rest of us," said their mother.


Try not to self-destruct. Sometimes, I swear, we do more harm to ourselves by our bad attitude, destructive words, and stupid actions than anybody could do to us.

Delphi

It is wise to understand the relationship between the inscription at Delphi, "Know thyself," and Greek tragedy. Greek tragedy is about outwardly great men and women -- "heroes" -- who do not know themselves. They do not know either their personal limits ... or their culture's limits ... or their creaturely boundaries before the gods. As a result of thinking that they are more than others, and deserve more than others, they fall into narcissism ... or hubris ... or impiety. They then stumble into a crisis that reveals their self-ignorance; that cuts them down to size; and that generates suffering. Only after a stern ordeal does the tragic hero understand what "Know thyself" means, and possibly become truly heroic.


Why are so many modern-day accounts of God like photographs of Big Foot -- grainy, blurry, and indistinct, with an air of incredulity about them?

flying buttresses of Amiens Cathedral

Regarding the secularization of the West since the Enlightenment, I think many men and women are happy to be flying buttresses -- supportive of the church but okay outside of it.


A different view of politics: "If the polis is the association whose purpose is the complete human life, then politics includes all the activities whose end is the complete human life. In reflecting upon these activities, politics becomes philosophic. Indeed, it is only political philosophy, whose founder was Socrates, which takes seriously the possibility of the best regime as the standard whereby every other polity is to be judged. Political philosophy, according to Aristotle, is an inquiry into the soul. For it is ultimately the proper order of the human soul which determines the proper order of constitutions. The modern difficulty is that we no longer think of politics as concerned with all human things. The state has replaced the polis, and that means that we now understand politics as concerned only with the external conditions of human existence." ~University of Dallas, PhD program in politics, statement of purpose


Pura vida! [This is living! What a life!]  Live each day in such a way that you can exclaim it.


Because I am alive, because I exist, I can make a difference in others' lives. What an opportunity!


The brain -- even of older people -- is much more adaptable than previously realized. There is "accumulating evidence that our brains aren't just stamped by the past. They are constantly being shaped by the future." Hope can shape our brains for the better. So be hopeful.


There is a difference between "the public interest and the public are interested." ~Sir Malcolm Rifkin


An exchange between President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger in 1972 about the next strategic move in Vietnam:
Nixon: I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: That will drown about 200,000 people.
Nixon: Well, no, no, no, no, no. I'd rather use a nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?
Kissinger: That I think will just be too much, uh...
Nixon: A nuclear bomb, does that bother you? I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes!


There are many ways to worship God -- you in your way, and I in His.


In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. ~George Orwell, 1984 (a futuristic inferno)


Benign neglect ... or malign neglect?

Wisdom in Plato and Aristotle

Maxims for the good life. When our children encounter problems, it is usually more important to instruct them in the principles that apply rather than dictate the specific course of action. Our children, hopefully, will remember the principles. The following principles have helped a lot of people:
- Don't be a victim: Are you going to let someone else determine your life, or are you going to decide who and what you will be? [Said to a child whose materialistic spouse was holding him back.]
- Regarding a career: Find your passion and you'll never toil a day in your life. Love you job and you'll never work a day in your life.
- Regarding things over which you have no control: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Regarding conflict: Learn to overlook the little injuries that disturb our peace. They're not worth the energy. Patience with others -- the ability to overlook the molehills on the road -- will make for a more peaceful coexistence.
- Regarding how to treat difficult people especially, but all people in general: the Golden Rule: Treat others as you wish to be treated.
- Regarding a borderline ethical decision at work: the Headline Rule: How would my action look if it were the headline of the newspaper?
- Regarding people of whom you feel critical: Lead by example. Be the person you want them to be (instead of putting all your energy into criticizing them).
- Love the sinner; hate the sin.
- Regarding any quandary, especially if things have been a mess: Do the next right thing.
- You make scores of decisions a day to be a better person or a worse person, to say the thoughtful thing or the petty thing. Which wolf will you feed?
- Do good; develop good habits: Watch your thoughts; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character because it becomes your destiny.
- Do not be in debt to any friend. Pay cash for as much as you can (your mortgage on a house is an acceptable exception). Treat credit cards strictly as 30-day bank loans.
- Work really hard to be on consistent good terms with others. They will remember one injury more than a thousand kindnesses.
- Get along with the people who will bury you.
- God gave you two ears and one mouth. Listen more than you speak.
- Know thyself.


Education at its best engenders understanding and compassion. We see what happens where education is lacking. In the absence of understanding and compassion, frustrated people resort to extremism, force, violence, terror, and war. ~Dr. Jonathan White, press conference following the killing of Osama bin Laden, May 2, 2011

Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776, by George Mason

... no free government, nor the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; [and] by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. ~Constitution of Virginia, Article I (Bill of Rights), Section 15


Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire. ~St. Catherine of Sienna


Do not live in the past, consumed by guilt and shame. Do not live in the future, preoccupied with anxiety and fear. Live in the present, aware of your breathing, the sublimity of nature, the good in the people around you, and the positive effect you can have by doing the next right thing. 5/1/11


A wise man talks because he has something to say. A fool talks because he has to say something. ~Plato


Know thyself. ~Temple at Delphi

Nothing in excess. ~Temple at Delphi

Make a pledge and mischief is nigh. ~Temple at Delphi

E [the Greek epsilon]: Thou art one. ~Greeting inscribed at the temple at Delphi


In the international order, when a great nation is in decline, it must learn to lead rather than to rule.


Good Friday, 2011: This April a robin keeps crashing into my window. Nothing I do thwarts his self-destructive behavior. An ethologist explained that the bird is seeing a reflection of himself in the window and, thinking it's a rival, attacks to preserve his territory. What the robin sees is "real" to him, of course, but in fact is no rival. What he sees is his own image that he mistakes for a threat. The metaphor for how we human beings conjure up false threats is irresistible. How often do we manufacture a threat that looks really real, and that makes us anxious and afraid, only to turn out to be a distortion of our own image and thus no threat at all? Dear God, please save me from the self-destructive behavior that comes from worrying about mistaken "threats" that come from myself.


Our habits exact an unforgiving justice from our body. How we eat, how much we exercise, how we handle stress, how prone we are to succumb to addictions -- we get what we deserve. ~Bill Brennan to GW, 4/26/11


God grant me
The serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen. ~Reinhold Niebuhr


It used to be that colleges served in loco parentis to their charges. These days, they are more and more just loco. ~The New Criterion


In sports, records are broken. Victories never are.


New word for April 15th, Tax Day: "intaxication" -- the feeling of euphoria that washes over you when you think you'll get a tax refund, lasting until the realization that it was your money in the first place. ~Urban Dictionary


What motivates us to give to others? Do we act out of justice, love, fear, or pride?
- Justice is the duty to give others their due -- it's what we owe them morally, contractually, or legally.
- Love manifests itself in the desire to give something that is mine to you.
- Fear sometimes looks like justice or love, but it actually gets me to violate my own conscience to give you what you probably shouldn't have.
- Pride sometimes looks like justice or love, but I want to look better than others, so I give.


I get into lots of trouble all the time. I try to determine the truth of a question and am not deterred by the damage that will be done to me by moving out of the herd. ~Mark Helprin


Fires take a lot of labor. As a method of heating, it is inefficient. But it’s worth it. Fire engages the senses. The light is richer than artificial light, and heating systems don’t crackle or give off the scent of wood smoke. Tending a fire enforces a sense of patience and tranquility. In that way it is like sailing a boat. You’re engaged by it and trapped by it; fire is captivating. Your time is captured so you have enforced idleness. Like music, it somehow coordinates the rhythms in your brain, or in your soul. It clears the air. Enforced idleness is the way I want to live. I want to be a prisoner of things that make me stop still. ~Mark Helprin


Do not despair over the failure of repeated attempts to live more virtuously. Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future. ~Mgsr. Michael Murphy


Anybody who is surprised by occasional flashes of virtue in our leaders, or is outraged by their sins, just hasn't read enough history. ~John Willson


If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. ~Derek Bok


Children may be only 25 percent of our population, but they are 100 percent of our future.


When everybody is thinking the same thing, nobody is really thinking. ~Krista Noble (prompted by the crushing orthodoxy on a college campus).


For an arresting look at the seven deadly sins, see the heptagon created by Jessica Hagy.


There are 7,500 bookstores in America. Want to write a bestseller? For one year write 500 words a day about something that will sell two copies in each store. There's your bestseller.


William Barrett Travis, paraphrasing Sir Walter Scott in the Romantic Age: "One crowded hour of glory is worth more than an age without a name."


Hey, gals, we guys aren't stupid: there is dressing to be attractive -- and dressing to attract.


Sophocles observed that we only learn when we suffer. Every addiction deadens our pain and thus diverts us from the healing we need. Drugs, alcohol, gambling, work, sex, shopping -- whatever your flavor, every addiction masks pain, hurts, and mistakes. Addictions drain our psychological energy and keep us from learning and growing through whatever challenges life is requiring us to confront and overcome.


Honk if you love Jesus. Text while driving if you want to meet him. (On a church sign in Florida)


Martha (sister of Mary and Lazarus) is unusual among the disciples of Jesus: she is constantly engaging and questioning and challenging the great rabbi. No complacent believer, she. Should we do or be anything less?


Love your job and you'll never work a day in your life. ~Confucius, often quoted by Ralph Hauenstein


Irritated by someone? Disappointed and frustrated? Since you can't change others, stay focused on what you can change -- you. Lead by example. Be the person you want others to be.


"The truth will set you free" -- so have the courage to follow the truth wherever it may lead, even (especially) if it makes the status quo uncomfortable.


The worst bankrupt in the world is the man who has lost his enthusiasm. Let a man lose everything else in the world but his enthusiasm and he will come through again to success. ~H. W. Arnold



You cannot do a kindness too soon, because you never know how soon it will be too late. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson 


Build up the truth, goodness, and beauty of the world today. 


Being content makes poor men rich; being discontent makes rich men poor. ~Benjamin Franklin 


The world is not black and white; it is black and gray. ~Reinhold Niebuhr 


Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.... The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world. ~Reinhold Niebuhr 


Democracy is the search for temporary solutions to unsolvable problems. ~Reinhold Niebuhr


It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people than to dominate them, more 'manhood' to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles or an immature mind ~Alex Karras. 


The more one worries, the older one gets; the more one laughs, the younger one feels. ~Chinese proverb



"If you want to get along with others, it is necessary to curb your own will in many things." ~Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book 1, Chapter 17

It's easy to live with your little flaws when I've had so much practice living with my big ones. This paraphrase of a pearl -- a deft move of passive-aggressive jujitsu -- set me on the search for the quotation I had encountered but could not remember where, until I stumbled across it while reading Thomas a Kempis:


"There ill always be defects in ourselves or others that we cannot correct. These we must simply tolerate until God in His goodness sees fit to change things. After all, this may be the best possible way to prove our patience, without which our good qualities are not worth much. Nevertheless, you must pray earnestly that God in His mercy will help you bear these impediments with patience....
"Learn how to be patient in enduring the faults of others, remembering that you yourself have many that others have to put up with. If you cannot make yourself be what you would like, how can you expect another to be what you would like? We wish to see perfection in others, but do not correct our own faults.
We want to have others strictly reprimanded for their offenses, but we will not be reprimanded ourselves. We are inclined to think the other person has too much liberty, but we ourselves will not put up with any restraint. There must be rules for everyone else, but we must be given free rein. It is seldom that we consider our neighbor equally with ourselves. If everyone were perfect, what would we have to endure for the love of God?
"God wills us to learn to bear one another's burdens. No one is without faults, no one without a cross, no one self-sufficient, and no one wise enough all alone. Therefore, we must support, comfort, and assist one another, instructing and admonishing one another in all charity.
"Adversity is the best test of virtue. The occasions of sin do not weaken anyone; on the contrary, they show that person's true worth." ~Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book 1, Chapter 16.


In life, the little things are the big things. You never know how far a gesture of kindness will go ... or how that angry little outburst (that seemed so satisfying at the moment) will forever keep someone at a distance. 


The center must hold. Our leaders must know how to inspire from the center. Don't let others define the center as roadkill or the lack of convictions. Look at the center as the most strategic place -- whether on the chessboard or in the arena. The center is where maximum vision and action are possible. 


Better half a loaf than no loaf at all (motto of the politics of the possible).


Sometimes in error, never in doubt. ~Lucille Taylor 


Good conversation is like a ship heading into deeper waters where no anchor can take hold and where no port is in sight. ~paraphrasing Michael Oakeshott 


The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true. Politicians live by ideas just as much as professional thinkers do, but they can’t afford the luxury of entertaining ideas that are merely interesting. They have to work with the small number of ideas that happen to be true and the even smaller number that happen to be applicable to real life. In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources. An intellectual’s responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician’s responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm. ~Michael Ignatieff, New York Times Magazine, August 5, 2007 


Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. ~Will Rogers 


By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad wife, you'll become a philosopher. ~attributed to Socrates 


Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. ~Mark Twain 


Atheists like to claim they behave no worse than believers, and often better. I don't deny it. It would be easy for almost anyone to have lived a more virtuous life than mine. ~Peter Hitchens 


First law of holes: If you're in one, stop digging. ~Denis Healy



If you have nothing intelligent to say, you have the moral obligation to remain quiet. ~Richard Weaver



It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. ~Theodore Roosevelt 



Three levels of relating to another after being injured...
Forgiveness: I "give up" my anger, hurt, disappointment, envy, and resentment toward another, whether the other person asks for forgiveness or not. To forgive is to let go. It does not mean forgetting or necessarily trusting again. Yet to let go of my injury helps me win back my peace of mind and opens up the possibility of a relationship, again, with the person who injured me.
Reconciliation is restoration. Because the injurer offers a sincere apology, I am willing to meet them half way and say that the person who hurt me and I can go back to the status quo ante -- to the way the relationship was before the injury.
Renewal: the person who injured me and has apologized is willing to work with me and leverage the hurt to take the relationship to a new and better level.


In whatever difficult situation you find yourself, do the next right thing, because ... Virtus tentamine gaudet. (Strength rejoices in the challenge.) 


An Aristotelian thought on the importance of the good habits of your "second nature" supplanting the bad habits that arose either from the disposition with which you were born or that came about as a younger person:
Watch your emotions; they become thoughts.
Watch your thoughts; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they form character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.


No one is obligated to love you. So: your obligation is to find the person who chooses to love you. You are responsible for finding the person with whom you can be emotionally safe; someone who wants to shower you with love, affection, presence, and constancy; someone about whom you feel the same way and who can receive the love you have to give. 


People only change when they realize what treasure they'll lose if they don't. (Even then, they often don't change, though it might mean losing the love of their life, their family, their job, their career, and their dignity.) 


The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. 


Words are cheap: Love is as love does. 


No excuses: Be the person you know you should be.