Pyramids in the Sand

In one sense, our highest achievements are like sculpting pyramids in the sand. The waves of time and change will eventually obliterate all the creations of our hands. So what's the point? Why all the effort at achievement? Why all the arduous endeavors to learn from our failures and finally get it right?

I've come to believe that what we become and help others to be as a result of our worldly efforts are spiritual things that will never be erased. A good deed for a friend, an innovation at work that improves things in some way, a social media post that informs or heals or encourages, those few minutes on Zoom or Face Time with a good person who needs your help can have ripples of positive consequence that never end. Plus, why should we think in the first place that impermanence itself drains things of all value? Perhaps it endows good things with a particular, zestful, concentrated value, however ephemeral in itself though lasting for us, to be fully savored as we can, and celebrated as the art we’re here to make. So build boldly in the sand, hear the ocean, feel the breeze, notice the little birds, and enjoy.

Goals and Problems

The secret connection of Goals and Problems don’t get talked about much.

The problems we face form us. Those that we choose define us.

Have you ever pondered the fact that when you set a new goal, you invite new problems into your life? Many situations around you and facts about the world that would have been of no special interest to you suddenly become problems when they stand between you and a goal you've chosen. Apart from that goal, they would not have counted as problems for you. Many of those situations you might never have noticed at all. Others would have come to your attention, but not as difficulties or hardships for you. They didn't impinge on you personally. Until you set the goal you wanted to pursue. And then suddenly, you begin to notice circumstances anew, as problematic, as obstacles, as irritations.

Other situations will develop as personal problems while you pursue your goal. You'll get yourself into hard places that you could have avoided. You'll face challenges that are of your own doing. But that's Ok. It's your goal, after all. And it's important to have goals, even though they bring problems. It's part of the package deal in this world. We'd have vastly fewer problems if we had no dreams, or aspirations, or goals. It's the purpose of our goals to stretch us and grow us. And they often do that through the problems they bring with them. And as the Roman poet Horace once said, we often find that, "The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory." We feel best about the success that comes out of challenge.

Therefore, hence, ergo. When you fall down, don't worry about it. Just pick yourself back up. Recall how the journey you're on may have brought you to this fall. You'd be back in your armchair without the goals you're pursuing. And you wouldn't be falling. But you wouldn't be going anywhere, either. And bouncing back from a fall may be just what you need.

So when you're facing a new problem, obstacle, or difficulty, ponder how your dreams and aspirations and goals may have brought it into your life. Embrace it with cheerfulness as a part of the process. Solving it may just give you the wisdom you need down the road. Even the sheer process of struggling with it might accomplish that same end. We're always becoming, never just doing. With the right attitude and practice, we can become great, falls and all.

The Novel, Little Women

I just read a wonderful book that I want to recommend to you all, one that I might never have tried, were it not for an upcoming Masterpiece Theater series scheduled to begin in May on PBS. And it has reconfirmed my view that some of the best reading business people can do is not to be found in business books.

In an age of dystopian novels, and stories about deeply damaged and disturbed people doing awful things, it's a breath of fresh air to read a book about good people growing to be even better. And that's exactly what I've been writing in my own recent Egyptian novels, swimming hard against the contemporary tide with all my might. For a long time, we've heard that it's much easier to write about evil than good. But I've not found that to be true, and I would suppose that neither did the author Louisa May Alcott, as she composed her glorious epic story, Little Women. I just read the beautiful Puffin edition designed by family friend Anna Bond, founder of the wonderful Rifle Paper Company.

In the world of business, we need to understand the people around us. What motivates them? What bothers them? What are their ambitions, and their secret sufferings? How can we best deal with the various personalities of our colleagues and clients? Sometimes, a good novel can provide perspectives on these issues like nothing else. I came away from Little Women refreshed, energized, inspired, and wiser than when I began to read it.

Do yourself a favor. Get yourself a copy and read the 777 pages of this book (No worries: Big Print) for its deep wisdom, homey ethos, and incredibly inspiring philosophy. Just click the link below, or visit your local library. Some of the best philosophers of the nineteenth century were women who wrote novels, not philosophical treatises, and taught us a lot more about life than their male counterparts of the era. You'll love this book.

Little Women: https://amzn.to/2qzIjuj

The Arts, The Humanities, and Business Success

When young people study the Arts and Humanities, they can prepare themselves in deep, untold and currently unappreciated ways for a successful business life.

The Arts: Every art involves complexity and mastery, two of the deepest features of any highly accomplished business life. We can think of a painting as a solution to a problem—or better yet, as thousands of solutions to thousands of problems. When it embodies Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity, it succeeds best. And this is true of a business, or a business deal. The same is also true of a piece of music, a dance, or a sculpture. Art hones many intellectual qualities and personal traits like perseverance in the pursuit of perfection, or even happy imperfection.

The Humanities: Let's begin with what's broadly called literature, encompassing poetry and prose, short stories, essays, and novels. Let's even throw in the best of film. When we study great literature, we can prepare ourselves for deeply satisfying business success. First, in reading well-told stories, we learn to tell stories well. And there's nothing more important in business life than telling powerful stories about what we're doing, want to do, and can possibly do. One famous film producer, Peter Guber, has said in his delightful book "Tell to Win" that during his career, whenever he went into a meeting with facts and figures, he never got what he wanted, but whenever he showed up with a great story, he got everything he wanted and more. Secondly, we come to understand character more deeply through the lens of a masterful story. Great literature is full of cautionary tales for leaders and high achievers: Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Don Quixote, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, and Jack London's Sea Wolf, among many others. And in these tales of greatness and tragedy, we see the truth of what Heraclitus said long ago, "Character is Destiny."

History: Of course the lessons here are obvious. The long-term link between character and excellence throughout the course of our world up to now, The Law of Unintended Consequences, from even the most modest decisions, the balance of risk and reward that attends any bold action, the inevitable mess that arises from wild interventionism, and the catastrophes that democracy is intended to prevent.

Psychology: Coming more deeply to understand what motivates people just might be the most important key to business success. It's crucial for forming more positive relationships, building a great business culture, and diagnosing what can go wrong between people. The recent turn to positive psychology has provided us with new tools for excellence in everything we do.

Philosophy: As a philosopher, what can I say? When young people encounter the best of world philosophy, they learn about belief and skepticism, appearance and reality, love and purpose, evidence and folly, wisdom and virtue. They prepared themselves for a deeper and more lasting form of success in whatever they do. And the same is true for older people. The more we learn the insights of the great practical philosophers and use them relentlessly, the better we can be at anything we do. The truth of this has been on display in the talks I've given to business groups over the years, at this point far surpassing a thousand. One company has had me speak more than sixty-five times, offering me for each of those hours more than my annual salary once was at Notre Dame. Why would any business do such a thing? Because of the fact that they see the great value of philosophy. You can't have a great business without great philosophical foundations.

The Great Gift of Poetry

I hope you read good poetry now and then. Great poetry is of course even better. This week I've been reading the poetry of David Rigsbee, an amazing poet who grew up in a little house across the street from the home of my youth, his father a musician who had given up his performance dreams to have a son and then another, and took a job at the cigarette factory in town to support his family. And one boy, my funny and daring best friend in childhood, on a fraught day of anguish, shot himself dead. And the other grew up to perform, but with words. As I'm about to finish his third book of verse, I decided to write him my appreciation like this:

A Man Stretched Across The Hall, Four Feet Up

A philosopher, an older Yale trained logician and master of modality dedicated to defending the faith liked to walk outside my door like the rock climber he was, feet on the wall, soles pressing the paint as his hands pushed the opposing vertical face, shoving hard as if to relocate it inches farther back,

but then his body wouldn't span the full gap as your poems do so well, pressing the mundane, the small quotidian detail on one side, and keenly stretched to the metaphysical extreme on the other, caught between the concrete particulars of a flower or a bee or a gun, but with greater meanings

and longings tattooed on you, and now me, as on a father’s arm, intensely aware of the quick passing, evanescent, transient nature of all that we see and love and feel—and we're never really armed for that, are we?

But if I convey my appreciation like this, it’s as if a chimpanzee took a volume of Kant and opened it and stood on a podium, wearing a little suit

and said, “Chee, chee, chee” with a sound like a quotation from Confucius or Lao Tsu or one of their disciples on life energy—but we know better, and get it that he’s just monkeying around. And so, we can laugh.

A Passion for Excellence

Chef Anthony Bourdain has hosted a great new series of short films on the passion and impressive craftsmanship that can lie behind amazing handmade items. In one episode, he talks to a tailor who mentions the thousand of stitches a customer will never be aware of. I could relate to that as an author. In editing my novels, I spend hours a day taking out or putting in punctuation marks, or a word, or a phrase. The reader will never know how many thousands of such decisions I've made in polishing the flow of language meant to evoke mental pictures and spiritual insights. But these choices will have done their work unseen and unknown. And each is important. Mastery, in the end, is all about the little details that may never be noticed by anyone other than the master. But they make for excellence.

The tailor episode link is below. I'd guess these films are less than 6 minutes each. You'll be treated by each to new insights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jks5VHQ9Q0o

Simple Can Lead Into Deep

When I was a professor, a reviewer of one of my academic books wrote of the "deceptive simplicity" of my writing style. That made me smile. I've always worked hard to get to the masterful sort of simplicity on the other side of complexity, fighting for the core essence of truth. And now, I'm glad to see early readers of my short novel The Oasis Within talking about the deceptive simplicity of it. 

One prominent author wrote me that his intellectually advanced and quite literary teenage son had started the book, read the first couple of pages, and put it aside, saying it was "too simple." I was sorry.

Then a man named Bruce, who was reportedly a longtime reader of deep spiritual books, bought The Oasis Within and began it. He emailed me and said that the opening pages couldn't command his attention and that it was probably too simple a book for him. I urged him to read on. Days later, he wrote back to say that it had become one of his favorite books of all time, and that now, he's given dozens of copies to friends, and has continued in his enthusiasm at the books of the series it begins, The Golden Palace and The Stone of Giza. 

Bruce recently told me that he had given a copy to a lady he knows and that she had called to tell him what she thought of it. He wrote me this:

<<Effusive has to be the word.

Gail called. She is the lady who is renting my daughter’s house. I had given her a copy of Oasis suggesting she might like it. This afternoon she called and said she started to read it last Thursday night when her husband was watching Football. She explained that she just couldn’t get much out of it, but decided she would just push on. I figured to mention that there are some books that may just not appeal to everyone, but before I spoke, Gail continued.

Soon she found she could not put the book down and that it might well be one of the most meaningful books she had ever read. It captures all of the important values that could make our lives better, and yet it is not religious. She feels every youth should get and read this book early in their teen years. But more; they should be encouraged to reread it every year to engrain and refresh this wisdom as they mature. She says her grandchildren are too young for the book as yet but will get a copy for each one as they move into their teens.

I told her I will loan her a copy of The Golden Palace so she can see how a more story-based theme can carry the message in a new way to younger people.

For me, it is so encouraging that more people are seeing the inherent truth and worth within these writings not even knowing the underlying reality of how they have come about. Though the ultimate medium for the Walid materials seems almost certainly somewhere in the video sphere from which it emerged, the value must rest in the written form for now. We can be grateful it is now available to all. Many different movements will be necessary to make this a better world and this can be a true step in the healing direction.>>

I was deeply gratified. Then, I got a note from the reader herself, addressed to me and her friend:

<<Good evening Bruce and Mr. Morris,

I truly feel blessed to have read "The Oasis Within". I know that I will read it again. And perhaps again and again!!

Bruce, you very eloquently summed up both my reaction and my response to this book. The beauty of it is that it offers much in its simplicity. Yet, although it is simple, it is not at all simple. One must read it to know what I mean.

Thank you, Mr. Morris, for writing this in such a way that it makes me wish I had had this book to read and learn from many years ago. I hope many people, both young and old, hear about your book and read it. It is a guide book one can refer to throughout life. In my mind, it is a classic.

Sincerely,

Gail G>>

One CEO has told me that pages 5 and 6 of The Oasis Within changed his life. But he had to get through the "deceptive simplicity" of pages 1-4 to get there. Then he saw what was really going on. 

I had a similar experience. These books all came to me unexpectedly, as something like a movie playing in my head, or as what Mary Shelley once described as a “waking dream.” The opening scene was of a man and a boy sitting in the sand under a palm tree, talking. Their conversation was simple. And yet, it provided a doorway that, since I was willing to walk through it, brought me into an unanticipated land of deep wisdom. And that’s the way the best simplicity can work—as a doorway to depth. But it’s up to us to use it. 

If you haven’t yet had the experience of The Oasis Within, The Golden Palace, and The Stone of Giza, I hope you will soon. Then, The Viper and the Storm will be available this spring, as the latest installment in the series. One book reviewer said recently that it’s The Temple of Doom and Dan Brown, and The Hardy Boys Meet Aristotle, and that when reading, he felt like he was thirteen years old again. I felt that way when writing them. I had no idea how a simple story would bring me the greatest deep wisdom of my life.

Gisele and The Power of Positive Energy

The New York Times just ran a remarkable piece on the Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen. As she was reflecting on her early days in modeling, Gisele says:

"In the beginning, you know, everyone told me, 'Your eyes are too small, the nose is too big, you can never be on a magazine cover."

Then she adds:

"But, you know what? The big nose comes with a big personality."

The experts were completely wrong, as experts very often are when faced with something new. Gisele's net worth as a model is now estimated to exceed 300 million dollars, and Forbes puts her daily income at around $128,000. She's also appeared eleven times on the cover of American Vogue. The Times reporter is surprised when she says, "My career was never based on pretty." But then the designer Angela Missoni explains:

"With Gisele, there is something different, her energy. Of course, she is super beautiful, but she has this charisma, this presence, this very sexy normality."

Gisele herself attributes her extraordinary success to her energy, hard work, and innate positive attitude that finds the best in any bad situation. Others comment on her grit and ability to rise to the occasion, whatever the circumstances. And it could very well be that the very "imperfections" or "flaws" that everyone complained about at first were actually among the secrets of her success. She had a new and different look. And her inner spirit lit up all the cameras that were turned in her direction.

Of course, there are numerous lessons in such a story. First, that the experts and gatekeepers in almost any industry or walk of life are probably among the least likely to see and appreciate something new and great that comes their way. In politics, fashion, and almost everywhere else, the experts are often among those most baffled by the next new thing.

Second, the inner is more important than the outer in almost any quest for success. Energy, grit, hard work, and a positive attitude can take any of us far.

Third, those things that other people consider to be your flaws might just be important stepping stones to future success. My friend Dave Rendall has a very good book on this called The Freak Factor, and is busy traveling the world explaining to people the strange and yet common alchemy of turning weakness into strength.

Many people are writing recently to tell me about passages early on in my new book The Oasis Within that are helping them greatly to deal with the sort of negativity and obstacles that Gisele initially faced in her career. I'm so happy to hear that the conversations of my characters are making a difference with wisdom people can use! If you have had a good experience with the book but haven't yet let me know, please write me through the website TomVMorris.com and share your story!

My Evening With Pat Conroy, Prince of Stories

Years ago, I had the amazing experience of greeting a large audience at historic Thalian Hall in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina and introducing the main speaker for An Evening with Pat Conroy, the first of many events held that year to celebrate 100 years of story telling in the libraries of our county. I had the even more unusual opportunity of spending time with the author, just the two of us, for about an hour backstage before the festivities began, where we could talk freely.

He just wanted to talk about me and my time at Notre Dame. And of course, I only wanted to talk about him and his writing. If my wife had been there, we'd probably have spent all our time talking about her. But that's just the kind of man he was—gracious, kind, humble, and friendly.

Born and raised and educated in the south, Pat Conroy was a man who paid attention growing up and stocked his mind and heart with the stories of this distinctive region that he shared with the world for many years. He wrote his first book while he was still in school, and then followed up with a string of best sellers that continued for quite a run. I've read a bunch.

The Water is Wide is an extraordinary account of a heroic year of teaching on a small island off the coast of South Carolina, and the basis for two great movies.

The Great Santini is about growing up in the home of a fighter pilot, and having to fight for a small measure of independence and dignity in the midst of violence, prejudice, outrageous demands, and some surprising sides of love.

The Lords of Discipline gives us the experience of a southern military school and encompasses hazing, torture, friendship, self-mastery, hope, betrayal, and honor.

The Prince of Tides reveals one family’s struggles with tragedy and madness, much of it in the midst of great beauty, along with one man’s attempt at making sense of it all.

Beach Music helps us feel the gravitational force of family and how hard it is to achieve escape velocity from place and blood, no matter what you do. 

My Losing Season is a book where basketball meets the rest of life.

And, yes, I've even looked through the work that many people with culinary talents I don’t have tell me is one of the more compelling cookbooks of our time and place here in the south.

Pat Conroy’s themes were as universal as his sense of place was particular: The experience ofadversity, the power of friendship, the complex cauldron of family in which we’re all formed, the lure of the low country with its rich display of the wonders of nature, here at the edge of America. You can experience shock and trauma on one page, and find yourself laughing out loud in the very next chapter. 

Some of the best reading times I’ve ever had have been in Pat Conroy’s books. Probably like many of you, I’ve read them even when I really should have been doing other things around the house. I’ve relished every one, and I’ve even taken notes. Pat was a good philosopher, an astute diagnostician of human nature.  But, most of all, he was a master of stories.

You’ve likely read his books, you’ve probably seen and enjoyed the movies based on those books, maybe you’ve even cooked his recipes. With his passing, we all have the opportunity now to reflect with gratitude on his life and body of work. He was a southern original, a prince of his craft and a man I wish I could have gotten to know better. He will be missed.

The Joy of the Deeper Mind at Work

Joy awaits us all. When we work with the ordinary levels of our mind, everything's harder that it could be. When we clear away the clutter and get beyond the chatter of the normal conscious mind, joyous magic can happen.

I recently posted on social media that I had, a few days ago, finished the final major editing of the eight books that now exist in a series of novels that I've been working on for five years, since February 2011. It's the first experience of writing where I wasn't working hard in my conscious mind to think and compose. It was all a gift of the deeper mind, a layer of mentality or soul, if you will, that we all have, but that we don't often enough draw on, day to day.

These books and the stories they convey came to me, as I've said before, like a movie in my head, a translucent screening of an action and adventure story far beyond anything I could ever have created out of my ordinary operating resources. In fact, when I first started reading the manuscripts out loud to my wife, she interrupted to say, "Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" It was all that different from my nineteen previous books, all non-fiction.

One reviewer of the prologue to the series, The Oasis Within, suggested that a series of conversations between people crossing the desert wasn't that big a stretch for me, and not that far out of my comfort zone as a philosopher who is always talking about life wisdom. And he was right. But there are all these little details and plot points in Oasis that I never would have thought to develop. And there's a reason that The Oasis Within is a prologue to the new series and not a numbered volume of it. It's mostly great conversations. It prepares one of the characters for the action that's to come. And it prepared me for it, as well. But a younger reader, or a reader who just loves action can start with Book One of the series, Walid and the Mysteries of Phi, the book that's now recently out by the title The Golden Palace, which is full of action, adventure, mystery, and intrigue and brings us philosophy in an entirely new key. And all the other books are like that one in this regard, too. It's like slowly walking up to a door, and opening it, and what's inside takes you completely by surprise and launches you into an adventure that just won't stop.

Early in the process, when I learned to calm my conscious mind and just relax and release, the magic would happen. With the deeper mind at work, you feel more like a receptacle, or a conduit. I've mentioned here before, I think, Elizabeth Gilbert's new book Big Magic, where she tells several stories about this remarkable kind of creative experience. It's joyous and practically effortless in its level of self-perceived exertion. How often can we say of our job, paradoxically, that "It's the hardest I've ever worked" and "It's the easiest thing I've ever done" and "It's been pure joy" all at the same time?

This is a hallmark of the deeper mind at work. There is amazing persistence of accomplishment and a sense of ease, and an overflowing of joy to match. The joy is wondrous, deep and high, wide and focused, inner and outer somehow at the same time. It animates everything else you do. It's remarkable, and it's maybe meant to be our most natural state—when we've peeled away all else, all the accretions of consciousness and contrary emotion, when we get down, deep to our most fundamental resource, one that's both natural and transformative at the same time.

I heartily recommend working from your deeper mind and experiencing the joy that's there awaiting you. I'm hoping that another book will also come to me the same way. After a million and two thousand and five hundred and more words, I feel like I'm just getting started. And isn't that the way our work should feel?

Becoming More Intuitive

In every field of endeavor, there are innovators who naturally seem to pioneer new ways of doing things. There are individuals who are known for their endless creativity. They are often also people who, over and over, seem to be in the right place at the right time to make the right connections to do great things. The rest of humanity struggles, but these golden individuals, as if touched by the divine, seem to flourish effortlessly.

There are two things to say about such people. One is that their trajectory of success isn't typically as smooth or as easy as it seems. Such people tend to work very hard. And they long have. Because of that, they've attained a level of mastery in their field that's unusual. And this allows their work to have exceptional results. Like the metaphorical swan, all still and serene above water, they can seem to be at ease, but their hard paddling below the surface is what gets them across the lake.

And yet, there is a second thing to say, even more important than this.

These people tend to be highly intuitive. They don't just depend on normal "rational" thinking. And they don't feel a pressure to do everything the way everyone else does it. They listen to their heart, or maybe it's something beyond their heart.

The ancient Greeks talked of a spirit or muse. The Romans spoke of a guiding genius, not in you, but outside you, that's available to help you. However we conceptualize it, there seems to be an avenue of knowing and doing that's in some sense spiritual in nature. Accessing it requires us to get beyond our normal thought world, to reduce our mental chatter and clear out the clutter that otherwise blocks us from something deeper, and open ourselves to this powerful guidance. Sometimes it happens in extreme circumstances, during times of great danger. A switch flips. A strong clarity arises. And we're transported to a new level of being, feeling, thinking, and doing. It more often happens when there is preternatural calm within, a quietness and emptiness that allows itself to be filled. A supreme focus can facilitate it. A  great relaxation of the body, or a repetitive engagement of it, as in walking, or jogging, can at times create just the right soil, fertile for new ideas to be noticed and planted and to grow.

In a small meeting room yesterday at the large pharmaceutical development company PPD, I talked about how I have discovered my own best intuitive work. I told my story of unexpectedly coming to write eight novels in a period of four years, after forty years of authoring nonfiction philosophy books.  In this unexpected adventure of becoming a novelist, I've learned how to relax my body in order to disengage the normal flow of my conscious mind. And this is when the magic can happen. I think we all have that ability. And we can use it in whatever we do. Why don't we do so more?

My new book, The Oasis Within, begins the epic story whose main characters have taught me almost all I know about becoming more intuitive. I hope you'll also have a chance to learn from them as I have, and that it will have as big and deep an impact for you as it has had for me.

The Oasis Within

Today I have a great official announcement, unofficially posted on Facebook and Twitter yesterday. A new era has come! And a new way of being a philosopher has arrived with it.

In February of 2011, after a breakfast of toast and coffee, I suddenly had the most vivid daydream of my life. An old man and a boy were sitting under a palm tree, at a beautiful desert oasis, talking. They were in Egypt. It was 1934. And their conversation was really great. I was intrigued. It was all so real, and so different from anything I had ever experienced. I have a robust imagination, but nothing like this. As the movie played in my head, I ran up the stairs to my study to start writing it down. The boy, age thirteen, was with his much older uncle, and it seemed that they were crossing the desert with friends from a small village in western Egypt, on their way to Cairo. I wrote until the vision passed, and I posted the few pages I had written out, as a transcription, on The Huffington Post. Right away, I got lots of enthusiastic emails. "What is this? This is great!" I didn't know what it was.

The next day, the movie started up again. And I wrote down everything I saw and heard. This went on for weeks, and then months. The characters talk about such things as inner peace, the challenge of change, the dynamic nature of balance, how things can help or harm us, the true power of the mind, the hidden structures of our world, the importance of wisdom, the elements of human nature, the necessity of love, the requirements of success, and the world’s strangest gift of all - uncertainty. I could be almost anywhere, doing almost anything, and I'd have to grab a pen and paper and start writing. Pretty soon, I realized that I had an entire book. It was called The Oasis Within. I knew that because I woke up with the title seared in my mind. Yeah, it's all strange. But interesting strange. And it was the most fun, by far, that I've ever had writing - or doing anything as a philosopher.

The story continued. A second book, much bigger, appeared, as if it were already fully formed in every detail and I just had to get it in that movie form so I could write it down, as well. I never had to make up anything. And I never did. It all just came to me, in a rush. It was like drinking out of an open fire hydrant. It was all I could do to type fast enough. Egyptian names, historical references, stuff I didn't know anything about at all - but at the end of each day, I began to research what I had seen in the movie, and all sorts of odd details turned out to be true of the time and the place. How was this happening? I had no idea. The first book, it turned out, was a fascinating conversational prologue to what was now obviously a much longer action, adventure, and mystery novel full of comedy, romance, politics, crime, and, most of all, philosophy. I was seeing a deep worldview developed by the characters in what they did and said.  It really blew me away.

The second book was more than twice the length of the first one. Then, the movie picked up again - there was a third, even bigger, book, and a fourth one, and on and on. Book eight came to a wild culmination, and the movie projectionist, whoever it is, then took a break. I was nearly a million words into the most unexpected adventure of my life, and what I now think of as the culmination of my work as a public philosopher interested in understanding as much as I can about what we're doing in this world, and how we can do it best. I learned more from the movie than I had at Yale, UNC, and Notre Dame combined. But they had all prepared me well for this wild and unexpected journey.

One friend, a former student, who is a highly acclaimed novelist, read the first two books in draft and said, "This is The Alchemist meets Harry Potter meets Indiana Jones." That was encouraging. And the first edition of the first book just came out in its first form - a really beautiful paperback. The hardcover version, and an ebook, are due out within a week or two. But the paperback is now there, waiting for you, at Amazon, hoping you're curious. The hardcover and the ebook will be available through any bookseller, and also very soon. But if you want to see the opening chapters in the new adventure right now, the journey that has changed my own life for the better, please go, click here, The Oasis Within, and read and tell me soon what you think!

To quote one of the characters, "Much is yet to be revealed."

A Good, Virtuous Character

The New York Times Book Review recently asked two writers, Thomas Mallon and Alice Gregory, a question about characters in novels that's often been discussed before. It was posed like this: Can a Virtuous Character Be Interesting? The most common, received opinion is that a scoundrel, scalawag, deviant, or miscreant is much more interesting to read about than a normal garden-variety good guy. The argument usually given for such a view is simple. Imagine this story: A guy is born into a great and psychologically healthy family, he grows up around good friends, attends a fine school, is very nice himself, graduates from an ideal college, meets the perfect life partner, and lives happily ever after. It would not be the typical page turner. "Wait. I have to finish this chapter. Somebody just nicely asked our hero to pass the salt and I've got to see what form of graciousness he displays to comply!" 

We're often drawn to flawed characters. For one thing, we may see in them, on full parade, various traits that we've felt in ourselves and rightly suppressed. It's instructive and sometimes even fascinating to witness them fully developed and on display. In a related way, truly despicable characters in fiction make us look not so bad, after all, by contrast - which is surely one of the reasons reality television shows are so popular. And then, in another way, we may enjoy the insight that such portrayals can give us into the souls of people we actually have to deal with now and then outside the realms of novels.

Most good writers can provide long lists of baddies who have been more interesting to read about in the history of literature than almost any of the goodies. But should writers aspire more, and work harder, to depict goodness rather than focusing on so many types of evil?

Alice Gregory has something worthwhile to say about it all. She writes:

A truly radical 21st-century novelist wouldn’t ask us to see ourselves in made-up villains, and then, hopefully, revise our opinions of the real ones in our own lives. Rather, they would ask us to see the arduous and often acrobatic effort that goes into living a life of common decency. They would coerce us into believing that virtue is interesting and fun to think about and far more dazzling to encounter than malevolence.

In her 1947 book “Gravity and Grace,” Simone Weil wrote: “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

I think that's well said, both by Gregory and Weil.

I've just finished the most unexpected adventure in writing, over the course of my entire life, A movie started playing in my head one morning about four and a half years ago, and I immediately rushed to write down everything I was seeing and hearing. It was the most amazing process of writing I've ever experienced, and quite different from the rational and heavily planned creation of a nonfiction book of philosophy. The movie kept playing, and an entrancing prologue book, recounting a trip across the desert in Egypt in 1934, quickly came into being, and has been followed by seven subsequent much longer novels, so far. The prologue, The Oasis Within, is a short book just shy of 200 pages, and is going to be announced here soon, as it will be published within the month.

The Oasis Within, and its novel series that follows, are all my favorite books I've ever written. And the main characters are all very good guys. They display everyday virtue in dazzling ways. They do confront evil, and great danger, many times, and in wildly varied forms, but they are themselves great people I'd love to know. And they're the opposite of boring. In fact, they may be the most fascinating characters I've ever been introduced to, in any story. But maybe that's just me. And they confirm richly Alice Gregory's point.

I'll announce it here when the first of the eight books laying out their story is available. It will be very soon. A twenty-first century novelist is about to do something very different. 

The Purpose of Fear

One of the greatest pieces of advice ever given is this: Seek to live from love, not from fear. Over the long run, a few important things are true. Love expands us. Fear contracts us. A life mainly guided by fear is a small, shrunken substitute for what it could have been. 

But most of us can't completely avoid the experience of fear. And in this world, we probably shouldn't, anyway. So. In order to deal with it properly, we need to know its purpose. And here's a surprise.

The purpose of fear is to make us act. It's not to make us freeze.

Think about it: How many times do we ever find ourselves explaining someone's tremendous success in a challenging situation by saying, "She froze. That's why she prevailed."

The deer in the headlights doesn't escape danger by becoming motionless. The purpose of fear is to motivate action - often avoidance, sometimes preparation, always a new level of focused concentration. When we're trying something new where great gains or losses are at stake, fear will often arise. It's a certain form of emotional energy. The question then becomes: What do we do with it? Sometimes, it properly makes us stop and think and then proceed no farther. Often, it makes us stop and think and then proceed better. Courage can listen to fear but doesn't misunderstand it as nature's ultimate Stop Sign. Courage can be counseled by fear, but is never undermined by it.

When you next feel fear, let it make you act. Don't react in paralysis instead. Act. The right action may be a higher level of thinking, which, after all, is an action in its own right. Or what's called for could be a matter of physical movement. Fear isn't always our enemy, simply something to be overcome. It can be a stimulus to act properly, with consciousness, and focus. It can guide us to adapt, adjust, and act well.

It always signals the unknown. And the unknown is where the amazing can be found.

Just don't let fear stop you from acting at all. And remember, still, that the highest motivation is love. And perfect love, as we're told, casts out fear, even if it first feels it, and listens, and acts - it just never lets fear be the final word.

Life While-You-Wait

Today I just want to share a powerful and profound short poem by Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012). It comes from her book Map: Collected and Last Poems. I came across it on www.brainpickings.org, one of my favorite websites. Read it twice if you can. The last two lines are particularly striking, in the context of the poem, and of our lives. I do grieve for some of what I will forever have done. Perhaps you do, too. But there is an alchemy that can redeem and reweave even our worst into a different and never expected best.

LIFE WHILE-YOU-WAIT

Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.

Crafting Your Own Story

Who are you in the story of your life? What's your overall narrative? How do you cast yourself as the hero of your story - or at least one of the heroes? It can make a big difference in how you live.

My friend Clancy Martin has a very nice review essay in today's New York Times, discussing the new book with a clever and ironic title, Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life, by Eric G. Wilson. The lead idea is a simple one. A guy went to his therapist depressed, and wanting to be a better father than he thinks he is. The therapist demanded that he go home and construct a new narrative for his life, in which he wasn't a bad, depressed father, but something else altogether. The author took up the challenge with vigor and began viewing himself as "Crazy Dad" who would do all sorts of outlandish and fun things with his kids. He began acting a new role, revamping the Book, or Reality Show, that is his life. And things got much better, right away.

We're always told to know ourselves and be true to ourselves. But isn't it just as important to invent ourselves well? We're all artists. Our selves are works of art that are created and crafted day in and day out by our thoughts and actions. Who are you in the story of your life? Do you allow someone else to define you, at work or at home? Or do you take on the responsibility and hard joy of self creation, self definition, and becoming that Aristotle thought is so important?

What story do you tell yourself about who you are? Is it working? Or is it time for a creative redo? Should you be playing a different role in the way you see yourself and approach your day? Or would that make you somehow fake, or inauthentic? Perhaps, done right, it's all about making, and not faking. We're challenged to create and take on roles in life that will work. My philosophy buddy Clancy Martin, and the author Eric Wilson, give us all something worth thinking about.

Life Purpose

Arthur C. Brooks recently wrote in the New York Times:

In a 2009 study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, researchers interviewed 806 adolescents, emerging adults. and adults about their purpose in life. A key finding of the study was that being able to articulate a life purpose was strongly associated with much greater life satisfaction than failing to do so. In contrast, purposelessness — no matter how closely tied to worldly prosperity — generally defines a hamster-wheel life, alarmingly bereft of satisfaction.

What struck me from this statement, first of all, is that, on this particular study, it didn't even matter what you had articulated as your life purpose - some purpose was better than none. Imagine, then, the level of satisfaction that can result from a truly meaningful life purpose, and one that's deeply right for you.

What is your purpose? Can you put it into words? According to the study cited, that in itself can make a difference in a positive way. And the clearer you are about your sense of purpose, the easier it is to assess potential goals, business opportunities, and even social activities. If you're vague about your sense of life direction, meaning, and purpose, it becomes difficult to know what to say yes to and when to say no, apart from momentary feelings. But temporary feelings aren't always our best guides to long term good. A sense of purpose is a great guide forward.

What's yours?

A Land More Kind Than Home

There's a novelist named Wiley Cash who lives in my town. I've never met him but we have at least one friend in common. I recently picked up his first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, and once I started reading it, it was hard to put down. The story is told from multiple points of view in a way that actually works, and helps, rather than confusing the reader. It's a winding tale about some people in the mountains of North Carolina, and crucially involves religion, big snakes in church, crime, murder, heavy drinking, a family broken apart, and a long road to redemption for one man you'd never have suspected as capable of it. My favorite sentiment in the book, one that the story has richly earned the right to announce, is uttered by an older lady near the end. As she sums things up, she says:

It's a good thing to see that people can heal after they've been broken, that they can change and become something different from what they were before. (305)

This is a hope that we all have, and a truth that many of us can attest. Something is going to break us, if we live long enough, and we can change and heal, given enough time yet to come. And the healing doesn't have to look likely, in order to happen. Redemption is the result of a multitude of forces at work over time. If we give people the chance to turn around, sometimes they will. It's a prime example of the true alchemy in our world.

Wiley's story is rich with a resonance of North Carolina's mountain people. But you might see and hear something similar in any poor, remote area of the country. The words and cadences of the characters reflect even what I heard in the piedmont portion of the state, growing up on the edge of a town in an eight hundred square foot rental house. Its setting strips away a lot of the complexities of modern life, to allow some of the elemental things to shine through. The story of the book will fascinate you, disturb you in good ways, and then lift you up.

I'd recommend it as a great summer read. And now, Wiley Cash already has another book out. So I've got more reading to do.

Your Photos

The world is always moving and changing in a constant flood of events, as if there is a vast movie spooling forward from some cosmic film reel and being projected onto a limitless metaphysical screen. Because of the dynamism of everything, you might think, at first consideration, that actual movies of our lives, or our work, if we could have them made, might give us just the insight we need in order to be able to understand more deeply, and perform more excellently in whatever we do. Like sports teams studying game film, if we could just have something like a film of our work and life to review, we could perhaps gain tremendous insight that we otherwise lack.

But my movie would just show me for most of any given day at my desk, thinking. You might as well just take a photo. And this, I suspect, is at least one of the reasons why Ryan Seacrest has never pitched to me a reality show about my life. Who would watch an hour of me sitting still? But then again, compared to some of the shows currently running, it might not be the worst.

Would you like to be the star of your own movie, or TV show? Would watching yourself help you to understand your life better? I've learned something interesting. Photographs can be just as illuminating as film. And sometimes, even more so. My daughter, in her work, often makes slide shows from great photographs she's taken and then set to music, displaying the visuals over an appropriate soundtrack. When I watch such a show on my computer, each shot, each individual photograph, stays on the screen for three or four seconds, it seems, before another appears and lingers, and then moves on.

Each photograph captures a moment in time in a way that was impossible before this distinctive art developed. We live a fluid flow of moments eliding into each other in such a manner that we can't directly experience the freezing of any one moment for examination and reflection. We can't stop the ever flowing stream of life, except in photographs. And then, when we do, we can contemplate, for a time, what took place at a time. In other words, we can think through, over a period of time, a snapshot of one moment in time. We can notice things that might have passed unnoticed in the real spooling forth of the filmic procession that is our lives. We can ponder that moment and what it shows. We can take the time needed to reflect more deeply on a fleeting second that may have been lived through initially devoid of reflection.

A photograph can be misleading in many ways. But it can be revelatory in others. It can be an aperture into a new vision for ourselves and our lives. We have more pictures available to us now than ever before in modern times. But do we use them well? Do we squeeze out the insight or wisdom from them that may be there to be gained?

I suspect, for the most part, not. And maybe this is something we need to think about more. How could you really benefit from those selfies on your phone? Contemplate it. Consider them. Linger in reflection. Illumination may occur.

The Fault In Our Stars

In the New York Times the other day, I read about a famous Young Adult book editor at Dutton who gives her authors 20 pages of harsh critique on their manuscripts, and they cry, and then revise, and get bestselling results. She has more bestsellers, apparently, than anyone else. John Green, author of the mega hit book The Fault in Our Stars, now a major motion picture, as they say, is one of her authors. And so when I saw his popular book on a used book table in an airport bookstore this week, I bought it to find out how mega bestselling books are written - something a philosopher would not know. I promise you that. And I read it on the airplanes of the week.

The book is good. I recommend it. It's a story about two teenagers in Indiana who have cancer and fall in love. The girl, Hazel, who is 16, loves a book once written by a reclusive novelist who now lives in Amsterdam. She's read it over and over. She meets a boy, Augustus Waters, when he visits her support group for cancer kids. He's hot, so they talk, and he decides to read the book she loves so much. And then, Spoiler Alert, he uses his "Wish" (for very sick kids to have special experiences) to taker her to meet her hero, the author of her favorite book, in Amsterdam. They find that the man is quite different from what they expect. But despite their disappointment in that main facet of the trip, love blossoms. Then: Someone dies. And the nature of our universe is prodded and pondered.

It's a surprisingly philosophical novel. And, again, I liked it. But do you remember how the characters in the hit tv show Dawson's Creek used to talk like graduate students, instead of the high schoolers they were supposed to be? Ok maybe you didn't watch. Well. These characters, the girl 16, and the boy 17, talk and think more like exaggerated versions of Ivy League professors.

Hazel, the girl, speaks with words like: veritably, decrepit, horrifically, toroidal, disheartening, dysmorphia, incessantly, feign, taut, catastrophic, hamartia (the ancient Greek word for sin), gutted, ludicrous, flummoxed, gratuitous, luminous, and indefatigable, as well as in phrases like “waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles.”

She thinks, and narrates to us, with words like rapture, sedentary, ferocity, tenuous,  misnomered, elicit, coterie, irreconcilably, succulently, malevolent, encroached, transfigured, commiserate, cloyingly, prematorium, eponymous, irrevocably, rotundity, labyrinthine, and lumen, and also in phrases like “the tears not like tears so much as a quiet metronome,” and “existentialist experiment,” and “a bodily sovereignty,” and again, “existential curiosity,” and “a quantum entanglement,” and “the sound of a parent’s annihilated voice,” and “depraved meaninglessness,” as well as, finally, “the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering.” Do sixteen-year-olds ever actually go around talking and thinking like this, anywhere other than the Indiana of the book?

Augustus, the 17 year old boy, and former high school basketball player, speaks with words like sacrality, trope, perseverant, eviscerated, and self-aggrandizing, and with phrases like “The day of existentially fraught free throws,” “the men and women who wait like Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot,” and “awash in the nobility of sacrifice,” and again, “awash in the metaphorical resonance,” or “the Whitmanesque revelation,” and “the terrible ferocity,” and “the incessant mechanized haranguing.”

But they also curse in really normal curse words, and Hazel often agrees with Augustus in the new faddish phrase, "I know, right?" And she eventually describes her formerly admired novelist as "the world's douchiest douche." (184) So there is quite a dynamic spectrum of language represented in the book.

Hazel's really popular fashionista high school friend, Kaitlin, uses phrases like "preemptive dumping,” and “lascivious details,” and speaks of “unconscionable” luck. And then she buys lots of cute shoes.

Parents occasionally speak professorially, but not nearly as well as the kids. A nurse gives an abstract of the news that sounds like something Jon Stewart might do after getting his own PhD in pop culture.

The prose of the book is sometimes really really aggressively MFA (Master of Fine Arts degree). And some of the ideas are, as well. But it's all very clever, despite striking me as incredibly unrealistic. Of course, maybe that's just me. I've never been around kids who ate dictionaries for breakfast and alphabet soup for lunch.

But I think the author does a good job of bringing up some big issues about life, death, disease, afterlife, consciousness, fairness, fate, and honesty that we all need to contemplate. I think I will contemplate them with you some tomorrow, or the next day. If you've read The Fault in Our Stars, let me know what you think.

So maybe I know now, indisputably, irrevocably, and inerrantly, if not sublimely, what it takes to write a Number One New York Times bestseller. I've got to practice my prolixity, at least enough for the inexorable to occur.