On Quiet, Reading, and the Fear of Stillness with David Foster Wallace
Clip from a 2003 interview with the German TV station ZDF. You can listen to the full interview here.
"Reading, reading requires sitting alone by yourself in a quiet room and I have friends, intelligent friends, who don't like to read because they get—it's not just bored ... there is an, there's an almost dread that comes up, I think here ... about having to be alone and having to be quiet."
"And you see that when you walk in—when you walk into most public spaces in America it isn't quiet anymore ... they pipe music through."
"And the music's easy to make fun of because it's usually really horrible music but it seems significant that we don't want things to be quiet ever anymore."
"And, and, to me, I don't, I don't know that I could defend it but that seems to me to have something to do with when you, when you feel like the purpose of your life is to gratify ... yourself ... and get things for yourself ... and go all the time, there's this other part of you that, that's the same part that can kind of, almost hungry for silence and quiet and thinking really hard about the same thing for maybe half an hour instead of 30 seconds that doesn't get fed at all. And it, um, it makes itself felt in the body in a kind of dread ... in here." (rubs center of chest)
"And I, I don't know, I don't know whether that makes a whole lot of sense but I think it's true that here in the U.S. every year the culture gets more and more hostile."
"And I don't mean hostile like angry. Just it becomes more and more difficult to ask people to read or look at a piece of art ... for ... an hour."
"Or to listen, to listen to a piece of music that's complicated and that takes work to understand, because, well, there are a lot of reasons, but, um, but particularly now in computer and internet culture everything is so fast." (snaps fingers three times quickly)
"And, uh—and the faster things go, the more we feed that part of ourselves but don't feed the part of ourselves that likes ... ... (sotto voice) that likes quiet.
"That can live in quiet ... you know ... that can live ... without any kind of stimulation."
Bob Dylan's 2016 Nobel Prize Speech - Full Speech Transcript
Hey everyone,
Scroll down for the full text of the Nobel Prize in Literature speech from Bob Dylan in 2016.
Bit of background up top: I don't think it's a spoiler to say the very final text onscreen of the film "A Complete Unknown" starring Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan is a slow fading sentence telling us that Bob Dylan was the first musician to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature ... and then there's a pause before a second and ultimately final sentence slowly loads up saying "He did not attend the ceremony."
Then the credits roll! And that's it. LOL.
But imagine, though: You just won the Nobel Prize. And you're like "Nope! Not going." Maybe just finishes with another layer to the already mesmerizing, magical, mercurial performance from Chalamet. I found myself wiping back tears so many times: when 20-year-old Dylan is singing to Woody Guthrie in the opening scene, the Blowin' In The Wind in the apartment scene, the first letter from Johnny Cash ... such a wonderful and striking film by James Mangold.
That last sentence though. Did Bob Dylan really just not go to the Nobel Prize ceremony? I looked it up and he was awarded the Nobel Prize on October 13, 2016. There was a period of controversy afterwards where he apparently just ... didn't respond. A Nobel member even called him 'impolite and arrogant'! But then he evidently wrote a speech yet didn't give it himself. It was spoken by ... the US Ambassador to Sweden? LOL. Yes. On December 10, 2016. That's the speech I've pasted below. I like his thoughts on focus—how aiming for a prize isn't, and maybe *can't be*, what an artist ever intends or guides themselves towards—and his thoughts on how performing for large audiences is easier than small ones. (David Sedaris told me something similar.)
The postscript to the postscript is that Dylan did eventually accept the actual physical prize at a private event in a secret location on April 1, 2017 and then, before the required "six month deadline" (mandatory to claim the 8 million kroner / $900k USD prize), recorded an audio note, which is posted on YouTube. Such an enigma that these little spurts of personal voice resonate deeply.
Here is the full text of Bob Dylan's 2016 Nobel Prize Banquet Speech.
Neil
Bob Dylan's 2016 Nobel Prize Banquet Speech - Full Speech Transcript
Good evening, everyone. I extend my warmest greetings to the members of the Swedish Academy and to all of the other distinguished guests in attendance tonight.
I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize. Being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming. From an early age, I’ve been familiar with and reading and absorbing the works of those who were deemed worthy of such a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants of literature whose works are taught in the schoolroom, housed in libraries around the world and spoken of in reverent tones have always made a deep impression. That I now join the names on such a list is truly beyond words.
I don’t know if these men and women ever thought of the Nobel honor for themselves, but I suppose that anyone writing a book, or a poem, or a play anywhere in the world might harbor that secret dream deep down inside. It’s probably buried so deep that they don’t even know it’s there.
If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon. In fact, during the year I was born and for a few years after, there wasn’t anyone in the world who was considered good enough to win this Nobel Prize. So, I recognize that I am in very rare company, to say the least.
I was out on the road when I received this surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to properly process it. I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn’t have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I’m sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: “Who’re the right actors for these roles?” “How should this be staged?” “Do I really want to set this in Denmark?” His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. “Is the financing in place?” “Are there enough good seats for my patrons?” “Where am I going to get a human skull?” I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare’s mind was the question “Is this literature?”
When I started writing songs as a teenager, and even as I started to achieve some renown for my abilities, my aspirations for these songs only went so far. I thought they could be heard in coffee houses or bars, maybe later in places like Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was really dreaming big, maybe I could imagine getting to make a record and then hearing my songs on the radio. That was really the big prize in my mind. Making records and hearing your songs on the radio meant that you were reaching a big audience and that you might get to keep doing what you had set out to do.
Well, I’ve been doing what I set out to do for a long time, now. I’ve made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world. But it’s my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do. They seemed to have found a place in the lives of many people throughout many different cultures and I’m grateful for that.
But there’s one thing I must say. As a performer I’ve played for 50,000 people and I’ve played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried. The fact that the Nobel committee is so small is not lost on me.
But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life’s mundane matters. “Who are the best musicians for these songs?” “Am I recording in the right studio?” “Is this song in the right key?” Some things never change, even in 400 years.
Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, “Are my songs literature?”
So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.
My best wishes to you all,
Bob Dylan
Originally published on Nobelprize.org
As a giver of speeches myself, I love to save my favorite ones to share with you here.
I'm sure it's nice to win a Nobel Prize, but the real rewards come from intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation.
91-year-old former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien - Full Speech Transcript - March 9, 2025
Canada is trending!
Sitting in Toronto I find myself reading stories about how Canadians are cancelling US vacations, protesting Elon's "Canada isn't a real country" comments by scratching up Teslas, and swerving buying dollars to local Canadian goods.
I love Canada! I've written about Canada a lot. It was #10 on 1000 Awesome Things and I expanded that little essay into a long-form Audible Original and now I'm working to expand it again into (maybe!) a print book.
I love Canada! We love Canada. It's where I'm from, where I grew up, where I live. Canada is most certainly home.
It's in that context Leslie and I were brought to tears many times a few weeks ago when 91-year-old (!) former Canadian Prime Minister (1993 to 2003) Jean Chrétien gave this thundering speech at the Liberal convention in Ottawa as Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada passed the baton to the brilliant Mark Carney.
There is so much here! How Canadians and Americans are friends—and always have been, despite one guy musing that we're not, how Canada is the place most people would want to restart their lives, how Canadians have fought off American imperial ambitions before with a polite yet firm "Non, merci." And much, much more. How powerful to see an elder diplomat elevate the level of the conversation rather than fall to lowest common denominator of algorithmically-infused soundbite discourse.
Here is the full transcript of Jean Chrétien's speech.
Vive le Canada!
Neil
(Speaking in French)
"Prime Minister Trudeau, Candidates, Candidates, President of the party, Ministers and MPs, dear compatriots ... good evening.
This is an exceptional opportunity for me to be here this evening.
This is my ninth Liberal convention that I’ve participated in (applause) and it’s the seventh time I’ve spoken at the podium. I would have never thought that I could do it at ninety-one! (huge applause)
I am still ready to fight! I have fight in me yet.
(switches to English)
It’s great to see so many young people in the room today. It reminds me of my first Liberal convention when I was the President of the Young Liberals at Laval University (applause) ... in 1958 (gasps) ... when Lester Pearson was elected Liberal leader.
(cheers)
In 1958 ... (laughs) ... not many of you were born! (laughs)
And he then became a very good Prime Minister.
I have kept coming to Liberal convention for sixty-eight years.
I have kept coming back to Liberal convention because of what the Liberal Party stand for.
I have kept coming back because of what the Liberal Party has delivered to make the lives of Canadians better.
And I am here today because it is the Liberal Party that can best deliver the better lives for Canadians in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.
(applause)
It is the Liberal Party that has given Canadian the Canadian Pension Plan and Medicare (applause), the Charter of Rights and Freedom (applause), the two official languages (applause), that put the indigenous rights into the Canadian constitution (applause), brought in tough gun control laws (applause), affirmative action (applause). We have always supported women's right to choose (huge applause), we are the party who led the way to permit—the second country in the world to permit same-sex marriage.
The party is the party of diversity, equality, tolerance, openness, and inclusiveness.
(applause)
We Liberals call it the very essence of Canada, and it is the Liberal Party that gave us the red maple leaf flag (applause), sixty years ago, which flew so proudly in homes across the country on the 14th of February to demonstrate our patriotism and love for Canada.
I want to say a special thank you to former Prime Ministers Joe Clark, (Stephen) Harper, (Paul) Martin, (Kim) Campbell, for coming together with me to rally Canadian across the land to show the Canadian flag with pride ... with a lot of pride.
(huge standing applause)
But tonight I want to pay tribute to Justin Trudeau.
(applause)
I want to pay tribute to him for taking the Liberal Party from third place to government (applause) and to three successive election victories. I want to pay tribute to what he and his team have accomplish: Canadian Child Benefit (applause) to reduce the poverty for the children in Canada, the ten dollars childcare (applause) that opened the labour market to so many women, for the dental plan for low-income Canadians (applause), for all the work he’s done on the environment.
(applause)
Ladies and gentlemen, these are Liberal policies.
And let’s talk about the economic reality of the moment now because Canada has done well. This—I’m telling you (applause), as I’ve said sooo many times—Canada is not broken.
(huge applause)
Despite the attacks by the critics, Canada has the lowest deficit per capita in the G7 (applause), more than five times lower than in the United States.
(applause)
For the lowest debt per capita in the G7.
(applause)
And, in fact, the payment on the interest of the debt today is only 11% for each dollar of tax we pay and compared to what we got when we formed the government in 1993, we were obliged to pay thirty-five cents (35%) in every tax dollar.
That was a little problem the Tories left to me.
(laughter)
And we balanced the books!
We took that mess from the Tories and we balanced the books!
And we had ten years of surplus.
And the Tories came back to power, and we went back in debt.
(laughter)
Now inflation is 1.9% percent in Canada. It’s 3.2% and increasing south of the border ... you know?
(laughter)
I spent my life talking about job creation. Now the problem, we’re looking for manpower. It’s a difficult problem, but it’s better than reverse.
You know, I want to pay tribute to the government, to Mr. Trudeau, and to all the provincial governments, for the fact that they have, with the municipalities, they have put together the best program on the pandemic that we faced, better than any other country in the world.
(applause)
Our death rate was less than half of the United States.
Today, as a party, we’re choosing a new leader. A leader who will assume the mantle of (Wilfred) Laurier and (Louis) St. Laurent and (Lester B.) Pearson, Trudeau’s father, ... Trudeau ... the son, who has with him a very beautiful daughter. You know, I’m old enough to say that.
(laughs)
And myself. And I want—that is very important—I want to take this moment to say I am impress, I am, by the quality of the candidates whose names are on the ballot tonight!
(applause)
It makes me very, very proud to be a Liberal.
(switches to French)
And now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room.
The long and fruitful friendship with Americans built over decades, which is falling apart before our eyes, and is becoming something which is difficult to name.
Mutual respect, trust, reciprocal cooperation, friendship, which have long characterized our relationship are now giving way to wariness and more and more open hostility from the Trump administration towards our country.
This is—this is something we’ve never seen. But this is something that Canadians don’t understand, and I think the majority of Americans don’t understand it either, without mentioning the rest of the planet.
Why?
Well, why, historians, journalists, and university researchers and experts at international politics are trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense.
Well, in Canada, our elbows are up. We’re working together to unite to deal with this threat—the threat to our economy and our sovereignty. In other words, our very existence as a country.
(applause)
At the beginning of the week, tariffs became a reality. And there will only be losers if you measure it in financial terms alone. But for Canadians, it’s more than that. It’s more than money that’s at stake here. We love our country and our independence. We love who we are because we’re unique in the world.
(switches to English)
And I want to pay tribute to the Trudeau government and all the Premiers for the way they have led Canada in the last few weeks in confronting the menace imposed on us...
(long applause)
...with tariff completely unjustified. Governments have absolutely right in retaliating as they are, and I congratulate all of them.
If it is necessary, the governments altogether can consider going further: and hitting the Americans where it's really hurts, by imposing an export tax on oil, gas, potash, steel, aluminum, and electricity.
(applause)
And we’ll use that money to build infrastructure that are needed in Canada. For example, to build a pipeline for natural gas from Alberta to Quebec. Alberta, the family of my mother, and Quebec ... of my father.
So, you know, I think that if we do that, that will keep the steelworkers working in Canada for a long time.
(laughs, applause)
And I could go on and on, but I’m limited in time. So the world has lived for eighty years with a rule-based order that has brought us peace and prosperity. It has enabled the United States to be the strongest, the most powerful country in the world. It has allowed all of us to sleep well every night.
And now Donald Trump has decided to throw it all out the window.
We are going to be living very difficult times, but I’m confident, I’m very confident that the next Prime Minister will work with the Premiers, the leaders of all the political parties in the House of Commons, and allies around the world to stand together to meet the challenges that Mr. Trump is creating for the whole world.
(applause)
And perhaps, speaking of the President, it is time for little history lesson for him.
(laughs)
Probably he does not realize that in 1776 Benjamin Franklin spent a year in Montreal trying to convince the people to join the American Revolution. And he was tollld by the Francophone, 'Non, merci.'
(cheers)
And they were right. Look what happened to the French language in Louisiana.
The loyalists left the USA to come back to Upper Canada and the Atlantic, and the Francophone of Lower Canada, together they built our independent country.
During the War of 1812, Americans who came to what is now Canada on a mission of conquest. They were defeated by Colonel de Salaberry in what is now Quebec and by leaders like the great indigenous chief Tecumseh, in what is now Ontario.
(applause)
And I don’t know apparently some burned the White House at that time.
But I’m too old to do it. No, it’s a joke.
(laughter)
But, ladies and gentlemen, we have been friend and good neighbour with our southern neighbours. But we must stand up for ourselves. Historically, despite our friendship, we have had problems, but we always found a way to solve them.
We have worked with and collaborated with the United States in the past, and I’m telling you, we will do so in the future.
(applause)
We are good neighbours and friends, but we are proud and independent country.
(cheers)
But sometimes one must stand up for Canada. We must always be vigilant, and I did so as Minister and as Prime Minister.
Way back in 1968, when the Americans sent a ship, the Manhattan, with no Canadian flag through our northern passage, they wanted to prove that the passage was international water. As Minister of Northern Affairs, I flew to Pond Inlet at the northern extremity of Baffin Island to confront them. I was on the Louis St. Laurent icebreaker. I call the captain. I said, 'I will be there in an hour (laughter)... and it’s better to have the Canadian flag at the mast.'
(long applause)
When I arrived, there was a Canadian flag at the mast.
(cheers)
And I had a big smile.
(laughs)
You know, we had other problems of the same nature. You remember Newfoundland, the so-called Fish War, when we arrested the (Spanish fishing trawler) Estai, when my friend (former Newfoundland Premier Brian) Tobin made a great show at the UN with the illegal nets. And—we were successful. They changed the international laws after that because there was a problem that needed to be fix.
And I’m quite proud of it ... and it was quite a time.
(cheers)
I was travelling in the west. I came back. It was early week. So it was a Thursday, early week. So my wife said, 'We’ll have a good rest for the weekend.' And I said, 'Perhaps not, because I’m declaring war to Spain.'
(laughter)
She did not sleep.
(laughter)
But, you know, we had another problem on the West Coast. You know, we have Vancouver Island, the mainland, and Canadian waters. And the fishermen from Oregon and Washington State were going to Alaska, but they were not respecting our water. So we threatened them to block the passage on Canadian water and force them to go in the high seas. It was a very difficult problem. The Senator Velasquez said it was almost a question of war.
So I discussed that, and I talked with my friend Bill Clinton, and he said 'It's out of Canada, there’s not much I can do.' And I said 'If you cannot do something, I will do something.' And they were forced to respect our laws. Some were taken to courts. And after that the problem was solved because we stood for us strongly.
(cheering)
But for eight years, I was a colleague of Bill Clinton, and he would always say that Canada was his best ally. And that I was a very good friend, and we still are very good friends. But we work together. And we found solution together. And this is what will happen in the future, too. We always been good neighbours with anybody.
So I was proud too when I was Prime Minister and I had to say 'No' to the participation in the American invasion of Iraq.
(long, sustained cheering)
That decision told the United States and the world that Canada is a proud, independent country.
(cheering)
Of course, the business community was very nervous. They were afraid of retaliation. So I told them, 'Okayyy. Give me the list of all the goods, and all the services, that the Americans are buying from us because they like us.'
I have not received the list yet.
(laughs)
So, you know we will work in collaboration with them, but, you know, they have to understand, and everybody understand that we are a very proud country. And ... for me, I can tell you that sometimes I can say this. From one old guy to another old guy...
(laughs)
Stop this nonsense!
(long, loud cheers)
Canada will never join the United States!
I can tell you that my parents were not millionaires from New York. They were worker from Shawinigan.
(cheers)
But my mother taught us good manners.
She would have been ashaaaame of me if I had treated anyone the way that the President treated my Prime Minister and the President in Ukraine in the last few weeks.
(cheering)
The reason we don’t want to become American is because of our values as Canadians. We are proud Canadians, and, yes, in fact we owe a debt of recognitions to Mr. Trump. He has united us as never before!
(cheering)
So I want to say thank you to him, and I think I will propose him for the Order of Canada.
(laughs)
I’m just kidding.
(switches to French)
Prime Minister, I will travel across the world. I went to the UN, to the G7, to NATO, to the Commonwealth, to the Francophonie, and to all sorts of international meetings on the five continents. When I came back to Canada, each time I would say that the job of being Prime Minister is perhaps the easiest of any country in the world. Canada is the country that works the best, I think, much better than any other country in the world.
(switches to English)
And it’s why there are millions and millions of human beings from all over the world who would like to come and become Canadian citizens.
There was a survey not long ago. They were asking the people, 'Where would you want to go if you had to start again your life?' And Canada was number one.
(cheers)
Why?
It’s because Canada is the land of freedom.
Canada is the land of opportunity (cheers), the land of generosity (cheers), the land of tolerance (cheers), the land of stability (cheers), the land of rule of law.
(cheers)
It is our land that is the envy of the world.
Canada will continue to rise—true north strong and free.
(cheers)
Nobody will starrrrve us into submission ... because Canada is ... and will remain ... the best country in the world.
(giant fist pump)
Vive le Canada!!!"
(long standing ovation)
Watch Jean Chrétien's full speech here.
Josh Allen's 2024 NFL MVP Speech - Full Transcript
Hey everyone,
On the Friday before the Super Bowl the NFL hosts an annual glitzy awards gala which centers around the big award for NFL MVP. This year the winner was Josh Allen (quarterback of the Buffalo Bills) who took home the award in a razor-thin victory. I loved Josh's acceptance speech and, yeah, I'm a Bills fan so maybe I'm biased, but honestly, to me it felt like a masterclass in servant leadership.
Josh exuded love, he exuded gratefulness. He looked fellow nominees in the eyes and spoke to them, he used nicknames—D-Dawk! Slick Rick in the mailroom!—and mentions everyone in the organization from top to bottom. The anecdotes about his parents, siblings, and fiancé made me cry! There's so much servant leadership here. I've watched it five times! No wonder this guy has transformed his team and *cough* should have been in the Super Bowl.
Neil
Josh Allen's 2024 NFL MVP Speech - Full Transcript
"And the AP Most Valuable Player presented by Invisalign is ... Josh Allen."
(Stands and kisses and hugs fiancé, hugs mom, dad, Jared Goff, runs onstage doing up his suit button right into lonnng hug with Dion Dawkins, then hugs or shakes hands with every other person onstage, and then comes to the mic...)
"Woo (looks at trophy)... wow (looks at trophy)... lotta people to thank—I know I'm gonna forget a few so I apologize in advance."
"I'd like to thank God, first and foremost, for allowing me to be here today."
"I'd like to acknowledge the other nominees: Jared, Joe, Saquon, Lamar all had great seasons, and all could be standing here today and you guys would be deserving of it—so... you guys are true stewards of the game, I *look up* to you guys, I *admire* you guys, I just look forward to sharing the gridiron in the future with you guys, too."
(applause)
"I'd like to thank the Bills organization—(owners) Terry and Kim Pegula, (GM) Brandon Beane, (Coach) Sean McDermott, thank you guys for... drafting me (applause)—*seven and a half years ago*—feels just like yesterday, it really does."
"And I know this is an individual award and it says 'most valuable player' on it, but I think it's derived from team success ... and I love my team."
"D-Dawk, thank you for presenting—I really appreciate it. (scans for him out front, turns and finds him behind him onstage). Um, we got such a great locker room in Buffalo. And it takes *everybody*—from the equipment staff, to the training room, to the strength staff... to Slick Rick in the mailroom, to the cafeteria upstairs. Like, it—it truly takes everybody to... have team success. And I'm so fortunate to be part of a great organization."
"I'd like to thank Joe and LaVonne—my *parents*—who in my 20-plus years of playing football, going down to Pop Warner, I bet you they missed *maybe* 15 games in their entire life. They are so dedicated to supporting me and my favorite teammates—who are my sister, my brother, and my little sister Nicola, Jason and McKenna—thank you guys for all the support, all the tiiiiime, money, energy wasted growing up from going from meet to game to practice every day. I love you guys. I know that you...you take a lot of pride in this as well."
(cuts to his parents crying)
"And, last but not least, my fiancé Hailee. You've been my rock. You are my best friend. I would not be standing on this stage if it weren't for you. So ... with that being said..."
"Be good. Do good. God bless. And Go Bills."
Don't have an MVP award to help you feel grateful? Check out my simple, science-backed gratitude practice.
Former Patriots tight end Martellus Bennett is reimanging imagination and building a new life after the big win.
"Trust is built in the small moments" by Brené Brown
Hey everyone,
I've been working on a book about trust for eight years now.
I think there are three types of trust: personal trust (your trust in yourself), relational trust (your trust in someone else), and organizational trust (your trust in a media outlet, business, or organization). My book is about the last one—organizational trust. Brand trust, company trust, that sort of thing. But that's partly because so much great work on the first two types of trust is already done. One of the best articulated talks on relational trust is by the one and only Brené Brown.
I recently went back and rewatched Brené's 2015 speech at UCLA's Royce Hall as part of Oprah's inaugural live Super Soul Sessions. If you can watch the video below, watch the video, and if you're a transcript person—keep reading. Any typos are, of course, on me, not Brené.
For more on my trust stuff as it slowly congeals check out my SXSW Talk "Building Trust in Distrustful Times." For me and Brené together, check out our 3 Books podcast chapter here. To follow along Brené's great work today check out her website here or join her email list here.
Neil
P.S. If you know someone who'd like to get my bi-weekly blog posts they can sign up here.
The Anatomy of Trust
By Brené Brown
Oprah: Let me introduce you to our first super-charged Super Souler—Brené Brown! Oh, my, my. Okay. The woman has done her homework. Literally. With years of intensive research. She's just not talking off the top of her head. She is shining a megawatt light on the wounds of millions of people and beckoning all of us to join her on this path of healing. Here is the professor of daring greatly, wholehearted living, and rising strong. Brené is here to talk to you about the anatomy of trust. Brené Brown!
Brené: Woo! (applause) This is my intention right now—“don't cry before you start, don't cry before you start.” Oh, it just feels like an incredible understatement to say how grateful I am to be here, with all of you. I feel like I have a relationship with many of you on social media, and you were like, “T-minus two days.” I’m like, “It’s coming! We’re going to be together.” So I’m so grateful to be here with you.
I’m going to talk about trust and I’m going to start by saying this: One of my favorite parts of my job is that I get to research topics that mean something to me. One of my least favorite parts of my job is I normally come up with findings that kick me in the butt and make me change my entire life. That’s the hard part. But I get to dig into the stuff that I think matters in my life and the life of the people around me.
And the topic of trust is something I think I probably would have eventually started to look at closely because I study shame and vulnerability. But there’s a very personal reason I jumped to trust early in my research career, and it was a personal experience.
One day, my daughter, Ellen, came home from school. She was in third grade. And the minute we closed the front door, she literally just started sobbing and slid down the door until she was just kind of a heap, of crying, on the floor. And of course I was … It scared me, and I said, “What’s wrong Ellen? What happened? What happened?”
And she pulled herself together enough to say, “Something really hard happened to me today at school, and I shared it with a couple of my friends—during recess. And by the time we got back into the classroom, everyone in my class knew what had happened, and they were laughing and pointing at me and calling me names.” And it was so bad, and the kids were being so disruptive, that her teacher even had to take marbles out of this marble jar.
And the marble jar in the classroom is a jar where if the kids are making great, you know, great choices together, the teacher adds marbles. If they’re making not-great choices, the teacher takes out marbles. And if the jar gets filled up, there’s a celebration—for the class.
And so, she said, “It was one of the worst moments in my life. They were laughing and pointing. And Miss Bokum, my teacher, kept saying, ‘I’m going to take marbles out.’ And she didn’t know what was happening.”
And she looked at me just with this face that is just seared my mind and said, “I will never trust anyone again.” And my first reaction, to be really honest with you was, “Damn straight (laughter), um, you don’t tell anybody anything—but your Mama.”
Yeah, right? That’s it. I mean, that was my … “You just tell me. And when you grow up and you go off to school, Mama will go too. I’ll get a li’l apartment.” And the other thing I was thinking to be quite honest with you is, “I will find out who those kids were.” And while I’m not going to beat up a nine-year-old, I know their mamas.
And, you know, that’s the place you go to. And I’m like, “How am I going to explain trust to this third grader in front of me?” So I took a deep breath and I said, “Ellen, trust is like a marble jar.” She said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “You share those hard stories and those hard things that are happening to you—with friends, who, over time, you filled up their marble jar. They’ve done thing after thing after thing where you’re like, ‘I know I can share this with this person.’ Does that make sense?”
Yes! And that’s what Ellen said, “Yes, that makes sense.” And I said, “Do you have any marble jar friends?” And she said, “Oh yeah. Totally. Hannah and Lorna are marble jar friends.” And I said … and then this is where things got interesting. I said, “Tell me what you mean. How do they earn marbles for you?”
And she’s like, “Well, Lorna, if there’s not a seat for me at the lunch cafeteria, she’ll scoot over and give me half a heinie seat.” And I’m like, “She will?” She’s like, “Yeah. She’ll just sit like that, so I can sit with her.” And I said, “That’s a big deal.” This is not what I was expecting to hear.
And then she said, “And you know Hannah, on Sunday, at my soccer game?” And I was waiting for this story where she said, “I got hit by a ball and I was laying on the field, and Hannah picked me up and ran me to first aid.” And I was like, “Yeah?” And she said, “Hannah looked over and she saw Oma and Opa,”—my parents, her grandparents—“And she said, ‘Look, your Oma and Opa are here.'” And I was like …
And I was like, “Boy, she got a marble for that?” And she goes, “Well, you know, not all my friends have eight grandparents.” Because my parents are divorced and remarried, my husband’s parents are divorced and remarried. “And it was so nice to me that she remembered their names.”
And I was like, “Hmm.” And she said, “Do you have marble jar friends?” And I said, “Yeah, I do have a couple marble jar friends.” And she said, “Well, what kind of things do they do to get marbles?” And this feeling came over me. And I thought … the first thing I could think of, because we were talking about the soccer game, was that same game, my good friend Eileen walked up to my parents and said, “Dianne, David, good to see you.” And I remember what that felt like for me. And I was like, certainly, trust cannot be built by these small insignificant moments in our lives. It’s gotta be a grander gesture than that.
So, as a researcher, I start looking into the data. I gather up the doctoral students who’ve worked with me. We start looking. And it is crystal clear: Trust is built in very small moments. And when we started looking at examples of when people talked about trust in the research, they said things like, “Yeah, I really trust my boss. She even asked me how my mom’s chemotherapy was going.” “I trust my neighbor because if something’s going on with my kid, it doesn’t matter what she’s doing, she’ll come over and help me figure it out.” You know, one of the number one things emerged around trust and small things? People who attend funerals. “This is someone who showed up at my sister’s funeral.”
Another huge marble jar moment for people, “I trust him because he’ll ask for help when he needs it.” How many of you are better at giving help than asking for help? (puts hand up) Right? So, asking for help is one of those moments.
So, one of the ways I work as a grounded theory researcher, is I look at the data first, then I go in and see what other researchers are talking about and saying, because we believe the best theories are not built on other existing theories, but on our own lived experiences.
So, after I had looked at this, I said, “Let me see what the research says.” And I went to John Gottman, who’s been studying relationship for thirty years. He has amazing work on trust and betrayal. And the first thing I read, “Trust is built in the smallest of moments.” And he calls them “sliding door moments.”
Sliding Doors is a movie with Gwyneth Paltrow from the 90s. Have y’all seen this movie? So, it’s a really tough movie, because what happens is it follows her life to this seemingly unimportant moment where she’s trying to get on a train. And—she makes the train, but the movie stops and splits into two parts where she makes a train and she doesn’t make the train. And it follows them to radically different endings. And he would argue that trust is a sliding door moment. And the example that he gives is so powerful.
He said he was lying in bed one night, he had 10 pages left of his murder mystery, and he had us feeling he knew who the killer was, but he was dying to finish this book. So he said, “I don’t even want—I want to get up, brush my teeth, go to the bathroom, get back in and not have to get up.” You know that feeling when you just want to get all situated and read the end of your book?
So, he gets up, and he goes—he walks past his wife in the bathroom, who’s brushing her hair, and who looks really sad. And he said, “My first thought was just keep walking, just keep walking.”
And how many of you have had that moment where you walk past someone and you’re like, “Oh, God. They look … avert your eyes!” Or you look at caller ID or your cell phone, and you’re like, “Oh yeah, I know she’s in a big mess right now, I don’t have time to pick up the phone.” Right? Yes or no? (laughs) This looks like guilty laughter to me. (laugh)
So, he said, “That’s a sliding door moment.” And here’s what struck me about his story, because he said, “There is the opportunity to build trust and there is the opportunity to betray.” Because as small as the moments of trust can be, those are the moments of betrayal as well. To choose to not connect when the opportunity is there is a betrayal. So he took the brush out of her hand, and started brushing her hair, and said, “What’s going on with you right now, babe?” That’s a moment of trust, right?
So fast-forward five years, and I’m clear about trust, and I talk about trust as the marble jar. We gotta really share our stories and our hard stuff with people whose jars are full—people who’ve, over time, really done those small things that have … helped us believe that they’re worth our story.
But the new question for me was this: What are those marbles? What is trust? What do we talk about when we talk about trust? Trust is a big word, right? To hear, “I trust you,” or “I don’t trust you.” I don’t even know what that means. So, I wanted to know, what is the anatomy of trust? What does that mean?
So I started looking in the research and I found a definition from Charles Feltman that I think is the most beautiful definition I’ve ever heard. And it’s simply this: “Trust is choosing … to make … something important to you … vulnerable to the actions of someone else.” Choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else. Feltman says that “Distrust is what I have shared with you that is important to me is not safe with you.”
So, I thought, “That’s true.” And Feltman really calls for this—let’s understand what trust is. So, we went back into all the data to find out, can I figure out what trust is? Do I know what trust is from the data? And I think I do know what trust is.
And I put together an acronym, BRAVING, B-R-A-V-I-N-G. BRAVING. Because when we trust, we are braving connection with someone. So what are the parts of trust?
B, boundaries. I trust you … if you are clear about your boundaries and you hold them, and you’re clear about my boundaries, and you respect them. There is no trust without boundaries.
R, reliability. I can only trust you if you do what you say you’re going to do. And not once. Reliability … Lemme tell you what reliability is in research terms. We’re always looking for things that are valid and reliable. Any researchers here or research kind-of geeks? 10 of us! (laughter) Okay, so we would say a scale that you weigh yourself on is valid if you get on it and it’s an accurate weight. 120. (laughter) Okay. So that would be a very valid scale. I would pay a lot of money for that scale. So, that’s actually not a valid scale, but we’ll pretend, for the sake of this. That’s a valid scale. A reliable scale is a scale that if I got on it a hundred times, it’s gonna say the same thing every time. So, what reliability is, is you do what you say you’re going to do over and over and over again. You cannot gain and earn my trust if you’re reliable once, because that’s not the definition of reliability.
In our working lives, reliability means that we have to be very clear on our limitations so we don’t take on so much that we come up short and don’t deliver on our commitments. In our personal life, it means the same thing. So, when we say to someone, “Oh God, it was so great seeing you. I’m going to give you a call and we can have lunch. Yes or no?” (long pause) “No. It was really great seeing you.” (long pause) Moment of discomfort—goodbye. (laughter) Right? But honest, honest!
So B, Boundaries. R, Reliability. A … huge. Accountability. I can only trust you … if, when you make a mistake, you are willing to own it, apologize for it, and make amends. I can only trust you if when I make a mistake, I am allowed to own it, apologize, and make amends. No accountability? No trust.
V, and this one shook me to the core. Vault. The Vault. What I share with you, you will hold in confidence. (long pause) What you share with me I will hold in confidence. But you know what we don’t understand? And this came up over and over again in the research. We don’t understand the other side of the vault. That’s only one door on the vault. Here’s where we lose trust with people. If a good friend comes up to me and says, “Oh my God, did you hear about Caroline? They’re getting a divorce and it is ugly. I’m pretty sure … her partner’s cheating.” (pause) You have just shared something with me that was not yours to share, and now, my trust for you, even though you’re gossiping and giving me the juice—now my trust for you is completely diminished. (applause) Does that make sense?
So the Vault is not just about the fact that you hold my confidences, it’s that, in our relationship, I see that you acknowledge confidentiality. Here’s the tricky thing about the Vault. A lot of times, we share things that are not ours to share as a way to hot wire connection with a friend … right? If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit next to me. (laughter) Y’know? Yes or no? Our closeness is built on talking bad about other people. You know what I call that? Common enemy intimacy. What we have is not real. The intimacy we have—is built on hating the same people … and that’s counterfeit. That’s counterfeit trust. That’s not real. So, the Vault means—you respect my story, but you respect other people’s story.
I—Integrity. I cannot trust you and be in a trusting relationship with you if you do not act from a place of integrity and encourage me to do the same. So, what is integrity?
So I came up with this definition because I didn’t like any of the ones out there, and that’s what I do when I don’t like them. (laughter) I do. I look in the data, and I say, “What is integrity?” Here’s what I think integrity is. Three pieces. It’s choosing courage over comfort, choosing what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy, and practicing your values—not just professing your values. Right? (applause) I mean—that’s, that’s integrity.
N—Non-judgment. I can fall apart, ask for help, and be in struggle without being judged by you. And you can fall apart, and be in struggle, and ask for help without being judged by me, which is really hard … because we’re better at helping than we are asking for help. And we think we’ve set up trusting relationships with people who really trust us because we’re always there to help them. But let me tell you this, if you can’t ask for help and they cannot reciprocate that, that is not a trusting relationship. Period. And when we assign value to needing help, when I think less of myself for needing help, whether you’re conscious of it or not, when you offer help to someone, you think less of them too.
You cannot judge yourself for needing help but not judge others for needing your help. And somewhere in there, if you’re like me, you’re getting value from being the helper in a relationship. You think that’s your worth. But real trust doesn’t exist unless help is reciprocal and non-judgment.
The last one is G—Generosity. Our relationship is only a trusting relationship if … you can assume the most generous thing about my words, intentions, and behaviors, and then check in with me. So, if I screw up, say something, forget something, you will make a generous assumption and say, “Yesterday was my … mom’s one-year anniversary of her death, and it was really tough for me, and I talked to you about it last month. Um, and I really was hoping that you would’ve called … but I know you care about me. I know you think it’s a big deal. So I wanted to let you know that I’ve been thinking about that.” As opposed to not returning calls, not returning emails, and waiting for the moment where you can spring, “Well, you forgot to call on this important …”—you know? You’ll make a generous assumption about me and check it out.
Does that make sense? So we’ve got boundaries, reliability, accountability, the vault, integrity, non-judgment, and generosity. These—this is the anatomy of trust, and it’s complex.
Why do we need to break it down? For a very simple reason. How many of you in here have ever struggled with trust in a relationship—professional or personal? (hands up) It should be everybody, statistically, right? (laughter) And so, what you end up saying to someone is, “I don’t trust you.” “What do you mean you don’t trust me? I love you. I’m so dependable. What do you mean you don’t trust me?”
How do we talk about trust if we can’t break it down? What understanding trust gives us is words to say, “Here’s my struggle. (pause) You’re not reliable with me. You say you’re going to do something, I count on it, you don’t do it.” Or maybe the issue is non-judgment. But we can break it down, and talk about it, and ask for what we need, very specifically, instead of using this huge word, that has tons of weight and value around it, we can say, “Here’s specifically what’s not working. What’s not working is we’ve got a boundaries issue.”
So, one of the things that’s interesting, I think, is one of the biggest casualties with heartbreak and disappointment and failure and our struggle, is not just the loss of trust with other people, but the loss of self-trust. When something hard happens in our lives, the first thing we say is “I was not—I can’t trust myself, I was so stupid, I was so naive.”
So, this B-R-A-V-I-N-G acronym works with self-trust too.
So, when something happens … I just recently went through a really tough failure, and I had to ask myself, “Did I honor my own boundaries? Was I reliable—can I count on myself? Did I hold myself accountable? Was I really protective of my stories? Did I stay in my integrity? Was I judgmental toward myself? And did I give myself the benefit of the doubt? Was I generous toward myself?”
Because if B-R-A-V-I-N-G relationships with other people is braving connection, self-trust is braving self-love, self-respect—the wildest adventure we’ll ever take in our whole lives.
And so, what I would invite you to think about, when you think about trust, is if your own marble jar is not full, if you can’t count on yourself, you can’t ask other people to give you what you don’t have. So we have to start with self-trust.
There’s a great quote from Maya Angelou that says, “I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves, but say I love you.” (applause) Right? (applause)
She quotes an African proverb when she said that, and she said, “Be wary of the naked man offering you a shirt.” (laughter)
And so, a lot of times if you find yourself in struggle with trust, the thing to examine first is your own marble jar. How you treat yourself. Because we can’t ask people … to give to us something that we do not believe we’re worthy of receiving. And you will know you’re worthy of receiving it, when you trust yourself, above everyone else.
So, thank y’all so much. I’m so honored to be here. (applause)
Thank you! Thank y’all! (standing O)
Want more from the brilliant Brené? Listen to my interview with her on 3 Books.
Working on trust with yourself? Here's how to think about confidence.
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"On the age of computers" by Jiddu Krishnamurti (1985)
The computer is something extraordinary.
It's going to probably take over our lives.
That's probably the new industry.
The computer will shape our lives.
It's already doing it quietly ... slowly. We're unaware of it.
We've talked to a great many of these experts, computer experts, for building it. They are not concerned with what happens to the human brain. You understand? They are concerned with creating it. Ah! Not creating it, building it. That's better word.
When the computer takes over ... our lives ... what happens to our brains?
They are better, far quicker, so rapid.
In a second they'll tell you a thousand memories.
So when they take off, what's going to happen to our brains? Gradually wither?
Or, be thoroughly employed in amusement ... in entertainment?
Please face all this, for God's sake, this is happening.
"How Do You Make An Impact?" by David Foster Wallace
Hey everyone,
There's a growing trend in our culture to think of the work we do in terms of impact. Significance! Legacy! Lot of pressure to take this kind of "from the future looking back" approach to creating art or choosing a career. And I get that. But it's also tough because, well ... we can't control impact. Right? We can try! But it's up to others. Not us.
I was flipping through my paperback of "The Last Interview" with David Foster Wallace and found this wonderful quote which I've pasted for you below. If you'd like to grab the full book, you can get it right here.
PS. This pairs well with the conversation I had recently with a couple of Syrian Chefs working hard to help people become happier through delicious shawarma and healing ayran. Listen to that chat if this one resonated with you!
Neil
An Excerpt from David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview and Other Conversations
Written by David Foster Wallace | Get the book here
9) Amherst magazine likes to profile alumni whose work has had an impact on the world outside of Amherst. How would you describe the impact of your work? (That may be a two-part question: What kind of impact do you hope your work will have as you're creating it? And what do you think the actual impact has been?) And how do you measure the success of your work?
Sneaky, Ms. S.: this question actually comprises more than two subquestions. And unfortunately this is all stuff that I've discovered it's in my own best interests not to think much about. 'Impact' is tricky because it has so much to do with interpretation and fashion (which phenomena are far from independent of each other). Plus plain luck: the fact that you've got to find first an agent and then an editor and then an editor's publishing co. who not only like your stuff but believe it to be "viable"—which in 1999 America means salable in sufficient numbers to permit an approximate 7-percent net profit—before you even get to consider something like 'impact' the way Q9's using it. And I know way too many fine and serious writers who haven't been able to get anything published to be able to regard the whole process as anything much more than a lottery. Then, if your thing does get published, and if some combination of cultural kismet and corporate hype garners it an audience, you get to discover how extremely remote people's takes on your work are from anything you had in mind when you were working on it, plus how little whatever they feel and think about the work's author has to do with you as you know and experience yourself . . .
I've hit on an effective way to handle all this schizogenic stuff, which is to keep the whole thing at a very simple level, roughly a level/vocabulary that an average U.S. fifth-grader can understand. I want my work to be good. I want to like it. This is the only part that has anything to do with me. I can't make it have an 'impact' on anybody else. This doesn't mean I can't hope it has one, but I can't do anything to guarantee it, or even to cause it. All I can do is make something as good as I can make it (this is the sort of fact that's both banal and profound), and promise myself that I'll never try to publish anything I myself don't think is good or finished. I used to have far more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking about 'impact', but they always left me with my forehead against the wall.
Epilogue from Awaken Your Genius by Ozan Varol
Hey everyone,
In my April Book Club, I wrote a review of Ozan Varol’s new book, Awaken Your Genius. It’s a really nice summary-type self-help book – meaning there are just so many nuggets folded in from all over. I really enjoyed the epilogue in the book, so I’m sharing it here below with Ozan’s permission. Click here to check out the book. I’ll be back on Saturday with my May Book Club!
Neil
Epilogue from Awaken Your Genius
Written by Ozan Voral | Full book here
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune,
I myself am good-fortune.
—WALT WHITMAN, “SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD”
You were created from pieces of the universe.
The iron flowing in your blood, the calcium in your bones, and the carbon in your brain were made in the chaos of red giants billions of years ago.
If you look only at the last 300 years of your family tree, you’ll find that you have over 4,000 direct ancestors. Take out just one of them, and you wouldn’t be here today.
So much had to conspire to bring you here. For you to be reading these words is nothing short of a miracle.
So be you—unapologetically and spectacularly you.
Discard what doesn’t serve you, so you can discover your core.
Declutter your mind so you can see the wisdom within.
Delight in getting to know yourself because there’s only—and ever will be—one of you.
Swim with the big fish playing in the depths of your oceans.
Follow your body to places where your mind hasn’t allowed you to go.
Embrace the purple that lights up your soul.
Find the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Stand on the shoulders of giants—and help the next generation stand on yours.
Channel the energy that brought you into existence.
Turn it into the art that only you can create.
Stop looking for gurus and heroes.
You are the one you’ve been waiting for.
Butterfly, it’s time for you to fly.
And if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.
My battery is low and it’s getting dark.
To Build a Swing by Hafiz
Written by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky | Link to poem here
Hey everyone,
I flew down to Texas last week to interview my friend Suzy Batiz for 3 Books. Suzy is probably best known as founder of the billion-dollar company Poo~Pourri … but her story is much, much bigger than that and one I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. I can’t wait to share it with you on the next full moon.
When we did the interview in the massive otherworldly church she lives in I noticed a long quote by fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz seemingly chiseled out of metal placed on a light box in her kitchen. She told me her daughter called her excitedly one day and said “Mom, if you were a poem you would be this one.” She had her daughter write it out and had those words emblazoned on this stunning sign. The photo below is shared with permission and, you know, horribly blurry. But I pasted the words — the lyrics!? — right below.
See if it hits you like it did me. This one comes from The Gift by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky. I’m just getting into Hafiz. Only 700 years late to the party. Do you have a favorite poem or quote by him? If so, just reply and let me know.
And most importantly: keep mixing, mixing…
Neil
To Build a Swing
You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare-
Don’t mix them!
You have all the genius
To build a swing in your backyard
For God.
That sounds
Like a hell of a lot more fun.
Let’s start laughing, drawing blueprints,
Gathering our talented friends.
I will help you.
With my divine lyre and drum.
Hafiz
Will sing a thousand words,
You can take into your hands,
Like golden saws,
Sliver hammers,
Polished teakwood,
Strong silk rope.
You carry all the ingredients
To turn your existence into joy,
Mix them
Mix them!
"You are Brilliant and the Earth is Hiring" by Paul Hawken
Delivered by Paul Hawken | 2009 Commencement Address University of Portland | Source here
Reader Amanda Dudman sent me this arresting and totally gripping high-flying commencement speech from environmentalist Paul Hawken. Paul is the author of books like Re-generation: Ending the climate crisis in one generation and Drawdown.
Speech:
When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling and graceful.” No pressure there.
Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: You are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on Earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation…but not one peer- reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the Earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that Spaceship Earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The Earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night-blooming jasmine and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on Earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this Earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries and slums.
You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in ideas, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America and, as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.
There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, re-imagine and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.
Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the deaths of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown—Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood—and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: At that time, three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of nonprofits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.
The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy the Earth in real time rather than renew, restore and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the Earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the Earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.
The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”
So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: Who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.
This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.
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"There is no Frigate Like a Book" by Emily Dickinson
Written by Emily Dickinson (link to original poem here)
Context:
David Mitchell calls poets the "apex predators" of the literary world because, as he says, if they have one wrong word they have a dead poem. There is something so masterful about saying such a well-known idea in an innovative way in so few words. Dickinson would have clearly killed it on Twitter.
Poem:
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –
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“Sauntering” by Christopher Morley
Written by Christopher Morley | Source here
Context:
I love going on extremely long walks. Three, four, or five hours isn’t uncommon. Urban walks, forest walks, birding walks -- I find them the perfect antidote to screens and the endless stress-inducing algorithmic scourges they serve up in our world today.
Journalist, poet, and novelist Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957) lived in Philadelphia and was commissioned to write a series of articles about his city for the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. He compiled these into a book of essays published in 1920 entitled Travels in Philadelphia.
I love his essay "Sauntering" which first appeared in the paper in 1918 and captures some of that joyful, chaotic, observational, connected feeling that comes baked into any long walk.
Essay:
Some famous lady—who was it?—used to say of anyone she richly despised that he was "a saunterer." I suppose she meant he was a mere trifler, a lounger, an idle stroller of the streets. It is an ignominious confession, but I am a confirmed saunterer. I love to be set down haphazard among unknown byways; to saunter with open eyes, watching the moods and humors of men, the shapes of their dwellings, the criss-cross of their struts. It is an implanted passion that grows keener and keener. The everlasting lure of round-the-corner, how fascinating it is!
I love city squares. The most interesting persons are always those who have nothing special to do: children, nurses, policemen, and actors at 11 o'clock in the morning. These are always to be found in the park; by which I mean not an enormous sector of denatured countryside with bridle paths, fishponds and sea lions, but some broad patch of turf in a shabby elbow of the city, striped with pavements, with plenty of sun-warmed benches and a cast-iron zouave erected about 1873 to remind one of the horrors of commemorative statuary. Children scuffle to and fro; dusty men with spiculous chins loll on the seats; the uncouth and pathetic vibrations of humankind are on every side.
It is entrancing to walk in such places and catalogue all that may be seen. I jot down on scraps of paper a list of all the shops on a side street; the names of tradesmen that amuse me; the absurd repartees of gutter children. Why? It amuses me and that is sufficient excuse. From now until the end of time no one else will ever see life with my eyes, and I mean to make the most of my chance. Just as Thoreau compiled a Domesday Book and kind of classified directory of the sights, sounds and scents of Walden (carefully recording the manners of a sandbank and the prejudices of a woodlouse or an apple tree) so I love to annotate the phenomena of the city. I can be as solitary in a city street as ever Thoreau was in Walden.
And no Walden sky was ever more blue than the roof of Washington square this morning. Sitting here reading Thoreau I am entranced by the mellow flavor of the young summer. The sun is just goodly enough to set the being in a gentle toasting muse. The trees confer together in a sleepy whisper. I have had buckwheat cakes and syrup for breakfast, and eggs fried both recto and verso; good foundation for speculation. I puff cigarettes and am at peace with myself. Many a worthy waif comes to lounge beside me; he glances at my scuffed boots, my baggy trousers; he knows me for one of the fraternity. By their boots ye shall know them. Many of those who have abandoned the race for this world's honors have a shrewdness all their own. What is it Thoreau says, with his penetrative truth?—"Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once and a half witted with the half witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit." By the time a man is thirty he should be able to see what life has to offer, and take what dishes on the menu agree with him best. That is whole wit, indeed, or wit-and-a-half. And if he finds his pleasure on a park bench in ragged trousers let him lounge then, with good heart. I welcome him to the goodly fellowship of saunterers, an acolyte of the excellent church of the agorolaters!
These meditations are incurred in the ancient and noble city of Philadelphia, which is a surprisingly large town at the confluence of the Biddle and Drexel families. It is wholly surrounded by cricket teams, fox hunters, beagle packs, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. It has a very large zoölogical garden, containing carnivora, herbivora, scrappleivora, and a man from New York who was interned here at the time of the Centennial Exposition in 1876. The principal manufactures are carpets, life insurance premiums, and souvenirs of Independence Hall. Philadelphia was the first city to foresee the advantages of a Federal constitution and oatmeal as a breakfast food.
And as one walks and speculates among all this visible panorama, beating one's brains to catch some passing snapshots of it, watching, listening, imagining, the whole hullabaloo becomes extraordinarily precious. The great faulty hodge-podge of the city, its very pavements and house-corners, becomes vividly dear. One longs to clutch the whole meaning in some sudden embrace to utter some testament of affection that will speak plain truth. "Friday I tasted life," said Emily Dickinson, the American Blake. "It was a vast morsel." Something of that baffled exultation seizes one in certain moments of strolling, when the afternoon sun streams down Chestnut street on the homeward pressing crowd, or in clear crisp mornings as one walks through Washington Square. Emily utters her prodigious parables in flashing rockets, that stream for an instant in the dusk, then break and sink in colored balls. Most of us cannot ejaculate such dazzles of flame. We pick and poke and stumble our thoughts together, catching at a truth and losing it again.
Agreeable vistas reward the eye of the resolute stroller. For instance, that delightful cluster of back gardens, old brick angles, dormer windows and tall chimneys in the little block on Orange street west of Seventh. Orange street is the little alley just south of Washington Square. In the clean sunlight of a fresh May morning, with masses of green trees and creepers to set off the old ruddy brick, this quaint huddle of buildings composes into a delightful picture that has been perpetuated by the skilful pencil of Frank H. Taylor. A kindly observer in the Dreer seed warehouse, which backs upon Orange street, noticed me prowling about and offered to take me up in his elevator. From one of the Dreer windows I had a fascinating glimpse down upon these roofs and gardens. One of them is the rear yard of the Italian consulate at 717 Spruce street. Another is the broader garden of The Catholic Historical Society, in which I noticed with amusement Nicholas Biddle's big stone bathtub sunning itself. Then there is the garden of the adorable little house at 725 Spruce street, which is particularly interesting because, when seen from the street, it appears to have no front door. The attic window of that house is just our idea of what an attic window ought to be.
A kind of philosophy distills itself in the mind of the saunterer. Painfully tedious as people often are, they have the sublime quality of interesting one. Not merely by what they say, but often by what they don't say. Their eyes—how amazing is the thought of all those millions of little betraying windows! How bravely they struggle to express what is in them. A modern essayist has spoken of "the haggard necessities of parlor conversation." But the life of the streets has no such conventions. It is real: it comes hot from the pan. It is as informal, as direct and as unpretentious as the greetings of dogs. It is a never-failing remedy for the blues.
Back garden in Orange Street
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'New Day's Lyric' by Amanda Gorman
Written by Amanda Gorman (link to original poem here)
Context:
I get incredible emotions riding these waves with Amanda Gorman. This poem was originally shared at the beginning of 2022 on her social media.
Poem:
May this be the day
We come together.
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.
Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.
This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.
What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.
Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.
We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.
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On the Soul-Sustaining Necessity of Resisting Self-Comparison and Fighting Cynicism by Maria Popova
Delivered by Maria Popova at the University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication in 2016 (Source: Annenberg School of Communication)
This speech communicates the power of personal narrative slipped just under a simple-seeming story and also shows how wordplay and poetic turns of phrase make a message really pop. It was given by Maria Popova, creator of The Marginalian, at the commencement address of the Annenberg School for Communication in 2016. This issue of endless comparison is also the entire focus of Chapter 2 of The Happiness Equation (clearly I suffer from it too!) and I just loved seeing the same idea explored from a completely unique perspective.
Speech:
Good morning.
I want to talk to you today about the soul. Not the soul as that immortal unit of religious mythology, for I am a nonbeliever. And not the soul as a pop-culture commodity, that voracious consumer of self-help chicken soup. I mean the soul simply as that seismic core of personhood from which our actions, our thoughts, our ideals, radiate.
I live in New York, where something extraordinary happens every April. In the first days of spring, those days when the air turns from blistering to balmy, a certain gladness envelops the city — strangers smile at each other and give way and actually look up from their screens while walking. For a few short days, it’s like we remember how we can live and who we’re capable of being to one another.
I also practically live on my bike — that’s how I get everywhere — and the other week, on one of those first days of spring, I was going from Brooklyn to Harlem. I had somewhere to be and so I was pedaling pretty fast — which I enjoy doing and must admit I take a certain silly pride in — but I was also very much enjoying the ride and the river and the spring air and the smell of plum blossoms. And then, I sensed that somebody behind me was catching up in the bike lane, and going even faster than I was going. Suddenly it felt somehow competitive. He was trying to overtake me. I pedaled faster, but he kept catching up. Eventually, he did overtake me — and I felt strangely defeated.
But as he cruised past me, I realized the guy was on an electric bike. And I felt both a sort of redemption and a great sense of injustice — this unfair motorized advantage over my honest pedaling felt very demoralizing. But just as I was getting all self-righteously existential, I realized something else — the guy had a restaurant’s name on his back. He was a food delivery person. He wasn't rushing past me to slight me, or because he had some unfair competitive advantage in life, but because this was his daily strife — this is how this immigrant made his living.
My first response was to shame myself into a kind of gratitude for how fortunate I’ve been — because I too am an immigrant from a pretty poor country and it’s some miraculous confluence of chance and choice that has kept me from becoming a food delivery person on an electric bike in order to survive in New York City. And perhaps the guy has a more satisfying life than I do — perhaps he had a good mother and goes home to the love of his life and plays the violin at night. I don’t know, and I never will. But the point is that the second I begin comparing my pace to his, my life to his, I’m vacating my own experience of that spring day and ejecting myself into a kind of limbo of life that is neither mine nor his.
Now, I grew up in Bulgaria and my early childhood was spent under a communist dictatorship. But for all its evils, communism had one silver lining — when everyone had very little, no one felt like somebody else was cruising past them motorized by privilege.
I came to Penn straight from Bulgaria, and through the same confluence of chance and choice (and, yes, through a lot of very, very hard work — I don’t want to minimize the importance of that, but I also don’t want to imply that people who end up on the underprivileged end of the spectrum haven’t worked hard enough, because I think that is one of our most toxic cultural myths and it's a lot more complicated than that). But in any case, I came to Penn and I had an experience very very different from that of my childhood. Suddenly, as I was working four jobs to pay for school, I felt like everybody else was on a motorized bike and I was just pedalling myself to the ground.
Now, this, of course, is what happens in any environment densely populated by so-called peers — self-comparison becomes inevitable. Financial inequality was just my particular poison, but we do it along every imaginable axis of privilege and every dimension of identity — intelligence, beauty, athleticism, charisma that entrances the Van Pelt librarians into pardoning your late fees.
But here’s the thing about self-comparison: in addition to making you vacate your own experience, your own soul, your own life, it breeds in its extreme a kind of resignation. When we are constantly comparing ourselves to other people and feeling like there is something available to those with a certain existential advantage, but not available to us — we come to feel helpless. And the most toxic byproduct of this helplessness is cynicism — that terrible habit of mind and orientation of spirit in which, out of hopelessness of our own situation, we grow embittered about the goodness of the world. Cynicism is the sewage of the soul. It is a poverty of curiosity and imagination and ambition. Today, the soul is in dire need of stewardship and protection from cynicism.
The best defence against it is vigorous, intelligent, sincere hope — not blind optimism, because that too is a form of resignation, where we think everything will just work out just fine and we don't need to work hard in order to make it happen. I mean hope bolstered by critical thinking that is clear-headed in identifying what isn't working, in ourselves, in the world, but then envisions ways to make it work, to create that and endeavors to do it.
In its passivity and resignation, cynicism is a hardening, a calcification of the soul. Hope is a stretching of ligaments, a limber reach for something greater.
You are about to enter the ecosystem of cultural production. Most of you will go into journalism, media, policy, or some blurry blob of the Venn diagram, increasingly blurred by the boundaries of these forces, shape and culture, and public opinion. Whatever your specific vocation ends up being, your role as a creator of culture will be to help people discern what matters in the world and why, by steering them away from the meaningless and toward the meaningful. E.B. White said that the role of the writer is to lift people up, not to lower them down, and I believe that’s the role of every writer, every artist and every creator of culture.
Strive to be uncynical, to be a hope-giving force, to be a steward of substance. Choose to lift people up, not lower them down — because it is a choice, always, and because in doing so you lift yourself up.
Develop an inner barometer for your own value. Resist page-views and likes and retweets and all those silly-sounding quantification metrics that will be obsolete within the decade. They can’t tell you how much your work counts for and to whom. They can’t tell you who you are and what you’re worth. Don’t hang the stability of your soul on them. They are that demoralizing electric bike that makes you feel if only you could pedal faster — if only you could get more page-views and likes and retweets — you’d be worthier of your own life.
You will enter the world where, whatever career you may choose or make for yourself — because never forget that there are jobs you can get and jobs you can invent — you will often face the choice of construction and destruction, of building up and tearing down.
Among our most universal human longings is to affect the world with our actions somehow, to leave an imprint with our existence. Both destruction and construction can leave a mark and give us a sense of agency in the world.
Now, destruction is necessary sometimes — damaged and damaging systems need to be demolished to clear the way for more enlivening ones. But destruction alone, without construction to follow it, is hapless and lazy. Construction is more difficult, because it requires the capacity to imagine something new and better, and the willingness to exert ourselves toward building it, even at the risk of failure. But it is also far more satisfying in the end.
You may find your fate forked by construction and destruction frequently, in ways obvious and subtle. And you will have to choose between being the hammer-wielding vandal, who may attain more immediate results — more attention — by tearing things and people and ideas down, or the sculptor, patiently chiseling at the bedrock of how things are, in order to sculpt something new and beautiful and imaginative following a different vision, your vision, of how things can and should be.
Some active forms of destruction are more obvious and therefore, to the moral and well-intentioned person, easier to resist. It’s kind of hard not to notice that there’s a hammer there and to refuse to pick it up. But there are passive forms of destruction far more difficult to detect and thus to safeguard against, and the most pernicious of them is cynicism.
Our culture has created a reward system in which you get points for tearing down rather than building up, and for besieging with criticism and derision those who dare to work and live from a place of constructive hope. Don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively, in yourself and in those you love and in the communication with which you shape our world.
Cynicism, like all destruction, is easy, it’s lazy. There is nothing more difficult yet more gratifying in our society than living with sincere, active, constructive hope for the human spirit. This is the most potent antidote to cynicism, and it is an act of courage and resistance today.
It is also the most vitalizing sustenance for your soul.
But you — you — are in a very special position, leaving Annenberg, because your courage and resistance are to be enacted not only in the privacy of your inner life but in your outer contribution to public life. You are the packagers of tomorrow’s ideas and ideals, the sculptors of public opinion and of culture. As long as we feed people buzz, we cannot expect their minds to produce symphonies.
(long pause)
Never let the temptation of marketable mediocrity and easy cynicism rob you of the chance to ennoble public life and enlarge the human spirit — because we need that badly today, and because you need it badly for the survival of your soul.
So as you move through life, pedal hard — because that’s how you get places, and because it’s fun and so incredibly gratifying to propel yourself forward by your own will. But make sure the pace of your pedalling answers only to your own standards of vigor. Remain uncynical and don’t waste energy on those who pass you by on their electric bikes, because you never know what strife is driving them and, most of all, because the moment you focus on that, you vacate your soul.
Instead, pedal forth — but also remember to breathe in the spring air, to smile at a stranger. Because there is nothing more uncynical than being good to one another.
Thank you and congratulations.
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Nobel Acceptance Speech by John Steinbeck
Delivered by John Steinbeck at The Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, Sweden in 1962
This is John Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech from 1962. He was acknowledged by the committee, "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception," and as "a giant of American letters."
Speech:
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Min Vackra Fru, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I thank the Swedish Academy for finding my work worthy of this highest honor.
In my heart there may be doubt that I deserve the Nobel award over other men of letters whom I hold in respect and reverence – but there is no question of my pleasure and pride in having it for myself.
It is customary for the recipient of this award to offer personal or scholarly comment on the nature and the direction of literature. At this particular time, however, I think it would be well to consider the high duties and the responsibilities of the makers of literature.
Such is the prestige of the Nobel award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practiced it through the ages.
Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches – nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.
The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species.
Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion. My great predecessor, William Faulkner, speaking here, referred to it as a tragedy of universal fear so long sustained that there were no longer problems of the spirit, so that only the human heart in conflict with itself seemed worth writing about.
Faulkner, more than most men, was aware of human strength as well as of human weakness. He knew that the understanding and the resolution of fear are a large part of the writer’s reason for being.
This is not new. The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.
Furthermore, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit – for gallantry in defeat – for courage, compassion and love.
In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation.
I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
The present universal fear has been the result of a forward surge in our knowledge and manipulation of certain dangerous factors in the physical world.
It is true that other phases of understanding have not yet caught up with this great step, but there is no reason to presume that they cannot or will not draw abreast. Indeed it is a part of the writer’s responsibility to make sure that they do.
With humanity’s long proud history of standing firm against natural enemies, sometimes in the face of almost certain defeat and extinction, we would be cowardly and stupid to leave the field on the eve of our greatest potential victory.
Understandably, I have been reading the life of Alfred Nobel – a solitary man, the books say, a thoughtful man. He perfected the release of explosive forces, capable of creative good or of destructive evil, but lacking choice, ungoverned by conscience or judgment.
Nobel saw some of the cruel and bloody misuses of his inventions. He may even have foreseen the end result of his probing – access to ultimate violence – to final destruction. Some say that he became cynical, but I do not believe this. I think he strove to invent a control, a safety valve. I think he found it finally only in the human mind and the human spirit. To me, his thinking is clearly indicated in the categories of these awards.
They are offered for increased and continuing knowledge of man and of his world – for understanding and communication, which are the functions of literature. And they are offered for demonstrations of the capacity for peace – the culmination of all the others.
Less than fifty years after his death, the door of nature was unlocked and we were offered the dreadful burden of choice.
We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God.
Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world – of all living things.
The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand.
Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.
Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope.
So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased …
In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man – and the Word is with Men.
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'We don't 'move on' from grief. We move forward with it' by Nora McInerny
Delivered by Nora McInerny at TED Women in 2018
In 2014 Nora went through a deeply traumatic six weeks. She had a miscarriage, lost her father, and lost her husband Aaron with whom she had a young son. She spent the next year of her life couch surfing, staying with friends, trying to process the loss, the grief and the trauma. And what has emerged is somebody who I feel is at the world’s leading edge of discussing things like grief, trauma, loss, widowhood, and how we navigate forward with those all bottled up inside us.
She has a gift for being bravely honest and witty as you’ll see from this speech delivered at TED a few years ago which is extremely powerful.
Hope you enjoy and, for more of Nora, you can check out our 3 Books conversation, listen to Terrible, Thanks for Asking, or read It’s OK to Laugh, Crying is Cool Too.
Speech:
So, 2014 was a big year for me. Do you ever have that, just like a big year, like a banner year? For me, it went like this: October 3, I lost my second pregnancy. And then October 8, my dad died of cancer. And then on November 25, my husband Aaron died after three years with stage-four glioblastoma, which is just a fancy word for brain cancer.
So, I'm fun.
(laughter)
People love to invite me out all the time. Packed social life. Usually, when I talk about this period of my life, the reaction I get is essentially:
(sighs)
"I can't -- I can't imagine." But I do think you can. I think you can. And I think that you should because, someday, it's going to happen to you. Maybe not these specific losses in this specific order or at this speed, but like I said, I'm very fun and the research that I have seen will stun you: everyone you love has a 100 percent chance of dying.
(laughter)
And that's why you came to TED.
(laughter)
(applause)
So, since all of this loss happened, I've made it a career to talk about death and loss, not just my own, because it's pretty easy to recap, but the losses and tragedies that other people have experienced. It's a niche, I have to say.
(laughter)
It's a small niche, and I wish I made more money, but ...
(laughter)
I've written some very uplifting books, host a very uplifting podcast, I started a little nonprofit. I'm just trying to do what I can to make more people comfortable with the uncomfortable, and grief is so uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable, especially if it's someone else's grief. So part of that work is this group that I started with my friend Moe, who is also a widow; we call it the Hot Young Widows Club.
(laughter)
And it's real, we have membership cards and T-shirts. And when your person dies, your husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, literally don't care if you were married, your friends and your family are just going to look around through friends of friends of friends of friends until they find someone who's gone through something similar, and then they'll push you towards each other so you can talk amongst yourselves and not get your sad on other people.
(laughter)
So that's what we do. It's just a series of small groups, where men, women, gay, straight, married, partnered, can talk about their dead person, and say the things that the other people in their lives aren't ready or willing to hear yet. Huge range of conversations. Like, "My husband died two weeks ago, I can't stop thinking about sex, is that normal?"
Yeah.
"What if it's one of the Property Brothers?"
Less normal, but I'll accept it.
(laughter)
Things like, "Look, when I'm out in public and I see old people holding hands, couples who have clearly been together for decades, and then I look at them and I imagine all of the things they've been through together, the good things, the bad things, the arguments they've had over who should take out the trash ... I just find my heart filled with rage."
(laughter)
And that example is personal to me.
Most of the conversations that we have in the group can and will just stay amongst ourselves, but there are things that we talk about that the rest of the world -- the world that is grief-adjacent but not yet grief-stricken -- could really benefit from hearing. And if you can't tell, I'm only interested in / capable of unscientific studies, so what I did was go to The Hot Young Widows Club and say, "Hello, friends, remember when your person died?" They did.
"Do you remember all the things people said to you?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Which ones did you hate the most?"
I got a lot of comments, lot of answers, people say a lot of things, but two rose to the top pretty quickly. "Moving on."
Now, since 2014, I will tell you I have remarried a very handsome man named Matthew, we have four children in our blended family, we live in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. We have a rescue dog.
(laughter)
I drive a minivan, like the kind where doors open and I don't even touch them.
(laughter)
Like, by any "mezhure," life is good. I've also never said "mezhure," I've never once said it that way.
(laughter)
I don't know where that came from.
(laughter)
I've never heard anyone else say it that way. It looks like it should be said that way, and that's why the English language is trash, so ...
(laughter)
So impressed with anyone who, like, speaks it in addition to a language that makes sense -- good job.
(laughter)
But by any measure ...
(laughter)
By any measure, life is really, really good, but I haven't "moved on." I haven't moved on, and I hate that phrase so much, and I understand why other people do. Because what it says is that Aaron's life and death and love are just moments that I can leave behind me -- and that I probably should. And when I talk about Aaron, I slip so easily into the present tense, and I've always thought that made me weird. And then I noticed that everybody does it. And it's not because we are in denial or because we're forgetful, it's because the people we love, who we've lost, are still so present for us. So, when I say, "Oh, Aaron is ..." It's because Aaron still is. And it's not in the way that he was before, which was much better, and it's not in the way that churchy people try to tell me that he would be. It's just that he's indelible, and so he is present for me.
Here, he's present for me in the work that I do, in the child that we had together, in these three other children I'm raising, who never met him, who share none of his DNA, but who are only in my life because I had Aaron and because I lost Aaron. He's present in my marriage to Matthew, because Aaron's life and love and death made me the person that Matthew wanted to marry. So I've not moved on from Aaron, I've moved forward with him.
(applause)
We spread Aaron's ashes in his favorite river in Minnesota, and when the bag was empty -- because when you're cremated, you fit into a plastic bag -- there were still ashes stuck to my fingers. And I could have just put my hands in the water and rinsed them, but instead, I licked my hands clean, because I was so afraid of losing more than I had already lost, and I was so desperate to make sure that he would always be a part of me. But of course he would be.
Because when you watch your person fill himself with poison for three years, just so he can stay alive a little bit longer with you, that stays with you. When you watch him fade from the healthy person he was the night you met to nothing, that stays with you. When you watch your son, who isn't even two years old yet, walk up to his father's bed on the last day of his life, like he knows what's coming in a few hours, and say, "I love you. All done. Bye, bye." That stays with you. Just like when you fall in love, finally, like really fall in love with someone who gets you and sees you and you even see, "Oh, my God, I've been wrong this entire time. Love is not a contest or a reality show -- it's so quiet, it's this invisible thread of calm that connects the two of us even when everything is chaos, when things are falling apart, even when he's gone." That stays with you. We used to do this thing -- because my hands are always freezing and he's so warm, where I would take my ice-cold hands and shove them up his shirt ... press them against his hot bod.
(laughter)
And he hated it so much,
(laughter)
but he loved me, and after he died, I laid in bed with Aaron and I put my hands underneath him and I felt his warmth. And I can't even tell you if my hands were cold, but I can tell you that I knew it was the last time I would ever do that. And that that memory is always going to be sad. That memory will always hurt. Even when I'm 600 years old and I'm just a hologram.
(laughter)
Just like the memory of meeting him is always going to make me laugh.
Grief doesn't happen in this vacuum, it happens alongside of and mixed in with all of these other emotions.
So, I met Matthew, my current husband -- who doesn't love that title,
(laughter)
but it's so accurate.
(laughter)
I met Matthew, and ... there was this audible sigh of relief among the people who love me, like, "It's over! She did it. She got a happy ending, we can all go home. And we did good." And that narrative is so appealing even to me, and I thought maybe I had gotten that, too, but I didn't. I got another chapter. And it's such a good chapter -- I love you, honey -- it's such a good chapter. But especially at the beginning, it was like an alternate universe, or one of those old "choose your own adventure" books from the '80s where there are two parallel plot lines. So I opened my heart to Matthew, and my brain was like, "Would you like to think about Aaron? Like, the past, the present, future, just get in there," and I did. And all of a sudden, those two plots were unfurling at once, and falling in love with Matthew really helped me realize the enormity of what I lost when Aaron died. And just as importantly, it helped me realize that my love for Aaron and my grief for Aaron, and my love for Matthew, are not opposing forces. They are just strands to the same thread. They're the same stuff.
I'm ... what would my parents say? I'm not special.
(laughter)
They had four kids, they were like ... frankly.
(laughter)
But I'm not, I'm not special. I know that, I'm fully aware that all day, every day, all around the world, terrible things are happening. All the time. Like I said, fun person. But terrible things are happening, people are experiencing deeply formative and traumatic losses every day. And as part of my job, this weird podcast that I have, I sometimes talk to people about the worst thing that's ever happened to them. And sometimes, that's the loss of someone they love, sometimes days ago or weeks ago, years ago, even decades ago. And these people that I interview, they haven't closed themselves around this loss and made it the center of their lives. They've lived, their worlds have kept spinning. But they're talking to me, a total stranger, about the person they love who has died, because these are the experiences that mark us and make us just as much as the joyful ones. And just as permanently. Long after you get your last sympathy card or your last hot dish. Like, we don't look at the people around us experiencing life's joys and wonders and tell them to "move on," do we? We don't send a card that's like, "Congratulations on your beautiful baby," and then, five years later, think like, "Another birthday party? Get over it."
(laughter)
Yeah, we get it, he's five.
(laughter)
Wow.
(laughter)
But grief is kind of one of those things, like, falling in love or having a baby or watching "The Wire" on HBO, where you don't get it until you get it, until you do it. And once you do it, once it's your love or your baby, once it's your grief and your front row at the funeral, you get it. You understand what you're experiencing is not a moment in time, it's not a bone that will reset, but that you've been touched by something chronic. Something incurable. It's not fatal, but sometimes grief feels like it could be. And if we can't prevent it in one another, what can we do?
What can we do other than try to remind one another that some things can't be fixed, and not all wounds are meant to heal? We need each other to remember, to help each other remember, that grief is this multitasking emotion. That you can and will be sad, and happy; you'll be grieving, and able to love in the same year or week, the same breath. We need to remember that a grieving person is going to laugh again and smile again. If they're lucky, they'll even find love again. But yes, absolutely, they're going to move forward. But that doesn't mean that they've moved on.
Thank you.
(applause)
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Bill Belichick's press conference answer on 'long snapping'
Context:
This not a speech per se -- but definitely qualifies in my books.
If you don't know him, Bill Belichick is the highly decorated coach of the New England Patriots and he gives famously glib, curt, and occasionally monosyllabic answers at the endless mandatory press conference. And yet here -- he does something different. I loved the lessons on connecting with an audience and building trust through patient and careful experience and explanation. Gave me Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny vibes. I loved it as a student of speaking and a football fan.
Speech:
Reporter: "Hey, good morning Bill. I have a question that's a little out of left field. It's about roster building and not having to do with the game this week, but it's something I've been thinking about for a while and ... it's about long-snapping, actually. And, I was just kind of wondering ... and this is no -- with all due respect to Joe Cardona and all the fine long snappers out there -- but, is long snapping that difficult that you need to use a roster on one player who does only that? Can't you just cross train a few guys to do long snapping and then have more flexibility with that roster spot?
Bill: "Yeah, well you know, uh, Ben, it's an interesting conversation and one that's really, um, uh, I would say honestly during the course of my coaching career has kind of travelled that, that long and winding road from, when I came into the league.
Uh, well first of all there were no long snappers, but the specialists -- the kickers and the punters -- were frequently position players. And that's where they came from in college as well. So a lot of the good college punters and place kickers also played a position. And then, as time evolved, you know, starting with like Gogolak and guys like that, you know, they specialized in kicking. And then you had, you know, some of the punters that specialized in punting. So, players like Danny White and Tom Tupa and guys like that who were, you know, very good position players, became, Gino Cappaletti.
You know that evolved into specialists because of -- I would say the importance of the kicking game and the number of, you know, the number of plays that the kicking game and opportunities that it provided. Same thing with returners. There were very few just pure returners.
I think the long snapping, to me, changed in the mid 80s. And really the key guy in that was DeOssie, in my opinion, because, uh, Steve [DeOssie] was the first center that really truly allowed a spread punt formation against the all-out rush. Prior to that teams would generally pull -- well, first of all there wasn't that many gunners [a player who lines up near the sideline with the goal of moving downfield as fast as possible to eventually tackle the punt returner.] But when teams started using gunners, they would pull one in and kick away from the free guy on the backside. And that was kind of the idea of the protection -- was not to let the snapper block against a nine-man rush with a split player. So the return team would have one guy on the the gunner that split, one guy returning, so you got nine guys rushing against, um, essentially, you know, the punter, who wasn't a blocker, the split guy, who wasn't a blocker, and the snapper, who really wasn't a blocker. So it was nine on eight, and the idea was to block the most dangerous eight ... and let the ninth guy go and punt away from him.
And then, when the Cowboys went to the spread punt and the Cardinals followed that pretty quickly and they kept two gunners split and the snapper blocked a guy, uh, then that created an eight on eight situation, but put a lot of pressure on the snapper to you know deliver the ball 15 yards deep on the money and still block a good rusher, you know, offset in the A-gap. I mean, we've all seen offensive linemen have trouble making that block on a pass play. And so now you're talking about a deep snap and a block.
But, as players got better at that, and that skill became more - I would say - players became more efficient at that, then you know teams decided to carry a long snapper rather than worry about getting a punt block. Plus, there was also the level of consistency and durability with those players. So, if you lose a position player, who's also a long snapper, you know, you're looking at some, some real problems. And that evolved into the punters, for the most part, becoming holders, because the amount of time that they could spend with the kickers versus having a wide receiver or quarterback be the holder -- which, again, you don't see very much of that anymore -- assuming the punter is, you know, capable and good enough, has good enough hands, to be the holder.
And so then that kind of whole unit has really evolved into, you know a specified snapper, a specified kicker, a specific punter, and generally the punter as the holder so the three of those guys could work together all practice because they're all available.
And I know, again, going back to when I first came into the league, you worked on, you know, field goals, and I mean it was maybe five minutes, because that was the only time the starting center and the starting receiver or backup quarterback or whatever were available to practice that.
So, like, is it that hard?
Um, it's a pretty hard job, yeah. It's a pretty hard job. It's not as hard as it used to be because you're not allowed to hit the center, especially on field goals, and, you know, run them over. And there are some limitations on the punt rush based on, you know, what the formation is and so forth. Generally speaking. But it's still a hard block. And I think you see most punt rushers attack the snapper. So they loop guys back so the center thinks he's going right but then he has to come back to the left. Or maybe they fake like they're coming back but they don't come back. So he not only has to snap. And so then that gets into whether you're a blind snapper and you look at the rush and just snap the ball, or whether you're a look-back snapper and snap it and then after the snap you have to look up and recognize what's happened and then make the proper block.
But again, it's it's man-to-man blocking.
Like that guy's got to block somebody or you're a guy short.
So, it is it is a hard job.
And the accuracy of the place kickers through the years which has gone up dramatically. Part of that's the surface. Part of that's, you know, not kicking outdoors and so forth. And part of it is the operation between the snapper, the holder, and the kicker, which I would say, generally speaking, is at a pretty high level.
Which it should be.
In the National Football League.
So, I think if you go back and look at, you know, kicks from, back when that wasn't the case, you know, you see balls rolling back, and the holder coming out of a stance to catch the ball. The kind of things you see sometimes in a high school game and that kind of thing. There's just a much higher level of skill -- which there should be. But, yeah, I think it's a pretty tough position. And nobody knows or cares who the snapper is until there is a bad snap and all of a sudden it's a front page story.
So, you know, there's a decent amount of pressure on that player as well, not just the snap, but also, as I said, to block and punt protection.
So, as the roster sizes have increased it's been a lot easier to carry that player, just like it's a lot easier to carry a true returner. And so, in terms of depth and availability, um, you know, you really don't want to be looking for one of those players in the middle of any time. In the middle of a game or in the middle of a season. But when you have him as, you know, a starting receiver or starting, you know -- Luke Rosa, starting tackle, or whoever, those guys -- and they're playing and something happens, not only do you lose a player but you lose a key specialist as well.
So, yeah. I mean, it's a great question. There would be so much value in a player that could do a couple of things and save a roster spot. But I would say there are so few of those players available, even to the point where, and, you know, Amendola did a great job last week, but it's so rare that you even see a combination punter and placekicker. Usually it's it's one or the other. And I think part of that is, you know, at one level it's, I'll say, relatively easy to put your foot on the ball. But at this level, you know, the difference in kicking mechanics and punting mechanics are are so different that it's really hard to be good at both.
But, you know, if a guy's got a good leg and he's a good athlete and makes good contact with the ball, there's a point where, you know, high school, college, you know... maybe it's good enough. Maybe he's the best guy on the team to do that. But I'd say at this level that would be asking a lot. Now, you know, like, Jake can punt, Jake can kick off, you know, Jake can kick field goals [but] to be at the kind of level you want it to be at to have the person split their time between the two of those, again, I think is, you know, it’s a lot to ask. It's not -- I'm not saying it's impossible or unheard of, but it's a lot to ask and that's why you don't see it very much.
That's a good question. It's really interesting and I'd say if you look at the evolution of those positions over the last -- since I've been in the league -- but even a little bit before then because that's really where it started to go was was in the late 60s and I think Gogalak was the first, or one of the first, where that trend really started to say 'Okay, we're just going to keep a guy and all he does is kick' ... and that's, that's like all they did, that was, that was a little bit unusual, but, you know, gradually, that's become the new norm.
Reporter: "Um, thank you Bill. That was as thorough and in-depth as I hoped it would be ... so thank you."
Bill: (smiling) "No, you're welcome Ben. Thanks for the question."
Delivered by Bill Belichick as seen on Golden Sports in September 2021
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'Pale Blue Dot' by Carl Sagan
Written by Carl Sagan (Link to excerpt here)
Context:
If I'm known for anything it's probably The Book of Awesome and all the sequels and spinoffs. But I don't talk much about the deeper feelings of awe that are so important psychologically and physiologically to living an intentional life. I'm cheating a bit here because this 'speech' by Carl Sagan is really an excerpt from his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space which was published in 1994. I find it impossible to read and not be momentarily stunned back into seeing the exceptional gift that is conscious life itself. As Carl says, seeing the earth like this helps underscore our responsibility to 'deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.'
Excerpt:
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
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'The Other America' by Dr Martin Luther King Jr
Delivered by Dr Martin Luther King Jr (Source: Civil Rights Movement Archive)