Chip Conley

My friend Neel recently sent me this collection of visual life cycles that were sparked by a Twitter user who posted the life cycle of a blackberry that went viral. From there, people started sharing additional life cycle images of things like coffee, cotton, blueberries, and leaves.

In a post not long ago (“Are You So Woke You Can’t Sleep”), I introduced you to author, speaker, and inspirational entertainer Justin Michael Williams, our youngest MEA grad who is one of the wisest and most soulful people I know.

Fleeing my native California, I couldn’t see the ground after the plane was 50 feet in the air. Too much thick, billowing smoke. The earth was scorched. Three hours later, I arrived in a parched Texas that had two hurricanes barreling toward the Gulf Coast.

How many coats of paint have your body gathered? How could you live an unvarnished life? These were the questions that arose for me when I watched this short video about Alex Raza and his second act as a violin maker.

If you’re been an avid Wisdom Well reader, you know I revere the Irish poet John O’Donohue who passed away way too young a dozen years ago. If you dip into his well on Google, you’ll find things like this YouTube conversation on Ageing (yes, I kept the “e” in there out of respect to John’s European roots). Here are a few of the gems from his ruminations:

The wise author and academic Clayton Christensen coined the phrase “disruptive innovation.” A couple of years ago, right before he passed away, he predicted that half the colleges and universities in the United States would have to close in the next ten years.

I’ve spent the week in San Francisco talking in “spooky units.” Numbers that mess with my mind. My trip from Baja was precipitated by the fact that my postponed medical and wellness appointments were seriously past due.

I’m not Mel Gibson. And you’re not Sigourney Weaver. So, we’re not going to replay the film “The Year of Living Dangerously,” set in Indonesia during a time of extreme political turmoil.

Simone de Beauvoir is one of those epic writers and thinkers who has influenced so many of us. She’s on par with Sartre and buried next to him at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. She was an existential philosopher, early-day feminist, and political activist.

I wish this book already existed, but Arthur Brooks is in the midst of writing it. I did a Q&A with Arthur a couple months ago and his column in The Atlantic called “How to Build a Life” is profound. A few weeks ago, when he sent me one of his most recent columns entitled “‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special Over Being Happy,” I cowered. Has he been stalking me?