Wisdom

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.

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?

Hermann Hesse wrote, “When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.” “Hay un árbol que adoro.” I flirt with this specific tree on my daily walk as it towers above a farm just five minutes from the MEA campus.

This spring, author Scott Barry Kaufman launched his ninth book, Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization (not bad for someone 41 years old, right?!). Since Scott is one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject of intelligence, we’ll explore the difference between intelligence and wisdom.

I've been a friend and fan of author Simon Sinek for a dozen years and appreciate that we recently had the opportunity to muse on midlife as he's now 46. In this video, we explore a whole bunch of questions including:

I have a naughty relationship with knots. Even though I was on my way to becoming an Eagle Scout in my early teens, I couldn’t tie a knot to save my life. I was especially bad at tying knots to hold up my bathing suit, so often, upon jumping in the swimming pool, my suit would be hanging around my ankles, and I’d be in “Full Monty” glory for family pictures.

I love the humanity of this author. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is a MacArthur Prize-winning sociologist and Harvard professor. In this book titled “The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 Years after 50,” she writes, “We must develop a compelling vision of later life, one that does not assume a trajectory of decline after fifty but recognizes this as a time of potential change, growth and new learning, a time when our courage gives us hope.”

To Christine and Chip (Pronouns applied equally throughout to women and girls) The carpenter was a busy man His work his passion and joy He had dedicated all to carpentry Since he was just a boy

What’s a part of your body that disappears when you stand up? No, not your belly! It’s your lap. Around our house, I call our 25-yard-pool Lapland. I get lost once a day, swimming endless laps while the sun gloriously bakes my body, all while our dog Jamie perfectly-times a bite of my rubber fins as I flip-turn at each end of the pool. She’s no lap dog! Suffice it to say, this daily ritual brings me far more joy than my laptop.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was a biochemist. Lately, I’ve found myself a little wistful about that, but that’s another story. Were I to go back now, I’d have a hell of a lot of catching up to do. Since my days in the lab with Jack, Hugo, Hermann et al at the Max Planck Institüt in Frankfurt, understanding of the mechanism of transport across the cell membrane has moved on.