Keeping your career in permanent beta forces you to acknowledge that you have bugs, that there’s new development to do on yourself, that you will need to adapt and evolve. It is a lifelong commitment to continuous personal and professional growth.

Entrepreneurs penetrate the fog of the unknown by testing their products, and their hypotheses, through trial and error. Any entrepreneur (and any expert on cognition/learning) will tell you that practical knowledge is best developed by doing, not just thinking or planning.

(source)

“I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them.”

- POTUS, 2012

Commentary: Yes I realize my job is a “role”, that of CEO. Yet sometimes I reserve the right to point out what I believe to be obvious. Sometimes that obviousness is bigotry in the form of discrimination against people for the way they were born, created, by God.

Example:

In 1981 when I met a good friend it was clear to me he was “born that way”. The first week of high-school we all didn’t know how to react to him. What was his deal? Huh? Turns out he is a great man. Different from many of us. Being born gay, something we all knew but he didn’t confirm until many years later. If asked he denied it. We didn’t care because he was a good friend and a good man. Period. He was part of our tribe and good heavens we all had our own weirdness.

Years later I remember the call when I was in college when he said “I have something to say” and I said “we know, we knew in high school, and it doesn’t change a bloody thing. We love you as you are dude.” His response was “you knew?” and, for lack of a more refined response I said something like “we all knew, we didn’t care, and I’m pretty sure you knew even back then but that doesn’t matter. You rock and it’s so great to hear from you.”

I’d have my PR team refine my response now. But it wouldn’t change the message.

I stand by my statements. I’d do the exact same thing today. I do. Accept.

Different? Yes, a minority. But God’s creation. This wasn’t some “choice.” This was simply who the man was. He was born that way. And who am I to judge how God creates us? Do I really understand it? No. Do I understand at a logical level why I find women attractive? No. We are truly just “born that/this/the-other way.”

So regardless of your politics, I love hearing the President of the United States state clearly his support of gay rights. States rights first, yes, but given a states’ choice the Federal Government should stay out of it. And I rarely agree with politicians, but in this case, I  agree. Tip of the hat to your courage POTUS. Keep on keepin on.

Scores of readers, often students, wrote to Wilder over the years seeking his position on the questions posed in The Bridge. In this excerpt from a letter written march 6, 1928, four months after the appearance of the novel, Wilder responds to a query from John Townley, one of his former pupils at Lawrenceville.

The first:

Thornton Wilder
Davis House
Lawrenceville, New Jersey

Dear John:

The book is not supposed to solve. A vague comfort is supposed to hover above the unanswered questions, but it is not a theorem with its Q.E.D. The book is supposed to be as puzzling and distressing as the news that five of your friends died in an automobile accident. I dare not claim that all sudden deaths are, in the last counting, triumphant. As you say, a little over half the situations seem to prove something and the rest escape, or even contradict.

Chekhov said: “The business of literature is not to answer questions, but to state them fairly.”

I claim that human affection contains a strange unanalyzable consolation and that is all. People who are full of faith claim that the book is a vindication of this optimism; disillusioned people claim that it is a barely concealed “anatomy of despair. I am nearer the second group than the first; though some days I discover myself shouting confidentially in the first group.

Where will i be thirty years from now? – with Hardy or Cardinal Newman?

- Thornton Wilder

Afterward, The Bridge of San Louis Rey

I always say I work only with people I love and I can make only things I love.

- Alber Albaz

“When the pressure is intense, a driver who is being chased relentlessly by a competitor, realizes that he might be better off pushing from behind than pulling from the front. In that case the smart move is to yield his lead to the trailing car and let the other driver pass. Relieved of his burden our new leader can tuck in behind and make the leader drive his mirrors.

Sometimes however it is important to hold one’s position, and not allow the pass. For strategic reasons. Psychological reasons.

Sometimes a driver simply has to prove that he is better than his competition. Racing is about discipline and intelligence. Not about who has the heavier foot. The one who drives smart will always win in the end.

Sometimes you have to assert yourself.

And dramatically speaking, intention is everything.

No race has ever been won in the first corner. But many a race has been lost there.”

- Enzo, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“…nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people. An Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotchman, an Italian or so, several Frenchmen and a number of Americans were present, and you couldn’t ask a question about any possible country under the sun, but some fellow in the crowd had been there and could give the information from personal experience.”

- Mark Twain

This place is an X-file, wrapped in a cover-up and deep-fried in a paranoid conspiracy.

- General W.R. Monger (source)

‘How shall I move forward?’ you might ask yourself, as you stand at the threshold, confronted by the darkness ahead. Many of us learn from an early age to fear the unfamiliar or unknown. If the unknown is also without light, it can become unjustifiably terrifying. How you approach the unknown is unique, as your first encounter with anything can only ever be as an individual. Staring ahead into the black void of How It Is may make you wonder whether to move ahead at all. How It Is simultaneously embodies the unknown and the familiar; the darkness is contained in a structure mimicking both the architecture of the Turbine Hall and a contemporary shipping container, luring you inwards through its recognizable form. ‘It’s fine,’ you reassure yourself, ‘what can actually be inside?’

- miroslaw balka

“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and
Demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,
Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and
Its purpose in the service of your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
Even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and
Bow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and
For the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks,
The fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing,
For abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts
Are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes
They weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again
In a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

- Shawnee Chief Tecumseh

(via a post on FB)

R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means to me

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Take care, TCB ohhhh. Sock it to me…

- Aretha Franklin, Respect