Category: Idea Sharing Adventure Blog Posts
“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere—it is within each…
READ ARTICLE“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” —Henry Ford The traditional definition of winning is Darwinian. Every winner requires an equal and offsetting loser. For me to win, someone else must lose. Picture the Roman Colosseum, where it was kill or be killed—eat or be eaten. According to this view,…
READ ARTICLE“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” —Romans 5:12 I’ve found a new favorite book. It’s titled Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman. You may have to search for it, because it threatens too many conventional…
READ ARTICLE“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.” —Lucille Ball In January of 1988 I drove from Bowdoin College to Bridgton Academy to interview for a teaching and coaching job. Upon arrival I found myself sitting on the less powerful side of a large oak desk. Bob Walker, the headmaster, sat opposite me….
READ ARTICLERushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe. Therefore the Master takes action by letting things take their course. He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He simply reminds people of who they have always been….
READ ARTICLE“To have a comeback you have to have a setback.” —Mr. T Falmouth High School—January 1983. I jump for a rebound. The next thing I know, I’m lying on the court, clutching my right shoulder in extreme pain. I would learn an hour later at the hospital that I’d dislocated my shoulder. Shoulders are pretty…
READ ARTICLE“No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” —John Wheeler, physicist Alison and I have been married for thirty-two years. During that time, we have had four dogs, all yellow Labs. Bowdoin, Tampa, Tucker, and Scout are their names. Only the last of which is still with us today. Most dogs…
READ ARTICLEFlashback #1: Our daughter Abby is five years old, and blindfolded. In the middle of the screened-in porch hangs a piñata. It’s a colorful donkey twirling gently in the breeze. In her hands Abby holds a yellow Wiffle bat commandeered from the garage. Abby swings and misses, yet all the other children cheer, confident in…
READ ARTICLE“If one person in your family commits a crime, the entire family must be purged.” “When you have food in your stomach you can think about the meaning of life, but when you are starving, all you can think about is hunger.” “I never saw a map of the world. As an Asian I didn’t…
READ ARTICLE“If you want to be a champion you’ve got to feel like one, you’ve got to look like one, you’ve got to act like one.” —Red Auerbach John Kohtala was the best jump shooter I ever met. If he could get his right elbow above your left defensive hand, he was going to shoot, and it…
READ ARTICLE“It takes a lot of different flowers to make a bouquet.” —Ancient Islamic proverb I can still picture the world from my dad’s shoulders. I’m two and a half years old and he has an ankle in each hand. My head is above his and I feel as if I’m on top of the world…
READ ARTICLE“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” —Joseph Campbell It would be impossible to acknowledge the oneness that defines our universe and then go back to work as a supervisor, executive, or team leader and manage “employees” the old-fashioned way—barking out instructions with a heavy hand. Workers historically have been commodities….
READ ARTICLEGo ahead and hate your neighbor Go ahead and cheat a friend Do it in the name of heaven You can justify it in the end. —One Tin Soldier Why has acknowledging our universal connectivity and oneness been downplayed for so long? The answer has two parts. First, only recently has scientific understanding advanced far…
READ ARTICLE“The earth and myself are of one mind.” —Chief Joseph “Hey, Dad, what’s wrong?” one of our daughters asks. Whenever I’m asked that question, I’m a tad disappointed (in myself), and yet fascinated by the intuition of the person who has spotted what I was trying to conceal. We’re together as a family, so I’m…
READ ARTICLE“It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among them men get lost.” —Black Elk In my last post I wrote about what the sandpiper knows, the tiny bird that moves predictably with the unpredictable. No two waves are ever the same, yet the sandpiper…
READ ARTICLE“We Indians think of the Earth and the whole universe as a never-ending circle, and in this circle, man is just another animal. The buffalo and the coyote are our brothers, the birds, our cousins. Even the tiniest ant, even a louse, even the smallest flower you can find, they are all relatives.” —Jenny Leading…
READ ARTICLE“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” —John Muir The most transformative concept I’ve learned from my time at Pine Ridge is “Mitakuye Oyasin.” Each person translates this phrase in their own way, but the essence is always the same: We are all…
READ ARTICLE“Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you. I am I.” —Osho If we don’t share our stories they die with us, Verola Spider said to me one afternoon as we sat together on the porch at the Singing Horse Trading Post on the Pine Ridge Indian…
READ ARTICLE“Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” —Jack Swigert It was April 13, 1970, and the crew of Apollo 13 was in trouble. “This is Houston. Say again, please.” An explosion in one of the oxygen tanks had crippled the spacecraft in mid-flight. “Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B bus…
READ ARTICLE“You are only ever one decision away from a totally different life.” —Mark Batterson Forty-seven weeks ago I published the first post of this yearlong series on the power and potential of heightened self-awareness resulting in respect for all voices, beginning with one’s own. Next week I will publish the last post of this…
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