The Vine

Our organization recently lost a dear colleague and friend.

Don Oliver, pictured here with his wife and daughter, passed away after a courageous six-month battle with cancer. He was a kind and gracious man who gave far more than he took. We miss him, and the world is poorer for his loss.

We try to draw a measure of comfort in the knowledge that he’s no longer suffering, and in the belief that he’s now in a better place. Honestly, though, I’m not sure there’s any perspective—not that we’ll see on this side of the divide anyway—that can make us feel okay about a father leaving behind his young child, or parents outliving their son.

I don’t pretend to have answers that make sense of this, but I’m convinced the solace and healing we’re looking for begins in relationship and community.

We experience pain and loss because we form attachments. And we form attachments because the alternative is far, far worse.

Singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, whose lyrics often explore matters of life and death and the search for deeper significance, expresses this more poetically than I can:

This is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some…
Someone else’s heart
Pumping someone else’s blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don’t get harmed
But even if it does
You’ll just do it all again

Life is fleeting. People are precious. Relationships are everything. So keep forming them and keep feeding them. When your friends mourn, mourn with them. When your friends dance, dance with them. Be in community with the people around you.

And even when you’re harmed, do it all again.

Wishing you a peaceful and rejuvenating holiday. See you in the New Year.

From the aforementioned What Matters Now ebook, this commentary from Howard Mann nails it.

I’m continually amazed by the number of people on Twitter and on blogs, and the growth of people (and brands) on facebook. But I’m also amazed by how so many of us are spending our time. The echo chamber we’re building is getting larger and louder.

More megaphones don’t equal a better dialogue. We’ve become slaves to our mobile devices and the glow of our screens. It used to be much more simple and, somewhere, simple turned into slow. We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before.

Multi-tasking has become a badge of honor. I want to know why.

I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I find myself thinking about them more and more. In between tweets, blog posts and facebook updates.

When a remarkable group of thinkers collaborates to create a book of inspiration and provocation, you pay attention. Better yet, when they give it away for free as a downloadable ebook, you pay nothing.

What Matters Now is a collection of short pieces—things to think about and do—contributed by business leaders, bestselling authors, philanthropists, activists and academics. (Among them Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Guy Kawasaki, Dan Pink, Elizabeth Gilbert and Jacqueline Novogratz.) And its creators actively want you to take it, quote from it, and share it with others.

Arianna Huffington extols the virtues of sleep and encourages us to trade multi-tasking for uni-tasking (and sometimes even no-tasking). Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh reveals how everything he knows about running a business was learned from playing poker. Penelope Trunk offers a thoughtful perspective on being comfortable where you are and making the people around you feel comfortable too—all the more poignant considering she has Asperger Syndrome.

Tim Sanders reflects on the origins of confidence. Mitch Joel urges businesses to behave more like communities. And Jason Fried and Gary Vaynerchuk simply want us to get better at saying “I’m sorry” and “Thank you.” 

This entry from Gina Trapani might be my favorite.

Getting things done is not the same as making things happen.

You can…
…reply to email.
…pay the bills.
…cross off to-do’s.
…fulfill your obligation.
…repeat what you heard.
…go with the flow.
…anticipate roadblocks.
…aim for “good enough.”

Or you can…
…organize a community.
…take a risk.
…set ambitious goals.
…give more than you take.
…change perceptions.
…forge a new path.
…create possibility.
…demand excellence.

Don’t worry too much about getting things done.

Make things happen.

Sounds like a great resolution to me. New Year’s or any time.

As captured beautifully in this soon to be released movie from Focus Features.

Amie MacPhee points us to this intriguing perspective from David Brooks, reflecting on the value of emotional education—life’s formative experiences that shape us in ways that are unexpected, unknown (at the time) and indelible.

Unlike the traditional, structured education we get in school, emotional educations are “unsupervised and haphazard.” And they are, Brooks argues, far more important to our long-term happiness and quality of life.

“In a normal schoolroom, information walks through the front door and announces itself by light of day. It’s direct. The teacher describes the material to be covered, and then everybody works through it.

The knowledge transmitted in an emotional education, on the other hand, comes indirectly, seeping through the cracks of the windowpanes, from under the floorboards and through the vents. It’s generally a byproduct of the search for pleasure, and the learning is indirect and unconscious.”

For Brooks it was the music of Bruce Springsteen. For me, I suppose it was discovering (as a ten-year-old) the early writing of Stephen King (The Stand and ‘Salem’s Lot still among my all time favorite books). Not exactly classical literature, granted, but being drawn into his rich and bizarre imagination utterly engaged my own. The work I do today is, at its core, the transfer of emotion. And the path to get here began, I now realize, there.

Where did yours?

Young & Rubicam’s John Gerzema shows the upside to our economic woes—the opportunity for positive change, as consumers recalibrate values and habits, and businesses and brands evolve to connect with them.