Leadership
Great lives result from having meaningful work. Real leaders can help us get there.
Author: DJB
History is not what happened two hundred years ago; It is a story about what happened two hundred years ago*
Michael Eric Dyson argues that America has “washed the grit” from Dr. King’s rhetoric in order to get to a place where he can be admired by the country at large.
The Founding Father we’d do well to find once again
Thomas Paine and Roger Williams are the two founding fathers whose work is most often forgotten yet remains among the most consequential today. My belief was strengthened upon reading Craig Nelson’s excellent 2006 biography, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations. Paine, born in England and truly a citizen of the Enlightenment world, wrote three of the bestsellers of the eighteenth century, topped only by the Bible. His Common Sense has long been recognized as a key work in changing the hearts and minds of the people of the United Colonies into citizens of what Paine was the first to characterize as the United States. Similarly, his Rights of Man helped shape the French Revolution and — although it would take more than a century — inspire constitutional reform in Great Britain and foreshadow Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Age of Reason, a forceful call against organized religion, finds Paine sticking to his Enlightenment and deist values even at the expense of his public reputation. Paine’s mind was clearly a force of …
Kindness
I am very grateful for the many kindnesses shown to me over the years. Looking forward, I encourage you to be kind to one another.
Cynicism vs. hope
Cynics. We’ve all encountered them. They make pronouncements with great certainty and take pride in not appearing foolish. Those who disagree with them are instantly branded, in the eyes of the cynic, as naïve. Thankfully, there are ways to combat cynicism. Over the holidays I finished reading author Rebecca Solnit’s most recent book, Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays). Solnit includes an essay—Naive Cynicism—that flips the idea of cynicism and naivete on its head. “Naïve cynics shoot down possibilities, including the possibility of exploring the full complexity of any situation. They take aim at the less cynical, so that cynicism becomes a defensive posture and an avoidance of dissent. They recruit through brutality. If you set purity and perfection as your goals, you have an almost foolproof system according to which everything will necessarily fall short. . . . Cynics are often disappointed idealists and upholders of unrealistic standards. They are uncomfortable with victories, because victories are almost always temporary, incomplete, and compromised.” Change and progress require hard work, and cynics …
Use your New Year’s resolutions to give up stuff that doesn’t matter
Say yes to things that matter. As that great American philosopher Mae West said, “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
Farewell 2018, Hello 2019
It is that time of year, dear readers, when I look back over the past twelve months, assess progress (or lack thereof) against my goals, and think ahead for 2019. Careful readers know that for several years I have worked with a set of life rules (rather than annual resolutions) for living the next third of my life. This review is just one small part of an exercise to have an honest conversation with myself, so I’ll be able to have real conversations with the larger world. We don’t do enough looking at our uncertainties and vulnerabilities, sometimes choosing as an alternative getting angry at others—which hinders real understanding. Steve Almond, in the book Bad Stories, asserts that’s true because we take our grievances seriously but not our vulnerabilities. In the 2017 essay “Facing the Furies” (found in the collection Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises and Essays), Rebecca Solnit frames it this way: “. . . more often, lashing out is a way to avoid looking inward. A 2001 study by Jennifer …
My 2018 year-end reading list
As 2018 draws to a close, I’m sharing this list of the books I read over the past twelve months. Since returning from sabbatical early in 2016, I committed to reading more, and to seek out a wider range of works beyond my normal histories and biographies. Here are the treasures I found on my reading shelf this past year. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. I began the year with a work of fiction. In this at times perplexing yet ultimately satisfying novel, Saunders builds off the fact that in February 1862, just a year into the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln’s 11-year-old son Willie dies of typhoid fever. It is known from contemporary accounts that the President went several evenings to stay in the crypt with his son’s body in Georgetown’s Oak Hill Cemetery. Saunders takes that bit of knowledge and turns it into a rich story populated with dozens of spirits who reside in the Bardo, which is the Tibetan Buddhist name for a transition period between death and rebirth. Tears …
Connections
When I was a freshman in college, I waited tables at a local restaurant and bar in Nashville. Waiting tables is hard and humbling work, which I highly recommend. Once you’ve experienced it you’ll forever be mindful of 1) how you treat wait staff, and 2) how to tip properly. When I was leaving at the end of the school year, the manager, Bill, and his sister Ruth invited me over for a drink. At the end of the night, Ruth gave me a hug and said, “Have a good life!” This was the pre-Facebook/email/Instagram days, and she meant it as a heartfelt farewell to someone she’d probably never see again. I stuck that sentiment in the back of my mind. But to paraphrase folksinger Arlo Guthrie halfway through the 17-minute-long Alice’s Restaurant, this isn’t a post about waiting tables. This is a blog post about the emotional and intellectual value of personal connections. One of our staff members had her final day at the National Trust coincide with the last day of our 2018 …
How I learned to stop worrying and love delegation
Micromanaging dents your team’s morale by establishing a tone of mistrust—and it limits your team’s capacity to grow. It also hampers your ability to focus on what’s really important.
MORE TO COME... 