Where Am I? 

Once every eight weeks, if not more often, K and I travel to LA to visit Number One and Number Two Sons and their families. Together, they have bestowed upon us four grandchildren: Francis, the elder and constant thinker, Penny and Fionna, the always rambunctious and ready-for-anything twins, and Willa, my sweet little slice of strawberry shortcake.

I don’t like traveling nearly as much as I did in my 40s and 50s, when I used to – no joke – put colored pins in a world map indicating the cities I’d seen. K and I traveled for pleasure, and I traveled for work. For more than 40 years, I was out of the country at least ten times a year and away from home another two dozen. I’ve been to all the “must-visit” European cities, as well as those of Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America, Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, India, China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Russia… and the list goes on.

Two problems: I remember, at best, only fragmentary images of those hundreds of adventures. And the energy that fueled my excitement in my youth to see the world has been replaced by a low-level dread of airports and day-long plane trips and jet lag.

K experiences none of this. She is as energetic and sprightly as she was when we spent two years living in and traveling around Africa in the mid 1970s. So these days, she does a fair amount of her traveling with girlfriends, while I – no longer obliged to travel for work – limit my travel to extended family gatherings and visiting the grandkids.

And that’s how I found myself at the Fairmount at Century City (LA), a huge, modern building recently refurbished for a billion dollars that sits among dozens of similarly sized, reconstructed glass-and steel towers connected to one another by cement courtyards and walkways, with the occasional bit of greenery here and there.

There is no question. This is a Forbes 4-star hotel that deserves the reputation it has in terms of everything one might want in a great hotel, including handsomely appointed rooms with good views and a beautiful lobby and numerous restaurants and meeting rooms and libraries and all the rest. And the service is great. Really great. A noticeable step above most other first-class American hotels. It is comparable to the service you can get in Asian hotels, which is, by almost any standard, the best in the world.

But it’s missing something that I’m trying to put a name to. I haven’t found the word, but it’s the opposite of “charming.”

Never mind. That’s not why we are here. We are here to spend time with family, especially these kids – all of whom provide me with as much charm and action and laughter as I could ever hope for. And that’s okay with me.

Continue Reading

Learning How to Forgive Yourself 

I recently delivered a video presentation to senior executives in a Japanese publishing company I write for titled “The Zen Secret for Never Regretting Your Business and Financial Decisions.” In that presentation, I spoke about how to set goals and be intentional about achieving them, but without attaching yourself emotionally to the results.

Following the presentation, I got a note from one of the attendees, who wrote:

As I was interpreting you confidently with my tone of “as if I’m doing it myself already,” I noticed I’m so not doing it. Suffering from what turned out to be the opposite of what I wanted it to turn out has been really big and I tend to blame myself.

But like you slightly touched on, it shouldn’t have been all because of me. There could have been some other natural forces that I couldn’t control that led to the unwanted result. When I think this way, I feel a little easier. I’d better detach myself from the result, and have Plan B.

was happy that I had communicated the thrust of my idea, but I was concerned about the statement that “there could have been some other natural forces that I couldn’t control.”

I realized that there should have been a Part II to my presentation: Learning how to forgive yourself without denying or diminishing responsibility.

So, this is what I wrote back…

What I Should Have Added to My Talk

After reading your note, I have another idea for you to consider. It goes something like this: “The moment you forgive yourself, the universe forgives you, too.”

Maybe that is too abstract – one of those statements that, while true, is nevertheless impossible to understand unless you have done it yourself or at least seen it done by others.

Your note inspired me to try to do a better job of expressing what I mean by it, so let me try again…

We must take responsibility for our actions. Trying to avoid that responsibility by blaming other people or other things cannot ease the pain we feel for something we regret doing.

So that’s the first step.

The second and perhaps more difficult step is to forgive yourself. For most people brave enough to take step one, this is not easy. We’ve all been taught as children to feel shame and regret. For all sorts of things.

And there is nothing wrong with having those feelings. They are part of the larger recognition that we are all part of an interconnected universe, and that everything we do has some effect, large or small, on everything else. We all damage things. We all hurt and/or damage other beings. We do it purposefully through action or accidentally through inaction. Feeling regret and/or shame about it is a natural response.

But then we must move on.

And to move on, we must realize that the only way we can forgive ourselves is to give up the egoistic idea that we have control over everything we do – whether unconsciously, accidentally, or purposefully – and how it affects others.

We must be humble enough to accept our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. We must understand that, as imperfect beings with limited powers, we are no match for nature – that we should strive towards improving our awareness and behavior, but, at the same time, acknowledge that, however much progress we think we are making, we are, from the larger context of nature, bit-part actors in a very short scene of a very long play whose recurring principal themes are of tragedy and comedy with only a single thread that connects them. And that thread is irony, whose essential insight is, to paraphrase Newton, that each truth has an equal and opposite truth.

I’m writing this, as I sometimes do, as a hypocrite. I grew up secretly blaming myself for everything that wasn’t perfect in my life. I mentally tortured myself for every failure, every stumble, every disappointing outcome.

Looking back, I see that, at some egocentric level, I was seeing myself as a sort of heroic figure in a great struggle for human perfection. Not just for me, but for the rest of the world. Now I try to see myself more realistically, as a bit player in a cosmic comedy of never-ending moments of achievement and failure, love and loneliness, happiness and hurt.

But the failures and the loneliness and the hurt do not have to be constant and continuous. If we can see ourselves and our actions in the larger context, we can forgive ourselves – not to rationalize our mistakes or our limitations but to accept responsibility for the harm and damage we cause – and we can move ahead with humility and hope.

And if we can do that – if you can do that, even once in a while, you will notice that the world will be that much more ready to forgive you, too.

Continue Reading

If Necessary, Use Deadly Force? 

When JM, my ex-Navy Seal trainer told me about it, I thought it couldn’t possibly be true.

Trying to defeat your political opponent through “lawfare” is tacky enough for a first-world, wannabe democracy. (See what I said about this tactic in the May 17  issue.) But allowing (encouraging) deadly force against your political foe?

It turns out, it is mostly true.

The FBI, the Justice Department, and the Biden administration are all claiming that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s approval of the use of deadly force for the Aug. 8, 2022, raid on Mar-a-Lago was “standard operating procedure.” And if you google it, you’ll find plenty of stories from the mainstream media that supported that contention. They don’t discuss the fact that no such use of deadly force was used to seize Biden’s illegal possession of classified documents. Nor do they discuss how the FBI has acknowledged that some of the documents at Mar-a-Lago were put there by the FBI and that, after collecting them, they tampered with them before turning them over to Congress, after claiming they didn’t.

Now, as more details of the raid are becoming public, it’s looking more like this kind of authorization is “ordinary” only when they raid armed drug dealers, but it’s never been used for the seizing of documents of a public official, let alone a former president and a candidate for the next presidency.

You can see the range of reporting on this herehereherehere and here.

 

Taking the Long View on Presidential Immunity 

A rare, un-politicized essay on a key question in several of Donald Trump’s many legal charges against him: Does a US president have immunity from criminal prosecution for any official acts taken while in office?

Read it here and tell me what you think.

 

From What River to What Sea?

In my May 9 Special Issue on “Antisemitism vs. Free Speech,” I included this short video of two anti-Israel protesters who weren’t quite sure what exactly they were protesting.

Just this morning, NF sent me another one that is even more hilarious (or disturbing).

Continue Reading

Why Is the Market Going Up?

This week, for a change, I am not commenting on a chart that Sean sent us to illustrate some points about the stock market and investing. Instead, I’ve asked him to explain why, given all the instability in the financial markets and all the obvious problems with inflation and the efforts to reduce the power of the US dollar, the stock market hit an all-time high on May 16, with the Dow breaking 40,000.

Look for his answer in a Special Issue later this week.

Meanwhile, here’s a video clip Sean put together to test the market with a new promotion for a wealth building course I designed several years ago. Although there are elements of this that I would normally avoid in selling wealth-building promos (such as humor), I think he did a good job with it.

Let me know if you agree.

 

How Many Hours Do Americans Work?
(The Answer May Surprise and/or Disturb You) 

Check out these charts.

They show the average hours per week that Americans work by age. As you can see, most people work the most hours in their 30s and 40s, with a modest drop in the 50s and then a deep drop after that.

Look at my decade – the 70s. It looks like my coevals are hardly working at all! I know, most of them are retired. And I’m sure most of them have earned the right to retire. But retire to do what? I suspect many people my age are still working 20 to 30 hours a week, but on jobs that they value but don’t get paid for. What do you think?

Continue Reading

In What World Is Gender-Transition Surgery Gender-Affirming Care?

A study from the University of Texas Medical Branch found that the risk of suicide increased 12 times following gender-transition surgery compared to those who did not undergo the procedure. Click here.

Continue Reading

The Best Latin Hip-Hop of the Last Decade

I spend a fair amount of time in Latin America. So when a friend suggested that he’d never leave the US because he’s addicted to hip-hop, I pointed out that some of the best of it is being produced by Latin Americans.

Check this out and see if you agree.

Continue Reading

Five Quick Bites 

Interesting. Peter Diamandis reports: “WTF Just Happened in AI?” Click here.

Interesting. Fact and fiction, right and wrong – Hannah Arendt on Totalitarianism. Click here.

Fun. Edgar Allan Poe rap by Elle Cordova. Can’t get enough of her! Click here.

Interesting. I often wish that Thomas Sowell was my uncle. Here’s one reason why.

Fun and Interesting. Two great conversations between Conan O’Brien and Jim Downey, a comedy writer who worked on more than 30 seasons of SNL. Click here and here.

Continue Reading

From AS: “Some fodder for your war on liberals”

AS is an old friend, independent thinker, and liberal-to-moderate on most issues, which makes these quips doubly appreciated. I thought it was particularly interesting that the great comedic philosophers Lenny Bruce and Dick Gregory are included.

“A liberal is a man who leaves a room when a fight begins.” – Heywood Broun

“The liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.” – Lenny Bruce

“Liberal: a power worshiper without power.” – George Orwell

“A liberal is a person whose interests aren’t at stake at the moment.” – Willis Player

“A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.” – Robert Frost

“Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.” – Dick Gregory

Continue Reading