Start 7

Why it's easier to learn from failure than success: success is like advertising, half of it works and half doesn't, but it's very difficult to tell which half is which.

Failure, especially big failure, clears the air.

The test of a way of life is in it's durability. Does it work?

Just as, when you buy a new chevy, you see them everywhere so also when you come up with a good idea it seems to work everywhere.)

Are you really intuit?

Meaning, if you were to start a business, would you be able to determine whether you were making any money?
Not as easy as it sounds.
Money is elusive. And fungible.
Money is like a pleasant smell. It's attractive, yet can dissipate all too easily in a moderate breeze. People who can keep tight control of money are characterized by the word "grasp". To maintain a tight grasp on money is a time-honored system for controlling the location of every dollar.

When the first inclination is never to spend anything, ever, then money loses its fungible quality, i.e., its ability to become anything else, easily.

Miserliness, as a hard rule, works, though its inflexibility will eventually undermine a life built on passion.
Above all, MONEY functions best, not as the motor of a business but as the electricity which powers the motor.
Electricity surrounds us, not necessarily to be accumulated for its own sake, as misers, but to run our various motors, the passions of our lives.

Business plans control money,too.
A business plan demands thinking clearly about what we want, how we expect to get there, and, in the process, why we even want to try.
Not so dissimilar from a LIFE plan.
The first step in formulating one's business plan is, therefore, to take charge of one's life.


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Uproot

Which?
To travel to Varanasi
Or cover my body
With tattoos of Shiva?


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Life

Last week, nothing
and now a crocus.
Will I always remember?

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Conner and Jack

A young life,
pulled with such effort,
from the night sky,
yet
returned to the evening stars
too soon,
undermines our sense
of fairness.
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C'est la Careme

Careme

It was Springtime, in Koun Abrouzo, in the Ivory Coast, and my partner in the Peace Corps, Michael, and I were in our little house withstanding the heat of the day as best we could.
Usually few people ventured out in the village in the mid afternoon heat.
There sounded, however, a knock at our door. Since my french was better than Mike's, i opened the door. I was confused to find two women whom I had never seen before. Normally, the women don't say much to the two americans, especially without a local man present.
One of the girls spoke and her french was good enough for me to understand her.
It seemed that the elders of the village had decided that two young men, so far from home, needed female companionship, and as she said this, she slipped out of her clothes, right on our doorstep.
I swear that my first thought was: what the hell do i do now?
And my second was: how to get out of this mess without humiliating everyone?
Michael was being of very little help.
Midwestern Catholic law student, circumscribed thinker.
What must rank as one of my more brilliant improvisations, if I may say so myself, I managed to look desolated, while saying that, it being the season of Careme (Lent), sacrifices must be made.
Everyone in the village knew that we often ate dinner with the Catholic pere in the village, and a knowing nod indicated that they understood.
She re-draped herself and, magically, they smiled and we smiled, for by this time, Michael stood beside me at the door, and they left.


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Start Small 8

Start Small 8

We must always remember that nothing in this world is given to us in perpetuity. We must continually earn everything we think we have, and seek to discover those things that we have which remain unseen.
We are part of a river with many tributaries., necessitating rowing back upstream if we haven't been paying attention.
In order to take control of our lives , we must build a foundation of adaptation and curiosity, qualities best developed in an entrepreneurial environment.
It is all too easy, living in a big house with stout walls and a sound roof, to become complacent.
To start working again in a cheap tent, in the open air , is to feel every passing breeze, every scent, every sound.
In other words, more responsive to the world around.
It's easy to imagine this substantial little house capable of withstanding the storms of life, but, in the little tent, it's more difficult.
Instead of walls, we, as entrepreneurial livers of life, must depend on ourselves.
America,
what are we thinking?
That our oceans will protect us?
That because we speak English, speaking other languages is unnecessary?
That "from rag salesman to rag salesman in three generations" is no longer valid?
What are we thinking, America?
That it's easier not to think?
About what we eat?
About who are true friends are?
About, not only WHAT is happening in the world, but WHY?
About where we have come from, and where we are going?
Personally?
And as a nation?
Nothing is unimportant.

How big can we think?

The larger the world, the more possibilities.


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