What if you could reach to Who You Already Were and Who Still is Somewhere perhaps existing in some parallel dimension floating alongside this?

What if… the me you will be, already exists, alive and glowing and is reaching out to you this very moment; cheering you on, hugging you, applauding you, telling you it’s okay?

“In this novel, a follow-up to Bridge, Richard and Leslie are flying in their seaplane towards L.A., when all of a sudden there is a flash of light, and they are over the ocean, with no land in sight. They decide to set themselves down on the water until they can figure out what is going on. As they get closer to the water, they notice a pattern underneath, like underwater roads. It turns out that these underwater roads are the paths of their lives (each squiggling alone, running parallel, then meeting). They can land the seaplane anywhere on the paths, and be thrown to that point in time, to see the Richards and Leslies of the past… and future. Even more, they find that there are an endless number of branches to these paths; an infinite number of pasts that they didn’t choose, and they are able to visit these too, to see how things might have been had they made other decisions. Richard and Leslie try to talk to their past selves, to change their decisions, finally realizing that even if they change that Richard and Leslie, somewhere else, there are another Richard and Leslie making the other decisions, branching off into alternate pasts.” [Alisha]

“You’re the only one in the world who can answer that question. Find out what you really want to do and do it. What do you really want?”

She knew at once, “I want to learn. I want to be excellent at what I do,” she said. “I want to give something special to the world!”

“You will. What else?”

“I want to be happy. I don’t want to be poor.”

“Yes. What else?”

She warmed to the game. “I want to believe that there’s some reason for living that makes sense, some principles to help me through hard time and good times too. It’s not religion because I’ve tried it, and instead of answers I get ‘Have Faith, My Child.’”

Leslie frowned, remembering.

The younger Leslie went on, suddenly shy. I want to believe there’s someone else in the world who’s just as alone as I am. I want to believe we’re going to find each other… and love each other, and never be alone again!”

“Listen,” said my wife. “Everything you’ve said, everything you want to believe is already true. You may not find some of it for a little while, and some of it may take longer than that, but that doesn’t keep it from being true.”

“Even the someone to love? Is there really someone for me? Is he true too?”

“His name is Richard. Want to meet him?”

My wife held out her hand to me. I walked from behind the girl, glad that this aspect of one so dear would want to meet me.

She looked up at me speechless.

“Is it OK to ask… are you really happy together?” She said it as if she found it hard to believe.

“Happier than you can imagine,” I said.

“When do I meet you? Where?”

Should I tell her the truth? That it would take her another twenty five years, a failed marriage, other men? That it would be a life-time from where she stood by her battered piano before we’d meet?

I looked the question to my wife.

“It’ll be quite some time,” she said gently.

“Oh.”

It’ll be quite some time must have made her feel more alone than ever.

“Why do you think we came to see you?” asked Leslie.

“Because you think I’ll kill myself? Because you wish some future self would have come to you at my age and said don’t worry, you’ll survive! Isn’t that right?”

Leslie nodded.

“I promise to survive,” the girl said. “Better than that, you’ll be glad I lived. I promise you’ll be proud of me!”

“I am proud of you!” Leslie said. “We’re both proud of you. My life was in your hands, and you didn’t let me die, you didn’t give up when everything around you was despair. Maybe we didn’t come back to save you. Maybe we came back to thank you for opening the way, for making it possible for Richard and me to find each other and be so happy. Maybe we came back to tell you that we love you.”

Found this on Facebook some time ago. I don’t know them personally, although the bride is a Filipina comedian. I just found this video beautiful, and that’s why I’m posting it.

Three or four years ago, I wasn’t a morning person. When I was studying in college, I hated 730AM classes because I’d have to wake up really early and my brain doesn’t usually work at those early hours. When I was on graduate studies, I made sure to avoid early morning classes too. I worked in a Call Center for awhile and I found out that my peak hours were 10 pm to 12 midnight.

But when I started working in my present company, I had to transform myself into a morning person, partly because a lot of our meetings were in the morning (and I had to be up and about early), and also because much of our work has to do with dealing with clients who were morning persons themselves. If you’re a consultant, you can’t have “off days.” You have to be sharp every time. And gradually, I had to transform my 10–12 midnight peak hours to something more workable with my present set-up.

Here are tips from BNET on how to transform yourself into a morning person:

Choose to get up before you go to sleep — You’re not very good at making decisions when you’ve just woken up. You were in the middle of a dream in which [insert celebrity crush of choice here] is serving you breakfast in bed only to be rudely awakened by the harsh tones of your alarm clock. This is not the time to be making decisions about whether or not you should stay in bed! If you want to be a consistently early riser, try making your decision to rise at a specific time before you go to sleep the night before.

Have a plan for your extra time – Let’s say you’ve actually made it out of bed two hours before you normally would. Now what? If you don’t have something planned to do with your extra time, you risk falling for the temptation of a “morning nap” that wipes out all the work you put into getting up. What to do? Before you go to bed, make a quick note of what you’d like to get done during your extra hours the following day.

Make rising early a social activity — Sure, you could choose to read blogs for two hours every morning. But wouldn’t it be great to join an early breakfast club, running group, or play chess in the park at 5am? The more people you get involved in making your new habit a daily part of your life, the easier it’ll be to succeed.

Don’t use an alarm that makes you angry – I spent years trying to wake up before my alarm went off so I wouldn’t have to hear it. Then I started using a cellphone as my alarm clock and quickly realized that different ring tones irritated me less but worked just as well to wake me up. The lesson learned? Experiment a bit and see what works best for you.

Get your blood flowing right after waking – It doesn’t take much to get your blood flowing and chase the sleep from your head. Just pick something you don’t mind doing and go through the motions until your heart rate is up. Jumping rope, push-ups, crunches, or a few minutes of yoga are typically enough to do the trick. (Just don’t do anything your doctor hasn’t approved.)

Photo Credit: Felipe Andrade

This is something we could all learn from here in the philippines. We have our own versions of the work done in Bogota, Colombia, but it would be great to have more and more cities in the Philippines doing this.

It starts with eradicating corruption. And people doing what they are paid to do, and were elected to do. And it also includes everyone else’s cooperation. But it is possible. It can be done. We do not have a choice.

Can We Design Cities For Happiness?
by Jay Walljasper
Shareable

Happiness itself is a commons to which everyone should have equal access.

That’s the view of Enrique Peñalosa, who is not a starry-eyed idealist given to abstract theorizing. He’s actually a politician, who served as mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, for three years, and now travels the world spreading a message about how to improve quality-of-life for everyone living in today’s cities.

Peñalosa’s ideas stand as a beacon of hope for cities of the developing world, which even with their poverty and immense problems will absorb much of the world’s population growth over the next half-century. Based on his experiences in Bogotá, Peñalosa believes it’s a mistake to give up on these cities as good places to live.

“If we in the Third World measure our success or failure as a society in terms of income, we would have to classify ourselves as losers until the end of time,” declares Peñalosa. “So with our limited resources, we have to invent other ways to measure success. This might mean that all kids have access to sports facilities, libraries, parks, schools, nurseries.”

Peñalosa uses phrases like “quality of life” or “social justice” rather than “commons-based society” to describe his agenda of offering poor people first-rate government services and pleasant public places, yet it is hard to think of anyone who has done more to reinvigorate the commons in his or her own community.

Transforming Bogotá

In three years (1998–2001) as mayor of Colombia’s capital city of 7 million, Peñalosa’s Administration accomplished the following:

* Led a team that created the TransMilenio, a bus rapid transit system (BRT), which now carries a half-million passengers daily on special bus lanes that offer most of the advantages of a subway at a fraction of the cost.

* Built 52 new schools, refurbished 150 others and increased student enrollment by 34 percent.

* Established or improved 1200 parks and playgrounds throughout the city.

* Built three central and 10 neighborhood libraries.

* Built 100 nurseries for children under five.

* Improved life in the slums by providing water service to 100 percent of Bogotá households.

* Bought undeveloped land on the outskirts of the city to prevent real estate speculation and ensured that it will be developed as affordable housing with electrical, sewage, and telephone service as well as space reserved for parks, schools, and greenways.

* Established 300 kilometers of separated bikeways, the largest network in the developing world.

* Created the world’s longest pedestrian street, 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) crossing much of the city as well as a 45– kilometer (28 miles) greenway along a path that had been originally slated for an eight-lane highway.

* Reduced traffic by almost 40 percent by implementing a system where motorists must leave cars at home during rush hour two days a week. He also raised parking fees and local gas taxes, with half of the proceeds going to fund the new bus transit system.

* Inaugurated an annual car-free day, where everyone from CEOs to janitors commuted to work in some way other than a private automobile.

Quality of Life = Common Wealth

All together, these accomplishments boosted the common good in a city characterized by vast disparities of wealth. Peñalosa is passionate in articulating a vision that a city belongs to all its citizens.

David Burwell—a strategic analyst with Project for Public Spaces who has long experience working on environmental, transportation, and community issues—calls Peñalosa, “One of the great public servants of our time. He views cities as being planned for a purpose—to create human well-being. He’s got a great sense of what a leader should do—to promote human happiness.”

Bogota is now held up as an international model for sustainable innovation, even for cities in the developing world. Peñalosa of course, didn’t do this alone. Antanas Mockus, who both preceded and succeeded him as mayor, and Gil Peñalosa, Enrique’s brother, who served as parks commissioner under Mockus, are among the many who deserve credit. Bogota mayors are limited to one consecutive three-year term. Peñalosa ran again for mayor in 2008, losing according to some observers because a leftist opponent also embraced a commons-style agenda, including the promise of a new subway system.

Enrique Peñalosa has become an international star of sorts among green urban designers, so I assumed he was trained as a city planner and inspired by long involvement in the environmental movement. But the truth is that he arrived at these ideas from a completely different direction. “My focus has always been social—how you can help the most people for the greater public good.”

Growing up in the 1960s, when revolutionary fervor swept South America, Peñalosa became an ardent socialist at a young age, advocating income redistribution as the solution to social ills. He studied economics and history at Duke University in the United States, which he attended on a soccer scholarship, and later moved to Paris to earn a doctoral degree in management and public administration. Paris was a marvelous education in the possibilities of urban living, and he returned home with aspirations of bringing European-style city comforts to the working class of Bogotá. Several years working as a business manager moderated his ideological views but not, he hastens to tell me, his quest for social justice.

Thinking about Equality in New Ways

“We live in the post-communism period, in which many have assumed equality as a social goal is obsolete,” he explains. “Although income equality as a concept does not jibe with market economy, we can seek to achieve quality-of-life equality.”

Quality of life is not just a phrase to Peñalosa. He is firmly dedicated to giving everyone in a city more opportunity for recreation, education, transportation and the chance to take pleasure in their surroundings. That explains his emphasis on parks, mass transit, childcare facilities, bikeways, schools, libraries and other forms of the commons that enhance people’s lives. And that focus on serving the disadvantaged extends to public space—which he explains is where poor people who do not have backyards, vacation homes and private clubs tend to hang out.

Peñalosa is proud of how his administration tamed the automobile in Bogota in order to meet the needs of those who do not own cars. Nearly all cities around the globe accommodate motorists at the expense of everyone else, turning the streets—a commons that once was used by everyone, including pedestrians and kids at play—into the exclusive domain of motorists. In the developing world, where only a select portion of people own motor vehicles, this is particularly unfair and detrimental to a sense of community.

The streets were reclaimed for people through policies that used both carrots and sticks. As expected, the sticks—driving bans during rush hour and enforcement of long-ignored laws prohibiting cars on the sidewalks—drew howls of outrage from a small but powerful group of people, who had always treated sidewalks as their own personal parking lot.

“I was almost impeached by the car-owning upper classes,” Peñalosa recalls, “but it was popular with everyone else.”
However, the carrots were embraced by almost everyone. The pedestrian streets, greenways and bike trails he created are well used on weekdays by commuters and on evenings and weekends by recreational bikers and walkers out enjoying the Latin custom of a paseo—an evening stroll.

Streets for People, Not Just Cars

Another hit is the Ciclovía, in which as many as 2 million people (30 percent of the city’s population) take over 120 kilometers of major streets between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. every Sunday, for bike rides, strolls and public events. This weekly event began in 1976 but was expanded by Peñalosa. It now has spread to numerous Colombian cities as well as San Francisco; Quito, Ecuador; El Paso, Texas; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and is being explored for Chicago, New York, Portland and Melbourne, Australia.

Oscar Edmundo Diaz, senior program director for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), who was Peñalosa’s chief mayoral aide, proudly notes that even wealthy people who own cars are now enthusiastic users of the BRT. “You don’t want to build a transit system just for the poor,” he counsels. “Otherwise it will be stigmatized, and even poor people will look down on it. If everyone uses it, it will help the poor more.”

Wowed by the success of TransMilenio, six other Colombian cities are developing their own systems. And Peñalosa and Diaz have been very influential in spreading the idea throughout the world. In 2004, Jakarta, Indonesia, inaugurated TransJakarta, a Bogotá-inspired BRT system that now features six lines with three more under construction. Dozens of other cities around the globe have BRT projects under construction or up-and-running, including Hong Kong; Mexico City, Mexico; Johannesburg, South Africa; Taipei, Taiwan; Quito, Ecuador; and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. The idea is now spreading to cities in developed countries including Sydney, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, and even the city known for decades as the world center of automotive glory, Los Angeles.

It’s not that Peñalosa hates cars. It’s that he loves lively places where people of all backgrounds gather to enjoy themselves—public commons that barely exist in cities where cars rule the streets. These sorts of places are even more important in poor cities than in wealthy ones, he says, because poor people have nowhere else to go.

Urban Sustainability Goes Global

Peñalosa has been taking this message throughout the world in lecture tours sponsored by the World Bank and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), a New York-based group promoting sustainable transportation in the developing world.
“You cannot overestimate the impact Peñalosa has had, on a personal level, in 10 or 12 countries,” notes Walter Hook, director of ITDP. “He takes these ideas, which can be rather dry, and speaks emotionally about the ways they affect people’s lives. He has the ability to change how people think about cities. He’s a revolution that way.”

“Economics, urban planning, ecology are only the means. Happiness is the goal,” Peñalosa says, summing up his work. “We have a word in Spanish, ganas, which means a burning desire. I have ganas about public life.”

“The least a democratic society should do,” he continues, “is to offer people wonderful public spaces. Public spaces are not a frivolity. They are just as important as hospitals and schools. They create a sense of belonging. This creates a different type of society—a society where people of all income levels meet in public space is a more integrated, socially healthier one.”

Jessica, a 42-year-old forensic scientist, is typical of the lucky group. As she explained: “I have my dream job, two wonderful children and a great guy whom I love very much. It’s amazing; when I look back at my life, I realise I have been lucky in just about every area.”

In contrast, Carolyn, a 34-year-old care assistant, is typical of the unlucky group. She is accident-prone. In one week, she twisted her ankle in a pothole, injured her back in another fall and reversed her car into a tree during a driving lesson. She was also unlucky in love and felt she was always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Over the years, I interviewed these volunteers, asked them to complete diaries, questionnaires and intelligence tests, and invited them to participate in experiments. The findings have revealed that although unlucky people have almost no insight into the real causes of their good and bad luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their fortune.

Take the case of chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not. I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities.

I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

For fun, I placed a second large message halfway through the newspaper: “Stop counting. Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win £250.” Again, the unlucky people missed the opportunity because they were still too busy looking for photographs.

Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people’s ability to notice the unexpected. In one experiment, people were asked to watch a moving dot in the centre of a computer screen. Without warning, large dots would occasionally be flashed at the edges of the screen. Nearly all participants noticed these large dots.

The experiment was then repeated with a second group of people, who were offered a large financial reward for accurately watching the centre dot, creating more anxiety. They became focused on the centre dot and more than a third of them missed the large dots when they appeared on the screen. The harder they looked, the less they saw.

And so it is with luck — unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are (1) skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, (2) make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, (3) create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and (4) adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

I wondered whether these four principles could be used to increase the amount of good luck that people encounter in their lives. To find out, I created a “luck school” — a simple experiment that examined whether people’s luck can be enhanced by getting them to think and behave like a lucky person.

I asked a group of lucky and unlucky volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck.

One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier. While lucky people became luckier, the unlucky had become lucky. Take Carolyn, whom I introduced at the start of this article. After graduating from “luck school”, she has passed her driving test after three years of trying, was no longer accident-prone and became more confident.

In the wake of these studies, I think there are three easy techniques that can help to maximise good fortune:

Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell — a reason to consider a decision carefully.

Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

From DevelopYourEnergy.Net

Lately, the theme my life has taken is about looking for that which I have lost. The road of return is long and winding. But it is there.

I feel that I have lost so many things in my life. When I left the Society of Jesus, I stopped going to the eucharist, I stopped formal prayer, I lost my way. But I’d like to think that I’m slowly coming back. The road may be long, but it is there. And I intend to find my way back.

I am coming home.

I wrote this on Nov 11, 2006 at 250 PM. I remember that was the day I got internet in my condo unit. I didn’t have work yet. I was living off the money the Society has given me. I was on self-imposed hibernation. I was grieving for the life I had lost. And yet I was excited for the life still ahead.

Posted on Nov 11, 2006, 250 PM.

There is no road…the road is made by walking.

This journey which began eight years ago ends for me today. There is a lot to say about it, but that will be for later. Only that I feel overwhelmingly sad, but at the same time excited about what lies ahead.

There is no road. The road is made by walking.

So many things in life is about way closing behind you, as an old American Indian proverb used to put it. Sometimes, things just end. Just that. No explanations. No sense. No meaning. And so people ask. People surmise. And give their two cents worth. But at other times, the ending is meaning-ful. Maybe not all the answers are given you in one instant, but there is a sense that things will make sense in the end.

Maybe the meaning will come later in life. When things have fallen into place again. Way has closed. And new advent-ure begins.

Sometimes I wish I was just strong enough to STAND by what I have said or what I have declared years ago. And leave it at that. Just endure. And yet, just the thought of enduring gives me the jitters. Life cannot just be about sacrifice. For some people, it is not. And for those who have the grace and the passion and the gift, then you are one of the lucky few. And so go for it.

It took me a while. I was afraid I would be making the greatest mistake of my life. And so I relented. I gave it time. I made it simmer. I analyzed. I felt my guts. I imagined my possible future/s.

I did analyze–what went wrong? Could I give it a second chance? Is this FOR me?

I realized that to give time is the braver thing to do. Because more often than not that is the HARDER thing to do. Because that would mean vulnerability and humility and putting yourself at the mercy of ridicule.

In the end, there is no road. The road is made by walking.

A part of me is afraid, and terrified, yes, but another part is actually heaving a sigh of relief. I am grateful about the whole experience. I will remain grateful for the past eight years. I became who I am bouyed by my experience of the past eight years.

Eight years! I grew up, grew old, grew stronger in the past eight years. Nothing is ever wasted. All things fall into place. Nahuhulog sa tamang lalagyan. May kaHULUGan.

I do not know what the future will hold. If I will be miserable or unhappy, or fulfilled and complete. But I am willing to journey again in uncertainty.

But also in Hope. In Love.

Advent–ure. I am now about to embark on the next great adventure of my life.

George Carlin died around two years ago. He is one of those brilliant brilliant stand up comedians–one whose humor is something that makes you laugh for a minute and makes you think for an hour (or two) afterwards.

And here’s another George Carlin performance. Simply brilliant:

These are from a book called ‘Disorder in the American Courts’ and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place. With apologies to my many lawyer friends. This is all for fun guys! Don’t sue me!

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
____________ _________ _________ _________ ____

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________ _________ ____ ___________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year– old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He’s twenty, much like your IQ.
____________ _________ _________ _________ ____

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
____________ _________ _________ _________ __

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
____________ _________ _________ _________ _____

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS : Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
____________ _________ _________ _________ _____

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
____________ _________ _________ _________ _____

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I’m going with male.
____________ _________ _________ _______

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
____________ _________ _________ ________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
____________ _________ _________ _________ __

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
____________ _________ _________ _________ __

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
____________ _________ _________ _________ _____

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
____________ _________ _________ ________

And the best for last:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

We already have an idea why this is so. The really wise leaders are wise enough to know that they don’t know everything. But we forget this all the time and we act as if we don’t know that. So here is another reminder. :-)

Why Wise Leaders Don’t Know Too Much
Jeffrey M. Stibel

Don’t get me wrong — knowledge is a good thing. But there is a point at which it may be bad. Even the sturdiest shelf crumbles under the weight of too many books.

We can only comprehend so much. Our minds have limits in our ability to digest information, just as shelves are only meant to hold so many books. Too much knowledge undermines the greatest insights, the deepest conjectures.

Take an example from graduate school. To earn my Masters degree, I had to write a lengthy thesis (hundreds of pages) to demonstrate a command of knowledge in a broad field. When it came time for my Doctorate, however, I was asked to take my thesis and condense it into a synthesis of that knowledge. Most people think that the process should be reversed — that writing 20 pages is easier than writing 200. But the lesson is less about writing than it is about learning that information and knowledge are something to dissect and discard. And that is the difference between knowing and understanding; between knowledge and wisdom.

Wisdom can be shattered by too much information. Great scholars, for instance, tend to be great in very narrow disciplines. These scholars give ground on colloquial information so that they can digest more within their field. In many ways, we are all idiot savants: our expertise in certain areas necessitates weakness elsewhere.

Yet we still spend our days analyzing information and falling into traps. Decisions are destroyed by over-analysis. The brain is not intelligent because of the sheer volume of data it can ingest, but for the way it can quickly discern patterns — and then guess the rest. The more information you pile on, the less likely you are to make educated guesses. But educated guesses spring from wisdom: all of your past experiences, knowledge and knowhow, coupled with the most recent information and analysis. In other words, wisdom comes from your gut.

Pile on too much information and you fall victim to one of two phenomena: On the one hand, you might make a decision focused only on what has been analyzed because the abundance of information suppresses even the most relevant past experiences. This “knowledge trap” disregards our decision-making skills (often intentionally), opting instead for the logical decision-making of a computer or calculator. You see this often on Wall Street where quant jocks confidently grind data into machines, only to face an unlikely (but not unexpected) event — or what Nassim Taleb calls a “Black Swan” event. For those on Wall Street, this is often an unfortunate demonstration of the power of wisdom over knowledge. Just look what happened in the hedge fund industry in general or credit default swaps in specific as painful examples.

Or worse, faced with an abundance of information you fall victim to analysis paralysis — unable to make any decisions in the face of so much data. To be frozen by information is perhaps the single biggest risk of knowledge. Ancient Greek philosophers used to warn their children about this ailment and Peter Drucker did a good job of combating it in the business world. But is anyone really listening?

People often become victims of the “knowledge trap” or “analysis paralysis,” thinking they need to weigh every bit of information against all possible outcomes. Those people rarely make it very far. Those who avoid these traps — who realize they’ll never have all the answers no matter how much knowledge they gather — are often the ones who succeed.

Jeffrey M. Stibel is an entrepreneur, a brain scientist, and the author of Wired for Thought: How the Brain Is Shaping the Future of the Internet. He studied business and brain science at MIT Sloan and Brown University, where he was a brain and behavior fellow. Stibel has authored numerous academic and business articles on a variety of subjects and is the named inventor on the US patent for search engine interfaces. He was formerly President of Web.com and currently serves on academic Boards for Tufts and Brown University, as well as the Board of Directors for a number of public and private companies.

From GettyImages

She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, what scriptures she would like read, and what outfit she wanted to be buried in.

Everything was in order and the Pastor was preparing to leave when the young woman suddenly remembered something very important.

“There’s one more thing,” she said excitedly.

“What’s that?” came the Pastor’s reply.

“This is very important,” the young woman continued.. “I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.”

The Pastor stood looking at the young woman, not knowing quite what to say.

“That surprises you, doesn’t it?” the young woman asked.

“Well, to be honest, I’m puzzled by the request,” said the Pastor.

The young woman explained. “My grandmother once told me this story, and from that time on I have always tried to pass along its message to those I love and those who are in need of encouragement. In all my years of attending socials and dinners, I always remember that when the dishes of the main course were being cleared, someone would inevitably lean over and say, ‘Keep your fork.’ It was my favorite part because I knew that something better was coming.…like velvety chocolate cake or deep-dish apple pie. Something wonderful, and with substance!’

So, I just want people to see me there in that casket with a fork in my hand and I want them to wonder “What’s with the fork?” Then I want you to tell them: “Keep your fork, the best is yet to come.”