“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.”

Daniel Kahneman

“The sacredness of the land lies in the mind of its people. This land is dedicated to the spirit and memory its ancestors and its people”. This line reminds me of sacred places like California.

The field of grass looking up at El Capitan in Yosemite

The top of half dome in Yosemite

Nepenthe, Big Sur

Tomales Bay

Alta Plaza Park, San Francisco

Eucalyptus trees and nistursion in the Presidio

Point Reyes Station

Old Mill Park, Mill Valley

The fire roads on Mount Tamapais

Wunderlich Park

Big Basin, Santa Cruz

When Cornelius Vanderbilt found out that a business partner had been stealing from him, he wrote the former partner a letter. “I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt.” The former business partner went out of business later on.

I don’t believe in the saying the “Friends comes and go, but enemies accumulate.” After working in Silicon Valley for 15 years, I believe in the saying, “Friends accumulate, and don’t forget your enemies.”

There’s a massive power in a network of good humans that look out for each other with a “you win, we win” attitude. But this open culture only works if you don’t reward and encourage transactional, mercenary behavior from bad actors and takers.

Reward and build a good culture, but also don’t enable the selfish takers who use people and take advantage of the open culture of helping people without ulterior motives 

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice – in practice there is.”

Yogi Berra

Amateurs, first-timers and backseat drivers learn this lesson the hard way. Life comes at you fast when you are in charge with your hands on the wheel.

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”

Muhammad Ali

At school and university, you are given the lesson, then you write the test.

At work and with most things in the real world you are tested, and then you learn the lesson. 

It’s a gift to work with smart and compassionate people. I learn so much from being proximate. I also pay it forward by copying and replicating their leadership traits. I mimic behaviors I see every day.

The gift of interacting with a transactional, cowardly, and selfish person is that the experience gives me a great example of what not to do and how to act.

Learn from the best and choose wisely what traits replicate.

Birds of a feather flock together.

If you watch the news, you’d probably think it’s getting bad out there, especially with the recency bias from the last 18 months with Covid on everyone’s mind. So take a step back and look at these positive trends for Extreme Poverty, Education, Literacy, Democracy, Vaccinations, and Child Mortality. I’ll bet this looks even better when updating through 2022.  

There’s more insights here at OurWorldInData.org

The post-Covid reunion videos on Facebook and Twitter are going to be like those “military coming home” videos where the soldier surprises family members at a school or at work. There is a lot of emotion welled up here that’s going to hit a release valve when the world’s seatbelt goes off and people are free to move about the cabin again.