From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
A refugee, we might say, is a person fleeing life-threatening conditions. In daily parlance and for journalist purposes this is roughly the meaning of refugeehood. Predictably, in legal and political circles, among those officials who formulate refugee policies for states and international agencies, the meaning is considerably more circumscribed.
I don't want my success to define me. I want people to see me without all that – success comes and goes, without it, I am still who I am.
One of my Zen mentors, Barry Magid, authored a book entitled 'Ending the Pursuit of Happiness'. In it, he criticises the concept of chasing happiness as a curative fantasy – the mistaken belief that happiness is an attainable, sustainable, and permanent state. The reality is, no one is in a state of perpetual happiness.
It's like playing chess but while getting punched in the face.
When you're getting defeated in training, you're getting better. You've got to get tested in life if you're going to improve. When you're training in the martial arts, you always want to be getting beaten in the practice room. That signifies you're fighting good people.
Human progress often comes at great cost to people who are willing to sacrifice for the sake of principles or in defense of the rights of others. It took hundreds of millions of people to die before we created a global security and human rights order and all of these are under stress. One would hate to think it would be another similar amount of deaths before we made more progress.
The things that are trivially easy for humans turn out to be extraordinarily difficult for machines, and vice versa. I cannot do the square root of a large number in my head, but my pocket calculator can do that instantly. But my pocket calculator still cannot make me a cup of coffee.
The myth of women's inferiority is the product of a social system that has produced and fostered countless other inequalities, inferiorities, degradations, and discriminations. The ripple effects of the creation of these systems continue to this day – to the point where they are deeply embedded into society.
Once you recognise that, you can take any situation and interpret it in a way that makes it enjoyable. You no longer have to chase after certain outcomes or fear others. Whatever happens, happens.
I hated it! I absolutely hated it without knowing why really, at that age. And these two contrasting images in a way became symbols for the rest of my life and the way I think about wildlife. One is how not to keep them, and one is how to leave them alone where they should be.
Abraham Maslow (a famous psychologist) once commented, 'if all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail'. Investors currently have a hammer, and that hammer is economics.
When you go out to run 100 miles – the lessons of a lifetime get compressed into 24 hours of non-stop running.