Beyond Wealth

I know of no better nutshell statement of the path to finding one’s true calling in life than the simple formula given by Aristotle: Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation. These two, your talents and the needs of the world, are the great wake-up calls to your true vocation in life. To ignore either is, in som

The ancient Masters didn’t try to educate the people, but kindly taught them to not-know. When they think that they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don’t know, people can find their own way.

Astronomers, physicists, and cosmologists often rhapsodize about the scale, the majesty, the harmony, and elegance of the universe. Yet, in truth, they are only discovering what the poets have known all along: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first tim

As Woody Allen said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen. I want to live on in my apartment.”

As physicist Paul Davies writes in The Goldilocks Enigma (Allen Lane, 2006): Somehow the universe has engineered, not just its own awareness, but also its own comprehension. Mindless, blundering atoms have conspired to make not just life, but understanding. The evolving cosmos has spawned beings who are able not merely to watch the show, but to unr

As Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World (Ballantine Books, 1997): Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of

Without natural science, we may also miss great beauty and understanding. In Unweaving the Rainbow (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1998), Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins writes: After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must clo

1. Subscribe to Scientific American. I took this magazine years ago and, quite frankly, found it tough sledding. But today the magazine is much improved. It is written primarily for nonspecialists. Jargon is minimal or concisely explained. Most articles begin with a short summary of the key concepts and findings. And the terrific monthly columns by sc

Last week, I read journalist David Lipsky’s recently published collection of conversations with David Foster Wallace, the brilliant young writer whose Infinite Jest made the Time list of 100 All-Time Greatest Novels. (Wallace battled depression for years and, tragically, hanged himself in 2008. It was a tremendous loss for his family and friends, b