Sublime

“Let me give you an illustration. Once I was the house guest in Berlin of one of the world’s greatest scientists. During the first few days of my sojourn, I was completely disorganized. I was nervous, tended to be inarticulate, generally confused, and ill at ease. I had either to get a hold on myself or bring my visit abruptly to an end. One

In each instance, what we are asked for is a combination—or more accurately, an integration—of emotion and action.

TAKING STOCK Follow your bliss. If it brings you joy, do more of it. What brings you joy, brings you alive? How could you do more of it? (Campbell, 1949) What is your vision of the compelling future that serves generations to come? What if you started your next important meeting with the question, “What are we not going to tell the truth about

In previous stages, the pursuit of love, recognition, and success shapes our lives slowly but surely to the point that we end up, in the words of poet May Sarton, “wearing other people’s faces.”

And so I go with the flow and live someone else’s life—except it looks like the bland mass life that all of us are living.

At the heart of the operative moral polestar is the freedom of the individual. In contrast, embedded in our institutions are constraints on the individual.

Today I understand vocation quite differently-not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice "out there" calling me to become something I am not. It comes

To bring about better organizations, we need to risk speaking the truth of our soul and learn to navigate the conflicts that might ensue.