Category: Daily Philosophy

I found one of my favorite reading lists in a little book called The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time. The list was “The 100 Best Books for an Education” and it was my introduction to Will Durant.

I was browsing in a Borders (Remember those?) looking at books for, and or about my then unborn son. This would have been in 2002. So there I am looking for books about children and on the endcap across the way is a book called The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time. Well if there was anything I should teach my son it should be in a book like that right? So I took a quick look and put it in the stack. The book itself is a collection of essays and I think it was a good introduction to Will’s writing, he does a great job of talking about history in a way that is relatable. And the list taught me two things:

• How a great headline can draw you in.

• The deep power of curation.

It taught me that a list of books can become an entire education if presented by the right teacher, someone who has a wide view of the subject and can let you know what to focus on to have a similar understanding without the lifetime of study. The is one of the reasons I think Tim Ferris is so effective. So over the next few years I began to pick up titles from the list and read them. But what I  really started looking for was a copy of Will Durant’s masterwork, The Story of Civilization. And then a strange thing happened.

After my grandmother passed away we were going through the house to see what everyone wanted before they sold the house and anything left in it. There were a few things that I knew I wanted but as I looked around more a surprise was waiting for me. There on the bottom row of one of the many bookshelves was The Story of Civilization. I had been looking at a copy of the collection for years. Now it’s an 11 volume set of books with each one roughly 1000 pages long, so it would be hard to miss. Maybe I had never bothered to look before. Or I did not know what I was seeing. But when I was ready, the connection was made.

I am still getting through the list and the 11 volumes. I am easily sidetracked by all of the other things I want to read but I keep coming back to this. It draws me in. Or as Will put it so well in the preface to The Story of Civilization:

“Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse, and is at best but a brave stupidity; but let us hope that, like philosophy, it will always lure some rash spirits into its fatal depths.”

So what is it that lures you? Where are your connections? Maybe they have been sitting on a shelf somewhere in plain sight waiting for you to discover them.

I walk to work. I mix sound for television and film and the studio where I work is only a mile or so away from my house. Even on the few days here when it rains I walk. I love it. It gives me time to think and process but lately I’ve found another reason to love it. An old man.

He must be in his eighties. He is thin and frail and has a walker with a seat. Each morning for the last few weeks he has been coming down my street when I leave and I pass him at about the same place, give or take a few houses. He finds a shady spot and sits on his walker and looks out over the world and then he gets up and walks on a few houses further until he finds the next shady spot. The first few times we passed each other we nodded and cracked the smallest of smiles. Maybe a smirk. Maybe less.

But last week I was walking down the street and I thought about how I hardly passed anyone on my way to work. The sidewalks are mostly empty. But this old man is there nearly everyday. Why wouldn’t I say hello and ask him how he was doing? As I approached I stopped and smiled and asked him how he was and that’s when he surprised me. He reached out and took my hand and held on to it and spoke in broken Italian or another language from the old country and I don’t really know what he was trying to say but he had the kindest smile on his face. Huge.

The next day the same thing. And everyday since when I see him, he takes my hand and smiles. Now I don’t know anything about his life and he knows nothing of mine, but we smile at each other and look in each other’s eyes and recognize the other soul within. And that is all it takes to change the world. My day is better because of him.

So next time you are thinking about just nodding or looking the other way when you meet someone on the street or in the hall at work try it. Smile. It’s easy to blame our smartphones or our busy lives for our unwillingness to take a moment and see the other souls around us, these fellow travelers on the way to unknown destinations, but we have always been this way.

As people we are protective and fearful of those outside of our tribe but they are just like you, they are just as lost and scared and hopeful and joyous. They have each one come a long way to to get where they are and you can never be sure of what trials await them or how deep their scars run but you can be sure that they are looking for the same thing you are. They are looking for signs of their own presence and a smile is all it takes to show it to them.