Michelle recommended this book to me. It features 80 essayists - from famous to unknown - completing the thought that begins the book's title. As I glanced through the different essays, I picked up these four immediately...
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This I Believe
Foreword by Studs Terkel
Disrupting My Comfort Zone
By Brian Grazer
I was 45 years old when I decided to learn how to surf.
Picture the scene. The North Shore of Oahu. The toughest, most competitive surfing spot on the planet. Fourteen feet swells. Twenty tattooed locals. And me, five feet, eight inches of abject terror. What will get me first, I wondered, the next big wave or the guy to my right with the tattoo on his chest that reads RIP?
They say life is tough enough. But I guess I like to make things difficult on myself, because I do that all the time. Every day. On purpose. That's because I believe in disrupting my comfort zone.
When I started out in the entertainment business, I made a list of people I thought it would be good to meet. Not people who could give me a job or a deal. But people who could shake me up, teach me something, challenge my ideas about myself and the world. So I started calling up experts in all kinds of fields: trial lawyers, neurosurgeons, CIA agents, embryologists, firefighters, police chiefs, hypnotists, forensic anthropologists, and even presidents. Some of them -- like Carlos Castaneda, Jonas Salk, and Fidel Castro -- were world-famous. Of course, I didn't know any of these people, and none of them knew me. So when I called these people up to ask for a meeting, the response wasn't always friendly. And even when they agreed to give me some time, the results weren't always what one might describe as pleasant.
Over the last 30 years, I've produced more than 50 movies and 20 TV series. I'm successful and, in my business, pretty well-known. I'm a guy who could retire to the golf course tomorrow, where the worst that could happen is that my Bloody Mary us watered down. So why do I continue to subject myself to this sort of challenge?
The answer is simple. Disrupting my comfort zone, bombarding myself with challenging people and situations, this is the best way I know to keep growing. And to paraphrase a biologist I once met, if you're not growing, you're dying. So maybe I'm not the best surfer on the North Shore. But that's okay. The discomfort, the uncertainty, the physical and mental challenge I get from it -- all the things that too many of us spend our time and energy trying to avoid -- they are precisely the things that keep me in the game.
A Shared Moment of Trust
By Warren Christopher
One night recently, I was driving down a two-lane highway at about 60 miles an hour. A car approached from the opposite direction, at about the same speed. As we passed each other, I caught the other driver's eye for only a second. I wondered whether he might be thinking, as I was, how dependent we were on each other at that moment. I was relying on him not to fall asleep, not to be distracted by a cell phone conversation, not to cross over into my lane and bring my life suddenly to an end. And though we had never spoken a word to one another, he relied on me in just the same way.
Multiplied a million times over, I believe that is the way the world works. At some level, we all depend upon one another. Sometimes that dependence requires us simply to refrain from doing something, like crossing over the double yellow line. And sometimes it requires us to act cooperatively, with allies or even with strangers.
As technology shrinks our world, the need increases for cooperative action among nations. In 2003, doctors in five nations were quickly mobilized to identify the SARS virus, and action that saved thousands of lives. The threat of international terrorism has shown itself to be a similar problem, one requiring coordinated action by police and intelligence forces across the world. We must recognize that our fates are not ours alone to control.
In my own life, I've put great stock in personal responsibility. But, as years have passed, I've also come to believe that there are moments when one must rely upon the good faith and judgment of others. So, while each of us faces -- at one time or another -- the prospect of driving alone down a dark road, what we must learn with experience is that the approaching light may not be a threat, but a shared moment of trust.
Have I Learned Anything Important Since I Was 16?
By Elizabeth Deutsch Earle
Over 50 years ago, at age 16, I wrote an essay published in the original This I Believe series. Since then, I have advanced through much if the life cycle, including college, marriage to the same man for over 40 years, two daughters, plus a scientific career, two lively grandsons, and death of parents and friends.
I still believe most of what I wrote long ago. Many of my early traits remain, including skepticism about religious authority, curiosity about the world, and the lofty desire to live a righteous life. The world I see now worries me at least as much as it did in the 1950s. So, have I learned anything important since I was 16?
I now know that life is very often unfair. My own life has gone well, with much happiness and no exceptional grief or pain. Yet travel to other countries, experiences closer at hand, and just reading the news show me how hard things are for many people. That contrast troubles me, and I'm still not sure how best to respond to it. I do believe that those of us who have prospered should view our good fortune not as an indication of personal merit or entitlement, but as an obligation to recognize the needs of others.
Sadly, I've fallen short of my optimistic youthful goal of "doing what must be done." I try to be a good friend to the people I know and support causes with broader goals that I respect, but I recognize that my efforts have changed the world only in small ways.
Being a kind person and striving for social justice remain high priorities for me, but not for religious reasons. The "simple faith in the Deity" expressed in my teenage essay has faded over the years. Still, after the event of 911, I returned to the Unitarian Church, the same denomination in which I was active when I was 16. I've come to appreciate once again that communal reflection about life's deeper matters is sustaining and uplifting and provides a consistent nudge in worthy directions.
I believe that it's good to spend time engaged in the present. I recently heard and admired the phrase "wherever you are, be there." This may not work for everyone; dissociating from misery may be wise. But someone like me, who focuses on lists of the next day's tasks and often reads a newspaper while walking outdoors, should remember also to look up at the sky and at the people around me.
I believe that it's important to recognize and appreciate joy when you feel it. Every once in a while, and not just on special occasions, I've suddenly realized that I am truly happy right now. This is a precious experience, one to savor.
When I was young, an honest and moral life seemed like a straightforward goal. I now know that it's not always easy to see what should be done and even harder actually to do it. Nevertheless I'm grateful that I still have some time to keep trying to get it right, and to savor each remaining day in my life.
Happy Talk
By Oscar Hammerstein II
I have an unusual statement to make. I am a man who believes he is happy. What makes it unusual is that a man who is happy seldom tells anyone. The unhappy man is more communicative. He is eager to recite what is wrong with the world, and he seems to have a talent for gathering a large audience. It is a modern tragedy that despair has so many spokesmen, and hope so few.
I believe, therefore, that it is important for a man to announce that he is happy even though such an announcement is less dramatic and less entertaining than the cries of his pessimistic opposite. Why do I believe I am happy? Death has deprived me of many whom I loved. Dismal failure has followed many of my most earnest efforts. People have disappointed me. I have disappointed them. I have disappointed myself.
Further than this, I am aware that I live under a cloud of international hysteria. The cloud could burst, and a rain of atom bombs could destroy millions of lives, including my own. From all this evidence, could I not build up a strong case to prove why I am not happy at all? I could, but it would be a false picture, as false as if I were to describe a tree only as it looks in winter. I would be leaving out a list of people I love, who have not died. I would be leaving out an acknowledgment of the many successes that have sprouted among many of my failures. I would be leaving out the blessing of good health, the joy of walking in the sunshine. I would be leaving out my faith that the goodness in man will triumph eventually over the evil that causes war.
All these things are as much a part of my world as the darker worries that shade them. The conflict of good and bad merges in thick entanglement. You cannot isolate virtue and beauty and success and laughter, and keep them from all contact with wickedness and ugliness and failure and weeping. The man who strives for such isolated joy is riding for a fall. He will wind up in isolated gloom.
I don't believe anyone can enjoy living in this world unless he can accept its imperfection. He must know and admit that he is imperfect, that all other mortals are imperfect, that it is childish to allow these imperfections to destroy all his hope and all his desire to live. Nature is older than man, and she is still far from perfect. Her summers do not always start promptly on June 21. Her bugs and beetles and other insects often go beyond her obvious intentions, devouring the leaves and buds with which she has adorned her countryside. After the land has remained too dry for too long, she sends relieving rains. But frequently they come in torrents so violent that they do more harm than good. Over the years, however, nature keeps going on in her imperfect way, and the result -- in spite of her many mistakes -- is a continuing miracle. It would be folly for an individual to seek to do better -- to do better than to go on in his own imperfect way, making his mistakes, riding out the rough and bewildering, exciting and beautiful storm of life until the day he dies.
