Inspiration | |
| To be inspired is to feel alive to your own potential. My sense of what is possible from life has been significantly enhanced by the people and ideas I have come into contact with: Heroes As a child I am not sure if I thought of my parents as heroes, but now I can only describe the sacrifices and love they invested so generously as heroic. The first person I consciously thought of as a hero was Anne-Marie. My best friend from the age of 19, she became my principal guide as I journeyed into adulthood - her integrity, wisdom and love made her the best person I knew. In my professional life, I have been fortunate to come into contact with amazing people who are passionate about trying to make this world a better place. Of all of them, the person who has inspired me most is Pat McGorry. I remain amazed as to how he is able to sustain such restless commitment to supporting young people through really tough times. Pat is a leader of real moral accomplishment as well as a person of genuine kindness and integrity. It was a privilege to work with him. Some more writing about heroes is available from my Hero School website - the home of my Become Your Own Hero series of courses. Art That Can Change Your Life In Zach Braff's Garden State, Natalie Portman claims that The Shins will change your life. So far I've bought two of their albums with no noticeable effect. However there are pieces of art that I have found hugely influential. There are few things as uplifting or fulfilling as feeling the full power of the beauty and wonder we are capable of. In fiction, Wim Wenders' film Wings of Desire allowed my spirit to soar amongst the angels for a while in a manner similar to how I felt when reading sections of Michael Ondaatje's In The Skin Of A Lion or when experiencing my first classical concert - Brahms symphonies 2 and 4 in the Royal Albert Hall. In comedy, Bill Hicks managed to preach a message of peace and love with filthy and funny jokes but his lasting impression on me was communicating the importance of artistic and personal integrity. I also particularly admire American satirist Stephen Colbert's address to the 2006 White House Press Correspondents Dinner - principally because it was an act of real moral courage to deliver that performance in front of such a hostile audience. I found the book The Corporation by Joel Balkan to be particularly insightful as it demonstrates how something as seemingly abstract as a legal structure (the corporate form) can deeply shape human behavior (in this instance incentivising selfishness and undermining values such as honesty, empathy and compassion). From the point of view of gaining much greater clarity about some of our most basic impulses and motivations the documentary Flight From Death is incredibly thought-provoking, especially about the role and meaning of culture. The book on which that film was based, Ernest Becker's The Denial Of Death for me that contains an even more powerful message - that we are terrified of our capacity to be amazing, or in the words of Marianne Williamson (wrongly attributed throughout many Internet resources to Nelson Mandela): 'It's not our darkness but our light that most frightens us.' Finally, the heroism and light of the countless numbers of people who endure persecution because they remain true to their values is the subject of my favorite lines of poetry, which are from Nazim Hikmet: "If I do not burn, If you do not burn, If we do not burn, Who will light the way?" |