By way of words, I think.
By way of thoughts, I feel.
If I don't know what I'm feeling or if I stuff my feelings deep, judging them as wrong or inadequate, then I deprive lubrication to my actions, speech and thought.
This is my final submission to Amphora for the remainder of summer, 2010. If you like what you read in the preceding paragraphs, you will find similar posts on my Facebook page: "Fly, Dive, Gallop or Illuminate".
Today also marks the conclusion of a wonderful six-month campaign to promote The Corporate Storyteller. My publicist, Lynn Coppotelli, whom I have come to cherish as a friend, believed in the book from her first read. Tireless, creative, committed, imaginative, she pursued every avenue and alleyway - and the results are still unfolding.
Thanks to Lynn, I've had the privilege of speaking on dozens of radio talk shows across North America. Reviews and articles about The Corporate Storyteller have appeared in at least fifty national and international publications, online and print. Television appearances include CHEX in Peterborough, Ontario; WZZM, Grand Rapids, Michigan; and ABC-TV's "Job Club", hosted by the kind and brilliant Tory Johnson.
What I love best are the readers who are making The Corporate Storyteller their own, which was exactly the intent when I gathered the concepts and formed them into words. Today's Campus blends the five indispensable talents (chapter five in the book) with the need for colleges to aspire to greater relevance to business. A writer whose name I do not know - and wish I did--posted a wonderful Facebook blog on the five indispensable talents of the veterinary grad student. Twitters and Diggs and Mixxes are adding to the fun, spreading what I hope will be seen ultimately as simple common sense and courtesy within the field of 21st century business communication.
In closing Amphora, I would like to leave you with something I didn't write, though I'd be awfully proud if I had. Ralph Waldo Emerson gathered the thoughts that would become his most powerful essay, "Self Reliance", between the years of 1830-1841. He started off speaking in churches, but as his voice became more and more original, fewer and fewer churches welcomed him. Deeply spiritual and committed to the divine in humanity, he left behind all institutions that debase our nature, and drew capacity crowds for his commitment to the most innovative, courageous and original within us.
What follows are the opening phrases of the fifty paragraphs of "Self Reliance". Notice their relevance and how he sort of scares you and then makes you want to read the whole essay. Thank you for reading Amphora, and I hope to meet you on Facebook or in person some day!
I read the other day some verses
There is a time in every man's education
Trust thyself
What pretty oracles nature yields us
The nonchalance of boys
These are the voices which we hear
Whoso would be a man
Virtues are, in the popular estimate
What I must do is all that concerns me
The objection to conforming to usages
For non-conformity the world whips you
The other terror that scares us
But why should you keep your head
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin
I suppose no man can violate
Fear never
I hope in these days
Let a man know his worth
Our reading is mendicant
The world has indeed been instructed
The magnetism which all original action exerts
The relations of the soul to the divine spirit
Man is timid and apologetic
This should be plain enough
And now at last the highest truth
Life only avails
This is the ultimate fact
Thus all concentrates
But now we are a mob
If we cannot at once rise
The populace think that your rejection
And truly it demands something godlike
If any man consider the present aspects
If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises
It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance
In what prayers do men allow
Another sort of false prayers
As men's prayers are a disease of the will
It is for want of self-culture
I have no churlish objection
Traveling is a fool's paradise
But the rage of traveling is itself only
Insist on yourself
As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad
Society never advances
The civilized man has built a coach
There is no more deviation in the moral standard
Society is a wave
And so the reliance on Property
So use all that is called Fortune
Posted on: 2010-07-11 12:25:33