A Magic Formula for Success Part 4 of 4

Part4/4

A Magic Formula

Remarks

Delivered to Bellarmine Pioneers
11-11@11-2008



It’s not how many times you get knocked down that measure your progress it’s how many times you get back up.

Let me tell you about two people I admire greatly, who have given me (and the world) so much. Cicero, the prominent Roman orator and politician effectively lost his job when Julius Caesar closed the forum and put an end to politics in Rome. So what did the ‘unemployed’ Cicero do? He pursued a career as a philosopher and writer and left an immortal legacy to the world during his forced and unexpected retirement. He excelled in a career he did not plan and did not want.

Dante, the poet and pilgrim of the Divine Comedy, was an aristocrat, a man of means, powerful and educated. In his timeless masterpiece, we meet Dante the pilgrim in a tangled wood, lost in the middle of life’s journey, near suicide. Dante the poet had lost his power, his property, his place, his prestige, his family and was under a death sentence when he found himself at odds with his church and his government.

Some of you have little, some of you have nothing and some of you have even less than that. Dante had everything and lost it.

In exile, stripped of everything, Dante used his unexpected ‘bad luck’ to write one of the greatest works of art known in Western civilization. In his poem, he travels from the dark and tangled wood into the celestial light of God’s divine presence; the only mortal ever afforded such a privilege. Why and how was the pilgrim transported from dark to light, from death to life, from Hell to Heaven? The poem answers the question: because he was a man of hope.

There’s a story I like to tell about the Sufi Sage. He was chastised by the Fool for not giving thanks when he was blessed by good luck or doing penance when he was cursed by bad luck. The Sage had an explanation: That’s because I’m never sure which is which.

There’s a proverb that teaches: if the sky falls, catch larks. That’s what Cicero and Dante did and you should think of them, catching larks and the Sufi Sage every time it looks like you have a set-back or an unexpected interruption in your plans.

During my time at Bellarmine, I met many real living and breathing friends, mentors and role models. But my liberal arts education introduced me to a host of other teachers, tutors and sages from the past. Those who know me well often hear my citations to Erasmus and the wisdom of his secular bible the Adagia; to my high pagan priest Seneca and to my Renaissance humanist preacher, Montaigne.


Montaigne had inscribed on the ceiling of his library various mottos, proverbs and bits of worldly wisdom that inspired him and governed him. As a Bellarmine student, I began collecting wise adages with the hope that I might one day own a ceiling on which to inscribe them. In time, I learned that it was more important to live them than to write them. While not on my ceiling today, they are always near. Collectively, they constitute everything I know or think I know or even suspect. In the aggregate, they are less than 500 words.

So, I conclude in summary by telling you about myself: (1) I have accomplished 8 words per year and (2) everything I know worth knowing can be said in less than 500 words (so I apologize in using 2000 words to address you). And I leave you with the last component of the Magic Formula which is my own personal motto:

Part 6: Always Make Haste Slowly.




DV
11/5/2008
1924 words