June 18 | It All Applies

Today you may find the high point of your education: you find the right mentor who, looking through your knowledge with the intent of a surgeon, asks a pointed question that fills in the exact right gap. Understanding explodes out from a single moment, a single phrase, and you begin to see continuity, in your area of expertise, outside of it, all things brought impossibly together.

Today may also be a defining moment of the opposite kind: when you learn your hero is just a more fraudulent version of yourself. You go in, ready to take notes, prepared to absorb, only to discover the oft-cited and frequently praised guru is nothing more than a charlatan. And after absorbing the pain of losing a hero, you begin to reshape your sense of what greatness is—and how even you might be able to embody it.

The problem of life is we never know which experience is which.

All we can do is look forward, remaining open, trusting that no matter what it is, it all applies.… Read the rest