The Wisdom Circle

I was giving a talk long ago one night on campus at Notre Dame to a room full of cable TV people. The Athletic Director came up to me after my talk and said, "Did you see that Lou Holtz was here tonight?" I said, "Yes, I did." He asked, "Did you notice he was writing the whole time you spoke?" I said, "I saw that." He explained, "He was writing down all your jokes and will use them next week and get paid a lot more for them than you did tonight." I laughed. "Seneca said the best ideas belong to everybody." What neither of us knew is that while we were talking, Lou was walking back to his office at 10PM to call one of the top speakers bureaus in the world and recommend they start booking me for their clients globally.

Tim Brown, the founder of "Jamie Oliver at Home," who brought that British chef to America after being an executive at companies like Coach, Dior, and Swarovski, Zoomed me yesterday to show me a video in which one of my favorite people was quoting me quoting Kierkegaard, Jesus, and Plato. And of course, Kierkegaard had studied the words of Jesus and Plato, who had respectively studied and passed on the words of those before them. That Zoom happened right after I posted here a passage from a living French philosopher's book where he's quoting Plato and Aristotle and all sorts of others. Wisdom is a circle. It's meant to arise and grow and spread and flourish in community. We learn from each other. We teach each other. We should never stop. We pass on the best of each other's ideas. The best ideas belong to everyone. Thanks, Seneca, for that idea.

So. Connect and keep connecting with wise people. Share and keep sharing with them. They'll teach you as you teach them, and as all your past influences continue to teach through your words and your wondering. Spread the wisdom.