Collected Articles and Essays

By Earl Smith

It started during lunch with an old friend. He suggested that I pull together some of the many articles and essays I had written over the years. “I have been reading your stuff for decades and always found it challenging and helpful. Why don’t you gather the best of them into a collection?”
I decided to have a look and was amazed at what I found. Over the period of roughly four decades, I have penned hundreds of articles on a wide range of topics. They had been published in a variety of journals and on various websites.
As I read through them, I realized that the articles focused on six broad areas. And that those could be divided into two groups of three. The first group, and the focus of this collection, deals broadly with the challenges of being human in human society. Some were designed as thought pieces – essays designed to start a process of contemplation. The second dealt with what I call transformational journeys – those life changing paths that lead to eureka moments. The third focused on my approach to mentoring – an activity that was driven by my determination to give back to younger generations.
As you read through them you will notice common themes that I revisit repeatedly. In that sense, they are the product of a single mind. But you will also notice a diversity of focus. Many of them were triggered by chance encounters with people who got me thinking or made an unexpected contribution to my understanding. There are too many to list here, but I am so grateful to them for what they gave me of their time and understanding.
My hope is that you will read each piece - then take time to think about what you have read. Each represents a slice of whatever wisdom I have accumulated over a long life. Each contains a kernel or two of hard-won insights. Take your time and let them settle in. Don’t be in a hurry to get to the next one. Ingestion should be followed by digestion before the next bite is taken.
As a serial entrepreneur, political and social theorist, published author and speaker, and veteran of Wall Street, I served as CEO/Senior Partner for all six of the companies and two non-profits which I founded. I have experience in mergers and acquisitions, designing and organizing companies, business/technology management, team building, strategic alliances, negotiating complex arrangements, governance & compliance, resourcing & financing, mergers & acquisitions, management/team/board assessment, coaching and strategic and tactical planning and implementation. I am the author of fourteen business books and over 400 articles on a wide range of subjects.
I am also the author of several paranormal, action-adventure novels. I write both fiction and poetry drawn from life experiences.
I received a PhD in Political and Social Theory from Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland, an MMS from the Sloan School at MIT, and a BA from the University of Texas. An itinerant, I have lived all over the world, lived in Manhattan for almost two decades and played the great game (intelligence) internationally. Now I wander about and exhale stories and poems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Earl Smith
• Release date: Nov 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215010808

Earl Smith

Rev. Earl Smith became the youngest chaplain ever hired by the California Department of Corrections when he was asked to become the chaplain at San Quentin in 1983. In 2000, Earl was named National Correctional Chaplain of the Year. He currently serves as chaplain for the San Francisco 49ers and the Golden State Warriors. He has appeared on HBO, CNN, The 700 Club, Trinity Broadcasting and the Discovery Channel, and has been featured in Newsweek and Time. He was born and raised in Stockton, California, where he lives today with his wife, Angel, and their children Ebony, Earl Jr., Tamara, and Franklin.

Book preview

Collected Articles and Essays

Transformational Journeys

Earl Smith

Raven Press

Copyright © 2023 Earl Smith

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 9781234567890

ISBN-10: 1477123456

Cover design by: Art Painter

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

Printed in the United States of America

Collected Articles and Essays

Volume One

Thought Provoking Articles

Transformational Journeys

Mentoring

Earl Smith

A close up of a bird Description automatically generated

Raven Press

2023

Table of Contents

Introduction

Thought Provoking Articles

Climbing a Ladder That Leads to a Hole in the Ground

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died

Days Within Days

If you are falling, dive

Do You Envy?

Don’t waste your life being envious of other people

Don’t waste your life trying to be someone else

Breaking Out of a Rut

Leaving the Rut Means Growing Your Life

Meditation – What’s it Good For?

Seeking the Upward Path

Less Substantial Friendships

Making a Difference

Westerners, Roadblocks & Zen

The Tragedy of Contradicting Reality

The Illusion of Duality

The Conundrum of Language

The Conundrum of Personality

Finding Meaning Without Manufacturing Meaning

Presence in the Present

In Opposition To …

The Denotative Tendency

The Fabric of Friendship

The idea of something is not the thing

Adults in Wonderland

The Benefits of Quiet Time

Marrying a Ghost

Seven Doorways to Better Relationships

Zen and Ambiguity

Zen and the Concept of Time and the Present

Zen Mentoring Can Change Your Life

Anything is possible, but nothing is easy. Not anymore!!

Transformational Journeys

Journeys

Transformational Journeys

Meeting the Past

Knowing What Matters

It’s the Experience

Running on Empty

Sea Change Brings Change

Making Time

How Long

Situational Awareness

Two Kinds of Happiness

Walking Together Alone – Searching For the Self

The One True Thing

I am I and will be till I die? Not!

It works better if you plug it in

Take a Chance – Change the Dance

Second Order Effects and How They Define You

Talking to Yourself Authentically

Ten Minutes That Will Change Your Life

Sarah’s Journey

The Passion Quest – Finding Your Center

The Price of Intemperance

The Cost of Anti-Humanism

The Recidivist’s Waltz

Transformational Journeys – Charting a New Course

Transformational Journeys – The Recurring Dilemma

Mentoring

Elements of Effective Mentoring

Mentoring Engagements – The First Steps

Mentoring Means Charting the Course for Change and Then Making The Journey

Working with a Mentor

What to Look For In a Mentor

Just Couldn’t Bring Himself – A Mentoring Case Study

Finding the Right Mentor

Life Mentoring – The Propose of a Compass

Mentoring can make a difference and why it might be important to you

Mentoring - Dissatisfaction, Vertigo, Determination, Euphoria, Resistance, Persistence = Progress

Mentoring – Learning the Difference

Mentoring and Overcoming A Non-Cumulative Life

Making the Possible Probable – A Mentoring Case Study

Team Mentoring – Building Value by Unlocking Potential

Some Unexpected Benefits of Mentoring

What Does a Mentor Do?

Striving to Remain Relevant

Seven Reasons Why Finding a Mentor Can Be Difficult

Selecting the Right Mentor

Don’t Do What?

Mentor or Coach?

Mentoring Breakthrough – First Steps

Mentoring Breakthrough – Coming to Terms

Mentoring Breakthroughs – Eureka Moments

Mentoring Change Aversion – Coming to Terms

Shall you live authentically who you are meant to be – the beginning

Mentoring Notes – Excuses and Such

Mentoring Notes – Focusing On Branding

The Principle of Least Effort: Mentoring The Ready

Introduction

It started during lunch with an old friend. He suggested that I pull together some of the many articles and essays I had written over the years. I have been reading your stuff for decades and always found it challenging and helpful. Why don’t you gather the best of them into a collection?

I decided to have a look and was amazed at what I found. Over the period of roughly four decades, I have penned hundreds of articles on a wide range of topics. They had been published in a variety of journals and on various websites.

As I read through them, I realized that the articles focused on six broad areas. And that those could be divided into two groups of three. The first group, and the focus of this collection, deals broadly with the challenges of being human in human society. Some were designed as thought pieces – essays designed to start a process of contemplation. The second dealt with what I call transformational journeys – those life changing paths that lead to eureka moments. The third focused on my approach to mentoring – an activity that was driven by my determination to give back to younger generations.

How to Read These Articles

As you read through them you will notice common themes that I revisit repeatedly. In that sense, they are the product of a single mind. But you will also notice a diversity of focus. Many of them were triggered by chance encounters with people who got me thinking or made an unexpected contribution to my understanding. There are too many to list here, but I am so grateful to them for what they gave me of their time and understanding.

My hope is that you will read each piece - then take time to think about what you have read. Each represents a slice of whatever wisdom I have accumulated over a long life. Each contains a kernel or two of hard-won insights. Take your time and let them settle in. Don’t be in a hurry to get to the next one. Ingestion should be followed by digestion before the next bite is taken.

A Bit About Me

As a serial entrepreneur, political and social theorist, published author and speaker, and veteran of Wall Street, I served as CEO/Senior Partner for all six of the companies and two non-profits which I founded. I have experience in mergers and acquisitions, designing and organizing companies, business/technology management, team building, strategic alliances, negotiating complex arrangements, governance & compliance, resourcing & financing, mergers & acquisitions, management/team/board assessment, coaching and strategic and tactical planning and implementation. I am the author of fourteen business books and over 400 articles on a wide range of subjects.

I am also the author of several paranormal, action-adventure novels. I write both fiction and poetry drawn from life experiences.

I received a PhD in Political and Social Theory from Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland, an MMS from the Sloan School at MIT, and a BA from the University of Texas. An itinerant, I have lived all over the world, lived in Manhattan for almost two decades and played the great game (intelligence) internationally. Now I wander about and exhale stories and poems.

Thought Pieces

Climbing a Ladder That Leads to a Hole in the Ground

There is a sea change going on among Millennials and Generation Z. The rest of us should pay close attention to it.

The Harvard University survey, which polled young adults between ages 18 and 29, found that 51 percent of respondents do not support capitalism. Just 42 percent said they support it.

With the excesses of capitalism reaching the limits of the ability of a society to maintain a stable relationship among individuals, the younger generations appear to be changing their minds about what constitutes a ‘good life’. Increasingly they are resisting the idea that capitalism is the only way to organize a fair and equitable society. And they have a point.

Modern society now seems to be structured to make the rich richer and deliver the middle class into servitude. The trends, since the Reagan years, are so well established that only through a severe and persistent exercise of self-deception could any reasonable person avoid seeing them.

The Rise of the Uber Class: Corporations are now people – but a strange sort of people. In the old days if a person committed a crime you hauled them before the court and subjected them to penalties under the law. But that is not the case with these uber-people. Now a group of people, in the name of a corporation, commit what is clearly a crime and what happens? They are bailed out. The government forces the human people to pay the bill for the crimes. Additionally, the corporation can take the results of the surpluses generated by the workers and deploy them against the interests of the very people who generated the surplus. Free speech is now defined as a theft of those surpluses and their use against the very people who generated them. The uber-citizen now controls not only the economy but the government.

Destruction of the Idea of Equal Before the Law: These millennials have come to realize that there are two legal systems – one for the very rich and another for everybody else. They see it as an inevitable result of the capitalist system. The jails fill up with people who have committed relatively minor crimes while those who almost brought down the world financial system not only keep their jobs and privileges but collect bonuses for talking advantage of the system and draining the treasury.

Servitude from Study: Those seeking an education find themselves buried under mountains of debt and entering a job market that does not allow them to repay it. Many millennials look at the prospect and turn away. They see it as a ‘bad deal’. Their future has been stolen by the uber-citizens with the help of the very government that is supposed to represent them.

But most importantly, young people are questioning the dominant definition of capitalism.

The word 'capitalism' doesn't mean what it used to, said Zach Lustbader, a senior at Harvard involved in conducting the poll, which was published Monday. For those who grew up during the Cold War, capitalism meant freedom from the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes. For those who grew up more recently, capitalism has meant a financial crisis from which the global economy still hasn't completely recovered.

In an important way, the Millennials and Generation Z are returning to the basic American values that the current form of capitalism has worked so hard to destroy. They read about how things were before. The efforts of the Franklin Roosevelt administration to pull the country out of the great depression. The positive impact of the rise of labor unions on the economy and the welfare of workers. They look back on a time when the dominant idea was a government of, by and for the people and are horrified at what has happened to their country.

John Della Volpe, the polling director at Harvard, went on to personally interview a small group of young people about their attitudes toward capitalism to try to learn more. They told him that capitalism was unfair and left people out despite their hard work.

They're not rejecting the concept, Della Volpe said. The way in which capitalism is practiced today, in the minds of young people — that's what they're rejecting.

But there is something else going on that is just as important as the growing dissatisfaction with capitalism among the Millennials and Generation Z. They are starting to question the idea of what constitutes a good life.

Millennials and Generation Z are watching their parents and grandparents consume the patrimony that historically has been passed on to future generation. They watch the equity in their parent’s homes being sucked away by reverse mortgages and see that the program is now to spend every last dime and then die. The perversion of the American dream is so obscene that they feel little connection to a past that will leave them with nothing but debt and limited opportunities. And they wonder why they should follow the example of those who have thrown away the fundamental advantages that this country brought to its people.

And searching for acceptance, they gave it all way. Only the children of their children know the price they had to pay.

And the children of their children are the Millennials and Generation Z. And they are both pissed and dismayed. The rise of populism is a direct result of this increasing dissatisfaction with capitalism as it presently operates in the US. The rise of Bernie Sanders is a clear reflection of that. Even the faux populism of Donald Trump can be connected to that dissatisfaction. It is worth noting that the last ‘establishment’ candidate standing was a Democrat and that increasingly Wall Street and the very wealthy decided that she is preferable to fake populism.

Millennials and Generation Z are the canaries in the coal mine. They are telling us something about the future of the United States and of capitalism as its defining economic system. We are fast approaching a time – if we are not there already - when the leadership of both political parties will be ignored as lackeys of the wealthy and special interests. We are fast approaching a time of revolution. The torch will not be passed to a new generation. It will be wrenched from the hands of those who seek to perpetuate a system that Millennials and Generation Z see as rigged and fundamentally un-American.

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

One of the true joys of long-standing friendships is that political correctness and faux conversations become unnecessary. For me, such friendships are central parts of the true joy of life. In the dreary landscape of grayness - of acquaintances - virtual friends - of pseudo-friends - of meaningless and neutered rituals, these wonderfully varied and nuanced flowers grow and bloom. Their aroma is heady indeed.

Recently, a friend of some three decades asked me if I wanted to go out for a drink. If the first round is on you, was my reply. We’ve known each other long enough and been down enough roads together to know that as shorthand for, anytime, anyplace.

Having settled into one of our favorite watering holes, got the drinks delivered and lit up - he a cigar and me a pipe - I looked over, grinned and. Just tell me where it hurts you babe and I’ll tell you who to call.

So, you’re the Mighty Quinn?

I have been, and always shall be, your friend, I replied. So now that we have paid homage to Bob Dylan and Star Trek, what’s the itch in your shorts?

A hefty hit on the drink and a long contemplative draw on the cigar later, he said, You know how I value having a mentor. I’ve always believed that having guidance from someone who has lived more of life than I have can make an enormous difference in my life. But Chief I just don’t seem to be able to establish a relationship with that kind of mentor.

I’ve been introduced to a couple of the people you thought were mentors. I was not impressed. I think you must decide if you have the balls to engage with a real mentor. Otherwise, you might as well sit on the sidelines and watch the world go by.

Ah, come on! Both Helen and Jack are good people with valuable life experience. I thought I could learn from them.

Look Ferd, here are some rules to live by. Never eat at a restaurant named Ma’s. Never play cards with a man whose nickname is Doc. And never enter into a relationship with a woman who has more problems than you do.

That brought a quick response. But there are people who refer to you as Doc!

Yes, I replied, but most of them won’t play cards with me anymore.

After the laughter subsided and the drinks were refreshed, my friend looked over and said, So, you think I’ve been selecting mentors who are safe, will not challenge me and who have more problems than I do?

That’s it, I replied. You need to have the courage to open yourself up to someone who can add to your life. You done that with your wife. How or why, she puts up with you is beyond me. But then I can say the same about myself. You need to do the same with a mentor. How about a bit of verse by Antonio Machado?

The wind, one brilliant day, called

to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

'In return for the odor of my jasmine,

I'd like all the odor of your roses.'

'I have no roses; all the flowers

in my garden are dead.'

'Well then, I'll take the withered petals

and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.'

The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:

'What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?'

No one whose life is principally regret is going to be able to help you. If their flowers have died for whatever reason, choosing to ask for their help might be the safe option but, in the long run, you will end up with the same withered petals and yellow leaves.

The rest of the afternoon was spent by two friends who know each other well and no longer have to engage in the pretenses of virtual friendship. It was two months later that I found out that he had asked one of my ‘elder statesman’ friends to help them along his life’s journey.

The point of this story is that the decisions you make in asking for help more often than not presage the results you will experience. If you are looking for a mentor, find one whose office plants have not died.

Days Within Days

I often think about the day that has just passed – in the evening as I sit in the quiet and remember things recently passed. It is during those times that I come closest to understanding what it means to live in time – a time that keep on passing with or without my permission. We all have this experience because we can’t avoid it. Life itself is the experience of passing days – and months – and years. It is during these quiet times that the memory of what was - what might have been - and the irrevocable loss comes to mind. And the immediacy of ‘now’ takes a back seat to a time of reflection.

Each day brings untold opportunities – to learn – to be kind – to understand – to connect with others. Each presents itself like an expectant puppy – eager for attention and wanting so much to find a world in which it is accepted and cherished. And I find myself – in those quiet hours – wondering why I sent this puppy away – why I didn’t realize that this other one was there at all.

Maybe you have had similar experiences. The people that you meet – the chances you are given – the gifts they bring to you – represent the county of living – the true reason to be alive. Wealth is there all the time – incredible richness flows all around you – it is a matter of recognizing and accepting the opportunity to take part.

But there is most surely a trap in such remembrances. Living in the recent past is still living in the past. When I find myself thinking about such things and wondering about lost opportunities, I take a breath and remind myself that this moment – this noticeably quiet time – is yet another opportunity – and that the present is the place to be living – even in these moments of quiet reflection.

Each day begins with opportunities to do something that you can be proud of – to touch another fellow human being – to understand their concerns and needs – to contribute to their lives – ease their pain – help them understand and cope – and let them teach you to understand. The afterglow of a day well spent is in the presence of those opportunities that were well used – a cause for reflection on the wonder that ‘I really did that and made a difference’ – ‘the world is a different place because I lived through this day in this way’.

When I am living in the present I reach out to people – extend a hand – try very hard to understand the world as they find it and the life that they are experiencing. It is not so very different than mine. But the details make all the difference. At the end of a very good day, I end up feeling that I have lived several lives through several days. Several lives through several days – and all in the same twenty-four hours!

Maybe you’ve met someone who seemed old beyond their years – I certainly have. Truth be told, I collect them – they are some of my most favorite memories. But it was just recently that I came to understand how they were able to manage such a thing. Most of them live forty-eight to sixty hours in any given day of their lives.

An old friend was fond of saying that it’s not the years, it’s the miles. Strange that it took so many years for me to understand what he was trying to tell me. Being alive in the present brings the exquisite benefit of living and experiencing more hours – and living more deeply – than the simple and mechanical march of the sun around the earth would seem to offer.

I call this ‘making time’. When I was younger, I thought that time made itself but now I know that I was wrong. We each make time – we are its creators – to the extent that each day is more than the minimally allotted twenty-four hours. And you can do the same – you can be a ‘time lord’ and create the most precious commodity that any human possesses – more time.

Sure, at first this is going to sound very strange to you. I can hear the literalists now – ‘there are only so many hours in the day and nothing can be done about that’. But spend some time with the thought – let it seep into your consciousness and settle into your understanding – and you will see that the literalists are gravely mistaken. They are intent on stealing the very thing that makes you most human – with all the possibilities that that implies. Learn to make time – and watch your s grow. Leave the literalist to wonder at your creativity.

Right now, that suggestion may sound a bit daunting, but I can give you a couple of places to start. First, make use of those quiet times at the end of each day. Use them to replay the day and look for opportunities that you missed – gifts that you refused – puppies that you ignored or missed altogether. But don’t take this as an opportunity to beat up on yourself for being less than you might have. Think of yourself kindly and with compassion as a person fallible and capable of unintentional mistakes. It’s not the apportionment of blame that wealth – it is the growth that self-knowledge can produce.

Take a bit of time to make notes about those things that you would have liked to have done better or at all. Write them down in a journal. Then promise yourself to be more aware – more alive to the moment – when they come by again. You see the exercise is not to place blame and generate shame – it is to create awareness and preparedness for the gifts that the next day will surely bring.

Only by honing your senses – by learning from your mistakes and missteps – can you become tomorrow the person you were not able to be today. And that is because of the most precious gift that any of us ever receive – the ability to be more tomorrow than we were today. In a very real sense, every day is a ‘do over’ of the last. No, you don’t get to go back and remake yesterday – but you do have the very real opportunity to make tomorrow different – and yourself very different in the process. So, learn from yesterday - let it help you improve tomorrow.

Every day should be a masterpiece that you are proud to have authored. Each hour should contain within it all that is the best in you and what you have to offer. Doing means reaching out to others and adding to their lives in ways that they couldn’t on their own but it also means reaching into your own life and becoming someone that does things that the ‘you of yesterday’ couldn’t do as well.

Every person who you meet during your day has a different experience of life. Think of the incredible diversity that surrounds you and the varied understandings that abound. This is truly abundance in its highest form. Each day you come in contact with those who have figured out what it is that confuses you most – overcome the challenges that you find most daunting – meet and slay the demons that are bedeviling you the most. They are all there right in front of you.

But you also meet those who are confused where you are not – who need help to overcome what you have overcome – and are still struggling with the demons that you have slain. You see you are not only a student but a teacher – and your day is going to find you in both roles. You gain confidence during a day well spent – but you also help others gain confidence.

Your journal can become either a bludgeon or a guiding light. It’s your choice. I regularly go back and read the entire thing. If you do this with kindness and a gentle understanding that you are, after all, only human, the experience can be very therapeutic. Here and there are missteps that you are still making. But every now and then there is one or two that you no longer make. You see your journal is a record of the person you used to be – being read by the person that you have become. And, in being that it reflects the progress you have made and a monument to your intention to progress.

Your goal needs to be that during those quiet times at the end of each day to be able to look back on your day with pride – to be able to say, ‘I’m glad that I lived it that way’. None of us ever get completely to that place – but, with effort and awareness, we can get a lot closer than we are today.

Finally, try to see yourself, the people around you and the gifts that the day brings as they really are – not how you would like them to be. Living authentically means accepting what is a richer and more abundant world than you could ever imagine or insist into existence. Living authentically also means being present in every moment of your day – living it directly but gently – and living as much of it as there is to live as possible. When you do that, you will also understand that ‘it is not the years, it’s the miles’ that really count.

If you are falling, dive

It was a favorite saying of the Great American mythologists Joseph Campbell. Like most profound things, an initial interpretation is almost guaranteed to miss the point. It’s not about falling or diving at all. As with the Zen Koans, the saying is simply an indication of a door that we might go through towards a deeper understanding of the experience of being alive.

You see the point is that we are all falling in at least a metaphorical way. The circumstance that we find ourselves in - that is the circumstance of being alive, in a particular place and at a particular time - has aspects of being beyond our control. And so, falling is a metaphor for the condition that every sentient being experiences at birth.

To restate one of Campbell’s favorite saying, if you are alive, live!

That might sound incredibly easy. After all, if you are alive you are, by definition, living. But, yet again, a metaphor introduces uncomfortable complexities.

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered Man.... Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.

The Dalai Lama’s point is that being alive, and living are not the same thing for beings possessing a consciousness and sense of self-awareness. The term ‘live’ means something different when applied to an amoeba. It’s difficult to conceive of an ‘enlightened’ amoeba. But humans have been pursuing that path for millennia. The fundamental