A Quest for Wisdom - The Fluidity of Living
Wisdom may be as simple as the notion of integrating thoughts, feelings and actions. Yet going from notion to living it requires intention and attention. Over and over. And over and over. On repeat.
I’ve made a lot of dumb and selfish decisions over the course of my life. I’ve failed and not always ‘forward’. I’ve hidden from truths and avoided obvious inconvenient realities. I’ve chased validation or acclaim and lost myself and sight over what really mattered to me. I’ve been afraid of opinions and judgements and getting into trouble. I’ve blamed and I’ve complained. Taking responsibility, that’s conditional.
I did a lot of stuff and things though. Constantly and endlessly. A corporate climate and sustainability martyr. Ultra distance running and pursued cricket at a high level here and overseas. Read books and listened to (probably tens of thousands of) podcasts in the pursuit of bettering myself. Married. Father. Son. Brother. Uncle. Friend. Nepal. India. USA. New Zealand. Made bread. Vegetable garden. List creator with the best of them. Where did that get me? Disillusioned, decimated and demoralised. I was broken, despite all the doing. A life as Pac-Man had allowed me to collect things, experiences and memories in the chase along the way. What was missing though? The quality of wisdom to bring what is contrary to impulsive, reactive decisions born out of my insecurities and self-centredness.
I see the same delusions in the systems we exist in as how I have and can still act, think and be. The denialism of climate change and the procrastination to rapidly and urgently act like we need to. The negative progression in regards to men’s violent behaviour in this country and the horrifying losses as a result of serious and meaningful interventions to address root cause issues and deal with acute problems like housing shortages and financial coercion. A world seemingly spinning into more terror and uncertainty. In these and other situations, all much grander and complex then the relative benign nature of my tiny little daily existence there is stupidity, lying, blaming, fears of losing or looking cowardly. In my darkest places lay desires for pride and prestige, to be right, to be perfect and to win. I’m not the only person who struggles with that. The consequences are all around us.
At the same time there has never been more data and information. Just today, 329 million terabytes of data will be created. To put that into a relatable context, that’s the storage capacity of about five billion phones. Every day. Five billion phones worth. 750,000 kilograms a day. Microsoft is now opening a new data centre somewhere in the world every three days as a result of its neck-deep plunge into AI. Don’t forget that in 2020 Microsoft were lauded for their climate action pledges but are now tracking somewhere between 29 and 40% above where they started. Microsoft are not that unusual though. The corporate dealings in pledges and promises of long-off time horizons that have been thrown around in recent years are easy and don’t require the thoughtfulness of what needs to actually be different and change. Later can be worried about another time. Then all of a sudden later is now.
What does all that information and data get us? More climate change? More men’s violence? More global instability? More misinformation? More distrust? More anger? Of course there are a few wins along the way that comes with more information, but are they worth it and when history is being written how obvious will the lack of wisdom in the mindless pursuit of short term financial results seem?
This issue is dealing in the topic of wisdom, which has become of critical importance to me as I’ve had to grapple with the dismantling of the life I had and try to work out the next one to come. The effort of grappling with what is truly valuable to me, of what my boundaries are and having to stand by them is existentially terrifying, the awkward sense that comes when I’m not rushing to whatever meeting or call or email or whatever other thing the Pac-Man in me wants to pursue. Then it strikes me - the next life is not coming. It’s right here, right now. Realising that may not make me as wise as the likes of Confucius or Socrates or Mandela, but it’s a start.
Life is not a puzzle. It’s a mystery. The more I struggle and rush the more difficult and out of control my life becomes. Wisdom lies in the slowing down, the contemplative reflection, by spending time talking with wise people and reading wise texts. The answers already lie outside of me and I have the ability to absorb and apply them. The wisdom to start is the wisdom I can grow. Wisdom isn’t about finding all the puzzle pieces as quickly as possible, it’s about finding my own path through all of the mess inside and outside of me and being ok with whatever that ends up being.
If you’re a podcast listener, head to Spotify or Apple and subscribe, share and rate the show. Episodes are released weekly and recent guests have included Cameron Tonkinwise, Jess Miller, Mathew Mytka, Kate Cotter and Paul Oosting.
I am honoured to be doing this, for your attention and care, and the nourishment of my own spirit and the forcing of wisdom practice it forces into my life as I undertake the this path I am heading down with Finding Nature.
Thank you
Nathan
Living On The Spectrum of Life’s Realities - Georgia Hall
Georgia is one of my most favourite colleagues I’ve been lucky to work with over the course of my career. Brave, intelligent, dark-humoured, ambitious. We helped to found The Planeteers - a rag tag group of climate carers - in a big bank and she always offered not only generous, thoughtful and valuable counsel (and I need a lot of it!), but could always be trusted as someone who would be one of the first people you’d want in forming The Resistance.
I personally believe the conventional notion of wisdom is borne out of historical institutionalism and religious philosophies. That’s fine for some, but it doesn’t really resonate with me.
For me, wisdom is messy, complicated and intertwined with life experiences that span from the magnificent to the devastating. The learnings I gained from these experiences may or may not have meant something to me at the time, but they always feel different with hindsight and time.
2019 and 2020 were extraordinary years. I started my Masters in Environmental and Human Rights Law, swam the English Channel and decided to marry my soul mate. I was in an uphill battle on the work front; managing a million mark ups and comments for board papers on sustainability policy, wrangling over the right wording to rule out thermal coal finance and convincing different business divisions to take modern slavery seriously. I won’t pretend I was a senior decision maker. At times I felt like a pen pusher but I appreciated the opportunity to be part of something bigger than me that offered a sense of purpose.
My personal life had flow, ease, electricity. Getting in the pool every morning at the crack of a sparrow’s fart, seeing the same young and old faces and enjoying the uninterrupted time to just “be”… no phones, no emails, no TV, no social media in the pool… just me, the water and my breath. Three strokes, one breath, three strokes, one breath, three stokes, one breath, until the sun rose and found its place in the skyline.
Returning to university ignited an insatiable desire to learn more. I was the dorky, embarrassing mature student with a million questions and I loved it. University was wasted on me in my spoiled and naive late teens and early twenties. I really wanted it this time and it gave me context to the world I worked and lived in.
People asked me “why law if you don’t want to practice it?”, and “what’s the relevance of law given your interest in sustainability?”. I felt I had to justify my choice at the time and questioned myself to the point of nearly changing courses. But I now immaturely glee at the irony when I read about shareholder litigation, mandatory human rights due diligence, carbon border adjustment mechanisms…. Ha…. !! What’s the relevannnnceee you ask???
I was absorbed in my studies, my work and my swimming yet my calm, stable and generous fiancé carried me through the constant strain of these times. Without him, I would have been lost.
Contrary to what other people think about wise people or finding wisdom, I don’t think it’s a case of quiet, calm, mindfulness, no distractions and a nice overpriced scented candle thrown in. I personally think wise people are really good at three things: listening, learning and connecting. There’s nothing wrong with being busy and there‘s a lot to be learned from those periods. At what cost or gain (to me and others) did it come? How did it contribute to something that aligns with my passions? How did I feel after such an intense period? Fulfilled? Empty? Angry? Buoyed? Meh?
Shortly before the COVID lockdowns at the beginning of 2021, I started to lose function in my right leg and sensation in parts of my lower body. The symptoms were slow and insidious but I was too busy to listen. I had a new job, lots of work to do, a life to live. There was no time to think nor need to worry about a tingling sensation on the side of my leg and a weak foot.
A trip to the hospital quickly led to emergency decompression surgery for a freak spinal cord injury. A dodgy disc had calcified in my spinal cord and was slowly damaging my lumbar spine nerves. Once it was removed, the nerve symptoms alleviated a bit but the pain was chronic. I was on strong painkillers and, much to the despair of my husband, I was having a 24/7 affair with my heat pack.
A few months later I started to lose sight in my right eye. A dark shadow over the top of my eye and a non-stop arc of light flashing in my peripheral vision forced me to Specsavers. I was referred to Sydney Eye Hospital and later that evening walked out with a referral to see an oncologist the next day. The doctor instructed me not to open the letter as it was addressed to the oncologist, but I tore it open while walking into the botanical gardens behind the hospital and read the words “suspected cancer”.
Out of the corner of my (good) eye I saw some croaking frogs hopping around in a bush. I sat on the pavement quietly trying to catch another glimpse. I don’t know how long I sat there for, but all I could think about were the frogs and their noises. I scrunched up the letter in my pocket and made my way home.
I didn’t want to worry my fiancé and went to the appointment by myself where I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer the following day. I should have asked him to come.
Given the poor prognosis for the cancer and the lack of systemic treatment options, I was forced to consider my own mortality at 31 years old. During treatment while I was lying in hospital, I listened to the audio book of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and music that soothed me. I’d never really put thought into my own mortality before; but suddenly I felt the need to accept it and accept the fact that timing was out of my control. Young or old. I noted down some of my favourite songs to play at my funeral and decided I’d like the ceremony to be outside.
Six months later I had reconstructive surgery on my spine to fix all the damage and lessen the pain. In March 2022, I found myself walking up and down a 10 metre pool, half blind and surrounded by oldies wondering how the hell I got there. Only recently I swam from Dover to Calais by myself. It was an epic fall from grace.
My story is a lucky one in many respects. I genuinely, hand on heart, have no reason to complain or feel sorry to myself. I don’t need pity. Life has given me extraordinary luck with one hand and a shit sandwich with the other. It’s up to me to work it out and no one else can do it for me.
“I don’t know how you stay so strong!”, some would say with a kind smile. The reality is that we don’t have a choice in life. We just have to get on with it. But wise people know when to ask for help and find their tribe. Deep down they know they’re not alone and they’re willing to learn and grow in big and small ways.
In that pool, walking up and down listening to the BeeGees, I had to work out my path and make sense of it all.
There is a Thai proverb that resonates with me; ‘When the tide is high, the fish eat the ants. When the tide is low, the ants eat the fish.’
We never know when we’re at the peak or trough of life. Right now, you could be at the peak or at the very rock bottom and you won’t know it. Circumstances can change gradually or change within a flash. Suddenly things are taken away from you and the minute details become irrelevant. At the time of writing, I’m happy to share there’s no evidence of active cancer in my body, but I now need six-monthly scans for most of my life to check it hasn’t returned. These regular scans used to fill me with dread, but now I see it as my six-monhtly green slip. A health check that I am lucky to receive. Tick. Then off I go on my merry way.
Reflecting back on periods of change gives so much perspective. Wise people are the ones who adapt the best to change and use their learnings to shape the path forward. They’re kind and empathetic. They take themselves seriously but also relish their imperfections and laugh about them. They’re patient yet impatient for the things that can’t wait. They advocate for themselves and others when something is unfair and needs to be changed. They have the audacity to be different in subtle or bold ways. They have the ability to judge when it’s necessary to to lock in for intense periods or if it’s hurting them and others around them. They afford themselves the grace to just be still. They’re not afraid of difficult conversations and apologise when they know they regret their actions or words. They start somewhere - however small - and sometimes start with no goal in mind. Everyone has started from scratch. It’s painful but it doesn’t have to be a lonely journey.
For those of us in sustainability, we regularly start from scratch and go through the endless process of bargaining, negotiation and compromise to get decision makers to take notice. The system is built against sustainability and so we doubt ourselves. Listening, learning and connecting are the best ways of navigating bullshit and that heavy feeling of loneliness that pops up every now and then.
Wisdom as The Dance Partner In The Disco Of Life - Mathew Mytka
Mathew is one of those people who when I met, I instantly knew there was something both unique and special about him. Smart, grounded, interesting and interested. But also a streak of weird-ness that stands out and is vivacious. A man pursuing what seems like the impossible in technology - responsibility, care and thoughtfulness - I instantly resonated with him from my own professional experiences. Pursuing Finding Nature has allowed me to get to know Mathew’s brand of wisdom.
In writing this over the past week, I've drawn on reflections from the morning ritual I have of sitting in my garden, surrounded by banana trees and my dogs calmly sitting by my side or occasionally foraging for tomatoes to eat. The invitation to contemplate the role and meaning of wisdom in my life is central to the work I do with Tethix: What does it mean to embody wisdom in a way that positively shapes our world and the technologies we create?
I don't believe there is one answer to that big question. I feel its many answers are revealed through collective practice. But to get started I'll begin with what wisdom is to me.
Wisdom means engaging with the world playfully through our bodies and mind, mindful of our relationship to others and the world I am part of, nurturing the values I hold dear, and empowering others to do the same. It's more about being in a meaningful relationship with life's rhythms, teachings and mysteries. It's not a noun, it's a verb.
Put simply, wisdom is not just a state of being for me; it's an active engagement with how I live my life.But how do I cultivate this state of being and active engagement?
Cultivating wisdom
There's a stillness and movement to wisdom. To me, it is to dance, sing, create art, make music, to ride waves and pay respect and have gratitude for the ocean, in its power and magnificent beauty. It's cultivated in gardening and growing food to nourish me, my family and my neighbours. It's through meditation that is a pillar of my routine, and occasionally, through exploring the depths of consciousness with my fungi friends.
I believe small, ritualistic practices play an important role. How I start my day, enter my home office, or even pause to breathe deeply can transform ordinary moments or ones we feel compelled to react to into a continuum of mindfully responsive living.
Now I am far from mastering zen to the extent of becoming a sage, but these practices both ground and move me, allowing the tides of wisdom to ebb and flow more naturally.
It’s the aggregation of all these small acts that continuously build and sculpt a wise life.
Wisdom seeking and seekers
Throughout history many have revered the wise ones. The sages, the poets, the prophets and philosophers. The shamans, songwriters and indigenous elders embodying the wisdom that is also encoded in the landscape and through stories told in interrelation with it.
We’ve heard stories of the rites of passage to go through on the path to embodying wisdom. Those of tending fire, engaging in shared rituals and ceremonies to support transitions between a change in status, age or phase of profession. These stories and symbols of wisdom in our cultural narratives are powerful references for us to find paths to a relational engagement with life and state of being.
But in many ways we are all a little isolated in finding our own rites of passage. Our current ways of living have decoupled us from community, from the land and from the life cycles of our natural ecology.
When we seek wisdom, we often have no enduring elders to guide us. We seek insight, but are confronted with more information and knowledge we can possibly integrate. We seek to live a life of virtue, but are entrapped into virtue signalling through our algorithmically curated social media feeds. We seek community, yet our social infrastructure is less about us as citizens and more about us as consumers. We struggle with the being and are more "human doings" in a world that fosters insatiable desires and compels us to add to the to-do list, read the next article, watch the next movie. Buy the thing. Do… the…… thing.
Where is wisdom?
For me wisdom isn't confined to human boundaries. It manifests through my relationships - the local kookaburra, my wife, my children, my co-founder Alja, the pumpkin plant in my garden and even my dogs. These relationships each reflect wisdom in unique ways, teaching me about resilience, joy, patience, pause, play and unconditional love.
It's also "in" me and you. Encoded in my DNA, in the wisdom of my gut microbiome and the complex relationships and biological systems that are our bodies. When was the last time you paused to consider the wisdom of your body? You don’t need to know how it all works. Sometimes just the mindful acknowledgement, awe and reverence is enough.
Yet, I am, like you, living in a world that comes from a paradigm that it less about wisdom and more about information and knowledge. Less about our relationships to the intricate tapestry of life and more about power and control over it. Less about the mystery of the universe and more about extracting value from its patterns for technological progress and a continuing colonialism. Not because we've messed up the home we have here on this planet, but because the adolescent urge to colonise and explore is stronger than any that has been nurtured to take stock, reflect and heal relationships to what we have where we are here, now.
This is not to dismiss scientific inquiry. But more about questioning the overly narrow view and way of understanding and relating to our world and universe that tends to dominate our worldviews and mindsets. Maybe it will take a significant "fall from grace" to learn the error of our ways, of knowing and being? A great flood of our own doing?
Is it the harsh lessons that help in fully embodying wisdom?
Life lessons
Pathfinding and seeking to embody wisdom hasn't been without its trials for me. Recently, while navigating job searches and trying to conform to societal expectations, I rediscovered the enduring truth that one cannot avoid authenticity. It was painful. Feels like you have to deny yourself to the world to get a job. We might try to put ourselves in a box, but given time, the force of a soul seeking true expression tears it asunder. We either embrace the journey now or confront these truths when we take our last breaths.
More abrupt lessons are the near-death experiences I've had throughout life. These experiences can quickly put things into perspective. For me, my continual ignorance and arrogance has meant it took a few of them to shock my system.
The birth of my children and being a father has taught me so much. It’s reinforced the responsibility I have. Helped me see joy and beauty in new ways. But my children are teachers, helping me to be more present and playful. To see and approach life with curiosity and compassion.
Death and rebirth as experienced by the psyche is equally powerful. For me this was spending time with plant medicine and shamans in Costa Rica for several weeks. This was both harrowing and illuminating, etching deep insights into my being. Ones still playing out in my wakeful dreams, reminding me I am still far from embodying the wisdom of Yoda or Yage.
This begs those questions encoded in the narratives of the spiritual wanderer. Feeling the pain of shattered dreams, the grief of loved ones passed, the discomfort of staying with existential truths, the refraining from desire or just sitting with oneself in silence. These are all rituals and rites of passage to take to fully embody wisdom. And while life provides ample opportunity to cultivate wisdom, maybe there is something to the great floods and the shock and loss that comes with it. The shock of rock bottom to truly come back to what matters in our life on this precious planet we live on, flying through space.
Envisioning a future of wise co-creation
Imagine a world where embodied wisdom is power, balancing the scales against the abundance of information and efficiency that define our current era. What if wisdom wasn't an afterthought but the foundation of our societal structures and interpersonal interactions?
In a wisdom-informed future, we prioritise depth over speed, relationships over transactions, and regenerative practice over short-term gains. We cultivate both physical and digital spaces and places that foster genuine connections and facilitate collective sense-making. It’s a future where technology serves to enhance our human capacities to think, feel, and interact meaningfully with the ecology of life we are deeply interdependent with and part of.
As we ponder the potential of such a world, I invite you to pause, reflect, and ask yourself: How can I cultivate more wisdom in my life? Who helps me now? How can I help those around me live more wisely? How can we together imagine, design and create a future that reflects a wiser interrelation to life?
Wisdom as Something To Be Learnt and Earnt - Ingrid Messner
It’s immediately obvious meeting Ingrid that she isn’t the usual stereotype of who you’d expect to be offering coaching and personal advise to professional workers. Embedded in her work of helping unlock the power and strengths of every individual and group she works with are the efforts and endeavours she has undertaken in knowing herself, of pursuing her own evolution as a person committed to and curious about the individual potential that lies within each and every one of us but also knowing this needs to be done as part of accepting that the natural world is grander than any one of us and something to be playful in, learn from and be a custodian of.
A few years ago I spent time with Indigenous elder Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison in the Australian bush. At one point, he looked towards an area of dense bushland and asked our group: ‘What do you see?’ Everyone looked around, searching for something special. There wasn’t anything extraordinary to see.
Uncle Max waited patiently and listened to the few suggestions that the group came up with. He then offered his wisdom, “I see a big supermarket. There’s food, water, medicine, fibre for clothes, wood for building, shade protection and many more applications.’ Over the next few hours, he showed us some of the ‘store items”.
This experience stuck with me. It taught me many things. First of all that you need a lot of knowledge to identify all these items correctly. However, there’s also an element of being with these items and having a fully embodied experience of how these are all interconnected. And then there’s a whole other intangible level of spiritual meanings. The list goes on…
We have come to a point in time where we can access data, information, and knowledge instantly. AI analyses, summarises, and creates answers immediately – often reducing or removing the need to think long and hard for oneself, or to even think at all.
There are many experts with significant knowledge yet the wisdom of how to understand and use this for meaningful purposes seems to be eroding. Many experts can comfortably exist in their disembodied intellect. They enjoy the sense of power and prestige this creates for them, while simultaneously having limited to no in-depth, sensory, emotional, and spiritual experience of the systems for which they think their knowledge applies. Too often, leaders are detached from the system they want to change yet hold the agency to make the important decisions on behalf of those affected. Think of global decisions for local challenges.
Real wisdom has very local, slow growing roots.
In the fast-paced world of sustainability, ESG and impact-oriented initiatives within many corporate or impact-focused contexts professionals often find themselves navigating complex challenges and ever-evolving landscapes. Amidst the flurry of data, metrics, goals and disclosure requirements wisdom can be a quiet yet powerful force that can significantly enhance one's effectiveness in this field – if only we took the time to properly develop it.
What is wisdom, and why is it essential for sustainability, ESG and impact-oriented professionals?
Wisdom goes far beyond knowledge and expertise; it's about understanding the deeper implications of our actions and decisions, considering the long-term consequences, and integrating ethical and moral principles into our work. In the realm of sustainability and ESG, where the stakes are high and the impact far-reaching, wisdom becomes not just a desirable trait but a necessary one.
I have been an explorer all my life. Exploring the small events of daily life, the big questions of life as well as other cultures and countries. When moving to Australia in 2004, I became curious about what business people could learn about sustainability and leadership from Indigenous cultures from around the world.
After years of different ways of researching and learning about the topic, I realised that there are many different forms of wisdom. None of the following wisdoms are necessarily better. You just need to be aware which one you are using as your reference as your results will vary.
What is the source of your wisdom?
Wisdom of others:
You become curious to learn more
You admire the person who shares it
You think there might be something in it for you
Example: You hear about how mindfulness can contribute to saving the planet.
Wisdom you explore intellectually:
You read about it
You watch a video
You talk about it with others
Example: You read Thich Nhat Hanh’s book “Zen and the art of saving the planet”.
Wisdom you embody:
You practice the wisdom and feel the benefits (and the challenges!)
You explore deeper levels
You gain new, holistic insights
Example: you practice mindful walking and sit spotting in nature (the longer the better)
Wisdom you share:
You are keen to share the benefits with others
You talk about it
You create mini experiences for others
Example: you take your stakeholders on a mindful exploration of the ecosystem for which you are designing a biodiversity strategy or plan.
One of my mindfulness in nature teachers, John P Milton*, taught us that to reach deeper insights into yourself and the world, you need to be aware how authentic your teacher is.
Authentic teachings need time and space – for the teacher and the student. Intellectual knowledge needs to be felt with your heart and body to become embodied. Intellectual intelligence alone is not enough to create positive change. It also needs emotional, somatic, and spiritual intelligence. No AI can deliver that. Sit with this thought for a moment.
How is this relevant for you?
In an incessant and fast paced world, many people don’t take the time to practice what they preach. We often have conversations that get stuck at the intellectual level and don’t touch the whole person. True change and transformation will only happen if we touch our colleagues and stakeholders on deeper levels. Sustainable change requires transformational relationship building and not just transactional getting-the-job-done interactions.
What you can do?
For yourself:
Check who you are learning from. There is nothing wrong with sharing wisdom that one has not fully embodied yet – as long as it becomes clear what knowledge base the wisdom is coming from: the intellectual or the embodied level.
Check in with yourself how authentically you feel connected to the wisdom you are sharing.
Create space and time to be in and with the environments and people you want to deliver positive impact for. Practice mindfulness in a variety of ways.
Know where you can be effective. Remember Stephen Covey’s concept of the circle of influence versus the circle of concern.
For other people, you work with:
Be transparent about how you came to know what you are sharing. People sense unconsciously whether someone is authentic or not. And they respond accordingly.
Communicate in holistic ways by not only touching people on an intellectual level. By adding references to why something is important and offering mini experiences of the shared wisdom, you will touch them on a much deeper level. Thereby enhancing the likelihood of inspiring change.
For the benefit of all people you encounter at work, how can you create more time and space to take your wisdom to a deeper, more embodied level?
As Aristotle said, ‘Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.’. You have got this!
*John P. Milton – www.wayofnature.com
In Pursuit Of The Search - Murray Hogarth
Murray is a doyen of Sydney’s sustainability community. Knowledgable. Passionate. Incisive. Dedicated. His return to a more public facing role at The Fifth Estate allows us all to benefit more easily from his years honing many crafts and the wisdom accrued across The Nine Lives of his Sustainability Career.
‘Wisdom’ has been on my mind of late. How much of it do I have? How is that calculated? Where can I redeploy it? Does it have value? Can a measure of it offset a lack of youth? Will it get me a job or roles?
In my 65th year, having recently taken a redundancy package, I’m working on the ‘next Murray’. There’ve already been several. Journalist. Corporate sustainability strategy adviser. Environmental campaigner. Energy technology startup/scaleup founding team member.
But also, and no less important: Son, brother, friend, husband, father, grandfather, dog owner.
What I regard as acquired wisdom tells me that whatever ‘next’ looks like, it has to be purpose-led. Leveraging the learning and skills of a multi-career life, in the main part well-lived, but also giving something back.
Thoughts of retirement and gentle retreat into family, travel and garden were entertained briefly and discarded quickly. For purpose reasons primarily rather than financial ones.
It also was argued to me, by people who’s wisdom and achievements I respect, that I had a moral responsibility to keep contributing. That my knowledge and experience, and purported wisdom, demanded it. That quiet quitting from meaningful work, whether paid or not, should not be an option for me.
That’s flattering. Clearly I’m a bit ego-led too. And just like that, I was hooked!
I’ve already referred repeatedly to purpose and purpose-led. Even to me, that sounds very woke and virtue signalling. And the truth is, I’m not planning to be a one-man charity. I need and want remuneration in hard currency.
So what if I try to replace purpose-led with wisdom-led?
What is the lens I can apply to myself, and the world around me, that literally is ‘wise’? Including making good judgements, effectively leveraging experience and knowledge, and exercising self-awareness to counter any hubris (i.e. as the Americans say, don’t drink too much of your own Kool-Aid).
Is it wise, for example, to always lead with the head, and be pragmatic and calculating? Or is it wiser, and I suspect this is where I am headed, to go with your heart and gut instincts? Based on a lifetime of experience which tells me they are powerful yet intangible tools for making the best decisions, and are ignored or pushed to the edge at your peril.
As a young journalist, I was surprisingly gullible for someone pursuing a career in that profession. I lacked the experience of the capacity of human beings, including but not only politicians, to look you in the eye and absolutely lie. There were some hard early lessons, before I learned to compensate for this character trait, if not eliminate it altogether. I developed methodologies to check and recheck, and banked some wisdom.
Now, as the next Murray tries to find himself, it’s mainly myself who needs truth checking. Short of trying to totally reinvent myself, I have three main career streams to work with: journalism, which at a generic level is skills-driven rather than content-driven; as well as corporate sustainability and the energy transition, with more content-driven driven roles like consulting and stakeholder engagement, where journalistic skills can still be applied - robust research, fast synthesis of complex information, effective communications, and at the ‘wiser’ end, a join-the-dots capacity for system-thinking.
My head tells me that you can’t make much from being a working journalist these days, unless perhaps you sell your soul to do PR stuff. That journalism’s best days lie far back, in the 20th century, and specifically the 1980s and 1990s, when I actually was a journalist. The best of days. When we were kings. A job so good, causing trouble for rich and powerful people and organisations, that you almost couldn’t believe you could get paid well to do it.
Strangely, however, my heart and ‘going the gut’ keep drawing me back into doing journalism, and simply seeing where it leads. This may actually be truly, deeply, authentically wisdom-led, and I’ve just kept fighting it. It makes sense. My wife certainly thinks so, telling me again and again to go with my journalism gene. A wise person would lead with their strengths, and mine are wordsmithing. I’m happier and more energetic and motivated when I’m doing it. I’m having fun again. I’ve got my mojo back.
I’ve also been thinking about whether wisdom is only acquired, or can be inherent, at least to a degree, without lots of grey hairs attached. My youngest of four children recently won an international short story writing competition. Not in the youth section, in the open division. His beautiful piece Joey was creative and wise beyond his 22 years and very limited life experience, and this was recognised by the judges who selected it from over 3000 entries from around the world.
Most recently, I’ve been wondering if human wisdom will be rendered redundant by artificial intelligence? In my lifetime, if not to some extent already! My gut says no, my heart hopes not, but my head speculates on whether or not I am wise enough to really know? My optimistic thesis remains that no AI can match or replicate the impossibly complex mix of experiences, feelings, learning, memories (even faulty ones) and imaginings that provide the foundations for whatever wisdom we attain.
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Listen!
13 Friends of The Pod later and the momentum of preparing for, recording and publishing this endeavour has invigorated. Each week I get to spend time with the people who can directly influence my daily work and open my mind and heart to what is possible. What a rouse!
But what does your pod even do? It gives a platform to some of Sydney and Australia’s best sustainability thinkers and doers to showcase what makes them so unique and valuable in their efforts to achieve meaningful impact for all of us. It also creates a place for the listener every week to hear directly from those who have attempted and achieved in what many of us are trying to do. As this issue stresses - access to wise people and wise conversations help all of us.
Thank you to each of the guests over the last month.
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Events!
Just this week at Customs House in the middle of Vivid Sydney we had fun, clenched in anxiety at what the future may hold, drew on the wise advice of previous critical global leaders and tried to make sense of the big wide world of foreign affairs and international diplomacy and what it all means for climate action with Bob Carr.
From an ever increasing ethno-nationalist India that just yesterday set a new national temperature record of 52.9 degrees in Delhi, to deep-seated corruption in South Africa including in its energy system that hampers their energy transition, the series of U-turns and nationalist rhetoric that permeates the UK while Indonesia’s emissions increase at record levels that spur their economic independence ambitions, to the big kahuna that is whatever may occur in the US not just in this election but what it might for its next election in 2028 and what world that could be. A lot was covered and people left engaged, entertained and enthralled by what they heard and curious to ponder what forces domestic elections and shifting global relations may unleash on our ability effectively address the climate crisis.
Plus - Bob Bingo! We had a little fun along the way with a game of bingo plus a Finding Nature Golden Ticket giveaway where winners will gbe treated to an upcoming supper club night with us and Bob Carr in the intimate setting of Bustle Studios.
The event program for Winter will be announced shortly. If you have ideas or suggestions please get in touch. As well, if you have a need to engage your clients or customers in novel, meaningful and memorable ways, please don’t hesitate to reach out to chat.
