Dear Montaigne:
Learning as Legacy
When we leave this drama called life, we leave something called a legacy. The “stuff” we accumulate either creates mischief for inheritors or goes in the landfill. This is not a noble purpose for a life well lived.
Recently, I lost a dear friend and learning partner, Pete Thigpen. His exemplar of a life well lived left a different kind of legacy. He left us his ideas, enthusiasm for learning, and examples how rich a life of the mind and spirit can be.
Each of us can follow models of learning passion from writers like Montaigne and other contemporary role models. And hopefully we reject the charlatans and hucksters who abound in the media and politics hawking goods to “enjoy the good life.”
Learning opportunities have been vastly expanded by technology. We can reach out for courses tailored to meet our specific needs, find obscure books, attend webinars or simply create on-line discussion groups.
Recently I became a proud charter member of the Sausalito Young Men’s Book Group. We have cool T shirts and we meet roughly 6 times a year. A friend and neighbor, Bill Mandel, a lawyer by day, and a passionate learner is our leader. By using basic technology we are now a learning organization of peers, a prospective legacy for others.
Pete and I, with help from many dear associates, were able to knit together a rich learning experience called the Good Life Seminar. Its genesis was through a mutual friend and learning enthusiast, Jim O’Toole, a Professor of Business at USC and at that time the head of programs at the Aspen Institute. After helping him “update” the classic seminar at Aspen (developed by Mortimer Adler) he suggested we start something similar on the West Coast.
Jim introduced me to Pete and we fashioned the Good Life Seminar eight years ago at Cavallo Point, a special and inspiring lodge overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco. Pete’s enthusiasm for scholarship, love of poetry, philosophy, good drama, and fiction was joyful and highly contagious.
Pete’s legacy includes service and learning as a leader: Marine Corps, Levy Strauss and a variety of boards. Like so many he learned from his relationships from family, friends, and students as well as study. We each can extract leaning from the same and other sources of our life’s experience.
Pete and I became learning partners, sharing and discussing our reading delights. We thought about Montaigne and his deliberate learning ventures. Montaigne credits his friend and associate, Le Boetie, with his most joyous and fecund learning days. We understood that relationship.
Since Pete’s passing, many of the “Good Lifers” have asked how they could help fill the void after Pete. I am so happy and grateful that Jesper Madsen, Lad Burgin, Wendy Richards, Tom Sargent, Henrik Nielsen, and Negar Tayyar have made specific offers to help move Good Life onward and upward.
Each of us has a similar prospect for living life forward: continue to learn; share with others; create a healthy fund of knowledge and give it away as we can. As Jonas Salk pleaded in his book “Survival of the Wisest,”: Create a legacy of knowledge, push the collective wisdom forward, and leave behind an enriched culture and knowledge base.
In gratitude to all of you who have….
John, February 9, 2018