The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

iPod touch: the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform?

(note: this article was originally posted on my blog for O'Reilly Digital Media.)

"We believe one of the iPod's future directions is to become the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform." So said, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer at their recent earnings call.

Okay, so let’s play this scenario out. Start with the premise that in most homes these days, reliable wireless connectivity is pretty much a given.

Now, add to this environment a device that fits in your pocket, generates no heat, has Wi-Fi capabilities, a touch screen and killer integrated media capabilities (it’s an iPod, after all).

Finally, give this device - the iPod touch - the ability not to only browse the Web, but to run local ‘client’ applications as well (e.g., the iTunes Wi-Fi music store, maps, widgets).

To be sure, there are some caveats (there always are with new platforms) but the possibilities for such a platform are pretty amazing.

The Wi-Fi Mobile ‘Platform'
Some time in February, Apple is due to release an SDK for building applications that run on iPhone and iPod touch devices.

The addressable market for such applications is potentially quite large. Apple’s own estimates suggest that it will move 10M iPhones this year. If a quarter of the 100M iPods sold to date can be converted to iPod touch owners, that is a combined market that dwarfs the size of Nintendo’s breakout Wii gaming system.

If Apple is smart, they will get religion about making it easy for developers to build local applications and services that are native to the iPhone/iPod platform versus artificially limiting them to ‘pseudo-applications’ that are wholly web-based.

If they got religion on this point they could cultivate a devoted ecosystem of third-party developers, penetrate new verticals and achieve even deeper synchronicity across the universe of Apple/Mac devices, software and services.

To Apple, I would say this. Remember the lessons of Microsoft and the importance of building a thriving ecosystem. It secures the consummate ‘unfair advantage’ to its progenitor by offering greater platform diversity to consumers, making them want to lock themselves in, which has the net effect of giving pricing protection to the platform builder at the center of the ecosystem.

Twenty years ago, Microsoft figured this out and played chess to Apple’s checkers, almost extinguishing Apple in the process. I remember this time well since, at the time, I was selling to Apple’s base of schools, entertainment and graphical creative types. It was painful to watch a great company’s demise.

It remains to be seen if Apple drinks the Kool Aid this go around or not. If they succumb to exercising too much control and force developers into a hobbled web-centric apps model, they risk turning off what would otherwise be a naturally evangelical following. I hope they make the right call.

Mobile Platform Envy
In the scenario that I envision, applications/services would be targeted at two primary use cases. One is living room spaces, where connectivity is assured. The other is intermittent connectivity environments, where having local applications with local data enables users to strike a balance between online dynamism and application availability/persistency. Consider:

- How useful would a Quicken application be that could sync between your iPod touch and the desktop? Application scenarios come to mind for receipts inputting, bill payment, balancing of your checking account and daily cash management. Who doesn’t struggle with this one? A rich application environment with touch screen, input forms and drop-down menus feels like a winner.

- About 15 years ago, the Interactive Network was service that allowed you to participate in an interactive fashion with TV game shows and sporting events. Unfortunately, it was pretty limited and required that a special hardware box with a dedicated phone line be connected to your TV. Plus, no one knew what the hell interactivity meant since the Web was still pretty nascent, so it failed. But with an iPod touch, an interactive TV programming guide application becomes possible that allows you to systematically interact with your favorite TV programs (think: sports, game shows, finance, reality TV, etc.) and connect with others who are watching the same program - in real time.

- What if all of the businesses that you frequent could maintain an interactive version of their customer loyalty program with you? You could always have coupons and discounts of interest at your fingertips, and could manage communications with them just as easily (information requests, booking reservations, etc.). Such an application is perfect for intermittent connectivity.

- Imagine a virtual DJ application where iPod touch users could allow third party DJs to ‘program’ what users see and hear on their iPod touch by pushing information feeds, video, audio, photos and the like. Users could choose to IM, SMS or talk live with others in the 'audience' in a one-to-one or one-to-many fashion. It’s like Pointcast for the Web 2.0 generation.

- It seems really clear that role-playing games (RPG) and virtual worlds have a logical place in this landscape. Similarly, there are a bunch of games that could take advantage of the input and movement functionality of the iPod touch device. What about playing backgammon with someone remotely but in real time?

- Finally, I would be willing to bet that A LOT of people would want to use such a device as an e-wallet application. Far from waxing poetic about futuristic services that require integration and customization that does not exist today, there are a bunch of products that can be ordered online and either delivered to you or that are local enough that you could pick them up. What about a service that aggregates all of the menus in your area of restaurants offering delivery service?

Given that it could be the perfect device for local and ultra-targeted advertising, making the ROI seem clear, one wonders if this is the killer device for an ad-supported Wi-Fi service.

Maybe that explains rumors of a reference design integrating Google’s Android (open handset platform) with the iPod touch. Perhaps this also explains Google’s recent announcement that they are upping their commitment to iPhone optimized applications.

Is the iPod touch destined to be the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform? Or jut the Newton revisited? What do you think?  Me? I just bought one so I am voting with my pocketbook.

UPDATE 1: Interesting analysis by Needham & Co. suggesting that Apple is letting iPod touch cannibalize iPhone sales to grow the overall market and convert larger existing iPod base.

UPDATE 2: Been using my touch device for about four or five days now, and two issues.  One, the flow of the touch virtual keyboard does not compare to my Blackberry 7130.  Whereas, with the latter I happily write long blogs (~500-1000 words), with touch, short notes are all that is palatable.  Two is that the wi-fi performance and reliability pales in comparison to my MacBook Pro in the exact same spot of my house.

UPDATE 3: Two pretty cool moments with the touch device over past couple of days.  One, playing with the Google Maps application I can say without qualification that it is sweet.  The combination of touch-screen with the dynamic richness of an application makes it the closest I have seen (and in many ways superior) to the pinned maps application my partner Steve Lee and I pioneered back in 2003 (he now leads Google's efforts in local search and maps on mobile).  Two, watching Lost Season 3 finale the other night, I had never seen the show before but with touch by my side (and an informationally subtitled version of the show on ABC - smart!), I was able to bring up Lost entry on Wikipedia, flip touch sideways and get basically caught up with first three seasons. Not bad. Quite enjoyable, in fact.

UPDATE 4: See my new post, 'iPod touch: take two.'  Basically, my thoughts on the iPod touch from a user perspective and some ruminations on how Google and Apple intersect and/or clash.

Oil, Vinegar and Volatility

Here is a bookend for you.  On one side, you have “oil and vinegar;” namely, our odyssey into a war with Iraq that was launched on the premise of reversing the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism, bringing democracy to the Arab states and (implicitly) protecting access to one of our most economically critical resources – oil.

Here, as Maureen Down of The New York Times eloquently captures in ‘Red, White and Blue Tag Sale,’ not only have we failed in our stated objectives, but, as she notes, “our addiction to oil has allowed our pushers in the Persian Gulf to go on a shopping spree to snap us up.”  That's the vinegar.

Specifically, China and Arab countries now have a staggering amount of treasury securities…the oil-rich countries are sitting on so many petrodollars, in fact, that they are taking advantage of the fire sale dynamics to buy eye-popping stakes in our major financial institutions.

For example, Citigroup, which raised $7.5 billion from Abu Dhabi in November, raised another $12.5 billion, including from Singapore, Kuwait and Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal. Merrill Lynch gave $6.6 billion in preferred stock to Kuwait, South Korea, a Japanese bank and others.

The irony, she notes, is that if the president had spent the trillion he squandered on his Iraq adventure on energy research, we might have broken the oil addiction, and potentially changed the power dynamics in the Middle East.

Instead, we have an economy that is teetering on the brink of a recession, “fueled” by an expensive, unilateral war and crude oil prices that have shot up 4X since 9-11 (from the low $20 range to the $90+ range).  Such is the bitter legacy of the twice-elected “mission accomplished” gang.

On the other side of this bookend is volatility, and specifically, the unpredictable, but truly staggering impact that seemingly random events can have in the larger scheme of things.

In ‘Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,’ Nassim Nicholas Taleb offers up a potent graphic that provides some context for making sense of today's rocky stock market. 

It spotlights how in the last fifty YEARS, the ten most extreme DAYS in the financial markets represent half the returns…and yet conventional finance sees these one-day jumps as mere anomalies.

I will defer to the reader to discern what one bookend has to do with the other, and how one should play their hand moving forward as citizen, voter and/or investor. 

As alluded to in 'Financial Tsunamis,' and approached from a completely different angle in 'On Intellectual Honesty,' we live in an increasingly interconnected world where understanding the storylines and their respective arcs is not enough. 

You need clear narratives about how the chicken parts coalesce to form a living, breathing chicken and scenario plans for navigating the (turbulent) road that lies ahead.

Metamorphosis: Change your Life

As I spoke to Charlie O., our largest client, who owned five large shopping centers comprising over one million square feet of real estate, I know that what he was most interested in hearing about was our strategy to lease his current vacancies.  But I couldn't help myself. 

“Charlie,” I said, “The internet is going to change a lot of industries. It is this generation’s steam engine and it is destined to give rise to pseudo trains, railroads and a host of entrepreneurial engines that we cannot yet imagine.”

“Interesting,” he offered.  What else could he say?  It was 1993.  “Now about my vacancies…” 

I didn't know it at that moment, but the credits had officially started to roll on my career as a real estate entrepreneur.

Five months later, on the fortnight of starting my third real estate company with my long time business partner, I had the epiphany that lead me to essentially start over in the very nascent internet space.

When I say nascent, let me set the time.  The web browser had not yet been created.  As such, Netscape had not yet been born, there wasn’t the VC-driven plethora of riches that we have come to know and love.  Heck, my dream gig was in multimedia. Dot com wasn't even a twinkle. The term didn't exist.  I knew literally no one in a VC-funded startup.

In terms of specific job prospects, I had none. What I did have was faith. Faith that if I was true to myself, I would accomplish my goals. Faith that, maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough, the cream would rise to the top.

And my personal truth was telling me that no matter how successful I was becoming in real estate, the bottom line was that I was in the wrong body of water for me personally and no amount of snooze buttoning this reality would make it less so.

Lest I paint a false picture, the transition was not seamless. Overnight, I went from running a company with hundreds of clients and offices spread across the bay area to a junior sales person.

I went from six figures to about $30k but I knew that taking the plunge would not be easier tomorrow when I was locked into a lifestyle and my ego was even more intertwined with my then-current professional velocity.

The irony is that within six months I was promoted from junior sales to a regional sales manager, and within three years I had started my first high teach start up.

Two years after that I had my first real liquidity event, and two years after that, I had my first breakout liquidity event.

I have often looked back on those times, the path that I chose and the seemingly little data that drove me to take the plunge, and one thing stands out.  Amazingly, once I took the plunge, I never looked back.

So if you are a would-be entrepreneur or someone just trying to make a material change in your personal life, what is the moral of the story from My story?  It is this:

1. You are one year from being able to manifest great change in your life. Take the plunge today, and twelve months from today you will truly be 'in the game.'
2. You are just three years from feeling truly competent and unquestionably 'belonging' in whatever body of water you choose to swim in.
3. You are just five years from being on 'top of your game,' an expert and a role model that others look up to.

This premise is liberating because it means that real, life-changing change is in your hands, it is workable so long as your are patient but dedicated to working towards clear, tangible and achievable milestones that are harmonious with your personal truth, whatever it is.

Commit and ye shall find your path.  Honest.

The tyranny of the ‘All or None’

(Just in case you were wondering, Mother Theresa makes a special guest appearance later in this post.)

Why can’t we get along?  Why do we define ourselves in terms of blue states and red states, as liberals or conservatives, as anti-war or pro military, as if these things were mutually exclusive?

Why do so many New Years resolutions to accomplish specific professional or personal goals fall by the wayside only days and weeks into the New Year? 

Plans to lose weight, to exercise more, to move ahead in one’s career, to spend more quality time with loved ones, to get organized, and on and on it goes.  Why can’t we get it done? 

It’s the ‘All or None’ syndrome at work. 

We fall into the trap of defining ourselves and others in terms of absolutes.  We make black/white decisions about whether a given situation is failing or succeeding.  And depending on how we view the world this particular day, we either cope or we quit. 

Other times, we fall prey to too forcefully asserting ourselves, grabbing real or emotional territory and refusing to consider other perspectives whether such ground is rightfully ours or not.

In an intellectually honest place, we have to see that from this behavior we end up closing doors, missing opportunities and creating dead-ends.

We also end up missing the opportunity to connect with others on a human level.  When multiplied day after day, week after week over time, this casts real karmic gravity.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  We don’t have to be victims of impatience, malfeasance or intellectual laziness.  We don’t need to isolate ourselves. 

Metaphorically speaking, we are building steps. If we can figure out steps ‘to what,’ then we can write it down.  That is step one. It will be iterative in nature.   

From there, we can start moving forward.  By ‘moving forward,’ I mean that we can start being proactive, and formally map out where we want to journey and how we want to get there. 

Then we can start building a boat to navigate those particular seas.

Mother Theresa once said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act.  If I look at the one, I will.” 

The one is you.  Change begins within you but once you commit to taking that step (and externally communicating your mission with consistency and clarity to others), your path is destined to be golden and landscaped with many rich and interesting connections. 

Can you think of a reason to wait?  I can't.

Pit bull Politics: How Bush Stacks Up

For me, logical analysis is all about the narrative.  The narrative provides the definition of the situation and the schema for making sense of seemingly disparate puzzle pieces. It is akin to an experienced tour guide taking you to the key attractions and dispensing the essential nuggets required to truly soak in a great destination.

So how does one make sense of the Bush presidency, a horror film already in progress, seemingly approaching the end credits but very much still subject to a shocking, grisly ending?

James Wolcott writes a searing indictment of the Bush Presidency in the February issue of Vanity Fair (it’s the one with the new Indiana Jones movie on the cover).  “How Bush Stacks Up” is a provocative, compelling read and the perfect excuse for picking up a copy of Vanity Fair if you have never read this great magazine.

* * *

If you have been following the presidential primaries, there are a couple of different articles worth reading on Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani, and Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, respectively.

In “Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?” Maureen Dowd contemplates Mrs. Clinton’s surprise primary victory in New Hampshire, which some say was sparked by her human (or staged) display of emotional behavior shortly before the primary.

Here is an excerpt, but read the full article:

There was a poignancy about the moment, seeing Hillary crack with exhaustion from decades of yearning to be the principal rather than the plus-one. But there was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing.

On the Rudy front, in “A Tale of Two Giuliani’s,” Michael Shnayerson documents in excellent detail the disparities between public Rudy – New York savior and 9/11 hero – and private Rudy. 

As someone who was once pre-disposed to vote for the man, I must say that article after article chronicle someone whose less visible private reality is deeply at odds with his public persona, and unfortunately (for him), Rudy is riding the wrong coattails (Bush legacy) at exactly the wrong time. 

Here is an excerpt from that article:

On the back of 9/11, Rudy Giuliani refashioned himself as a national hero, a top presidential candidate—and, through his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, became a very wealthy man. But the questionable backgrounds of some of the firm’s clients make one wonder what Rudy wouldn’t do to make a buck. As Giuliani’s former crony Bernard Kerik faces trial, the author uncovers troubling signs of greed, poor judgment, and conflict of interest.

Some elections matter more than others.  This one is a biggie, so get educated, build your own internal narrative.  And vote.

Demonstration Logic

My Bikram yoga teacher recently said something worth noodling on as she was giving guidance on a yoga pose. 

She said that we should treat every pose as if we are giving a demonstration.

The point here is not to show off, be a phony, assert superiority or any such drama but rather, to practice what you preach with specificity, zeal and precision. 

This also recognizes the existence of group energy and how by striving to perform at a high level, you encourage others to do the same.

It hearkens me back to a great article that I once read about Ron Popeil of Ronco.  This is a guy that has built a number of products that have become part of our culture, in the process generating billions of dollars of sales. 

Part of his 'unfair advantage' is that he has always treated product MARKETING and product DEVELOPMENT as part of the same animal such that when it gets to the point of the actual infomercial, both the STEAK and the SIZZLE portions of the demonstration are synchronized from product to demo and back.

Can you think of any areas where there might be goodness if you embraced demonstration mindset?

Five technology trends to watch in 2008

Ever since I read “The Art of the Long View” many years back, I have been a big advocate of scenario planning. Scenario plans enable you to ‘begin with the end in mind’ (Covey-speak) so that you can better plan out and orchestrate specific strategies relative to your personal and professional goals.

By having a sense of what tides are rising or falling you can think more crisply about what ‘boat’ in what ‘body of water’ you want to be plotting your course within in the days, weeks and months ahead. 

Me personally, the body of water that I am focusing on these days is digital media services; namely, the intersection of rich media, community and advertising/marketing in a mobile broadband enabled world. 

Thus, unsurprisingly, my trend watch is decidedly titled towards this arena.  What follows are five macro trends that I expect to grow in impact over the course of 2008:

1.    Privacy/Personal Data gets its ‘AHA’ moment: There has been a lot of ink spilled over the past couple of years on the topic of privacy, online security and its relationship to our personal data (here’s my swag).  Until recently, the topic was sufficiently abstract and complex that the average person did not even ‘know what they did not know.’  That is changing as buckets like “identity theft,” “targeted marketing” and “social networks” become part of our lexicon and provide clear framing from which narratives can be articulated, meaningful policies can be crafted and better products can emerge.  This is the 2000-pound elephant on that table the few have intelligently talked about, but they will in the year ahead.

2.    Mobile Starts to Look like the Web: There is an analogy about dogs walking on their hind legs.  While they can do it for short intervals, no one would ever claim that that is what they were designed to do.  Until recently, such has been the story about the web on mobile devices.  Clunky interfaces, limited bandwidth, stripped down functionality and proprietary (read: closed) networks have all resulted in the mobile equivalent of the dog walking on its hind legs. That is changing, as Apple’s iPhone has raised the bar not only for handset manufacturers, but service providers as well.  Expect to see new classes of web-ready smart phones proliferate the market in 2008.  As service providers and handset makers are forced to open up what has historically been a closed platform model, look for new, innovative mobile services to trickle into the market.  Also, expect to see mobile marketing and advertising models move out of diapers and into adolescence, powered by the intersection of locative/GPS data, richer device-level media content and meta-information culled from users’ formal and informal social networks.

3.    ‘Open’ is the New Black: Everyone talks about the goodness of open platforms, but the Internet and technology industry has generally been dominated by proprietary platforms, walled gardens and closed services/networks.  That seems to be changing as the premise of getting third parties to plug into and extend your platform (read: Facebook’s F8, Google Maps API, Google Open Social, Twitter) represents a new ecosystem model that is essentially the opposite of Microsoft’s legendary ‘embrace and extend’ approach.  Here the goal is to get others to embrace your platform so that you can extend its utility, thereby increasing your target users’ reason for and return on engagement.  This is one trend that could hit a wall and be relegated to faux trend or emerge as a transformative engine for innovation in the year ahead.  I am guessing the latter, but worth watching regardless.

4.    Convergence Emergence: What do you get when you combine YouTube’s library of sports videos with Yardbarker’s sports information service and integrate it with GTalk into the ESPN360 broadband sports network?  Perhaps a great collaborative entertainment service for rotisserie league fanatics (see my past blog post on this topic).  Or, imagine a network of virtual DJs programming the music on your iPod touch and serving up other news and information based on your profile of interests and viewing/listening behaviors.  In 2008, we will start to see new services emerge that combine your favorite voice, data, video and information services into new-fangled service ‘recipes.’  Convergence has been long anticipated but as of yet undelivered.  The combination of open platforms with an endless stream of web sites and web services starts to make convergence ready for prime time in the age of ubiquitous mobile broadband.

5.    M&A Heats Up Again: My final trend is not so much of a tech trend as it is an industry driver in the year ahead.  My thesis is as follows.  Too much funding has led to lots of innovation but too few breakout, financially viable businesses.  At the same time, the IPO market has not opened up, and likely won’t in the coming year, forcing many a startup to look for an exit.  By the same token, lots of larger companies that once dismissed the Web 2.0 model as  a passing fad or a simple feature add are having the ‘come to Jesus’ moment that this trend is a lifecycle problem that they will need to institutionalize into their online strategy.  For those late to the party, buying versus building will be a hard requirement, as this is a land grab.  For those who have already fallen on their faces in rolling out the 1.0 version of their Web 2.0 strategy, they understand that they lack the manpower and know-how to deliver a credible solution that both meets external market requirements and reconciles internal IT resource constraints in a manner that empowers marketing personnel to win the market battle. Therefore, startups that have built solutions which can be readily customized, administered and optimized by non-technical personnel are likely to find a motivated market to acquire them.  I call this the motivated buyer, rational seller scenario.

As I like to say, while I may not be right, at least I am not confused. ;-)

Are there any trends that stand out for you in 2008?

Related Links:

1. M&A: More Deals Worth More $$ in Q1 (@ Silicon Valley Insider)

The Internet is a blind five-year-old

A friend of mine specializes in the black art known as search engine optimization (SEO), as well as its sibling, search engine marketing (SEM).  He has a great analog for thinking about search engines and Internet marketing that I will call the “blind five-year-old” axiom.

Basically, he equates search engines to blind five-year-olds, which is to say that you need to tell them 3-4 times what you want them to do using simple, distinct, consistent terms, and you need to recognize that because they are blind, they don’t care about pictures.

More to the point, since the goodness of optimizing yourself for the blind five-year-old that is the search engine results in “free” organic search returns (versus “paid” keyword search returns via search engine marketing campaigns), unless you have an unlimited marketing budget, in many respects your primary audience is the search engine – not your human end consumer - since SEO is the cheapest lead generation strategy available to you online. 

This reality heavily instructs the type of content that you have on your web site, how information bits are structured and presented there, and equally important, your viral marketing efforts.

It is admittedly paradoxical to refer to a search engine as a ‘primary audience’ when ostensibly one of the greatest virtues of the Internet is about empowering the individual and niche interests via long tail, narrowcasting, one-to-one marketing, social networking building and wisdom-of-crowds methodologies. 

The ‘paradox’ topic as well as the best practices and outcome goals for SEO/SEM is for a different post, however.

This post is focused on the metaphor of the blind five-year-old and how embracing it changes the definition of the situation in thinking about your personal and/or professional communications and messaging imperatives.

What brought me home to this point was a book that I am reading right now called, “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.” 

The book posits that sticky concepts are ones that are simple to the point of being stripped to their very core without being reduced to meaningless sound bite. 

Put another way, they do not confuse the tail with the dog or needlessly get sidetracked in describing the tail, other dog parts or dog-ness.

They rigorously focus on finding the ‘lead,’ or first sentence, that compels you to pay attention to the proverbial dog and more importantly, respond accordingly.

How do they do this? Beyond simplicity, they present something unexpected to the audience with a narrative that is concrete, delivered from credible sources, imbued with emotional value and which can readily be packaged up and spread via story-telling vehicles.

Simple and logical in concept, but like any discipline takes clear outcome goals, lots of trial-and-error and attention to detail to make actually work.

I am admittedly pre-disposed to a book espousing such concepts, being a student of Memetics (see “Virus of the Mind”), Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of mavens, connectors and salespeople in “The Tipping Point” and the power of identifying/preserving the core in building companies that stand the test of time (see “Built to Last”).

But the book is an engaging read, and being a fan of trying to boil things down to their core essence, take a picture of them and keep them in my proverbial front pocket, I will submit that you should wear the blind five-year-old axiom for a bit, and focus on defining your lead – be it your life purpose, career goals or unfair advantage that you bring to planet earth – and test out your core message repeatedly with the the blind five-year-old in mind.

The Meaning of Life

A man goes to the dentist to have a cavity filled, and while under the effects of the nitrous oxide gas he sees with absolute clarity the meaning of life.  Unfortunately, once the anesthesia wears off, his memory is foggy and he can no longer place to words what he experienced. 

Undeterred, he commits himself to write down the specifics the next time that he is in such a state.  The time comes, and sure enough the man sees life and its meaning with total clarity.  With paper and pen handy, he faithfully writes down what he has just experienced. 

The next morning he enthusiastically pulls out what he has written from his pocket.  What does it say?  It says, “A strange smell of gas pervades the room.”

Too often we approach life from the perspective of moral and intellectual certitude that we have found the one 'true' path.  Anointing oneself as the arbiter of truth, we dismiss alternative perspectives and judge others, holding tightly onto to something that in the end is as amorphous as gas.

The irony is that the practitioner of such a perspective is its greatest victim.  Not only are they partially blind since they willingly limit their vision, but they walk the lonely path that comes from elevating oneself above others. 

Do you find yourself regularly falling prey to the ‘all’ or ‘none’ syndrome, wherein every situation is rigidly, blackly defined as good, bad, right or wrong, where there is no acceptance of the inherent gray-ness that is the paradoxical essence of life? 

If so, then you are a vampire of sorts, infected with a heart that cannot breathe in the same oxygen as others, relegated to walk the night alone. 

To be clear, I have been this person, and more so than anything I can remember how such judgment of others manifested in me being ready to pounce – mostly on myself – when plans went awry and expectations were not met.  Without compassion for others, I could not hope to be compassionate for myself.  It’s the yin-yang principle at work.

For me, the change came when I gained humility, the simple understanding that so much of life is randomness, full of untraceable karma and just plain luck. 

Far from rendering me powerless, this perspective empowered me to reach new heights by freeing me to see and contemplate new directions, create more accommodating spaces and giving me the heart and soul needed to truly connect with others.