Author: Rick Bellingham

“The five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the ones we lost.  They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling.  But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.”  Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, best-selling author on death and dying.    “Sustainable development is the pathway to the future we want Read More

“A rejection of absolutism, in all its forms, may sometimes slip into moral relativism or even nihilism, an erosion of values that hold society together, but for most of our history it has encouraged the very process of information gathering, analysis, argument, and persuasion which allows us to make better, if not perfect, choices – not only about the means to our ends, but also the ends themselves.”  Barrack Obama, The Audacity of Hope:  Thoughts Read More

“If we want to have good citizens, we need to create common spaces in which individuals can talk about the moral and ethical dilemmas that they have faced and how they resolve them.”  Howard Gardner   The more I read about the Israeli-Hamas War, the more confused I get.  The moral and ethical complexities are overwhelming.  I listen to Thomas Friedman, Brett Stephens, Nick Kristof, David Remnick, David French, David Brooks and Ezra Klein.  (Yes, Read More

“Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women radiate, in their lives and their works. . . . . Eyes so used to darkness as ours will hardly be able to tell whether their light was the light of a candle or that Read More

“In the face of patriarchy, it is a brave act indeed for both men and women to embrace, rather than shame or attempt to eradicate, the feminine.”  Alanis Morissette “When humans invented inequality and socioeconomic status, they came up with a dominance hierarchy that subordinates like nothing the primate world has ever seen before.”  Robert Sapolsky “We can learn the art of fierce compassion – redefining strength, deconstructing isolation and renewing a sense of community, Read More

“Age does not protect you from love.  But love, to some extent, protects you from age.”—Anais Nin “Age is an issue of mind over matter.  If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.””—Mark Twain Last week, my wife went to North Carolina to visit a dear friend of 50 years who, after a torturous process and diligent search, was placed in a cognitive care unit due to her dementia.  We had known our friend as a Read More

In multiple surveys of presidential historians and biographers over the past 40 years, five presidents almost universally appear at the top of the “most effective leader” list:  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and the Roosevelts.  While there is much less consensus around who else should be similarly recognized,  if it were up to me, I would add three more faces to Mount Rushmore:  FDR (consistently picked among the top 5) as well as JFK Read More

“Whatever you think rigor looks like, you should go up a few notches.”  Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Academy “Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.”  Dean Koontz, NYT best-selling author One of my favorite lines is “don’t believe what you think.”  We can have a lot of vigor for a particular idea or belief independent of the amount of rigor we invest to substantiate Read More

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” —Victor Frankl “People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.” —Plato Growth can be for better or worse. Growing physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually is almost always a good thing Read More

“Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.” —Thich Nhat Hanh “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” —Marcus Aurelius Life is so easy.  There are only two required tasks – we have to breathe and we have to die.  In their hit  song, Dust in the Wind, the group Kansas sings “All your money won’t another minute buy.”  Read More

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” —Martin Luther King A friend recently asked me why everyone called George Clooney by his real name and very few people knew that Fonzie’s real name was Henry Winkler.  My wife said, “that’s easy – George Clooney has been in Read More

“Part of spiritual and emotional maturity is recognizing that it’s not like you’re going to fix yourself and become a different person.  You remain the same person, but you become awakened.” —Jack Kornfield “To be, or not to be?  That is the question – whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, AND, by opposing them, end them?”  —Shakespeare, Read More

“We all have different narratives; all of our narratives are at different stages of development.”  —Viola Davis “If they were right, I’d agree, but it’s them they know not me.  Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away.”  —Cat Stevens I’ve been thinking lately about how the narratives we create for our lives, or those that are imposed upon us, can limit or expand our possibilities.  The question is, “how Read More

“Ideologies separate us.  Dreams and anguish bring us together.”  — Eugene Ionesco “The ultimate end of any ideology is totalitarianism.”  — Tom Robbins “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”—   Eleanor Roosevelt “For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.”  — Margaret Hefferman Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd.  Without innovation, it is a corpse.”  — Winston Churchill My Read More

“I am my own sanctuary and I can be reborn as many times as I choose throughout my life.” —Lady Gaga After reading the New York Times every morning, I need to find a sanctuary where I can recover from the daunting and depressing news around the world.  For me, that means retreating to my bedroom to meditate for 30 minutes and playing my guitar for 30 minutes more.  My little sanctuary helps me to Read More

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.”  —Raymond Williams “Radical simply means grasping things at the root.”  —Angela Davis “A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they are dead.”  —Leo Rosten “America has never been moved to perfect our desire for greater democracy without radical thinking and radical voices being at the helm of any such quest.”  —Harry Belafonte “A radical inner transformation and rise to a Read More

In French, the word for wine is vin.  If you want to order a glass of red wine, you say:  “Je voudrais un verre de vin rouge, s’il vous plait.”  In this post, I’m going to use VIN as an acronym to discuss the importance of finding connections with people according to Values, Interests, and Needs.  I like VIN as an acronym and vin as a drink because they represent the flavors of connections as Read More

 “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”  John Maynard Keynes “Old friends pass away, new friends appear.  It is just like the days.  An old day passes, a new day arrives.  The important thing is to make it meaningful:  a meaningful friend or a meaningful day.”  Dalai Lama “We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.”  George Bernard Shaw Read More

I joined the Army in 1967 identifying as an IBMer and was honorably discharged in 1970 feeling more like an SDSer. (Student for a Democratic Society).  I interviewed for a job at IBM before I started basic training at Fort Knox in the hopes they would keep me in mind when I got out.  The Army told me they would send me to Monterrey, California for 6 months of German language training and then on Read More

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.  And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”  Dalai Lama “Service is the rent we pay for being.  It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”  Marian Wright Edelman In my work with organizations, I am often asked to facilitate strategic planning sessions.  I always start the process with three questions: Why do you Read More

Come gather ’round peopleWherever you roamAnd admit that the watersAround you have grownAnd accept it that soonYou’ll be drenched to the boneIf your time to you is worth savin’And you better start swimmin’Or you’ll sink like a stoneFor the times they are a-changin’ Bobby Dylan In 1988, I spent a couple of weeks investigating the health and safety infrastructure in China because my employer at the time, Northern Telecom, was working with the Government of Read More