It is indeed no blessing to know the future, but it is a gift, particularly in times of crisis, to have a pretty good idea of what is coming next.

“Generals are always prepared to fight the last war.”– Winston Churchill

The worst decisions I have ever made are those that try to correct the past.

We overcompensate or second guess or simply take the road “less traveled” and think, as Robert Frost so beautifully wrote, that it will make “all the difference.” While the past is a wonderful teacher, it is but a factor, not a blueprint.

If we have learned anything over the past six years, and certainly after January 6th and the midterm elections, it is that the Social Compact is real and serves as the bedrock for a civilized society.

“Ah death, a change of clothes.”–The 14thDalai Lama

The endless fields of amber grain. Valhalla so far in the distance it is, we are sure, just shy of eternity. Mortality, we have decided, is not for us. “Heaven can wait.”

When there is a lack of honor in government,the morals of the whole people are poisoned.”– Herbert Hoover

In honor of Independence Day and our 500th podcast we dedicate it to the memory of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the three Freedom Summer organizers murdered, June 1964.

How do we find the strength to keep going? I know from so many recent conversations that I am not the only one to have those days when the fatigue will not dissipate and getting out of bed feels like fighting gravity.

The problem with infidelity is not so much the act but the loss of trust.

The leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s first draft of Dobbs v. Jackson Health Organization is an act of unfaithfulness to the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic norms and is one more destructive blow to a country based on a voluntary experiment known as democracy.

After being falsely blamed for King Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church and of infidelity, incest and seduction by witchcraft, Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded. It was, of course, powerful gaslighting, gleefully engaged in not just by the King, but by the insiders of the Royal Court. Sensing her weakness, they piled on and, among other things, referred to the Queen as “the concubine.” The King had eyes for Jane Seymore.

What’s enough? When are we satisfied? The brilliance of capitalism is that it keeps us motivated—ever creating, ever expanding. Its fatal flaw is that, for many of us, we are never satisfied. There is always more. Just one more thing to make us fulfilled and happy. We even need to hire therapists to confirm that we are content with being content.

As Clint Eastwood said, “Tomorrow is promised to no one.” The world is anything but static. Perhaps we should eliminate our generational demarcations—Z, Millennials, X, Baby Boomers—and just refer to us all as the “Whiplash Generation.”

We have now, all of us, looked into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eyes and we are troubled by what we see.

I have a special relationship with China, developed over a quarter century of business travel. At one point, my multiple annual visits to Beijing gave me a ringside seat to a metropolis, once known as a “bicycle city,” transforming into a city of eight lane highways and gleaming new Chinese-built automobiles. It is a remarkable country, with Americans still trying to figure out, “How do we compete? How do we co-exist?”

I have always been amazed at the confident abandon with which we use words like “due diligence,” as if we can accurately and fully read and understand every risk — past, present and future. The more information we have, the more surprised we seem to become by endless eventualities.

Each year we produce a Year-In-Review eBook with a theme based on the year that was, filling it with our 50-or-so columns and hundreds of podcasts. 2021 seems to be about learning to live with loss — with nearly 5.5 million people worldwide dying of Covid-19

There have been a few moments of remarkable hope over the decades that I never thought I would live to see and literally took my breath away. The fall of the Berlin Wall. The collapse of apartheid and the subsequent election of Nelson Mandela. The election of Barack Obama. The rise of the Internet.