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five why's since we were toddlers. But, no matter our ability, we can always improve. If we
hope to understand the nature of information in systems, we have so much to learn. Plus, frame-
shifting takes practice. When we're stuck in a rut, we go soft. So we must leave the comfort of
our category, again and again. Like muscles, our minds are antifragile. Stress makes them
stronger. In today's fast-paced era, the ability to change is a literacy. We can get better at getting
better, but only if we're willing to face our fears.
Each time I begin a project, I experience a moment of terror. My new client is trusting me with
their business. They believe I can help. But what if I can't? What if I'm unable to answer their
questions or solve their problems? What if they already know what I know? Intellectually, I
know these fears are unfounded. I've been here before, many times, and I always find my value.
But that doesn't ease my mind. The path to peace runs through the fear. The only way out is to
start.
That's why I'm so eager to begin hiking. It's the day before I'll arrive on Isle Royale. I've been
planning this trip for months. Today, I have a nine hour drive from Ann Arbor to Houghton in
Michigan's upper peninsula. That's a long way to worry, so I try to make it fun by playing with
strange connections. I stop at Walloon Lake and reflect on Walden Pond. I've been there too. In
college at Tufts one winter's night we tried mixing beer, trespassing, and transcendentalism.
While breaking the law, I broke through thin ice. I had to crawl back to shore on all fours, terror-
ized by the crack and whoop of the frozen lake. But now, eating lunch where Ernest Hemingway
spent summers as a child, I recall one of my favorite stories of his,
For Whom the Bell Tolls
, which
opens with an epigraph from a meditation by the metaphysical poet, John Donne.
No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod
bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor
of thy friend's or of thine owne were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Man-
kinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
When I was a child in England, my dad often quoted it to me. Even today, this poem strikes a
chord, but the ring of its bell isn't wide enough, because it's limited to man. In today's flatter,
fatter era of climate change, mass extinction, and lifestyle disease, “no island is an island” may
be a fitter frame. To draw us together is good, but nature belongs in the circle.
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