Everything one does in life even love occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
And I love that even in the toughest moments when we're all sweating it - when we're worried that the bill won't pass and it seems like all is lost - Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother he just keeps getting up and moving forward... with patience and wisdom and courage and grace.
I saw a drummer play once when I was a kid and I thought that's really cool. You know you're moving. You're using your arms and fingers. So I tried it and I loved it.
The speed of communication the speed of information transfer the cheapness of communication the ease of moving things around the world are a difference in kind as well as degree.
I agree that it is not just the extremists who harbor bad thoughts or engage in bad acts but they are usually the source of the polarization and try to keep education and communication of the main stream from moving forward.
I had a very insightful friend who warned me back when I stopped reading scripts 'It's easier to change directions while you're still moving.' If you stop it's harder to get started again. I still don't think I made the wrong decision but he was right.
I do genuinely believe that the political system is not linear. When it reaches a tipping point fashioned by a critical mass of opinion the slow pace of change we're used to will no longer be the norm. I see a lot of signs every day that we're moving closer and closer to that tipping point.
As far as friendships go things change even without the fame. People start moving on. I have a few friends that are married and are starting to have kids and I'm like 'Oh my goodness gracious - that's so insane.' I also have friends who are just doing their own thing which is cool.
Sometimes we look for those thunderous things to happen in our life for our lives to change or go in the other direction. We seek the miracle. We seek the parting of the seas the moving of the mountains. But no it's a quiet thing. At least for me it was.
One of the advantages of moving quickly is if you do something wrong you can change it. What technologies tend to do is they tend to make a lot of mistakes... but then we go back and aggressively attack those mistakes - and fix them. And you usually recover pretty quickly.