This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women
304
This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women
304eBookFirst Edition (First Edition)
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
An inspiring collection of the personal philosophies of a group of remarkable men and women
Based on the National Public Radio series of the same name, This I Believe features eighty essayists—from the famous to the unknown—completing the thought that begins the book's title. Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others.
Featuring a well-known list of contributors—including Isabel Allende, Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem, William F. Buckley Jr., Penn Jillette, Bill Gates, and John Updike—the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk from Rehoboth, Massachusetts; a woman who sells Yellow Pages advertising in Fort Worth, Texas; and a man who serves on the state of Rhode Island's parole board.
The result is a stirring and provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of people whose beliefs—and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them—reveal the American spirit at its best.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429918459 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 10/03/2006 |
| Series: | This I Believe , #1 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 59,589 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Jay Allison is one of public radio's most honored producers. He has produced hundreds of nationally broadcast documentaries and features for radio and television. His work has earned him the duPont-Columbia and five Peabody Awards, and he was the 1996 recipient of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Edward R. Murrow Award for outstanding contributions to public radio, the industry's highest honor. He was the curator and producer of This I Believe on NPR and he produces The Moth Radio Hour. Before his career in broadcasting, Jay was a theater director in Washington, D.C. He is also the founder of the public radio stations for Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Cod where he lives.
Dan Gediman is the executive producer of This I Believe. His work has been heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Fresh Air, Marketplace, Jazz Profiles, and This American Life. He has won many of public broadcasting's most prestigious awards, including the duPont-Columbia Award.
Jay Allison is one of public radio's most honored producers. He has produced hundreds of nationally broadcast documentaries and features for radio and television. His work has earned him the duPont-Columbia and five Peabody Awards, and he was the 1996 recipient of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Edward R. Murrow Award for outstanding contributions to public radio, the industry's highest honor. He was the curator and producer of This I Believe on NPR and he produces The Moth Radio Hour. Before his career in broadcasting, Jay was a theater director in Washington, D.C. He is also the founder of the public radio stations for Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Cod where he lives.
Dan Gediman is the executive producer of This I Believe. His work has been heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Fresh Air, Marketplace, Jazz Profiles, and This American Life. He has won many of public broadcasting’s most prestigious awards, including the duPont-Columbia Award.
Read an Excerpt
This I Believe
The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women
By Jay Allison, Dan Gediman, John Gregory, Viki Merrick, Nubar Alexanian
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 2006 This I Believe, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-1845-9
CHAPTER 1
Be Cool to the Pizza Dude
Sarah Adams
If I have one operating philosophy about life, it is this: "be cool to the pizza delivery dude; it's good luck." Four principles guide the pizza dude philosophy.
Principle 1: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in humility and forgiveness. I let him cut me off in traffic, let him safely hit the exit ramp from the left lane, let him forget to use his blinker without extending any of my digits out the window or toward my horn because there should be one moment in my harried life when a car may encroach or cut off or pass and I let it go. Sometimes when I have become so certain of my ownership of my lane, daring anyone to challenge me, the pizza dude speeds by in his rusted Chevette. His pizza light atop his car glowing like a beacon reminds me to check myself as I flow through the world. After all, the dude is delivering pizza to young and old, families and singletons, gays and straights, blacks, whites, and browns, rich and poor, and vegetarians and meat lovers alike. As he journeys, I give safe passage, practice restraint, show courtesy, and contain my anger.
Principle 2: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in empathy. Let's face it: We've all taken jobs just to have a job because some money is better than none. I've held an assortment of these jobs and was grateful for the paycheck that meant I didn't have to share my Cheerios with my cats. In the big pizza wheel of life, sometimes you're the hot bubbly cheese and sometimes you're the burnt crust. It's good to remember the fickle spinning of that wheel.
Principle 3: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in honor, and it reminds me to honor honest work. Let me tell you something about these dudes: They never took over a company and, as CEO, artificially inflated the value of the stock and cashed out their own shares, bringing the company to the brink of bankruptcy, resulting in twenty thousand people losing their jobs while the CEO builds a home the size of a luxury hotel. Rather, the dudes sleep the sleep of the just.
Principle 4: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in equality. My measurement as a human being, my worth, is the pride I take in performing my job — any job — and the respect with which I treat others. I am the equal of the world not because of the car I drive, the size of the TV I own, the weight I can bench-press, or the calculus equations I can solve. I am the equal to all I meet because of the kindness in my heart. And it all starts here — with the pizza delivery dude.
Tip him well, friends and brethren, for that which you bestow freely and willingly will bring you all the happy luck that a grateful universe knows how to return.
Sarah Adams has held many jobs in her life, including telemarketer, factory worker, hotel clerk, and flower shop cashier, but she has never delivered pizzas. Raised in Wisconsin, Adams is now an English professor at Olympic College in Washington.
CHAPTER 2Leaving Identity Issues to Other Folks
Phyllis Allen
Standing in the rain waiting to go up the steps to the balcony of the grand Theater, I gripped Mama's hand and watched the little blond kids enter the lobby downstairs. It was the fifties, I was "colored," and this is what I believed: My place was in the balcony of the downtown theater, the back of the bus, and the back steps of the White Dove Barbecue Emporium. When I asked Mama why this was so, she smiled and said, "Baby, people do what they do. What you got to do is be the best that you can be."
We got our first television in the sixties, and it brought into my living room the German shepherds, snapping at a young girl's heels. It showed children just like me going to school passing through throngs of screaming, angry folks, chanting words I wasn't allowed to say. I could no longer be "colored." We were Negroes now, marching in the streets for our freedom — at least, that's what the preacher said. I believed that even though I was scared, I had to be brave and stand up for my rights.
In the seventies: Beat-up jeans, hair like a nappy halo, and my clenched fist raised, I stood on the downtown street shouting. Angry young black men in sleek black leather jackets and berets had sent out a call from the distant shores of Oakland, California. No more nonviolence or standing on the front lines quietly while we were being beaten. Simple courtesies like "please" and "thank you" were over. It was official; Huey, H. Rap, and Eldridge said so. I believed in being black and angry.
By the eighties, fertility gods lined the walls and crammed the display cases of all my friends' houses. People who'd never been closer to Africa than a Tarzan movie were speaking broken Swahili. The eighties made us hyphenated: "African-American." Swaddled in elaborately woven costumes of flowing design, bright colors, and rich gold, I was a pseudo-African, who'd never seen Africa. "It's your heritage," is what everybody said. Now, I believed in the elusive promise of the Motherland.
In the nineties, I was a woman whose skin happened to be brown, chasing the American dream. Everybody said that the dream culminated in stuff. I believed in spending days shopping. Debt? I didn't care about no stinkin' debt. It was the nineties. My 401(k) was in the mid-six figures, and I believed in American Express. Then came the crash, and American Express didn't believe in me nearly as much as I believed in it.
Now, it's a brand-new millennium, and the bling-bling, video generation ain't about me. Everything changed when I turned fifty. Along with the wrinkles, softened muscles, and weak eyesight came the confidence that allows me to stick to a very small list of beliefs. I'll leave those identity issues to other folks. I believe that I'm free to be whoever I choose to be. I believe in being a good friend, lover, and parent so that I can have good friends, lovers, and children. I believe in being a woman — the best that I can be, like my mama said.
Phyllis Allen has sold Yellow Pages advertising for fifteen years. She spends about half her working hours in her car covering territory around Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. She composed her essay in her car and practiced reading it aloud in the phone company's utility closet. When she retires, she hopes to pursue her first passion, writing.
CHAPTER 3In Giving I Connect with Others
Isabel Allende
I have lived with passion and in a hurry, trying to accomplish too many things. I never had time to think about my beliefs until my twenty-eight-year-old daughter Paula fell ill. She was in a coma for a year, and I took care of her at home until she died in my arms in December of 1992.
During that year of agony and the following year of my grieving, everything stopped for me. There was nothing to do — just cry and remember. However, that year also gave me an opportunity to reflect upon my journey and the principles that hold me together. I discovered that there is consistency in my beliefs, my writing, and the way I lead my life. I have not changed; I am still the same girl I was fifty years ago, and the same young woman I was in the seventies. I still lust for life, I am still ferociously independent, I still crave justice, and I fall madly in love easily.
Paralyzed and silent in her bed, my daughter Paula taught me a lesson that is now my mantra: You only have what you give. It's by spending yourself that you become rich.
Paula led a life of service. She worked as a volunteer helping women and children, eight hours a day, six days a week. She never had any money, but she needed very little. When she died she had nothing and she needed nothing. During her illness I had to let go of everything: her laughter, her voice, her grace, her beauty, her company, and, finally, her spirit. When she died I thought I had lost everything. But then I realized I still had the love I had given her. I don't even know if she was able to receive that love. She could not respond in any way, her eyes were somber pools that reflected no light. But I was full of love, and that love keeps growing and multiplying and giving fruit.
The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential. Because of Paula, I don't cling to anything anymore. Now I like to give much more than to receive. I am happier when I love than when I am loved. I adore my husband, my son, my grandchildren, my mother, my dog, and frankly I don't know if they even like me. But who cares? Loving them is my joy.
Give, give, give — what is the point of having experience, knowledge, or talent if I don't give it away? Of having stories if I don't tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don't share it? I don't intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world, and with the divine.
It is in giving that I feel the spirit of my daughter inside me, like a soft presence.
Novelist Isabel Allende was born in Peru and raised in Chile. When her uncle, Chilean president Salvador Allende, was assassinated in 1973, she fled with her husband and children to Venezuela. Allende has written more than a dozen novels, including The House of the Spirits and a memoir, My Invented Country.
CHAPTER 4Remembering All the Boys
Elvia Bautista
I believe that everyone deserves flowers on their grave.
When I go to the cemetery to visit my brother, it makes me sad to see graves — just the cold stones — and no flowers on them.
They look lonely, like nobody loves them. I believe this is the worst thing in the world — that loneliness. No one to visit you and brush off the dust from your name and cover you with color. A grave without any flowers looks like the person has been forgotten. And then what was the point of even living — to be forgotten?
Almost every day my brother's grave has something new on it: flowers from me, or candles from the Dollar Store, or an image of the Virgin Maria, or shot glasses. There's even some little Homies, these little toys that look like gangsters.
Once my brother's homies even put a bunch of marijuana on there for him — I think my mother took it away. I think she also took away the blue rag someone put there for him one day.
Sometimes, when I bring flowers, I fix the flowers on the graves around my brother's grave. Some of the headstones have birthdates near my brother's; they are young, too. But many of them, if they have any little toys or things on them, those are red.
All around my brother are boys who grew up to like red, making them the enemies of my brother. My brother was sixteen when he was shot by someone who liked red, who killed him because he liked blue. And when I go to the cemetery, I put flowers on the graves of the boys who liked red, too.
Sometimes I go to the cemetery with one of my best friends, who had a crush on a boy who liked red who was killed at eighteen by someone who liked blue. And we will go together and bring a big bunch of flowers, enough for both of these boys whose families are actually even from the same state in Mexico.
There is no one but me and a few of my friends who go to both graves. Some people think it's a bad idea. Some people think it's heroic.
I think they're both being silly. I don't go to try to disrespect some special rules or stop any kind of war. I go because I believe that no matter where you came from or what you believed in, when you die, you want flowers on your grave and people who visit you and remember you that way.
I'm not any kind of traitor or any kind of hero. I am the sister of Rogelio Bautista, and I say his name so you will hear it and be one more person who remembers him. I want everyone to remember all the boys, red and blue, in my cemetery. When we remember, we put flowers on their graves.
Elvia Bautista, twenty-two, lives in Santa Rosa, California, where she works as a caregiver for the elderly and mentally handicapped. Bautista stayed after her brother's murder even though the rest of her family moved away. A high school dropout, Bautista now speaks to young people about the dangers of gang life.
CHAPTER 5The Mountain Disappears
Leonard Bernstein, as featured in the 1950s series
I believe in people. i feel, love, need, and respect people above all else, including the arts, natural scenery, organized piety, or nationalistic superstructures. One human figure on the slope of a mountain can make the whole mountain disappear for me. One person fighting for the truth can disqualify for me the platitudes of centuries. And one human being who meets with injustice can render invalid the entire system which has dispensed it.
I believe that man's noblest endowment is his capacity to change. Armed with reason, he can see two sides and choose: He can be divinely wrong. I believe in man's right to be wrong. Out of this right he has built, laboriously and lovingly, something we reverently call democracy. He has done it the hard way and continues to do it the hard way — by reason, by choosing, by error and rectification, by the difficult, slow method in which the dignity of A is acknowledged by B, without impairing the dignity of C. Man cannot have dignity without loving the dignity of his fellow.
I believe in the potential of people. I cannot rest passively with those who give up in the name of "human nature." Human nature is only animal nature if it is obliged to remain static. Without growth, without metamorphosis, there is no godhead. If we believe that man can never achieve a society without wars, then we are condemned to wars forever. This is the easy way. But the laborious, loving way, the way of dignity and divinity, presupposes a belief in people and in their capacity to change, grow, communicate, and love.
I believe in man's unconscious mind, the deep spring from which comes his power to communicate and to love. For me, all art is a combination of these powers; for if love is the way we have of communicating personally in the deepest way, then what art can do is to extend this communication, magnify it, and carry it to vastly greater numbers of people. Therefore art is valid for the warmth and love it carries within it, even if it be the lightest entertainment, or the bitterest satire, or the most shattering tragedy.
I believe that my country is the place where all these things I have been speaking of are happening in the most manifest way. America is at the beginning of her greatest period in history — a period of leadership in science, art, and human progress toward the democratic ideal. I believe that she is at a critical point in this moment and that she needs us to believe more strongly than ever before in her and in one another, in our ability to grow and change, in our mutual dignity, in our democratic method. We must encourage thought, free and creative. We must respect privacy. We must observe taste by not exploiting our sorrows, successes, or passions. We must learn to know ourselves better through art. We must rely more on the unconscious, inspirational side of man. We must not enslave ourselves to dogma. We must believe in the attainability of good. We must believe, without fear, in people.
Composer, conductor, pianist, and educator, Leonard Bernstein was longtime music director of the New York Philharmonic, where he led the highly successful Young People's Concerts series. Bernstein forged a new relationship between classical and popular music with his compositions West Side Story, On the Town, Candide, and others.
CHAPTER 6How Is It Possible to Believe in God?
William F. Buckley, Jr.
I've always liked the exchange featuring the excited young darwinian at the end of the nineteenth century. He said grandly to the elderly scholar, "How is it possible to believe in God?" The imperishable answer was, "I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from This I Believe by Jay Allison, Dan Gediman, John Gregory, Viki Merrick, Nubar Alexanian. Copyright © 2006 This I Believe, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Studs Terkel
Introduction
Jay Allison
Be Cool to the Pizza Dude
Sarah Adams
Leaving Identity Issues to Other Folks
Phyllis Allen
In Giving I Connect with Others
Isabel Allende
Remembering All the Boys
Elvia Bautista
The Mountain Disappears
Leonard Bernstein
How Is It Possible to Believe in God?
William F. Buckley, Jr.
The Fellowship of the World
Niven Busch
There is No Job More Important than Parenting
Benjamin Carson
A Journey toward Acceptance and Love
Greg Chapman
A Shared Moment of Trust
Warren Christopher
The Hardest Work You Will Ever Do
Mary Cook
Good Can Be as Communicable as Evil
Norman Corwin
A Daily Walk Just to Listen
Susan Cosio
The Elusive Yet Holy Core
Kathy Dahlen
My Father's Evening Star
William O. Douglas
An Honest Doubter
Have I Learned Anything Important Since I Was Sixteen?
Elizabeth Deutsch Earle
An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man
Albert Einstein
The Power and Mystery of Naming Things
Eve Ensler
A Goal of Service to Humankind
Anthony Fauci
The God Who Embraced Me
John W. Fountain
Unleashing the Power of Creativity
Bill Gates
The People Who Love You When No One Else Will
Cecile Gilmer
The Willingness to Work for Solutions
Newt Gingrich
The Connection between Strangers
Miles Goodwin
An Athlete of God
Martha Graham
Seeing in Beautiful, Precise Pictures
Temple Grandin
Disrupting My Comfort Zone
Brian Grazer
Science Nourishes the Mind and the Soul
Brian Greene
In Praise of the "Wobblies"
Ted Gup
The Power of Presence
Debbie Hall
A Grown-Up Barbie
Jane Hamill
Happy Talk
Oscar Hammerstein II
Natural Links in a Long Chain of Being
Victor Hanson
Talking with the Sun
Joy Harjo
A Morning Prayer in a Little Church
Helen Hayes
Our Noble, Essential Decency
Robert A. Heinlein
A New Birth of Freedom
Maximilian Hodder
The Benefits of Restlessness and Jagged Edges
Kay Redfield Jamison
There Is No God
Penn Jillette
A Duty to Heal
Pius Kamau
Living Life with "Grace and Elegant Treeness"
Ruth Kamps
The Light of a Brighter Day
Helen Keller
The Bright Lights of Freedom
Harold Hongju Koh
The Power of Love to Transform and Heal
Jackie Lantry
The Power of Mysteries
Alan Lightman
Life Grows in the Soil of Time
Thomas Mann
Why I Close My Restaurant
George Mardikian
The Virtues of the Quiet Hero
John McCain
The Joy and Enthusiasm of Reading
Rick Moody
There Is Such a Thing as Truth
Errol Morris
The Rule of Law
Michael Mullane
Getting Angry Can Be a Good Thing
Cecilia Muñoz
Mysterious Connection That Link Us Together
Azar Nafisi
The Making of Poems
Gregory Orr
We Are Each Other's Business
Eboo Patel
The 50-Percent Theory of Life
Steve Porter
The America I Believe In
Colin Powell
The Real Consequences of Justice
Frederic Reamer
There Is More to Life than My Life
Jamaica Ritcher
Tomorrow Will Be a Better Day
Josh Rittenberg
Free Minds and Hearts at Work
Jackie Robinson
Growth That Starts from Thinking
Eleanor Roosevelt
The Artistry in Hidden Talents
Mel Rusnov
My Fellow Worms
Carl Sandburg
When Children Are Wanted
Margaret Sanger
Jazz Is the Sound of God Laughing
Colleen Shaddox
There Is No Such Thing as Too Much Barbecue
Jason Sheehan
The People Have Spoken
Mark Shields
Everything Potent Is Dangerous
Wallace Stegner
A Balance between Nature and Nurture
Gloria Steinem
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Andrew Sullivan
Always Go to the Funeral
Deirdre Sullivan
Finding Prosperity by Feeding Monkeys
Harold Taw
I Agree with a Pagan
Arnold Toynbee
Testing the Limits of What I Know and Feel
John Updike
How Do You Believe in a Mystery?
Loudon Wainwright III
Creative Solutions to Life's Challenges
Frank X Walker
Goodness Doesn't Just Happen
Rebecca West
When Ordinary People Achieve Extraordinary Things
Jody Williams
Afterword: The History of This I Believe: The Power of an Idea
Dan Gediman
Appendix A: Introduction to the 1950s This I Believe Radio Series
Edward R. Murrow
Appendix B: How to Write Your Own This I Believe Essay
Appendix C: How to Use This I Believe in Your Community
Acknowledgments
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
1. Studs Terkel's foreword raises the question of truth and how we discern it. What do the essays in This I Believe tell us about the way we go about deciding what is true and what should not be believed? Do you think there are any absolute truths that apply to everyone?
2. In two essays reflecting the toll of war, Newt Gingrich emphasizes the need for vigilance ("I believe that the world is inherently a very dangerous place"), while John McCain celebrates the power of the quiet hero ("The true worth of a person is measured by how faithfully we serve a cause greater than our self-interest"). What is your approach to the tides of danger and victory, destruction and reconstruction that have shaped the world for as long as history has been recorded? Do you think the future can be more peaceful than the past?
3. Several of the essays describe discrimination, such as Phyllis Allen's recollections of growing up in a racially segregated town, and Eve Ensler's observations about atrocities committed against women. What do you believe is at the root of discriminatory behavior? What causes some members of society to feel justified in causing the suffering of entire populations? How can we ensure equality in the face of the forces behind discrimination?
4. What did you observe about the essays from half a century ago compared with contemporary ones? Which issues have remained constant? What new ones have arisen that Edward R. Murrow's generation could not have imagined?
5. Questions of mortality and immortality are raised throughout the book, from Isabel Allende's response to her daughter's death to Elvia Bautista's experience of visiting her brother's grave. At the heart of many of these essays is the notion that love endures beyond a person's lifetime. How does this book define a life well lived and a grief that is not in vain?
6. Martha Graham's "An Athlete of God" closes by describing the acrobat as "practicing living at that instant of danger. He does not choose to fall." In what way does this describe the tandem of fear and faith experienced in our daily lives? What does it take to "choose" not to fall?
7. What is the role of art and whimsy in shaping our beliefs? What do the contributors' words about fashion, reading, jazz, and other creative ventures say about the significance or value of imagination?
8. In "Seeing Beautiful, Precise Pictures," Temple Grandin describes how her ability to visualize resulted in humane new procedures for numerous livestock-handling facilities. What ethical balance shapes her work? What small vision could you translate into grand action in your community?
9. The contributors to this book express a broad variety of viewpoints about religious beliefs, including the belief that there is no God (Penn Jillette) and the belief that we should protect our fellow human beings from harm, even when their religious affiliations are quite different from ours (Eboo Patel). What cultural observations are made in the essays on religion? What is its role in shaping identities and worldviews?
10. Benjamin Carson pays eloquent tribute to his mother in "There Is No Job More Important than Parenting." What qualities make her a good parent? What beliefs enabled her to sustain and inspire her son? Who has held a similar role of redemption in your life?
11. In what ways does This I Believe serve as a time capsule for the dawn of a new millennium? What conclusions will future readers draw about our era when reading these entries in another half century?
12. Which of the essays resonated with you the most? Did any of them inspire you to become an agent for change, either globally or simply in the way you affect the life of another individual?
13. What do you believe? What were your greatest influences in shaping those beliefs? How have your beliefs changed throughout your life?
Related Subjects
Customer Reviews
Explore More Items
