There is often a great volume of pain behind kindness.

Of all the ways to respond to tragedy, the best is this: Remove it from the world. If I take a bullet for someone, I’m not then trying to dig that bullet out of me, load it into a gun, and fire it into the next person. Should I ever find myself in that situation, my goal is to stop the bullet.

We have the choice to do that every day. When the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune strike you, be glad of this: Those slings and arrows were going to strike someone, and they struck someone with the fortitude to survive it and the strength to end their path right then and there. The world is kinder because you turned to the next person not with a loaded weapon, but with a kind smile.

There is a subtle but great joy in doing something once, and then immediately doing it again just a little better. Like standing at the beginning of a long and fulfilling journey and catching a glimpse of the long arc of the road ahead. You enrich yourself each time you beat a personal best, and striving for such things in your endeavors is the mighty human spirit at work.

You should never rely on the black swan event to change your circumstances. However, black swan events happen all the time.

Life is practically made of weird events. The average of all of them might trend toward some sort of middle flow, but in the moment of each event, you’re living on the spike, not the trend line. There’s no way to fully be prepared for such things, so instead: Be mobile. Adaptable. Ready to ride that spike to the sky.

For most people, the journey of their life will not have one single other person who’s there for every part of it.

People will walk with you for a while. Some, very briefly – but they may change your gait. Others will skip and frolic with you for a long way. Still others will leave and rejoin your path many times, while there are some who chase you or who lead as you follow.

Don’t be mad about any of that. Your path is yours, and those that cross it are all blessings in their way, even when the two roads finally fork. You were better to have shared a few miles, even with people who made your journey harder.

After all, there’s no rush.

Leaves of paper, falling from spines of books, tall like trees in their stacks.

Sometimes we leave behind information, equipment for a long journey. But equipment rusts. Better still to leave behind curiosity and interest, that the person taking their own journey can find their own tools.

New books are added like new leaves in Springtime, hands climbing the stacks like branches to see the light at the canopy.

I love telling other people’s stories.

Every story shared with me becomes a part of my story, and vice versa. When I tell those stories, I’m sharing learned wisdom with a larger group, helping to increase an entire community’s wisdom. I’m an amplifier – if a colleague or a client uses an innovative idea to overcome a challenge, now that idea can propagate to many more people. I love being able to respond to a request for advice with a success story from someone else who’s faced the challenge.

Sometimes I even build new connections this way. I’ll share a story with someone, and they’ll find great value in it, and ask follow-up questions – questions I might not have answers for, since I didn’t live the experience. So I’ll make an introduction instead, putting the two people together, and now the great network effects are multiplied even further.

When you hear a good story, it’s a gift. It’s not meant to be hoarded!

I have a particularly bad habit that I’ve tried to work on. I know it’s bad, but it doesn’t manifest very often – part of why it’s hard to break. I see other people do it and disapprove like a hypocrite, but I’m working on it.

I shield people from bad things.

It’s in my nature, and I think a lot of people do this for the same reason – we don’t want people we love to be hurt. So we hide things from them, or carry the burden ourselves. But you can’t. People are strong, and a burden carried by two is lighter than one carried by one. When there’s a crisis, share it. Give them the opportunity to love you as you love them.

Shells are very helpful. They provide a safe place to grow if you’re an egg. They’re handy armor against predators if you’re a turtle. And they can give you a place to think if you’re a human.

“Coming out of your shell” is seen as an automatic goal if you’re a person, but we don’t lend enough credit to learning the ability to go in and out of them as you need. Yes, you should come out sometimes – a turtle would be safer if it never came out, and also it would be dead. But you sometimes need a certain calm safety that the world will not always provide for you, and it’s handy to learn how to generate it yourself.

Don’t think of your own shell like the egg’s – something only to protect you until you’re ready to abandon it forever. Grow one like the turtle’s. Give yourself space when you need it, poke your head out into the sun when you’re ready. But keep it with you when you need it again.

If someone frequently messes up a particular task, it can be frustrating for everyone. If they mess it up not as badly one day, that’s a huge accomplishment! The steps toward true mastery don’t just go from failure to minor success to major success. There are usually a dozen or more incrementally less worse failures along the way. And we should praise that!

If you, especially as a teacher or guide, express the same disapproval toward the not-as-bad failure, you’re discouraging the very process that will lead someone out of that swamp. Losing a game by three points is way better than losing a game by ten points, even if you still lost. Not everything has to be indexed against a win. Just making less of a mess is wonderful.

Being present is an act of defiance. So is making a friendship bracelet when you’re scared. This is not the end of the story, not the end of your story. It’s the middle, and the middle is where the ending is written. Be present in the middle. Make friends, and friendship bracelets. Let people make friends with you. There is a long way to go before the end, yet.