living life in the age of terrorism

Thomas Friedman, OpEd columnist extraordinare of the New York Times, visited Google today. He imparted upon us five pieces of wisdom during a Q&A session with us.


(Thomas Friedman (far right) with Google's CEO
(far left), advertising director (left), and SVP of
Worldwide Sales (right))

He spoke about what he told Yale's 2003 graduates in his commencement address to them on how to deal with life in the "age of terrorism."

"You basically have two choices about how to live your life," Friedman told us and the Yale graduates. "One is to be a survivor and the other is to be a thriver. Be a thriver."

The other 4 points:

"The best way to thrive, very frankly, is to do what you love. Because if you do what you love you'll always love what you do, and 100% of people who love what they do end up thriving either emotionally or financially."

"My third rule is to be a good listener... Listening is a strategy of learning about the world in which you want to act, and listening is also about opening yourself to new possibilities that you have not thought of before, because listening means allowing other narratives that are working in the world to come to your attention before they bite you on the bottom... So go forth into the world and listen. It will amaze you, whether you become a journalist, a diplomat or a boss, how much you can accomplish in life, and how much you can get out of others, by just lending them an ear.

"Lesson 4, penultimate, is be a naive optimist. The world really needs more of them after 9/11."

"My last and final message, or lesson, is very brief. It's called "Call Your Mama." For me, the most searing images and stories of 9/11 were the tales of all those people who managed to use a cell phone to call their loved ones to say a last goodbye from a hijacked airplane or a burning tower."

His discussion with us was quite memorable, so much that I found his commencement address on the web and read all of it. It's one of the best I've seen thus far.