Good Morning, Sisyphus
My father, a retired banker, returns to work at his office after a luncheon podcast interview in which he talked of his strategies for a purposeful and happy retirement. One of his secrets is taking on impossible missions, a habit which led my mother one day at breakfast to greet him with, "Good morning, Sisyphus." Having worked for more than a decade to promote education reform in Massachusetts, he is now working on ways to advance science, keep America strong, and expand the percentage of the world's population who live in free nations. The percentage now stands at 46 percent, according to an analysis by Freedom House. To a pragmatic optimist like my father, that figure simply begs for someone to set a goal of having more than half the world live in freedom. He walks a mile to his office each day eager to push the stone up the hill again, no matter how many times it rolls back.
We ate at Legal Sea Foods, where the restaurant noise was moderately loud, but I hope you can follow these excerpts of our conversation:
Thursday, February 16, 2006
