truly reflect on one’s experience, and learn from it, and emerge
renewed and refreshed.
FRIENDS AND MENTORS
As much as we each need such regular respite, we need true
engagement too; we need mentors and friends and groups of
allied souls. I know of no leader in any era who hasn’t had at
least one mentor: teachers who found things in them they
didn’t know were there, parents or older siblings, senior asso-
ciates who showed them the way to be, or in some cases, not
to be, or demanded more from them than they knew they had
to give.
When asked who had inspired him, Jamie Raskin said, “The
people I’ve admired most are the people I know or know of his-
torically who’ve been able to see seemingly unrelated things
coming together. One of my favorite people was Martin
Luther King. Something I read by him when I was a kid had
such an effect on me. He said that all life was interrelated, all
humanity part of one process, and to the degree that I harm my
brother, to that extent I am harming myself. A lot of leadership
is based on the ability to see how all humanity is related, how
all parts of society are related, and how things move in the
same direction. My father has this quality, too. He’s able to
make those kinds of connections and see the humanity in
everyone.... My dad taught me how to think and my mom
taught me how to write.”
Aviator Brooke Knapp said, “I learned my sense of quality
and performance from my grandmother, the matriarch of the
family. It was she who demanded that I finish college.”
Knowing the World