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What’s the Reward for Uncovering Truth?

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A friend emailed me the below excerpt from Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening. The closer we get to the core of all being, the more synonymous the effort and its reward.

So often we anticipate a reward for the uncovering of truth. For effort, we expect money and recognition. For sacrifice and kindness, we secretly expect acceptance and love. For honesty, we expect justice. Yet as we all know the life of experience unfolds with a logic all its own. And very often, effort is seen, and kindness is embraced, and the risk of truth is held as the foundation of how humans relate. However, the reward for breathing is not applause but air, and the reward for climbing is not a promotion but new sight, and the reward for kindness is not being seen as kind, but the electricity of giving that keeps us alive.

It seems the closer we get to the core of all being, the more synonymous the effort and its reward. Who could have guessed? The reward for uncovering the truth is the experience of honest being. The reward for understanding is the peace of knowing. The reward for loving is being the carrier of love. It all becomes elusively simple. The river’s sole purpose is to carry water, and as the force of the water deepens and widens the riverbed, the river fulfills its purpose more. Likewise, the riverbed of the heart is worn open over time to carry what is living.

All this tells us that no amount of thinking can eliminate the wonder and pain of living. No wall or avoidance or denial – no cause or excuse – can keep the rawness of life from running through us. While this may at times seem devastating, it is actually reassuring, because while the impermanence of life, if fixed on, can be terrifying, leaving us preoccupied with death, the very same impermanence, if allowed its infinite frame, can soothe us with the understanding that even the deepest pain will pass.

Hiring a Head of Content

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In September 2017, we announced Village Global, a new type of venture capital fund that is networked at its core. From who we have as financial backers, to how we invest, everything we do is about empowering and connecting people.

So far we’ve been heads down, focused on generating outcomes worth writing about. We’re finally ready to start telling some of the stories of the Village network, and, as such, we’re hiring a Head of Content and Marketing.

The Role

You’ll spread ideas and insights that matter to the tech community. You’ll pull out the best gems from our events, podcasts, and other media and repurpose them across different social media channels.

You’ll interview Village Global luminaries, network leaders, and founders — some of the most talented people across fields, disciplines, and companies — and create original, compelling content based on their stories.

You’ll join the ground floor of a new kind of venture firm and build our content and marketing strategy with us from the ground up.

You’ll go from 0 to 100,000’s of monthly readers/followers/subscribers, and aim to become one of the most recognizable brands in venture capital.

You’ll join a small team where you’ll learn about all aspects of venture capital. We want this to transform your career.

Interested? Here’s what we’re looking for:

You’re a writer, editor, and curator at heart. Maybe you run content for a startup or do marketing for a big company. Maybe you’ve been a founder who loves to write on the side. Maybe you’re starting off your journalism career but want to explore a different way of applying your skill set. You understand storytelling, narrative hooks, and you know a catchy idea when you hear it.

You understand online marketing and want to get better. You already have experience and good instincts when it comes to social media, VC and entrepreneurship Twitter feeds, email marketing, and running experiments to build brands. You geek out on audience building and engagement and use metrics to keep score.

You’ve always wanted to build something from the ground up. We’re looking for someone who can help architect a high level content strategy but who can also execute on it from start to finish on their own. Over time, you might even build a team around you to help fulfill our potential as a firm.

Venture capital and Silicon Valley fascinate you. You don’t necessarily need deep knowledge of all things technology and VC, but you should be wanting to learn fast to become a domain expert.

We’re based in San Francisco, but we’ll accept remote.

To be clear, this role is not:

  • General PR — If your dream job is pitching the New York Times and spinning out press releases, this isn’t that.
  • General marketing — This is not about designing corporate schwag, booths at conferences, etc.
  • Event management/production — We’re already covered there.

Does this role at Village Global sound like something you’d be terrific at?

If so, we want to talk to you. Email us and include a link to your LinkedIn profile: [email protected]

Do you know someone who’d be great for this job? If you refer the person we hire, we’ll pay you, the referrer, $5,000 as a thank you!

What I’ve Been Reading

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Books, books, books.

1. Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. Great historical fiction authored by a Pulitzer Prize winning writer who has command of every page. Set in Brooklyn during World War II, I learned a bunch about New York at that time, the mob scene, and scuba diving. The main character becomes the first female diver working on the Brooklyn docks.

2. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. My fifth or sixth book by Murakami. Kafka is totally engrossing. I read 200 pages of it straight through, in the middle of the night on a 12 hour flight. Kafka On the Shore, while set in modern day Japan, is as strange as any of his novels: cats who talk, fish fall from the sky, alter egos take on their own named characters, and characters enter others’ dreams. Murakami is peerless in his ability to create rich worlds that leave you in a trance. Critics often refer to Murakami’s novels as “dream like.” That phrase captures my reading experience 100%.

This is not a book with dozens of highlightable one-liners. But here are a few of my highlights:

“Actually, I don’t have any memories either. I’m dumb, you see, so could you tell me what memories are like?” Miss Saeki stared at her hands on the desk, then looked up at Nakata again. “Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”

I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don’t know, and I give up thinking about it.

“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”

3. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Harari.

The first 60% is a rehash of Sapiens. The next 40% is good (I highlighted 110 sentences!) but not great. Still worth reading if you’re a fan of Sapiens (as I am) if for no other reason than to get the refresh. A few random highlights:

If and when computer programs attain superhuman intelligence and unprecedented power, should we begin valuing these programs more than we value humans? Would it be okay, for example, for an artificial intelligence to exploit humans and even kill them to further its own needs and desires? If it should never be allowed to do that, despite its superior intelligence and power, why is it ethical for humans to exploit and kill pigs?

…

The technological solution to such dramas is to ensure we never have uncomfortable desires. How much pain and sorrow would have been avoided if, instead of drinking poison, Romeo and Juliet could just take a pill or wear a helmet that would have redirected their star-crossed love towards other people.

…

We just don’t know what to pay attention to, and often spend our time investigating and debating side issues. In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore. So considering everything that is happening in our chaotic world, what should we focus on?

4. Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder. Surprisingly gripping true life account of a hedge fund manager who makes a fortune in Russia by being contrarian, and then ends up making enemies with Putin. Timely, given the state of U.S.-Russia relations.

5. My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem. An engaging memoir from the legendary feminist and social activist. Stories from her travels, especially her visits to college campuses across the U.S.

Musings on Philanthropy After Hosting Refugees

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For much of 2017, we had LGBT refugees from Iraq and Uganda living at our house in the Bay Area. I sent out some private reflections and anecdotes about the experience to some friends. For those especially interested in the topic, feel free to email me and I can share with you.

Here are the thoughts on philanthropy that I’ve been mulling over after the tremendously fulfilling experience of hosting refugees.

Maximizing Philanthropic Utilitarian Impact vs. Emotional Satisfaction

My favorite charity to support is Give Directly. Give Directly sends money directly to some of the poorest people in the world with no strings attached. Backed by research, I believe Give Directly is one of the most efficient ways for your dollars to help those who need it most.

The challenge as a donor to Give Directly is that you don’t feel anything when you give. The money leaves your bank account and ends up in some stranger’s bank account. Then you move on with your life. Whereas when you host refugees, you feel very emotionally involved in the experience. But helping one refugee in the Bay Area is not making a dent in the global refugee issue in general, arguably one of the most important humanitarian issues of the next decade. The “systems”/impact part of my brain struggles with this.

What I realized this past year is that our experience hosting the men was a perfect 1-2 punch. By being extremely hands-on with three refugees, we generated the emotional propulsion to care deeply about the refugee issue more generally. We then used that emotional energy to engage at the systems level: learn how the systems work, research which organizations are helping, and begin to take steps to engage in philanthropy that would be more scalable.

Doing only Give Directly or any other type of super utilitarian and analytical but ultimately feeling-free giving would be emotionally unsustainable. Doing only refugee hosting or food bank handouts, or any other type of non-scalable, super local volunteer activity would undershoot on our potential to maximize impact. Do both — that’s what we learned.

Are the Financially Poorest People the Absolute Neediest?

When I donate to charity, in my own small way I try to prioritize helping the financially neediest on a global scale. For this reason, I haven’t given much to America-centric non-profits.

That said, the refugee experience has prompted me to re-evaluate an element of this belief. To what extent is financial poverty the truest proxy of neediness? The LGBT refugees from Iraq had phones, Facebook and Snapchat accounts, and exposure to most modern technologies that we have in California. In financial terms, they were/are richer than teenagers living in, say, the slums of India. At the same time, they’ve been disowned, indeed had their lives threatened, by their own family. And exiled from their country. And rejected by their religious community because of their sexual orientation. Who’s needier?

You Can Care About Complete Strangers. You Can Love People who Aren’t Biologically Related to You.

Complete strangers walk into your house. From a different culture, speaking a different language. They shack up with you. You help them. They help you. You argue with them. You laugh with them. You begin to care about them. You begin to love them.

I now have a glimpse, I think, into how and why people adopt children. You really can love people who aren’t biologically related to you. In our own ways, we truly grew to love the refugees who lived with us.

Scuba Diving the Great Barrier Reef

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It was a blast living on a boat for two nights (a “liveaboard”) and diving 10 times in the warm waters of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Cairns, Australia.

Our schedule was: Wake up at 5:30am, dive, eat breakfast, read a book on the sun deck, dive, read, dive, eat lunch, read, dive, read, go to sleep. Repeat.

It was my first time diving post certification. My ears still aren’t fully equalized, but beyond that, I had no issues and was able to really relax into the experience. Swimming amidst the fish and coral is really something.

Here’s a ~1 minute video I created with photos/videos from the dives. My iMovie for iPhone directorial debut…