A Newsletter of Newsletters

The Sultan’s Gift by Antonio Fabrés, 1885 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons)

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” — George Eliot, 1871

As I was putting this newsletter together, I contemplated the complexity of a seemingly simple word: score.

That five-letter Wordle guess holds many definitions, among them:

• Count of twenty

• A line made with a sharp instrument

• Grudge

• Musical composition for a movie

• Physical copy of musical notation

• Number expressing accomplishment

• Success in obtaining something, perhaps illicit

For those of you keeping score at home, today’s entry contains more than a score of essays on leadership, which is quite the score for a single newsletter.

Ideas and content that range from the profound to the banal whoosh by our screens at the speed of a swipe every day, being absorbed at a rate governed by our brains or our thumbs.

Which is where curation comes in.

Derived from the Latin cura, meaning care, curation is simply that: caring.

When we curate, we save people time, help them understand what’s important, and give them context as to why.

With so many entries in my newsletter over the last few years, I realized that there are some that may have never reached you, because you’re overwhelmed, or maybe you’re new to these parts.

But I’ve linked together some ideas that I think are essential to leadership and humanity, worthy of putting in one place.

Things like hope, vulnerability, character, duty, accountability, optimism, humility, empathy, resilience, kindness, and many more.

These are some of the many virtues of leaders — the kinds of people we ought to respect and emulate.

Because leadership is a journey — a journey of self-improvement — I invite you to take this journey with me through Timeless & Timely.

It all began when I sent you on a hunt, beginning with Change Emerging from Tragedy, a true story of a tragic loss of life in Boston and the civic improvements that followed.

That essay contained a link to Finding Hope, in which leaders are encouraged to find a silver lining. Examples included the Titanic, a plague of grasshoppers in the upper Midwest, and two events from the Civil War.

Finding Hope

Plus, there were a series of other newsletters included there: