The process went something like this: First you'd shoot for 20 pages. Then you'd editto 10. Then five. Then finally, two-a two-page, single-spaced paper that didn't merelysummarize. It rendered all the fat out of a body of ideas, boiling it down to the veryessence of its meaning. And then you'd start all over again the next week, with a different massive text. The philosophies and ideologies themselves certainly left an impression on me.But the rigor of the distillation process, the exercise of refinement, that's where thereal learning happened. It was an incredible, heady skill to master. Through the years, I'veused it again and again-the mental exercise of synthesis and distillation and getting tothe very heart of things. The intellectual process I learned in that class is also life's process. Because every lifeis a Great Work, with all the richness of its gifts, and the wealth of its possibilities. When you graduate from here, you exit with thousands of pages of personal text onwhich are inseribed beliefs and values shaped by years of education, family interactions,relationships, experiences. And buried within those thousands of pages is your personaltruth, your essence. So, how do you distill your life down to its essence? You can begin by confrontingyour fears. I understand now, 25 years after that class: it is through a similar, personaldistillation process...that I have encountered my own fears, and mastered them. Each time I encountered fear, each time I had another moment of 'ah-hah,' I wasgetting closer to identifying my essence-my true heart, my true self. The first epiphanycame in a moment of realization that I really did measure up. It was about conqueringthe fear of inadequacy. Remember when you entered Stanford, as a 17-or 18-year-old kid, or an eager gradstudent? You were at the top of the heap.
