A group that included a Choctaw-Navajo native, a few elderly couples and mothers of small children met Saturday, Feb. 26, at the Green Lake Library. Together, they explored two questions of the book "Guiding Lights: The People Who Lead Us Toward Our Purpose in Life": "Who has influenced you?" and "How are you passing it on?"
Eric Liu, author of the book and host of KUOW's "Power of Voice," is currently moderating Talking Circles: Community Conversations, a series of Q&A discussions of the book and its ideas.
It's a gathering presented by the Washington Center for the Book. Other sponsors included the Seattle Public Library Foundation, Starbucks Coffee and Verizon Wireless. In explaining his choice of sponsors, Liu said that "the premise of Starbucks and libraries is creating space.... I've always been that way, trying to connect dots between one thing to another."
To write the book, which was published last December, Liu interviewed 15 different "mentors," including a Julliard musician, pitcher Freddy Garcia's baseball coach and an acting coach. The scope of his project expanded, he said, as "invitations" for disclosure poured in and a short list of mentor types exploded into a long one.
Career changes
Liu himself has worked in high circles. He had a brief stint in the corporate world as the vice president of marketing at RealNetworks.
Liu also served as a presidential speechwriter and domestic policy advisor. He refers to Bill Clinton as "my old boss," a man who had "the greatest goals on the planet, whose political gifts were unmatched."
While exciting, Washington, D.C., left him hungry for the in-depth, interactive nature of learning and mentoring explored in his book. Thus, "Guiding Light" and Talking Circles became reality.
Liu described working in D.C. as "like flying 300,000 feet in the air and seeing everything but...not seeing the trees up close."
Mentoring
Liu intercepted questions and stories from the audience while relating them to his book. After two years of research, he exposed the myth of "the self-made man": He doesn't exist.
In the myth's place should be a "composite mentor," he found. Equally dangerous is to put a single teacher up on a pedestal, he said.
"There are people who are not mentors, but tormentors," Liu explained. "[Mentoring] bonds community, and it is the stock of social capital."
On the back of the book, Bill Moyers praises it as the "first lesson in civilization: Life is reciprocity." Caroline Kennedy said it offers the "prospect of self-discovery."
"I love your book, by the way. You are a great writer," a man told Liu Saturday, describing his personal experience finding his purpose in life: organizing a national committee.
"I came from an Indian reservation created for failure, a federal money-laundering system denying Indian voice and expression," said attendee Patricia Anne Davis, a Choctaw-Navajo native. "Then I started thinking of our clan system as a mentorship; I had to make my life a win-win in a system that promotes and teaches win-lose."
Liu talked about tapping into previously unseen talent. He drew excerpts from his book, including the Proctor & Gamble executive who nurtures the marketing prowess of a seemingly maladroit employee. As P&G CEO John Pepper confided to him, one must "skin knees, get a bloody nose and fall down," before raw confidence emerges, he said.
For more information about Liu and "Guiding Lights," visit www.guiding lightsnetwork.com.[[In-content Ad]]
