Michael Puett is the most popular professor at Harvard. He wrote the book ‘The Path’ in which he tells us to forget about our personal purpose: it only limits our possibilities. ‘We’re just messy things. These messy things meet each other and develop patterns among each other. We need to change those patterns over the course of our lives to become better human beings.’ In a nutshell. I like his ideas. It’s nice to hear something away from the mainstream positive psychology kind of stuff.
Within Theory U we ask ourselves ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is my Work?’ Puett doesn’t see a higher purpose for us individuals. He got his thinking from the ancient Chinese philosophers and meets a lot of appreciation from the young Harvard students and a sold out Waalse Kerk in Amsterdam. Check out this video in which he shares his ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSDL9qJdyfg
It was pretty amazing to wander through Amsterdam and find everywhere in the center podia with philosophers. I went together with my colleague Lara and took the opportunity to brainstorm about the title of my forthcoming book. With 200 people we had a ‘dinner pensant’ at Hotel the Grand where we held a dialogue about topics like human flourishing, what the world will look like when we all live for 200 years and the future of education.
It was truly special to get so much input from different perspectives in such a short period of time. Thank you Martine and Dasym for the invitation!
