Today I spent another great day escorting my thoughts around the museum – this time the MoMA. Being alone with art and my thoughts is an enjoyable experience and one done too infrequently for my taste. 

The best exhibit by far in my opinion was about Jacob Lawrence, “One Way Ticket”. Besides the art, music and history, ten poets were asked to share their thoughts and feelings after being inspired by the pieces. Links to two of my favorites are included below:

Rita Dove – “Say Grace”

Tyehimba Jess – “Another Man Done”

Series Overview 

Yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finalized a long delayed rule that will force all publicly traded companies to publish a ratio between the amount it pays its CEO and its median salary. 
The rule was included in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, but is only now (finally) gaining traction. Companies will have to start revealing this information by 2017 (seven years after it was proposed). 
Elizabeth Warren also took the SEC’s Chairwoman (Mary Jo White) to task by calling her leadership of the SEC over the last two years “extremely disappointing”. Ouch. 

In thinking about how different people approach their problems, large and small, several thoughts and images came to mind. 

Some people are fearful of, and even fall in love with, their problems. They put them on a pedestal and build a shrine to them. They stare at them, think about them, getting smaller relative to them all the while. They sing praises to them in the form of complaint, not even realizing that no one else appreciates their tune. In idolatrous fashion, they sacrifice all manner of things to them, even sacrificing themselves. This is not what problems are for. 

Problems should be appropriately studied, not obsessively, but to extract learnings and to determine solutions. To solve them they must be dimensioned. After they have served this purpose, they should be strung up nice and tall, and then beat to pieces like a piñata. Something sweet will hopefully come out of it.