Mary—but he expressed his feelings like a lovesick teenager. In one letter, he wrote, “I love you and I hold you tight and kiss you hard.” And in another, “Every time I ever put my arms around you I felt that I was home.”
Dietrich wrote back with equal ardor. In a 1951 letter that began with the salutation “Beloved Papa,” she wrote:I think it is high time to tell you that I think of you constantly. I read your letters over and over and speak of you with a few chosen men. I have moved your photograph to my bedroom and mostly look at it rather helplessly.
Despite the obvious passion, the pair were not lovers. At one point, Hemingway offered a fascinating explanation to his friend and biographer A. E. Hotchner:We have been in love since 1934 . . . but we’ve never been to bed. Amazing but true. Victims of un-synchronized passion. Those times when I was out of love, the Kraut was deep in some romantic tribulation, and on those occasions when Dietrich was on the surface and swimming about with those marvelously seeking eyes of hers, I was submerged.
In Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir (1966), Hotchner reported that Dietrich deeply respected Hemingway’s thoughts and opinions. In one conversation with Hotchner, she paid Hemingway a beautiful tribute:He is always there to talk to, to get letters from, and in conversation and letters I find the things I can use for whatever problems I may have; he has often helped me without even knowing my problems. He says remarkable things that seem to automatically adjust to problems of all sizes.
Dietrich went on to describe a telephone conversation she had with Hemingway. It began innocuously enough, with Papa simply asking how things were going. She told him she had recently received an offer to perform at a Miami nightclub but was not sure she wanted to accept it. The offer made by the club was lucrative, she explained, but her heart was simply not in it. When she thought of refusing the offer, though, she found herself wondering if she was just “pampering” herself. Her explanation was met with a moment of silence on Hemingway’s part, after which he said, “Don’t do what you sincerely don’t want to do.” And then he added:
Never confuse movement with action.
Hemingway’s words immediately cleared up any doubts Dietrich was having about the decision. But it was her comment about the admonition that has been remembered to history:
In those five words he gave me a whole philosophy.
There are periods in all of our lives when we are especially receptive to the influence of others. During these times—often called teachable moments —a handful of words can so dramatically impact our lives that they literally become words to live by. That’s what happened to Dietrich. In five perfectly phrased words delivered at exactly the right moment, Hemingway provided Dietrich with a working philosophy she could use as a guide for the rest of her life.
Almost all of the people I know can recall a specific time in their lives when they had their equivalent of a Dietrich-Hemingway moment. In Norman Vincent Peale’s 1965 book The Tough-Minded Optimist, the legendary preacher and writer recalled a time shortly after graduating from college in 1920. Filled with fear and easily intimidated by the people around him, he was in great danger of failing at his first job as a cub reporter for the Detroit Journal. One day, as he was sitting in the office of Grove Patterson, the newspaper’s editor, Peale revealed his self-doubts to his boss. Recognizing that the young man needed a wake-up call, the crusty editor pointed a blunt, ink-stained finger directly into Peale’s face and said:
Never be afraid of anybody or anything in this life!
As Peale retold the incident forty- five years later, he said something that so many people have said when recalling words to live by from an early period of their life: “I remember that statement as though it were yesterday.”
Some words to live by don’t hinge on the chanciness of a teachable moment but are carefully orchestrated by someone who is trying make sure a life lesson is learned. In his 1998 book Pushing the Envelope All the Way to the Top, bestselling author Harvey Mackay recalled an incident when he was eight years old. As he was sitting on the banister at the top of a flight of stairs, his father looked up and asked him if he would like to learn a lesson that might one day save his life as a businessman. Intrigued, young Harvey agreed. “Just slide down the banister and I’ll catch you,” said his father. Becoming slightly suspicious, Harvey said, “But how do I know you’ll catch me?” Mackay’s father comforted the young lad by saying, “Because I’m your father and I said I would catch you.” Reassured, Harvey slid to the end of the banister—only to land in a tumble on the carpeted floor. As Harvey rose to his feet, his father announced:
Never trust anyone in business; not even your own father.
Business is business.
According to Mackay, the lesson stuck. He went on to write:Since then, I’ve gone to great lengths to make sure that any business arrangement I’m involved in is backed up with yards of paper that describe exactly who does what and what happens if they don’t. Understandings prevent misunderstandings. Banisters are great teaching devices.
Like Dietrich, Peale, and Mackay, you may recall a moment from your past when the words of another person so affected your thinking that you were given a whole philosophy—to recall Dietrich’s lovely phrase—or at least an invaluable new perspective to help guide you through life. I can still recall—with great clarity, in fact—a number of inspiring things my high school guidance counselor, Mr. Critchfield Krug, said to me after I had lost my way as a teenager. Some became mantras for me, including a saying I first heard from him:
Never be satisfied with less than your best.
For many people, profound and life-altering admonitions have been found in the pages of a book written by someone who died centuries earlier. For Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, such a book was a 1647 work written by Baltasar Gracian. Gracian was a seventeenth-century Spanish priest who often ran afoul of his Jesuit superiors because of his “worldly” interests. His most popular work is now well known as The Art of Worldly Wisdom, but for more than two hundred years after its publication it was known only by its Spanish title: Oraculo manual y arte de prudencia (The Oracle, a Manual of the Art of Discretion). In the mid–1800s, Arthur Schopenauer fell in love with the book, ultimately translating it into German in 1861. A couple of years later, Friedrich Nietzsche—a young Schopenhauer fan—got hold of the German version of The Oracle. His curiosity must have been piqued when he read Schopenhauer’s glowing endorsement: “Absolutely unique . . . a book made for constant use—a companion for life.” From the moment Nietzsche began paging through the book, he was riveted. A few years later he wrote about it: “Europe has never produced anything finer or more complicated in matters of moral subtlety.”
When one reads The Art of Worldly Wisdom today, it’s easy to understand why Gracian’s 1647 book had such great appeal to these two intellectual giants. In his presentation of 300 principles about living honorably and effectively, Gracian covered almost every aspect of life, including such predictable problems as insecure superiors, foolish colleagues, and enemies with malevolent motives. Even though The Art of Worldly Wisdom is often called “a book of maxims,” it is clear that the author viewed it as more of a rulebook for living. In laying out his rules, Gracian often spoke exhortatively:
Always act as if others were watching.
Always hold in reserve recourse to something better.
Always have your mouth full of sugar to sweeten your words,
so that even your ill-wishers enjoy them.
If there is too much display today there will be nothing to show tomorrow.
Always have some novelty with which to dazzle.
But it was when Gracian expressed his rules dehortatively that they packed the most punch:
Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.
Never share your secrets with those greater than you.
