Ideas Are Like Pizza Dough,

Downtime Is Where We Become Ourselves, Looking Into The Middle Distance, Kicking At The Curb, Lying On The Grass Or Sitting On The Stoop And Staring At The Tedious Blue Of The Summer Sky. I Don't Believe You Can Write Poetry, Or Compose Music, Or Become An Actor Without Downtime, And Plenty Of It, A Hiatus That Passes For Boredom But Is Really The Quiet Moving Of The Wheels Inside That Fuel Creativity.

The Problem... Is Emblematic Of What Hasn't Changed During The Equal Opportunity Revolution Of The Last 20 Years. Doors Opened; Opportunities Evolved. Law, Institutions, Corporations Moved Forward. But Many Minds Did Not.

One Of The Things That Got Me On This Topic For This Book Was That When I Was Researching The Column I Wrote In 2009 Saying That I Was Stepping Down From My Column At "newsweek" Because I Wanted To Make Room For Newer, Fresh Voices Out There, I Discovered That In The Year I Was Born, 1952, The Average Life Expectancy Of An American Was 68. I Was Shocked By That Figure And Every Time I Mention It I Hear A Gasp From Somebody In The Crowd. Now, Of Course, We're More Or Less At 80, So That Means That We've Gotten 12 Additional Years.

In Books I Have Traveled, Not Only To Other Worlds But Into My Own. I Learned Who I Was And Who I Wanted To Be, What I Might Aspire To, And What I Might Dare To Dream About My World And Myself.

The Beginning And The End Are Never Really The Journey Of Discovery For Me. It Is The Middle That Remains A Puzzle Until Well Into The Writing. That's How Life Is Most Of The Time, Isn't It? You Know Where You Are And Where You Hope To Wind Up. It's The Getting There That's Challenging.