Cerebral Conversations With Ryan Maloney

There’s nothing wrong with money, but there’s something wrong with wanting it.

They call Citizen Kane (1941) the best movie of all time. The movie opens with Charles Foster Kane dying alone in his Florida mansion. He utters the word “Rosebud” just before passing, and the rest of the movie is an investigation into his life and the meaning of this cryptic word.

Kane became a hugely wealthy newspaperman, famous all over the world, but the end of the movie reveals that Rosebud was the name of the sled he played with as a little boy. He spent his life chasing wealth, power, and status–the things he thought would make him happy–but that sled was the closest thing he ever came to happiness, and it was there the whole time.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” ~Mt. 6:21

Gossip when the person you’re “gossiping” to can change the situation you’re “gossiping” about.

Otherwise, zip it.

They want to be loved.

Men are often ignorant of this, of course, but so are women.

Put your phone down. Put your stupid goddamn phone down right now and don’t pick it back up until you’re like, forty, after you’ve lived in the real world for a bit.

That should be a rule: no phones until you’re forty.

I solved it. Three cheers for me.

There’s nothing you can do about a toxic team culture.

There’s plenty you can do about the toxicity without your own heart.

Being like God is different than being a fatted pig, which you see everywhere at the bars.

Being like God is different than being a status-seeker, which you see everywhere in the workplace.

Being like God is different than being rich, for “it is easier for for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matt. 19:24).

It’s no wonder few of us are happy.

A bite out of an apple, like Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. I love Peter Kreeft’s take:

“It comes with a warning: take a bite of this apple, and you will fall from Love to Power, from Happiness to Success, from Wisdom to Knowledge, and from Freedom to Addiction.” (p. 244).

That depends. Are you looking for a relationship so that you can be happy? Or are you looking for a relationship so that you can make the other person happy?

The former looks like two people in an ocean, grasping at each other to keep from drowning. The later looks like an old couple celebrating its sixtieth wedding anniversary, surrounded by kids and grandkids.

“To love is to will the good of the other.” ~Thomas Aquinas

I don’t think it’s necessary to love your sport. That would be like saying Winston Churchill loved killing Germans during World War II. I think it’s necessary to bear it, and if not the sport then something else, because we all have crosses to bear during this life. Remember that the word passion comes from the Latin root that means “to suffer.”

In recent years I’ve seen more and more athletes quit their sports because of “mental health,” and while mental health concerns are obviously important and an awareness of their potentially arising is obviously good, it’s equally important to recognize that high-level sport is supposed to create hard-to-bear emotions. In fact, the bearing is where the happiness is.

The best leaders are not the most gregarious or persuasive. They’re not necessarily talented. They don’t have PhD’s, MBA’s, and they sure as hell don’t take leadership classes.

The best leaders are quiet and unsure of themselves, but they are righteous. The best leaders are like Moses, stuttering and in despair, but still chosen to lead his people out of Egypt.