Be like wine

If I told you that there was a connection between the good life and wine your mind might jump immediately to some bacchanalian scene, or to the subdued lights of a fine restaurant or cellar.

But the connection is more fundamental than that. Here is a quote from Galileo, which may give us a clue why:

“Wine is sunlight, held together by water”.

Last Sunday I held a small event to preview both The Good Life Book (now in the hands of editors) and a lifestyle business aimed at professionals that I founded calledTotal Life Complete LLC. The event combined a presentation of some of the key ideas of the book, interleaved with the story of winemaking in Italy and a tasting of quality wines from different regions.

The experience of life that we create for ourselves is the pivotal axis for both book and business. Our lives, as we’re well aware, are finite. We’ll have highs and lows, good times and bad times. Looking at life in this way it is quite reasonable to want to investigate how to optimise our time on the planet, and to try to live a life that minimises regrets.

Now imagine the experience of life shrunk down to a single moment. These moments in aggregate become the sum total of the legacy of our life. If you’re like me, in my former career as a management consultant, most of the moments of a year could be described as “blinkered autopilot”. Striving to achieve, accumulating experience and experiences. Getting by. Surviving to fight on another day.

When I found pause to look up, another year had passed with little fanfare. I was livingfor sure, but all too infrequently alive. At the other end of the spectrum are moments where you do actually feel truly alive. More often these moments are, I’ve found, associated with simple pleasures, rather than the complex ones we seem to spend the majority of our time chasing.

Before I started my consulting career in 1998 I completed what is a common rite of passage for those living in Australia. A trip back to the “Motherland” of the UK and the city of London. I then backpacked around Europe including time spent in Italy and the cities of Venice, Florence and Rome. There were many great sights seen and times had on that trip. But my lasting memory is of the space in between the major sights. For example, going to a small shop to buy meat, cheese and perhaps some cheap wine to consume in a town square, watching the world go by. The Italians and those in other parts of Europe seemed to have the right attitude to life. Even compared to Australians. To use an old expression: They worked to live, not lived to work.

Returning from that trip, and exchanging my backpack for a newly purchased business suit, I wondered why I’d had to travel half way around the world to have an experience of life (beyond the wonderful sights and culture) that I theoretically could have had at home?

For most of the time since then, this type of living has been relegated, if we’re lucky, to the few weeks of vacation that we take each year. It was on such a short break 15 years later, and a few hundred miles East from Florence, across the Adriatic Sea in Split Croatia, that I first asked the question “What is good life (and how to live it)?”. The solution is one I’ve tried to capture in a book, but let me try to answer it also using wineas a metaphor for life.

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Karen MacNeil in her definitive tome “The Wine Bible” makes a point, which I’ll paraphrase as “we drink wine for years without ever tasting it”. When you taste wine as opposed to just drinking it, you move from being just a consumer of the product, to a present and engaged participant in an experience.

When you taste you notice a richness of aroma and flavour for the first time that has always been there. Trying to describe that experience (the sensation of the wine) in words engages a different part of our brains. We remember that experience, and we work out over time how to articulate what we like and don’t like. Savouring life rather than just letting it wash over us has the same effect.

MacNeil also outlines what she calls the objective characteristics of quality wine. I think that these same qualities apply to a good life as well — no matter what your individual likes and dislikes are.

The five characteristics are:

Distinct (varietal) character — is the underlying flavour and aroma profile of the constituent grapes used to make the wine. In life this distinct character is our true self, based on our values, personality and character traits. Knowing this self and living life according to it is a key ingredient in authenticity, and a good life.

Integration — goes beyond the idea of a “balanced” wine in that each of the parts support each other and also build to a greater whole. Our own situation should be more than just the balance of opposites i.e. work and leisure, but instead the integration of multiple dimensions of life (work, relationships, health, spirituality and expression/growth) which enhance, not just offset one another.

Expression — talks about how clearly the individual characteristics of the wine are projected and shine through. Are they precise or muddled? In our lives we often don’t project who we are to the outside world. Instead we live through the façade of our job title or who we think others expect us to be. Yet in a globally competitive world and with only one life does it make sense to hold back the distinct and unique aspects of yourself?

Complexity — refers to the variety of experiences that the wine can deliver in terms of flavour and aroma, but also how these evolve and reveal themselves over time. Most of us could do with a degree of simplification in our lives, yet we also don’t want to be in a rut either. I believe the trick is to build your life around foundations that deliver some “good” complexity. This could be as simple as finding meaningful work that you are fascinated by. It could be in moving relationships beyond the superficial level, or even “turning pro” on hobbies and interests, moving them to greater levels of depth and sophistication.

Connectedness — refers to how well the wine reflects the piece of land it was born in. Does your life exemplify where you’re from and what you stand for? Connectedness is not clinging on to the past, but remembering your values and your roots.

An additional quality characteristic that MacNeil notes elsewhere is finish.

Finish — how sustained is the flavour of the wine after the moment you swallow it? Better wines have a longer finish. I’ve talked before about how basing your definition of success around attainment and gratification is a recipe for only short-lived satisfaction. The higher the quality of life you create, the longer the positive effects of that life will be sustained.

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There is another quote from Galileo that I’d like to close with. The quote is:

“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do”.

My approach to life is based around the three disciplines that I describe in The Good Book. The first discipline is Directing Energy. Whilst time is limited, energy is potentially unlimited since it can be shared, pooled and supplemented through the involvement of others, without being diminished.

With those attending the event last weekend I saw alchemy of sorts. The environment enabled them to express their delight about their previous experiences of Italy and current ones about the wines and company that they were engaged in. A moment of La Dolce Vita came to Dallas, Texas. It is precisely because of the shared struggle of life that such moments are so sweet.

We must direct some of our energy to creating something simple yet magical. That is a good life.

The Good Life Book is due for release in November 2016.