The Pistachio Lesson

Pistachios are good.

They're a little salty. And they're fun to crack out of their little shells to get to the goodness inside.

For a long time, I felt like the pistachio carried some kind of deep, almost mystical truth about life. I just couldn't put my finger on it.

Here's the part that always got me.

When you're done eating pistachios, you're left with a big pile of empty shells. You look at them and think, there they are. They look almost the same as they did a minute ago. But something essential is gone.

I started thinking about that pile of shells whenever I listened to certain people speak.

The words were there. Sometimes there was even a sense of energy behind them. But something was missing inside. No personal life story. No real passion backing up the words that were coming at me.

I'd hear every word and still feel the hollowness. I couldn't explain it. I just knew.

What good is the shell without the nut?

I got the same feeling with some organizations and companies. All the right words were said. The brochures looked nice. The websites were polished. The people running the company and promoting the stuff were dressed the right way.

But did they have my best interest at heart? Were they genuine and sincere in their words? When they talked about their vision, did they really believe it? And were they dead serious about following through on it?

After years of watching, I came to a sad conclusion. Some of them were missing the nut.

This morning, as I continued my study of Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I finally started finding the words for this elusive pistachio lesson.

In the first chapter, Covey has a section on what he calls primary and secondary greatness. It ties closely to the character ethic and the personality ethic, which I wrote about in my last post, Character Ethic vs. Personality Ethic: Being Real vs. Looking Good. The two ideas are closely related, but not quite the same thing.

Quick refresher. The character ethic is about who a person is: the inner, soul-level qualities they've developed. Some may be inborn. Others were earned through pain and effort.

The personality ethic is about the outside: the skills, techniques, and image a person uses to shape how others see them.

In pistachio terms, it looks like this.

Why is it that some people you meet seem to carry a sense of greatness within them?

You feel it whether they've had any big earthly success or not. With some people, you sense they're great before you know a single thing they've done.

Then there are others. You've been told they're great. This person has done this and that. This person has made this much money. This person has all these awards, certifications, and degrees.

And yet when you meet them, you get the feeling they achieved their "greatness" without much of the nut. They're more shell than pistachio.

Once upon a time, I worked at a company where my boss was the owner's son.

He had the suit. He had the title and the authority. And he wielded them with a sinister kind of pleasure, commanding this or that.

But I always felt something essential was missing in him.

This is the same man who once asked me in a job interview what my strengths were. One of the things I told him was passion.

At the end of the interview, he looked at me and asked, "Are you open to some feedback?"

"Yes," I said.

"You don't have passion."

What kind of person cuts another human being down like that?

That man had secondary greatness. What he was missing was primary greatness.

Secondary greatness is fame, recognition, and status. And it can be handed to a person who never earned it.

Think of the rich family's child who inherits a fortune. They have the money and the name, maybe even the fame. But do they carry the inner qualities of industry and fortitude that built that fortune in the first place? The qualities their parents, grandparents, or ancestors had?

Not automatically. Character doesn't come with the inheritance, and it's obvious when it's missing.

Society can grant secondary greatness. Only character earns primary greatness.

The quotes we all know have been teaching this lesson for a long time, even if we couldn't put it into these words.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

"What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say."

Stephen Covey put it this way:

"What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do."

Emerson also said that men are wiser than they know. I believe that's why this pistachio lesson has hovered at the tip of my consciousness all these years. A metaphor was helping me understand what was happening long before I could put it into words.

There's nothing wrong with secondary greatness. But it has a shallow quality to it.

Fame. Recognition from voices of people we don't know. Adoration from a hollow crowd.

The crowd is an illusion. It's made up of individuals. That's probably why you get so much more meaning and fulfillment from one real relationship than you ever will from a crowd.

So the pistachio lesson leads us to the same choice every other lesson does.

Will we choose wisely or not?

Will we be the ones who wake up early, read the books, do the reflection, and put in the work? Will we strive to live for goodness rather than for fame, recognition, and secondary success?

Both are available. But only one fills your taste buds and your belly like that salty little nut inside the pistachio shell.

Who's someone you've met who had the whole nut, with or without the fame? Tell me about them in the comments below.