Reflections on Lessons I Learned from Izzi Wagner
Saturdays with Izzi
by Jim Holbrook
For eight years, until he died in 2005, I went to lunch with my mentor, Izzi Wagner, at least once a week. This evolved into a ritual in which we had lunch every Saturday. Until the last six months of his life, he picked me up in one of his vintage cars and drove us to the men’s grill at his golf club. Until he could no longer drive because the batteries were dead in all his cars, he refused my offer to drive him.
Izzi did not have children and I was not close to my own father, so our friendship provided him with an opportunity to pass on his life’s wisdom to someone who deeply valued it. He taught me the need for friendship, the importance of independence, the wisdom of humor, the utility of street smarts, and the humility of gratitude:
NURTURE FRIENDSHIP: You need friends for leverage (i.e., to accomplish more things in life) and for fun (e.g., to play golf or gin rummy). You need friends from many backgrounds and different walks of life. You need lifelong friends for continuity and memories. You need a few close friends for trust and advice. To have a friend, be a friend. Be faithful to your friends (unless and until they abuse your friendship).
VALUE INDEPENDENCE: You need to be independent professionally, financially, spiritually, and politically. Get out of debt as quickly as possible, pay off your mortgage, pay for things with cash. Do not be motivated by a desire for power, approval, or revenge. Do not live for money. Do what it is you are supposed to do. Let money come to you as the butterfly that lands on your shoulder while you are absorbed in doing what you enjoy.
USE HUMOR: Teach others indirectly through your jokes and stories, especially through self-deprecating humor. Humor is an essential interpersonal skill: it can charm or at least disarm strangers; it can level differences in power, gender, age, education, and wealth. Humor can create mutual understanding, respect, and tolerance, because we hate what we fear, and we fear what we don’t know, but we embrace what makes us laugh.
APPRECIATE STREET SMARTS: Honesty, loyalty, common sense, curiosity, and hard work are personal attributes that have practical significance. Life is not a “zero-sum” game in which you get ahead by taking advantage of others. Life is a “repeat-transaction” game in which you get ahead by having partners who feel fairly treated and who want to do business with you again and again on just your handshake.
Influence others with their self-interest. Leave something on the table in each transaction. Take your winnings and invest them in the next new deal. Bet on other people and their vision, acumen, and dreams: their success will enrich you personally and (often) financially, as well.
BE GRATEFUL: If you understand life like Izzi did as a Jew, you will know pogroms, diaspora, and Holocaust—and you will feel in your bones that there, but for undeserved good fortune, go you and yours.
Why you are chosen for your lot in life is an unanswerable mystery. Know that, if your life had been only slightly different, you would not have health or meaningful work. (Izzi never understood why his life was spared in a terrible war by a mosquito that gave him malaria. Or how it was that he met the one woman he loved and all their dreams came true in 51 years of marriage.)
Care about and do something for those who need you. If life should smile on you with fame or fortune, be generous in using them to help others. Remember the city that was your home and the place of your happiness. Create a tribute to the memory of the most important people in your life. Make possible for others the chance for fulfillment that blessed your own life.
And remember, life is asymmetrical: the old man you see in the mirror is not the young boy you feel in your heart. Do what you can today—for, if not now, when?