Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
Every once in a while, you come across a book that is a melding of poetry, humor, and wisdom.
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey is one of those.
The book is unexpected and equal parts: memoir, hard-won wisdom, grit. Introspective, vulnerable, uplifting, and philosophical. Gems from McConaughey’s lifelong writing and journaling are woven into the book too.
I finished it a few months ago and have been recommending it to friends ever since. (Thx to my dear friend, advisor, and investor in Akamai Tom Gruger for turning me onto it)
It’s a quick read — or listen at just under 7hrs.
McConaughey has strong, positive male energy, and this is a good thing — think fatherhood, persistence, determination, focus, courage, and patience.
It’s a book about life — putting good things out into the universe, and the universe responding in kind — magnetically pulling in “greenlights.”
PS — I strongly recommend listening to the audiobook version. Hearing it in his own voice adds power and entertainment.
Note: If you’re looking for other meaningful books, here’s a past roundup of books I read in 2024.
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Check out this tidbit from his “essay” called “Tribes”.
"we learn to measure people on the competence of their values that we most value.
When we do this, the politics of gender, race, and slanderous slang take a back seat to the importance of the values we share.
The more we travel, the more we realize how similar our human needs are.
We want to be loved, have a family, community, have something to look forward to.
These basic needs are present in all socioeconomic and cultural civilizations.
I have seen many tribes in the deserts of Northern Africa who, with nine children and no electricity, had more joy, love, honor, and laughter than the majority of the most materially rich people I’ve ever met.
We have the choice to love, befriend, recruit, call to arms, associate, and support who we believe in, and more importantly, who, we believe, believes in us.
I think that’s what we all want. To believe in, and be believed in.
We all must earn belief in ourselves first, then for each other.
Earn it with you, then earn it with me, then we earn it for we...”
— Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights (excerpt from the essay “Tribes”, p. 100)
Note: Before we settled on the name Akamai, we were known as Tribal. I was drawn to this name because “tribal” and “tribes” evoke a strong sense of shared values.
