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I'm hesitantly groping for the word that describes Copthorne MacDonald's occupational repertoire and professional background when he volunteers it: "weird." The soft-spoken, silver-haired gentleman looks and sounds suited to his role as a laid-back freelance writer and budding motivational guru; however, his checkered resumé sports everything from nursing to a former incarnation as an acclaimed, upwardly mobile engineer.
"At age 30," he recalls, "I was a professional engineer doing very well in that job, but with a very narrow outlook on life." One of his more creative outlets was ham radio, in which he became a significant innovator and theorist. MacDonald's chief claim to fame at the time was his invention of "slow scan television", which allowed ham radio operators to both see and hear each other.
Copthorne had ascended to a corporate managerial position as an engineer when he attended a motivational seminar and found himself overwhelmed by the "self-actualization" theories of Abraham Maslow. This gave MacDonald "the idea of becoming all I'm capable of becoming."
Newly determined to find himself and explore his abilities, MacDonald donned his backpack and spent over a year traveling the world with his wife and daughter in tow before returning to the United States.
Disillusioned by the Watergate scandal, MacDonald emigrated to Canada in 1975. "I moved to Canada because of its humanity," he says, repulsed by the right-wing, fiscally driven politics that are currently sweeping the country. "If we let Medicare slip away, we are the greatest fools on Earth."
Settling in Prince Edward Island, MacDonald took various jobs to pay the bills and became preoccupied with developing the non-intellectual side of his brain. To this end, he embarked on his first meditation retreat in 1977. "My intellect got quiet for the first time in my life," he says.
Continuing his meditative studies into the 1980s, MacDonald began to regard both personal and global problems in the context of wisdom. He decided it was possible to become a wiser person deliberately through the gradual incorporation of simple attitudes, values and practices in our lives. Practical approaches to this theory drawn from MacDonald's own life experience are the primary focus of his new book, Getting a Life.
MacDonald stresses his belief that wisdom and contentment develop incrementally. There are no quick fixes; like physical conditioning, mental and emotional health is a gradual process.
More specifically, MacDonald recommends that people run "experiments" to determine which things give them pleasure in life, what skills they have and how best to use them. As he explains it, "What I'm advocating is getting in touch with what's really important to us, and what our strengths are."
Part of this, he explains, is meeting our basic needs: physical health, security, belonging and self esteem. Once these needs are met, a person can experience a "meta-need"-the desire to realize one's purpose and full potential, "a deep need for our lives to matter."
In his book and his life, MacDonald's primary goal is to promote the concept of wisdom in our culture. A cynic might invoke the old cliché that Cop's theories and a dime could buy us a cup of coffee (and not even that thanks to inflation), but MacDonald's reply is swift and emphatic: "Wisdom and a dime will get us the world we need."
Copthorne MacDonald's new book, Getting a Life, will be launched at the Arts Guild on Tuesday, November 14, 7:00 PM.