Knight, Phil

Shoe Dog

  • p.dedication – “For my grandchildren, so they will know”

  • p.next – “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. -Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”

Dawn

  • p.1 – “Though beautiful, Oregon struck some people as the kind of place where nothing big had ever happened, or was ever likely to.”

  • p.1 – “The best teacher I ever had, one of the finest men I ever knew, spoke of that trail often. It’s our birthright, he’d growl. Our character, our fate– our DNA. ‘The cowards never started,’ he’d tell me, ‘and the weak died along the way– that leaves us.’ "

  • p.2 – “My resume said I was a learned, accomplished soldier, a twenty-four-year-old man in full… So why, I wondered, why do I still feel like a kid?”

  • p.3 – “Like all my friends I wanted to be successful. Unlike my friends I didn’t know what that meant. Money? Maybe. Wife? Kids? House? Sure, if I was lucky. These were the goals I was taught to aspire to, and part of me did aspire to them, instinctively. But deep down I was searching for something else, something more. I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know, short as a morning run, and I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative. And important. Above all… different.”

  • p.3 – “… I saw it all before me, exactly what I wanted my life to be. Play.”

  • p.3 – “There’s a kind of exuberant clarity in that pulsing half second before winning and losing are decided. I wanted that, whatever that was, to be my life, my daily life.”

  • p.3 – “At different times I’d fantasize about becoming a great novelist, a great journalist, a great statesman. But the ultimate dream was always to be a great athlete. Sadly, fate had made me good, not great.”

  • pp.3-4 – “Now, as I began to clip off one brisk six-minute mile after another, as the rising sun set fire to the lowest needles of the pines, I asked myself: What if there was a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing. The world was so overrun with war and pain and misery, the daily grind was so exhausting and often unjust– maybe the only answer, I thought, was to find some prodigious, improbable dream that seemed worthy, that seemed fun, that seemed a good fit, and chase it with an athlete’s single-minded dedication and purpose. Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play, gets left on the sidelines, adn I didn’t want that. More than anything, that was the thing I did not want. Which led, as always to my Crazy Idea. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, I need to take one more look at my Crazy Idea. Maybe my Crazy Idea just might… work? Maybe. No, no, I thought, running faster, faster, running as if I were chasing someone and being chased all at the same time. It will work. By God I’ll make it work. No maybes about it.”

  • pp.4-5 – “Faces, numbers, decisions that once seemed pressing and irrevocable, they’re all gone. What remains, however, is this one comforting certainty, this one anchoring truth that will never go away. At twenty-four I did have a Crazy Idea, and somehow, despite being dizzy with existential angst, and fears about the future, and doubts about myself, as all young men and women in their midtwenties are, I did decide that the world is made up of crazy ideas. History is one long processional of crazy ideas. The things I loved most– books, sports, democracy, free enterprise– started as crazy ideas.”

  • p.5 – “The act itself becomes the destination. It’s not just that there’s no finish line; it’s that you define the finish line. Whatever pleasures or gains you derive from the act of running, you must find them within. It’s all in how you frame it, how you sell it to yourself.”

  • p.5 – “So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy… just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where ’there’ is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.”

1962

  • p.9 – “Being a business buff, I knew that Japanese cameras had made deep cuts into the camera market which had once been dominated by Germans. Thus, I argued in my paper that Japanese running shoes might do the same thing. The idea interested me, then inspired me, then captivated me. It seemed so obvious, so simple, so potentially huge.”

  • pp.9-10 – “I’d spent weeks and weeks on that paper. I’d moved into the library, devoured everything I could find about importing and exporting, about starting a company. Finally, as required, I’d given a formal presentation of the paper to my classmates, who reacted with formal boredom. Not one asked a single question. They greeted my passion and intensity with labored sighs and vacant stares.”

  • p.10 – “The professor thought my Crazy Idea had merit: He gave me an A. But that was that. At least, that was supposed to be that. I’d never really stopped thinking about that paper.”

  • p.10 – “Before running a big race, you always want to walk the track.”

  • p.10 – “Before setting out on my own personal life voyage, I thought, let me first understand the greater voyage of humankind. Let me explore the grandest temples and churches and shrines, the holiest rivers and mountaintops. Let me feel the presence of… God?”

  • pp.10-11 – “Yes, I told myself, yes. For want of a better word, God. But first, I’d need my father’s approval. More, I’d need his cash.”

  • p.12 – “In many ways my father was a conventional Episcopalian, a believer in Jesus Christ. But he also worshipped another secret deity– respectability. Colonial house, beautiful wife, obedient kids, my father enjoyed having these things, but what he really cherished was his friends and neighbors knowing he had them.”

  • p.13 – “He said that he always regretted not traveling more when he was young. He said a trip might be just the finishing touch to my education. He said a lot of things, all of them focused more on the trip than the Crazy Idea, but I wasn’t about to correct him. I wasn’t about to complain, because in sum he was giving his blessing. And his cash.”

  • p.13 – “Only later did I realize with a spasm of guilt that my father’s lack of travel was an ulterior reason, perhaps the main reason I wanted to go. This trip, this Crazy Idea, would be one sure way of becoming someone other than him. Someone less respectable.”

  • p.15 – “And my mother, as I recall, said nothing. She rarely did. But there was something different about her silence this time. It equaled consent. Even pride.”

  • p.15 – “Long before approaching my father, I’d decided it would be good to have a companion for my trip, and that companion should be my Stanford classmate Carter. Though he’d been a hoops star at William Jewell College, Carter wasn’t your typical jock. He wore thick glasses and read books. Good books. He was easy to talk to, and easy not to talk to– equally important qualities in a friend. Essential in a travel companion.”

  • p.16 – “Finally we stopped at a liquor store and bought two discounted tickets on Standard Airlines to Honolulu. One-way, eighty bucks.”

  • p.18 – “If my shyness made me bad at selling encyclopedias, my nature made me despise it. I wasn’t built for heavy doses of rejection. I’d known this about myself since high school, freshman year, when I got cut from the baseball team. A small setback, in the grand scheme, but it knocked my sideways. It was my first real awareness that not everyone in this world will like us, or accept us, that we’re often cast aside at the very moment we most need to be included.”

  • p.19 – “I wasn’t a smooth talker. I wasn’t any kind of talker. Still, I knew numbers, and I knew the product: Dreyfus Funds. More, I knew how to speak the truth. People seemed to like that. I was quickly able to schedule a few meetings, adn to close a few sales. Inside a week I’d earned enough in commissions to pay my half of the rent for the next six months, with plenty left over for surfboard wax.”

  • p.20 – “And then, surprise, the world was spared. The crisis passed. The sky seemed to sigh with relief as the air turned suddenly crisper, calmer. A perfect Hawaiian autumn followed. Days of contentment and something close to bliss. Followed by a sharp restlessness. One night I set my beer on the bar and turned to Carter. ‘I think maybe the time has come to leave Shangri-La,’ I said.”

  • p.20 – “The last thing I wanted was to pack up and return to Oregon. But I couldn’t see traveling around the world alone, either. Go home, a faint inner voice told me. Get a normal job. Be a normal person. Then I heard another faint voice, equally emphatic. No, don’t go home. Keep going. Don’t stop. The next day I gave my two weeks’ notice at the boiler room. ‘Too bad, Buck,’ one of the bosses said, ‘you had a real future as a salesman.’ ‘God forbid,’ I muttered.”

  • p.21 – “Crazy Idea? Maybe I was, in fact, crazy.”

  • p.21 – “The junk merchant doesn’t sell his product to the consumer; he sells the consumer to his product.”

  • p.21 – “Some three hundred thousand people were burned alive, instantly, four times the number died in Hiroshima.”

  • p.22 – “I took a cab there and the guys greeted me like family.”

  • p.23 – “I marveled at the concept of kensho, or satori– enlightenment that comes in a flash, a blinding pop.”

  • p.23 – “Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.”

  • p.23 – “Self is the bald-faced lie we tell ourselves daily, and happiness requires seeing through the lie, debunking it.”

  • p.23 – “Victory, Zen says, comes when we forget the self and the opponent, who are but two halves of one whole.”

  • p.23 – “Even the thought of emptiness is no longer there.”

  • p.24 – “I couldn’t look away. I watched and watched, asking myself, Is this what it’s all about? Really? I appreciated money as much as the next guy. But I wanted my life to be about so much more.”

  • p.25 – “In that case, the ex-GIs said, you’d better learn a few things about doing business with the Japanese.”

  • p.25 – " ‘The war situation hasn’t developed to Japan’s advantage.’ "

  • p.25 – “No one ever turns you down flat. No one ever says, straight out, no. But they don’t say yes, either. They speak in circles, sentences with no clear subject or object. Don’t be discouraged, but don’t be cocky. You might leave a man’s office thinking you’ve blown it, when in fact he’s ready to do a deal.”

  • p.26 – “Expect nothing, seek nothing, grasp nothing– the immortal Japanese poets wrote lines that seemed polished and polished until they gleamed like the blade of a samurai’s sword, or the stones of a mountain brook. Spotless.”

  • p.27 – “_You are capable. You are confident. You can do this. You can DO this. Then I went to the wrong place. I presented myself at the Onitsuka showroom, when in fact I was expected at the Onitsuka factory– across town. I hailed a taxi and raced there, frantic, arriving half an hour late.”

  • p.28 – “There is a primal urge to compare everything– life, business, adventures of all sorts– to a race. But the metaphor is often inadequate. It can take you only so far. Unable to remember what I’d wanted to say, or even why I was here, I took several quick breaths. Everything depended on my rising to this occasion. Everything. If I didn’t, if I muffed this, I’d be doomed to spend the rest of my days selling encyclopedias, or mutual funds, or some other junk I didn’t really care about. I’d be a disappointment to my parents, my school, my hometown. Myself.”

  • p.30 – “They asked me how big I thought the American shoe market was, how big it could be, and I told them that ultimately it could be $1 billion. To this day I’m not sure where that number came from. They leaned back, gazed at each other, astonished. Now, to my astonishment, they began pitching me.”

  • p.31 – “Also, I was crazed with loneliness, cut of from everything and everyone I knew.”

  • p.31 – “Even after I gave them all the money in my pockets, the cry never stopped.”