Himalayan Odyssey with Hyatt Chairman Tom Pritzker
The Himalayas are a massive mountain range in Central Asia that inspire awe and respect in anyone who visits. Humans have been living in their shadows for centuries, and the region is rich in culture and history. As well as being Chairman of Hyatt Hotels and The Pritzker Organization, Sandy and Sandra’s guest today, Tom Pritzker, is also a recognized archaeological expert on a particular section of the western Himalayas and Tibetan art and culture. He’s here today to discuss the remarkable work he’s done and continues to do in the remote areas of the Himalayas to discover and expose the traditions and heritage of this region.
Tom opens the episode by sharing how he got interested in archaeology as a subject and the Himalayas specifically. He recalls a childhood memory of tracing his future adventures on a map of the world and how he later went searching for a cultural adventure with his wife Margot, winding up living with the Tibetans in Trans-Himalaya for two months in 1978. He then describes becoming interested in Rinchen Zangpo, the priest who brought Buddhism to Tibet, and following the places named in his biography for the next forty years, including discovering a historically significant bronze commissioned by Zangpo himself. Tom also discusses how the philosophy of Buddhism has positively influenced his life, including in the business world, helping him to develop a healthy mind and an agile mindset.
The Finer Details of this Episode:
Quotes:
“This is Trans-Himalaya, this is literally on the northern side of the Himalayas, sort of sandwiched in between the Tibetan border and the Himalayas. And it’s Tibetan community, and we lived with the Tibetans for more than two months. And this was all walking, no communication, lots of adventure, lots of discovery. We think we were in the first ten outsiders to ever penetrate this area. And so that opened up a whole window into a world that was just very, very different.”
“We go in to the temple keeper and say, ‘We need you to take the clothes off the bronze.’ This would be like, at a dinner party, saying to your dinner party, ‘Would you mind taking off all your clothes?’ Guy thought we were completely nuts, convinced him to do it, and sure enough, the ring finger on his right hand was missing. And so, we had discovered this bronze that’s written about in history.”
“The one thing all of us can control is our attitude. We get to completely own it, and nobody has any rights to it. And if you can make that malleable to a situation or to some adversity, if you can begin to look at that in a certain way and have it make sense to you, all of a sudden, you get up in the morning and say, ‘You know what? This is interesting. This is a time under assault. This is gonna be really interesting to see how they do it, how I do it, how we navigate it.’”
“In the business world, to me, the scarce resource is not IQ, it’s judgment. And I’ve always tried to figure out, how do you train for judgment? What are the correlations for judgment? And my hypothesis—I have no idea if it’s accurate or not—is that experience is the breeding ground for judgment. And I always tell my kids, if you can just have zillions of experiences, that’s going to improve your judgment.”
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