Get an Idea (Part 2)

However it is that one would define the culture that we find life in today, what is undeniable is how much of it has been shaped by the ideas of the past. Here, my mind turns to the many great thinkers whose philosophical insights underpin the form that entire industries take today. Isaac Newton and the scientific revolution. Marie Curie and the field of radioactivity. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism as the guiding precept of legal order. And the list goes on and on. With these giants being agents of our collective evolution, they each laid in place the building blocks that have allowed us to see further than they were able to in their day, and ask deeper questions about the things they discovered. Having provided us with the knowledge and wisdom that we so often take for granted, it is their pioneering spirit that continues to inspire those who strive to awaken their own innate genius and move towards self-mastery.

This is perhaps no more true than for adherents of the perennial philosophy, which seeks to get at the heart of what it means to be fully human. With its immutable applicability that translates across generations, what is most amazing about reviewing its tenets is just how relevant its teachings are to modern life. While the context of life may have changed since its proponents wondered the earth many hundreds of years ago, the essence of what it ultimately means to live well hasn’t. For as long as I can remember, I have been an admirer of stoic thought and its urging for us to know ourselves in order to develop a virtuous character. How much better would the quality of our lives be if that was the path that we chose to emulate?

Another one of the books that I am currently working through is Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. While the title of that seminal work represents a flavour of meditation that is different from what you or I may hold in our mind as we think about the concept, this spiritually introspective practice was being advocated for by this former Roman Emperor in 150AD! Yet, it is only in relatively recent times that a large number of business leaders, politicians, entertainers and professional athletes, among others, have taken to the practice for the wide-ranging benefits that it delivers.

How do we become the person that we were created to be? This really is the universal question. Asking it of myself for more than two decades now, I have learned so much that has informed my own growth, and influenced how I instruct others to go about the task of developing themselves. Were I the same person I was twenty years ago, I would have much less to offer to those who I have a stewardship responsibility over, my children and students. This to me would be untenable and a betrayal of the actualising quality of life that we have been called to embody as we progress along our individual and collective journeys.

When you think about it, who we are in this moment is the sum total of the ideas that we have brought into over the course of our lifetime. While once upon a time, I used to categorise ideas as being good or bad, now I tend to judge them through the lens of being useful or not useful. For me the question is ‘does this idea increase the quality of my life?’ Quality here is meant to comprise spiritual nurturance and enrichment, not hedonic pleasure seeking ends. If an idea meets this criteria, then I will run with it and integrate its lessons into my life. If it doesn’t then I will put it on the shelf. There is no harm in learning something new, even if it is unworkable for you. Some ideas will automatically resonate with us while others will not. It is just a part of getting on our authentic path and finding something of value that we can move forward with. This is the test. If there is a genuine resonance, they are likely to work. If not, then they will be hindered in their functionality. Wisdom in this sense is knowing how to ‘pick the roses and leave the thorns’ as a good friend of mine, Joe, is fond of saying.

Master motivator, Tony Robbins, once mused that “it doesn’t take a lot of ideas to change your life and it doesn’t take a complicated idea to change your life. All that it takes is something that you are willing to take in and use.” Really simple but practical advice here. Ideas are what we make of them. Powerful in themselves, the real magic is to be found in their application. Being where the rubber meets the road, this is how they make a difference and carve out the legacy of those who are courageous enough to conceive and implement them for the betterment of humanity.

Love at First Sight…or Perhaps not Quite (Part 2)

When I spoke to my respondents about the course of their vocational journeys and the feelings that were associated with knowing that they were on the right course, I received a mixed bag of answers that supports the assertion that love for what one does comes about in a multiplicity of ways. For some, their experience was to encounter love when they were first exposed to the thing that they were born to do, which usually happened early in life, and often with the guidance of parents or other mentors. With this particular path, how it presented itself in the data was as occurring less frequently than the other means of encountering one’s vocation that I will expand on shortly. This might come as somewhat of a surprise given the awed attention that we pay to well-known individuals who have followed this path (think a 2 year old Tiger Woods appearing on the Mike Douglas Show to show off his golfing prowess). Mythologising this journey to destiny in the same way that we have romanticised the experiencing of love at first sight, we fall victim to over representing these types of vocational encounters, which can have the adverse side effect of instilling doubt in observers about the existence of their own calling, if they had not come to connect with it early in their life.

If we can think of the love at first exposure journey as a straight line path, another path, which I have found to be more common, is one that would map as a zig zagging path, where there is a number of detours and pivots taken before one really finds vocational clarity. For someone who has taken such a path and looked back at its wake, they may say something like ‘one thing led to another and I just didn’t know it at the time’. With this type of journey, it is the one that I resonate with the most because it is the path that I have taken. Crayboat deckhand, security guard, mature age student, lawyer, traveller, make-up salesman, academic, writer… On this winding path, our passion and purpose unfold along the way as we grow and evolve with time and the experiencing of different things that in some mysterious or destined way synergise to give us clarity about what we are meant to be doing with our lives.

Like the love in a relationship that comes to the surface of consciousness slowly over time, our love for our work on this zigzagging path marinates and becomes more pronounced as we connect more deeply with who we authentically are and the unique gifts that our spirit has endowed us with. Assisting us in our achievement of clarity were what we might have been inclined to call ‘dead ends’, but with hindsight can now realise were positively essential in teaching us more about ourselves and what we did not want for our lives. Through the adversity and challenges of this journey, the love that we find is hard earned, which can make the fruits of this journey that much sweeter. This is not to diminish the love that one experiences on a straight line journey, for undoubtedly, the work of unfolding oneself and moving towards mastery will have its own trials and tribulations in that context, as the biographies of a Tiger Woods or Elizabeth Taylor would attest.

Sitting in the grey area are some instances that I came across which can best be described as ‘having learnt to love the one you are with’. With this permutation of love, it is revealed as one relinquishes the desires of their ego to aspire to a form of life that is more physically gratifying and status enhancing. Having experienced or observed the hollowing effects of living a superficial life of climbing the greasy ladder of ‘success’ and prioritising material gain above all else, what is opted for instead is a path to meaning that makes the world better in a less grandiose way than one’s early ambition may have envisioned. With the importance and necessity of the work being the prime driver, over the particular context in which it takes form, one can reconcile their found purpose with a form of love that brings fulfilment to their heart and fortifies their sense of self-worth. Though it may only find life in a little corner of the world, those who experience love in this way don’t allow this reality to become a barrier to them putting forth their best efforts in furthering a social good that has called for their contribution. Having accrued a series of valuable qualities and skills that can be put to use, they dedicate themselves to the task with a tremendous zeal and care that is synonymous with the presence of love. From them, we learn that love for work emerges in serendipitous ways that we should be open to in our own lives. Whether our path is snaking, straight or something in between, our blessing is that we have one to traverse that connects us to eternity. Such is a cause for celebration for many paths do indeed lead to one destination.