The Mindless Pursuit of Pursuits
April 10th, 2008
Every day, millions awake, brush their teeth, get dressed, drive to work, tackle the emails in the inbox, attend meetings, drive home, have dinner, watch politicians lie on television, go to sleep and then wake up the next day to play it all out again.
This is what they call “living.”
Here is what they don’t do while they are busy “living:”
* Drive to the beach on just one day they are supposed to go to work.
* Ask themselves if they really like the treadmill they are on and if not, what they plan to do about it.
* Instead of tackling the emails, think of an entirely new way of doing things at the company and then send it off in the form of an idea to the people in position to effect change.
* Don’t drive home one night. Turn the car in a different direction and see where it takes you.
* Do something your friends would consider inappropriate. Who are they to decide the rules of the road?
* Surprise someone you love with an unexpected gift. Not flowers. Not a dinner out. Perhaps a song you wrote about them. Or tickets to Capri.
* Spend five hours alone doing nothing but thinking. These “do nothing” sessions give birth to the epiphanies you miss out on while you are engaged in the mindless pursuit of pursuits.
It is so easy to go through life on autopilot. But the idea is not to “go through life.” It is to treat it as a magic carpet ride. Some of which you can control and much of which is controlled by the winds and the magic that you abandon yourself to.
I have witnessed people in the throes of unexpected joy, of a love that came out of left field and grabbed them by the heart, of an idea that ignited their passion and pointed them toward a work, a project, an invention, they never saw coming–stop themselves in mid course because it wasn’t on the agenda. Because it was a surprise. Because it required reckless abandon.
And then I have witnessed them turn back to the checklist of “living” and I have wondered. Just wondered.
How does the instinct to survive overwhelm the need to thrive? To paint. To be reckless. To break new ground. To take risk. To throw out the calendar.To go on television and tell the world to keep their ideas about how you should “live” to themselves.
I see people in cubicles busy doing nothing for organizations whose only goal is to keep the doors open so that employees can have a place to drive to after they brush their teeth. A place to hide. A place to engage in the mindless pursuit of pursuits.
I ask them how long they have been there and they say forever. I ask them what they do there and they mumble something. I ask them if they are happy and they answer, “Can’t complain.” I ask them if they are fulfilled and they look at me as if I am speaking a strange language.
At one wonderful point in my young life I believed in Santa Claus. At one time in theirs, they must have known what fulfilled means. No more. But who needs it.
They are extremely busy with the mindless pursuit of pursuits.
And life goes by. And you can’t get a second back.
Mark Stevens
CEO