I’m starting this journey again on a bleak wet morning in the middle of February. Looking at the rain spilling onto the window, it reminds me of a scene from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. The movie begins on a sultry night in lashing rain when a hotshot consultant sweeps into town to motivate struggling local real estate salesmen. He came to teach them their ABCs – Always Be Closing. Always be working towards the closing of a deal, get them to sign on the dotted line, get them to part with their money; it’s the measure of success. No matter the obstacles, don’t take no for an answer, persevere, be ruthless, try different tactics, but – Always Be Closing. It’s the relentless ethic of the economic imperative; and it tolerates no questioning. He also came with a warning, that if they didn’t live up to the company’s measure of success, then they would meet the inevitable consequence, and be fired.
Well, events in my own life took a turn recently and delivered their own kind of closure, when I became a victim of that uncompromising reality and was made redundant from my own job. (The company’s fault, not mine, of course!)
Life sure has a way of stopping you in your tracks, to reflect. At times like this, when it feels like you’ve failed somehow, it invites reflection on what success really is. This world seems to have its own rules for success. There’s no end of business influencers, life coaches, bloggers, and podcasters who simultaneously both play-by and reinforce those rules of success by telling you how you can be more successful if you just follow a particular formula. Do X, Y, and Z and you’ll succeed! Of course what they won’t tell you, is that formula X, Y, and Z is exactly what they are applying to you to encourage you to get involved in making them a success! It’s one of the unwritten rules of the modern world!
The truth is, if you take a wider worldview than the purely economic, there are other measures of success. In fact, one of them is a pre-requisite to most, if not all, of the other successes. It is the success of making a start. Getting up off your backside and finding the motivation for a new beginning. To never give up. Be successful in dusting yourself off and getting on with it. We all have good intentions, hopes, dreams, and aspirations, and we all encounter failures, difficulties, and opposition, that can all be very draining on our motivation. Success does not mean an absence of failure in life – everyone is human, everyone falls sometimes – the measure of success is in finding the resolve to begin again. ABB - Always Be Beginning.
We can start again, turn calamity into opportunity. Personally, for me, this enforced fresh start has afforded me the chance to pursue some things I’ve been considering for a while. I will certainly write more again now, but I’ve been thinking of bringing the thoughts encapsulated in those words to a wider audience. Language is important to me, and writing will always be my first (and best) means of expression. Words, carefully chosen, are where thoughts and ideas find concise expression. But unfortunately, it’s a simple fact that not everyone likes to read anymore, and the meaning behind words can be transmitted through many channels, audio and visual. Podcasts and videos are where so many go now for their content. So welcome to my first, of what I hope will be many. Please bear with me as I find my feet in this unfamiliar medium. Please do like and subscribe – it’s a little gesture, but it would really help a lot.
I don’t know where this foray into new media (new to me anyway) will lead, or whether it will be a success. I’m channeling my inner Hamlet as I ask: “to be, or not to be?” That is the question. Well… it’s a question. I don’t know if it’s the question for me. To be honest, I never found the famous opening to Hamlet’s soliloquy as compelling as what followed it. Shakespeare shows masterful understanding of the human condition when the Prince of Denmark next questions:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
Ay, there’s the rub. Whenever life events smack us in the face we’re confronted with the harshness of the system we find ourselves living in, and the perceived unfairness of it all. When we become a victim of the invisible rules that seem to govern this world of ours, we can start to feel inadequate to the task, unwilling, or simply unable to follow the terms & conditions of life on earth. When the rules don’t seem to respect our ability, or when the rules make us victim of circumstance, it is tempting to dismiss the whole system as flawed, and to look for a better way – if only the world would comply with us. Of course, it rarely does. Sometimes events demand that we wake up and smell the coffee and adjust our own thinking and our own actions to meet reality. And at times like those each of us is faced with a moment of truth, of personal revelation, about what is important to us. To give in, and to adapt, or … to resist, and to fight.
That’s two ways we can deal with bad fortune. The first is to accept it and learn from it, in effect, let ourselves be changed by misfortune. How often have we heard it said: “that’s just the way life is. Deal with it.” Or we can reject misfortune, be incensed by it, and seek to change that which seems so unfair to us. How often have we heard it said: “the world is what you make it.” That phrase carries a double meaning. It ostensibly means accepting the world as it is, and to our advantage. But there is a deeper meaning that the world is created in part by our actions. If we passively accept, and refuse to use our agency, we are not making the world at all. We become spectators, not participants. Granted, it’s not always clear which approach is best to take in any given situation, whether we can or even should try to effect change. Therein lies wisdom, as the proverb goes.
That tension – whether to accept or to act – is part of human nature. The animal kingdom faces struggles and harsh realities of life every day – where to find food, shelter, avoiding predation, etc. Do animals agonize over the unfairness of their world I wonder? Do they struggle to comprehend the reasons, or ponder the apparent pointlessness of it all? Do they imagine ways life could be made better for themselves, or their community? I doubt it. They just get on with it. They just react instinctively. Perhaps we should just do so too. If we did, would we just become little more than animals ourselves? Surely it must be unique to the human animal to look on the world and dream how it could be made better. Concepts of imperfection and injustice are given to us alone to deal with in the natural order. If there’s injustice (particularly if caused by other members of our species), it is not only within our evolved ability to do something, but is it not in fact an obligation to do something about it? Otherwise we are participants in making a world that is at risk of going all to hell.
I’m realistic: one person can’t seek to change the world. It’s too Herculean a task for any human.
But we do so even when we change things in little ways, in our own particular sphere of influence, within our day, and in how we treat and respond to the people and challenges we meet. If we do that, then all those efforts, by every single person combined, is what makes up the world. It’s up to us.
Not all the obstacles are “out there” either, but many are “in here”, within you and I. The obstacles that we encounter in the world are certainly not always within our remit to change directly; but the obstacles in myself – those are only within my remit to change. No one else can tackle those. It is my particular mission.
And that is where we cycle back to the beginning. To overcome the things in ourselves that need to change, so that we can be able to bring change into the world, we simply have to .. begin. And it is not only a beginning that happens at the moment of revelation, or at the start of each day. It is the beginning that should be made in each moment. It is a mental attitude of beginning, that everything we do should be a beginning, the start of something greater. Each moment is a start, and if taken in that spirit, that moment launches us into the next. If we being each instant with the same enthusiasm and the same relish as the morning sun bestows on our aspirations at the beginning of each new day – what a transformative wonder on the world that could be.
The forecast is better for tomorrow. On the bad days, we can at least comfort ourselves with the knowledge that there is always a better day somewhere ahead. None of us knows where our path will take us, but we can always decide to share the journey, enjoy it along the way, and meet each moment with a recreational sense of anticipation, promise, and hope.
Always Be Beginning...