When we’re young, we understand that insects eat plants, that small predators eat insects, that big predators eat small predators. We understand that all of life is connected, that tadpoles become frogs, that rain turns to clouds to become rain again. When we’re young, we think about ourselves in unlimited impossibilities, how we’ll become fire fighters, singers, astronauts, or more likely, all of those.
Yet when we grow older, that unlimited imagination disappears. Instead, we accept how things are, what is told to us. We divide the world into work and personal life, so that can look at the evening news from afar, without having the need to feel responsibility. We look for cause and effect, and categorise everything neatly, so that we can solve problems one after the other one, or pick up the ones we feel good about.
Yet when we look at reality in neatly organised pieces, we fail to see the dependence of everything with everything. The biggest challenges of our time, climate change, poverty, and political unrest, are all interwoven in a web of causes and effects, and don’t have a singular cause or solution.
The new generations carry lots of talent, knowledge, and experience, as well as the ability to change the world for the better. The new generations are smart and creative in the things they do, hence it’s a pity seeing this ability so rarely being applied to life or work causes; the bigger picture. Many youngster arrive at work and play by the rules of their seniors, more duty bound than passion filled.
Ask yourself; ‘How do you want the world to work?’, and ‘How is my work contributing to that?’, and ‘Should I be doing what I’m doing right now?’ Make that the new zero.
When you have a mission in life that goes beyond paying off student debt or mortgage, that’s when you can develop your style, your unborrowed vision, your creative morale. It’ll make progress for yourself, your employer and all of us together, undeniable.
It’s a much richer life, even if it may make you poorer money-wise. Finding your creative morale is a search, but once you’ve found it, it’s as immersive as falling in love. So give shape to yourself, it’s too important to let others do for you.
