We are living in very interesting times with so much access to information and amazing progress by mankind. We witness this progress through technological advancements, human rights movements, business expansion, and so much more. Though these are awesome components of our society, one must admit that they also come with a hefty price tag on the soul. What do I mean by this? Well, in my conversations and observations I have noticed that the pursuit for bigger and better things may cause us to undermine the entire human experience.
In a recent conversation I was having with a dear friend of mine we laughed about this; “over romanticising” of a “spectacular end goal”. Our conversation centred around the idea that so often in our generation everyone is overly ambitious and that’s a beautiful thing, but you find that people don’t live in the NOW, they live fixated on their end goal.
It seems like people are saying to themselves “I will only fully start experiencing the whole human journey when I reach this particular milestone in my life” and I think that can be a ‘dangerous’ way to view the world.
It’s dangerous in a sense that, firstly tomorrow is not promised to anyone, we truly don’t know if we will be alive tomorrow. Secondly, we can undermine other very important aspects of our human development like; spiritual growth, social and romantic relationships, health matters, intellectual expansion etc.
Even in the business world we become so focused on waiting for financial year end to celebrate the previous year’s achievements and we often overlook progress in the quick daily wins. Yes, making profit is a spectacular end and the desired outcome of any business, but in pursuit of that, how about taking a pause and applauding things like fostering a great business culture, implementing all the great ideas and projects well, empowering leaders to do their jobs successfully and that the company values are not just words on a wall but that they lived daily by people in the organisation.
In the words of India Arie,
Life is a journey,
Not a destination,
There are no mistakes,
Just chances we’ve taken
Lay down your regrets cause all we have is now
I am by no means discounting long term goal achievement, but I am just advocating that there is a lot of progress that happens daily that we should celebrate.