Finishing off my Wolfgang Puck coffee, reviewing netvibes and email, and I was rewarded. From a friend who just bought a Wii, a very funny video. It got removed from YT but was still working on MySpace. Let’s try again:
The video was done by Team Good Life and I’m still singing the song. I checked their MySpace page. Their tag is “Live the life you love, love the life you live.” I’ve got the latter going pretty well right now. Not sure about the future but for this moment, I am a happy camper.
I think the real challenge is the first part: live the life you love. How do you figure that out? For instance, I saw a friend at the conference whose daughter just finished her undergraduate education in English and is now entertaining a variety of full scholarships for graduate school. She’ll have her PhD by the time she is 30! It occurred to me later that that was my original plan. And, I got through the undergraduate part but as I moved into graduate school discovered that while I loved to read and write, I was not really cut out to be an English professor. Or, I may have been, but my personal life intervened and I took something of a detour. And, that detour, to paraphrase Robert Frost, has made all the difference.
But, the fact is that at the beginning, I did not have a plan. Instead, I discovered a new passion and have been following it. When people tell me they enjoy my presentations and workshops, I tell them that I’m just one of those lucky people who found my passion and get to pursue it. That’s the advice I’m giving my twenty-something nephew. But, the lesson from my life is that sometimes your passion may change over time. I think the biggest skill you can have is to re-invent yourself. So, I’ll end with my email signature:
People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out. Warren Bennis
