Bill Gates. The Beatles. Canadian hockey players. Jewish immigrant lawyers.
What do they all have in common? According to Malcolm Gladwell, as stated in his best selling book, Outliers, they were all conditioned to succeed through a series of unforeseen and uncontrollable events. Rather than explaining reasons for this success in a limp attempt to summarize Mr. Gladwell's work, I offer you my own boiled down, 5-word interpretation of why: Everything happens for a reason. I've heard this phrase tossed around lightly like a Nerf football on Thanksgiving morning. Some flip it for short gains in trivial conversations; others chunk it deep as a hail mary to profound questions they'd rather not ponder. I, however, have a devout respect for the saying and do not pass it off so lightly. First, let's clarify something. Everything happens for a reason is not a tenet for idle poodles woofing it as an excuse for their flea-infested laziness. It is not an alternative to taking action. It does not mean that "everything will be okay." In fact, many times pain and suffering are necessary slices to the whole pie. After all, failure is the surest way to succeed. (The smartest people in the world are those able to learn from others' failures, saving themselves the time and trouble of repeating it. But I digress.). Everything happens for a reason is an axiom of traced logic. It typically starts -- as in most, if not all of Gladwell's case studies -- with an uncontrollable event. Why such an inciting incident occurs is not up to us. But the beauty of this principle lies in how we react. There are infinite choices we make on a daily basis; one leading to another, compounding from a single snowflake into a two-ton snowball cascading down the mountainside. These choices we make, rolled on top of the opportunities we tumble past every day...they are the ingredients that stir our life's soup. The thing is, you never realize what you're sipping until it's already become leftovers. But unless you can predict the future, that's just how the soup drips. The fun part is tracing your logic. Recounting your steps. Reliving your experiences. Discovering how one thing lead to another, and why you landed where you did. If you like where you're standing; nice landing. If not; figure out why. Because if you landed awkwardly, it's most likely for a reason. And that reason is to live and learn. Heal and grow. Move on. You might have twisted an ankle or skinned your knee on the way down, but at least you're still standing. Revise and optimize. Catch your breath long enough to inhale a moment of enlightenment, make you next decision, then keep tumbling down that mountain. Too often, people get sucker-punched by the feel-good story of Lucky Louise and her felicitous rise to fame. But luck is just the lime in Louise's pad thai. True, it's a crucial ingredient to her success. But there's more to it. Everything happens for a reason. What's yours?
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It is commonly said that the key to happiness is living in the now. Too often, we spend our waking moments dreaming and planning for a future just beyond our fingertips.
Tom Hennen, in his poem, The Life of a Day, says, “We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, ‘no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for,’ and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced, our lives will start for real.” In one sentence, Tom has encapsulated man's primal psychological flaw. In a lifelong scavenger hunt for the key to happiness, we look past the beauty smiling at us round every corner. Instead of stopping to smile back, we drive full speed ahead toward a destination unknown, hoping and praying that when we get there, we will instantly know that this is the place; the place we've always dreamed of, where happiness stares you in the face without blinking. How naive. Not to say I'm immune to this sentiment. But like everyone else who ponders it, I realize how absurd we are to saunter through life with our dreams perpetually set on the horizon. Spend all your time grasping for things just out of reach, and you'll forget to enjoy that which you already hold. However, my question is this: If you have already stumbled upon that majestic place where happiness massages your soul 24 hours a day, how do you return once again to find beauty in the banality of reality? The irony is that we have all unlocked the key to happiness at one point or another in our lives. The problem is that key only opens the door for a fleeting moment. The pure, uncut happiness we all seek is ephemeral. The question now, is what to do with the key until we find another door? |
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