Who we should be
News drum the beat of today’s concrete jungles. Thousands of messages reach us every day. Many are expected to do more, faster with less. Only few have the time, and power to cut through the clutter and noise, to separate the important from the urgent, and ask themselves:
What of all this is actually important to me? How do I want to live?
Who am I and who do I want to be?
It isn’t easy to answer this questions without understanding the problem that limits most people’s ability to become the best version of themselves – the one they wish for and secretly dream to be.
Continuously thinking about having and wanting to do, always busy, hardly ever standing still – we have become a resource rather than an independent force. We obey the system, play by the rules, are silent servants and called upon to be good citizens and employees.
At the same time, we are privileged, we are spoiled. We have become lazy and slow, stuck between having everything and having nothing. Saying one thing and doing another – having become used to lie to others and ourselves as a way of dealing with the things that are obviously wrong, concerning and shouldn’t be. Focused more on ourselves, on copy-paste and wanna be, on maintaining the status quo and securing the next pay check, that we have become so accustomed to see.
Half knowing that it would cost energy, it would cost comfort, it would cost effort to form an opinion, the price to pay to be actually free, we continue living the illusion that is stored in our memory. The biggest hurdle in our quest for happiness and fulfillment has become our own self and a system whose components are us.
We have settled in a cocoon of self-affirmation and mechanisms of continuous micro-gratifications. Social buzz and the next always-important news headline are fuzzing along our smart phone screens, bringing us satisfaction only for moments to be.
Today, now and immediately have replaced any other sense of time,
any others measure of progress and quality.
Skimming replaced reading. Chatting a conversation. True understanding and building something that lasts were replaced by sprints and constant presentations. We can’t focus and can’t miss a thing; we want to have to it all, now, not even in a fling. We forget that having and knowing takes time and contemplation, it takes effort and belief – in something that is worth pursuing, in something that you want to be. But how are we supposed to know, taught within a system that mostly values blind loyalty.
A system evolving and gaining more and more maturity, focused solely on its advance and consolidation, sucking in our energy and information as the fuel of its own professionalization. A system that has become so complex that we can’t even see the forest among all the trees.
Real education is hardly existent – we are trained to do, and not to think and see. We watch numbers going up and down, without a true understanding of what it means. We learn about things in isolation, instead of studying them in their nature with all their facets and manifestations. We shuffle all sorts of information in our short-term memory, check boxes, collect points, pick up degrees and feel good for short moments of time, lost in the same moment from our memory. Like on drugs we live for the next trip and expect and hope that this will make us happy and hip. We are trained to be fast and efficient, not waste any time in the supposedly increasing competition. We treat numbers as gods that tell us what is right and neat, and the effect has long replaced the cause in setting the direction for most who one day wish to lead.
Long-term thinking has become a nebulous dream, sustainability a buzzword
and the stock price focus of mindless idolatry.
Learning to understand, to question, to discuss and challenge – the how rather than the what is stamped as too philosophical or too deep, as not needed in much of today’s industries.
Industries that have started to define who we should be instead of industries that are a result of a response to an understanding of our deepest desires, wishes and needs. Industries made of companies that have grown so large that it has become humanly impossible to understand the actual cause-effect of actions they take and the impact they seek. It has become an interminable quest to visit every corner of their intertwined constructs that have been created over decades without a question of actual need.
So who am I? And who do I want to be?
This is who I believe we need, to thrive for and be, in order to change today’s reality and realize our values, visions and dreams.
I am because you are – Ubuntu – no one is without the we. As humans we share more than just our collective identity. We share one world, and we share our innate desires to grow, to love and to breath. We share wishes and dreams, we share our urge to improve, to doubt, to question, find new solutions and to be free. We strive to create the world we desire to see – the best of all possible worlds, the many that could be.
Unique individuals, thinkers, dreamers and doers that drive the human race forward, always better, always farther, progressing as we grow with an ambition to create a better future than the one we currently see.
Understanding that the constant battle between the I and the we,
isn’t a versus but actually a perpetual motion machine.
Not threatened or belittled by intellectual aspiration, but motivated and inspired by the sheer force of imagination. Driven to find an insight or need, by the things that inspire and that others weren’t yet able to see.
Open to learn, open to question and open to a different reality, always driven to become individuals that respect, individuals that act with integrity, individuals that realize that the world can become what they envision it to be.
Individuals that seek a world, where imagined futures inspire to create, to thrive, to contribute and dream, where everyone is being rewarded with a fair share of what is produced, created and reaped.
Individuals that create and shape industries that respect more than just the end product and margin; that create, shape and produce things we want and need – more than just a bargain.
Individuals that create industries that are made by humans, in human ways and for humanity. Industries that enable us to become who we strive to be and don’t contribute to separate a privileged few from the many minorities.
We live in a world that has experienced a decrease of vision providing constitutions, where religions, and parties and many of today’s large institutions, stumble, and fall, as a result that they have lost their human intuition. But in every misery lies an opportunity, and as they fall they give way to a new generation of beacons to guide and lead.
We need to remind ourselves that we are now here, we are responsible for what those beacons should be. Any cathedral is built by humans, any system constructed by someone with a vision, a dream or a need. Anything that was built can be strengthened, maintained or neglected – depending on the outcome we seek.
There is no simple truth, no simple way forward, but also no excuses to just blindly follow and only later take responsibility. We have to have an opinion, make our voices heard and take a stand about the things that are wrong and that one-day might shape a new dominion. We have to speak up about the things we care for and need, that will have an impact for generations to come, on the lives of millions to be; people that don’t yet have a voice but share our needs.
Nothing is just given, nothing is free, and we have to argue and fight
to realize our values, visions and dreams.
Each one of us has to open their eyes, realize and incorporate wholeheartedly, that every action we take, every comment we make, also in the social reality, shapes the world we live in and influences the people we hold dear, love, respect and aspire to reach. We have to learn that the world isn’t one or the other but a construct of endless bipolarities, in which often the difference is made by just one person, that doesn’t focus on the things that divide but instead focuses on our strength and commonalities. A person that paints a picture of a tomorrow that reflects our deepest desires and needs – to make mutual progress the focus of our mind instead of the destruction of our own kind.
We need to be open minded and vigilant in our observations, egalitarian and deeply human in any conversation. We need to understand and teach that a worthwhile future can only lie in the grey zones that so many in today’s world struggle to see.
We are the ones that carry the responsibility to shape the future we want to see, a future that will be a mirror of our values, visions and dreams that makes the world, and not just a country, home of the free.