Who doesn’t love a good email forward?!?!?
Okay, I don’t either. I’ve discovered, however, that they have this interesting disarming quality to them, especially when they are packaged with cute photos of animals or children.
See, you're hooked now, right?
It’s like talking to a dear friend who believes passionately about something and during the discourse, you feel your head nodding yes and your eyebrows raised in agreement. It’s not until you walk away that you realize that no, you don’t actually think waterboarding is ethically sound.
I received a forward today that compared the experience of life to that of a train journey. We get on board when we are born; we disembark when we die. The other passengers are our friends, etc.
As any recipient of such dispatches knows, the meaning is inevitably made clear enough that your 3 year old nephew would understand – no critical thinking required. This is handy. After all, I’m certainly not going to spend time on the deconstruction of a feel-good Power Point presentation that I feel compelled to read because I like sender.
Back to life = train ride. I’m moving quickly through the slide, gently rolling my eyes at the positive use of the word “baggage.” And then comes the message:
“Above all, we should all strive to make the ride as pleasant and memorable as we can.”
I feel my eyebrows raise a bit, my head lean to the left and a slight nod start at the top of my spine. This is nice, I think. Pleasant and memorable. I like pleasant – it’s comforting, reassuring, unobtrusive. And who doesn’t want to remember positive events? Or be remembered? Maybe I should think more about being pleasant and memorable.
And then my brows furrow. Pleasant and memorable? Pleasant is as vanilla as vanilla gets and memorable seems like a partial waste, considering you know, death.
What about bold? Powerful? Creative? Helpful? Connected? Authentic?
But what I really want is to hear from you. Play a little Mad Libs, fill in the blanks and share below:
Above all, we should all strive to make the ride as _____________ and ______________ as we can.
Tags: authenticity, purpose
Above all, we should all strive to make the ride as fun as hell and laugh as often as we can.
Above all, we should all strive to make the ride with as much presence, openness, depth and coffee as we can.
Above all, we should all strive to make the ride as full of whistle stops along new tracks we’ve laid ourselves as we can.