Taking life seriously.

Copied straight from Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com). You should add this guy to your blog-roll or RSS feeds. His material is routinely excellent. I’m not sure how he feels about me copying the post wholesale but I fully acknowledge his effort.

Is this the best I can do?

I’ve paid for the rent and the furnishings and the menus and the staff and the insurance… is this plate of food worthy of what went before it?

I’ve flown across the country to visit this museum–a building that cost more than a billion dollars to create and fill and maintain. Is my attention focused enough?

We paid $300 in marketing costs just to get this phone to ring this one time. How shall we answer it?

I’ve had a great education, suffered and scraped and scrounged to get this point… is this diagnosis, this surgery, this prescription, this bedside manner the end that justifies that effort?

We live in a stable democracy, a place where people have lived and died to give us the freedom to speak out… is that talking head or this spinning pundit the best we can do? Or is he just trying to make a profit and air another commercial?

Is cutting corners to make a buck appropriate when you consider what you could have done? What would someone with a bigger vision have done instead?

Is being negative or bitter or selfish within reason in face of how extraordinarily lucky we were to have been been born here and born now?

I take so much for granted. Perhaps you do as well. To be here, in this moment, with these resources. To have not just our health but the knowledge and the tools and the infrastructure. What a waste.

If I hadn’t had those breaks, if there weren’t all those people who had sacrificed or helped or just stayed out of my way… what then? Would I even have had a shot at this?

What if this were my last post? Would this post be worthy?

The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.