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Some days you just feel like you're fighting against yourself, don't you? Obviously that must have been what my subconscious was thinking of this evening.
We've all been there. You're arguing for what you believe in, but you know deep down, that there is no way to win. You keep on hammering away until you're exhausted. You rally and try one last time and then watch as all of your arguments crash helplessly against the rocks like a wooden ship lost in the fog. It's a tricky business.
Why? Why do we do it? I have been trying to figure it out. I often wonder if it happens across all industries or if advertising is a special kind of hell for masochists with Sisyphusean tendencies? I would imagine that it happens elsewhere because it seems like too much fun. I wonder if techniques on how long to watch someone try to save a good idea is taught in MBA programs or at Harvard Business School. I'll have to Google that.
I (and I know you, if you are in advertising) see it all the time in meetings. You watch as someone tries to argue a point. They are convinced they are right and firmly believe they have a chance to win if they present the argument succinctly and accurately. It's what they have been told their whole lives. From the other side of the room you can see they are utterly doomed.
Like a spectator in the Colosseum you watch as the half naked Christian picks up a sword lying in the dirt and waves it at his masters. The crowd roars and the half naked man feels his confidence rise. Then a gate opens, a lion rushes out and dinner is served.
Sometimes you're just out there amusing those around you. I know. I did it for years and it seems that I can still amuse the emperor.
You want to hear a funny story? I attempted a few years ago to go the other way. To stop fighting against the forces that were around me. I would move on. The Chinese call it Wu Wei, literally "without doing, causing or making." Allow the natural order of things to work with minimal effort on your part. Like a river flowing past and around rocks. Sometimes you must do the same. You just move on. So I resigned. I felt that I was a rock raging against a river and I let the river go. I stepped out of the river.
I recently found out that apparently the "river" didn't like that. I met with someone who told me that because I didn't stay and keep fighting it was seen as an affront, that I was not a leader because a leader would stay and fight to change things. She said this fully knowing that while I was in the "river" I was told that all my fighting was an affront and that I had to learn to get along with the way things were.
After the meeting I laughed for an hour. The circular logic was sheer genius. I had walked right back into the Colosseum for someone else's amusement and didn't even know I was there.
So do you fight or do you let it all go? I have no answer for you. I draw my little pictures and tell my little stories and hope that someday I'll figure out which way to turn.
Hey, look, is that a sword on the ground?
Cheers!
We've all been there. You're arguing for what you believe in, but you know deep down, that there is no way to win. You keep on hammering away until you're exhausted. You rally and try one last time and then watch as all of your arguments crash helplessly against the rocks like a wooden ship lost in the fog. It's a tricky business.
Why? Why do we do it? I have been trying to figure it out. I often wonder if it happens across all industries or if advertising is a special kind of hell for masochists with Sisyphusean tendencies? I would imagine that it happens elsewhere because it seems like too much fun. I wonder if techniques on how long to watch someone try to save a good idea is taught in MBA programs or at Harvard Business School. I'll have to Google that.
I (and I know you, if you are in advertising) see it all the time in meetings. You watch as someone tries to argue a point. They are convinced they are right and firmly believe they have a chance to win if they present the argument succinctly and accurately. It's what they have been told their whole lives. From the other side of the room you can see they are utterly doomed.
Like a spectator in the Colosseum you watch as the half naked Christian picks up a sword lying in the dirt and waves it at his masters. The crowd roars and the half naked man feels his confidence rise. Then a gate opens, a lion rushes out and dinner is served.
Sometimes you're just out there amusing those around you. I know. I did it for years and it seems that I can still amuse the emperor.
You want to hear a funny story? I attempted a few years ago to go the other way. To stop fighting against the forces that were around me. I would move on. The Chinese call it Wu Wei, literally "without doing, causing or making." Allow the natural order of things to work with minimal effort on your part. Like a river flowing past and around rocks. Sometimes you must do the same. You just move on. So I resigned. I felt that I was a rock raging against a river and I let the river go. I stepped out of the river.
I recently found out that apparently the "river" didn't like that. I met with someone who told me that because I didn't stay and keep fighting it was seen as an affront, that I was not a leader because a leader would stay and fight to change things. She said this fully knowing that while I was in the "river" I was told that all my fighting was an affront and that I had to learn to get along with the way things were.
After the meeting I laughed for an hour. The circular logic was sheer genius. I had walked right back into the Colosseum for someone else's amusement and didn't even know I was there.
So do you fight or do you let it all go? I have no answer for you. I draw my little pictures and tell my little stories and hope that someday I'll figure out which way to turn.
Hey, look, is that a sword on the ground?
Cheers!
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