Yesterday I had a ride-along with a potential employer. On a muggy hot day, we drove from Daytona Beach, Fl to Orlando, Fl to B.F.E., Fl and finally back to my truck in Daytona. The guy who was to show me the ropes, Bill, was nice and I could tell that he used to be interesting. He had a good way with people, a pure salesman, and he had a pretty good sense of humor. Though, later in the day, while driving between the 10 something businesses that we visited, I could see in his voice a slightly telling creek that suggests a saddened boredness. Prior, at lunch, I quizzed him on his present state. On the up end of a flattened-out rollercoaster, renting alone at the beach at 42, a runner and a Nascar fan, nice-natured with a good relationship with his son and Ex, he failed my happy quiz.
In Bill’s defense, however, the job is legit. The company sells chemical cleaning solutions to industrial facilities at a great profit in a great niched system. The benefits of the job include salary, truck payment, and an opportunity to make a very significant commission. The problem, for me, is the product – SOAP. Do I really want to be a soap salesman? (Me, a strong, smart, passionate man with the potential to change the world; me, as humble as I am cocky; me, a once to-be-when-I-grow-up professional baseball player / astronaut?) Do I have it in me to lay down my pride so as to again pick up a paycheck?
I think that this is a dilemma that I have in common with about sixty-one million and seven (61,000,007) Americans – Swallow my ego, my pride, my passion, my freedom for the sake of survival. How many of us eat a daily Ego Breakfast for the sake of keeping our home and making a truck payment? Many, eat this breakfast selflessly and so honorably as they do it for the sake of their kids or their parents or their significant loved one. Many more, still, swallow their once-passionate pursuits of doing for the sake of an extra 1,000 square feet and a boat payment as they keep up with the Amercianized greed-gravied Jefferson’s. What is the value of your ego?
How many people sleep on sidewalks under the Life section of Sunday’s newspaper, wearing brown-streaked Hanes and an old, brown Falcons toboggan with their ego well in tact? Probably not that many. And there is the bitch of the dilemma – where is the threshold to the point where there is no turning back? At a certain point, the preservation of things like passion and freedom that exist inside one’s figurative ego can crush a man under the weight of the real money-needing world. Conversely, similar to the saddened boredom inherent in Bill yesterday while on the road in the blue Honda, too many people live out their life one Ego Breakfast at a time in a constant state of denial and in the ignorance of their one-day regret.
I read a good short story the other day that does a great job to annunciate the Dilemma that I describe. Many mid-twenty unemployed and newly employed world citizens are faced with this dilemma. The story, How Much Land Does a Man Need by Leo Tolstoy, describes man’s incessant need for more in lieu of what is his inherent place. While I by no means promote life-complacency, there is a Josh-Implied lesson within the story that should not be missed or misinterpreted.
“Each man has a unique set of skills that is his talent. His talent is created by and improved upon according to his interests. His interests are given from God in his nature. He is Free only in the doing of his true interest.”
If you have to eat your Ego for breakfast, do it for but a short while and drown it with extra syrup,
Pursue your personal passionate freedom with your pride intact,
Do More Now
In Bill’s defense, however, the job is legit. The company sells chemical cleaning solutions to industrial facilities at a great profit in a great niched system. The benefits of the job include salary, truck payment, and an opportunity to make a very significant commission. The problem, for me, is the product – SOAP. Do I really want to be a soap salesman? (Me, a strong, smart, passionate man with the potential to change the world; me, as humble as I am cocky; me, a once to-be-when-I-grow-up professional baseball player / astronaut?) Do I have it in me to lay down my pride so as to again pick up a paycheck?
I think that this is a dilemma that I have in common with about sixty-one million and seven (61,000,007) Americans – Swallow my ego, my pride, my passion, my freedom for the sake of survival. How many of us eat a daily Ego Breakfast for the sake of keeping our home and making a truck payment? Many, eat this breakfast selflessly and so honorably as they do it for the sake of their kids or their parents or their significant loved one. Many more, still, swallow their once-passionate pursuits of doing for the sake of an extra 1,000 square feet and a boat payment as they keep up with the Amercianized greed-gravied Jefferson’s. What is the value of your ego?
How many people sleep on sidewalks under the Life section of Sunday’s newspaper, wearing brown-streaked Hanes and an old, brown Falcons toboggan with their ego well in tact? Probably not that many. And there is the bitch of the dilemma – where is the threshold to the point where there is no turning back? At a certain point, the preservation of things like passion and freedom that exist inside one’s figurative ego can crush a man under the weight of the real money-needing world. Conversely, similar to the saddened boredom inherent in Bill yesterday while on the road in the blue Honda, too many people live out their life one Ego Breakfast at a time in a constant state of denial and in the ignorance of their one-day regret.
I read a good short story the other day that does a great job to annunciate the Dilemma that I describe. Many mid-twenty unemployed and newly employed world citizens are faced with this dilemma. The story, How Much Land Does a Man Need by Leo Tolstoy, describes man’s incessant need for more in lieu of what is his inherent place. While I by no means promote life-complacency, there is a Josh-Implied lesson within the story that should not be missed or misinterpreted.
“Each man has a unique set of skills that is his talent. His talent is created by and improved upon according to his interests. His interests are given from God in his nature. He is Free only in the doing of his true interest.”
If you have to eat your Ego for breakfast, do it for but a short while and drown it with extra syrup,
Pursue your personal passionate freedom with your pride intact,
Do More Now
No comments:
Post a Comment