July 28, 2009
who says you can’t have it all?
I often think that the thing that probably causes the most “quiet desperation” in modern society, is the relentless pursuit of “Having it all”.
“Who says you can’t have it all?” were the lyrics of an annoyingly upbeat beer jingle from the mid-1980s.
This campaign for Michelob Lite tritely asked the question, “Who says you can’t love your work, and leave it too?” as an allegory to the question, “Who says you can’t get great, satisfying taste in a beer, that also happens to be kinda light and watery?“
I remember seeing the ad as a kid. Some yuppie who looked good in a suit, looked good in a corporate office, but also looked pretty good on the basketball court with his buddies, and who also looked good wielding an electric guitar surrounded by an admiring group of ladies. Loving his work, and leaving it too, as the jingle reaches its triumphant climax. “Oh YES you caaaaan… have it ALL!” How stirring for the soul etc. Tolstoy or Beethoven would be proud etc etc.
If you read the article from 1987 that I linked to above, you’ll find the campaign wasn’t that successful.
Of course it wasn’t. Why? Because as we all know, life isn’t like that.
How many PhD’s have quit their stellar careers in academe, to go play for the NFL? How many NBA stars, after they retired from basketball, go off to run a division of IBM?
To be the best in the world at something– or even REALLY good at it– the sacrifices are utterly, utterly enormous. “Have it all?” Are you insane?
We ALL know this.
Except Michelob Lite back in 1987, it seems. Which is why, twenty-plus years later after declaring their ability to be all things to all people, their brand is still struggling away, trying hard to be something– ANYTHING– other than unexceptional. I wish them well.
Of course, this “Have It All”, sacrifice-free attitude isn’t just the domain of unexceptional beer brands. It’s the domain of unexceptional individual careers, as well. We can only hope that ours is not one of them.
[UPDATE: Just added this blog post to “Evil Plans”.]
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A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.
Of course, Brian May of Queen just finished his PhD. Maybe if you can’t have it all, you can at least have a little more than your share.
Dave, you could also say that Brian May put his academic interests on hold for 20 years in order to play in a band
One of the more entertaining Aussie beer ads of recent times, by Droga5 Sydney, (http://www.bestadsontv.com/files/movies/2009/Jul/22872_VB0074TWO_sml.mov), shows ‘guys punching above their weight’. That’s about as aspirational as it gets. The slogan, ‘VB, the drinking beer’, is exceptionally unexceptional and as unpretentious as VB drinkers. Thank God the days of ‘having it all’ are over.
Well said, Hugh. I’ve realised/believed this for years but the idea of sacrifice and success going hand in hand doesn’t seem popular.
Perhaps this is because it tends to shatter the illusions and dreams that sustain mediocrity.
yo shit is funny as h**ll
I watched Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s TED talk on flow a few days ago. Achieving flow requires skill, knowledge and experience. You can do it only when the activity (playing the piano, telling a story, designing an experiment, …) becomes automatic, instinctive. Otherwise your thinking so much about the basic mechanics, process, rules, etc. that you can’t get into a flow state.
Mihaly reckons that for anything significant (music, design, art, science, sport, …) this takes 10 years. So you can probably ‘have’ three or four things in a lifetime if you put in the effort.
For me this means that I can design, sing and (when I was still young enough) play rugby. May have enough time left to get there with drawing. In everything else I’ll be forever ‘intermediate’.
I don’t want “everything”; just a few things and I reserve the right to name them at a latter date.
Sonny Bono was fairly good at the 10 year or so plan; except he chose the wrong sport
And don’t forget the Governator; wonder if he will start a band in a couple of years
Is there no way to post these great articles onto facebook or others?
Having it all was one of the worst ideas inflicted on my generation, I think. A whole generation of women especially grew up feeling like failures for either not being around all day for their kids, or for not having kids, or for not having careers because they were focusing on kids. (Same basic choices as men, but the expression started with feminism.)
What some people manage is “having it all” in series, or with tons and tons of help & support. Late launch careers are sometimes enormous success stories, and people sometimes find love later in life too. Not everyone, just very exceptional people. But I’d like my kids to aspire to exceptional goals while balancing them with realism and remembering that everything we achieve is really a gift from God to be thankful for.
It’s funny that you mention this, because I was just at a Web 2.0 conference that talked about the “have it all” attitude. All four of the speakers mentioned the widespread change of companies changing their websites to be more realistic. No more pictures of the bright-smiling, picturesque employee on the homepage to try and reel you into the rest of the website. Instead, companies are putting pictures of their own employees on the site, posting interviews and podcasts with CEO’s, and posting non-sketched tutorials with regular employees and engineers. It’s good to see a change like this!
Definitely agree — particularly as a person who has worked in online advertising / marketing for 5 years and have just started as a blogger. We all have a way to be just a little more exceptional — just takes a little more realism — and being yourself, whether you’re an individual or a brand.
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If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
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That’s a genuinely delicious cause theme , I need have ascertained that a couple of ages past. who cares, that’s what you are right here for yes?