Archive for the ‘remember who you are’ Category
May 12, 2010
9 Comments
[“Nightmare”, which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can buy the print here etc.]
[Today’s guest blog post comes from Pat Kane.]
“No ‘occupation’ or ‘vocation’ or ‘craft’ or ‘sector’ is ever going to be stable and predictable ever again.”
The first phrase that came into my head considering the title ‘remember who you are’ is the Marianne Williamson line: “Your playing small doesn’t serve the world”. Indeed not.
The second one came from John Calvin, via Theodore Roszak.
“If God had formed us of the stuff of the sun or the stars”, wrote Calvin, “or if he had created any other celestial matter out of which man could have been made, then we might have said that our beginning was honourable. But we are all made of mud, and this mud is not just on the hem of our gown, or on the sole of our boots, or in our shoes. We are full of it, we are nothing but mud and filth both inside and outside.” But as Roszak says, cosmology tells us we are indeed formed of “the stuff of the sun and the stars”. So to refute the old moan, our existence is thus intrinsically honourable.
Remembering who I am, at this stage in the game, is about remembering the conceptual, artistic and emotional breakthroughs I’ve made in my life as musician, writer and lover (of change, people, and everything in between). And these breakthroughs have essentially been about recognising that illimitabiity — so foul to Calvin, so joyous to the cosmologists — at the heart of the human condition.
When I was a wee child, it was about the infinite possibilities of Lego, comix, fevered dreaming. When I was a young man, it was the endless variations involved in creating a new piece of music, or the excitement when a great thinker blasted my existence into a new context, penetrated to the heart of the obvious and made it new and strange.
As a father, it was realising that a daughter who seemed to be set to repeat her parents’ choices (media/culture) decided to answer her own call and do something completely different (eco-engineering at MIT) — the beautiful though obdurate fact that you bring them up to be autonomous, and you shouldn’t be surprised when they exercise their autonomy.
And as an adult maker, it’s being struck by the vertiginous realisation — in the age of nano, bio and cogno, the Kurzweilian trinity — that no ‘occupation’ or ‘vocation’ or ‘craft’ or ‘sector’ is ever going to be stable and predictable ever again. And right here, right now, it’s understanding that the playfulness you began your human state with is the playfulness that will keep you adaptive and resilient, as you move through an age of endemic transformation and crisis.
But there is real profoundity and paradox in the play scholarship — which I obsessively sift through at http://www.theplayethic.com. From biology, ethology and psychology, it is that we play best when we stand on a ground of play: when we are some distance from hunger, when we have a surplus of materials we can play with, when there are distant guarantors of our security while at play. To be clear about this: play doesn’t pull you up by your own creative bootstraps; play needs some security to truly flourish.
And I think that understanding is a real challenge to those in the creative industries and sectors who might too easily fall into Darwinist fallacies like “out of competitive chaos, new order reigns”. Our playful illimitability, in short, depends on limits — the prior necessities of care, health and strength that we would be foolish not to attend to. (As a father, nurturing my girls into full self-possession, how could I ignore the relations between care and play?)
The fashionable term now is ‘neoteny’ — that extension of juvenile characteristics into maturity that defines us as humans. But that flexibility and openness that makes us creative and response-able is also a vulnerabilty and a fragility. At the very least we need to think about a social safety trampoline, never mind a safety-net, if we are going to commit to the high-wire act of a performative, creative life.
For example, might not an American people collectively freed from the fear of falling into ill-health generate even more innovation in products and services? Might they not have some emotional and psychic headroom to lift their heads above the grind, and see real entrepreneurial possibilities in an everyday life which seems amenable to their purpose, rather than treacherous and dangerous?
So remembering who I am, right now in 2010, is about remembering my own affiliations to a tradition of collective progress (call it socialism, if you wish, and I leave Obama out of that one), and trying to reconcile that with the fissible, morphing, transformative networked society we live in right now. How do I make a buck out of that? Not easy. But when you stand face to face with your personal truth, nothing is.
[Besides being a Glasgow-based “musician, writer, consultant, play theorist, activist” and the author of “The Play Ethic”, Pat Kane was lead singer of one of my favorite bands, when I was a kid growing up in Edinburgh.]
[The “Remember Who You Are” archive is here.]
[Download the high-res “Remember Who You Are” poster here.]
April 30, 2010
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[Today’s guest post comes from BL Ochman.]
Be Yourself. Remembering what’s important.
By B.L. Ochman
Three times in the past 10 years, I have faced down death. Once from illness, once by being hit by a car, and once running through the cloud of debris as the Towers fell on 9/11. Shoulda been dead each of those times, but I’m still here. I figure there’s a reason. Even if I don’t know what it is yet.
The result of those brushes with mortality is that a lot of stuff that used to seem important, like owning the first iPad, or collecting yet another pair of shoes, lost their urgency.
What’s urgent and important now: making time for my family and friends, my dog and cat; having time to think and write; being able to share ideas and to keep learning every day; and being able to call bullshit on false urgency, disingenuousness, and greed.
I know I am absolutely fortunate that my immediate family is alive and – except for my mom – well. We are blessed to have each other. But hey, life is not perfect, and there’s always longing for something more. I wish I could protect my niece and nephews from anything bad ever happening. I wish I could help my mom come back from Alzheimer’s. Because that’s a really ugly place to be, and it’s one we can’t do anything about.
I don’t know how to prevent or change those things, but I have become sure of who I am over the years. I got a really big clue about that just last summer.
My late paternal grandfather, Mischa Borr, was a violinist who led a dance orchestra at the Starlight Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The hotel was very grand in those days, and my grandpa was a bit of a celebrity. The biography the hotel wrote about him said that, during the Russian Revolution, he was on a train coming back from a concert with his band. Cossacks stopped the train, demanded everyone’s papers. One of them said to my grandfather, “Oh, you’re a fiddler! Play your fiddle. If we like it, we’ll let you live.”
As you can imagine, my grandpa played his heart out and the soldiers spared his life and the lives of his band members. I always thought that was some PR story the hotel made up to make him sound exotic. But I learned last summer, from the son of my late grandparents’ best friend, that the story was indeed true. And that many of the other passengers on the train were shot or beheaded that night.
When I was a little girl, my Russian grandma used to tell me, “remember darling, you are an aristocrat.” I had no idea what she meant until I learned more about history and about what she and her family lost when they left their village in Russia to start a new life of freedom in the United States.
All these years later, I know that what she was really telling me is that I am a survivor. And that means I have to remember what is beautiful, and hold dear the love in my life. It’s my heritage.
[B.L. Ochman, @whatsnext, is publisher of What’s Next Blog http://www.whatsnextblog.com , co-founder of Pawfun.com, the pet lover’s site http://www.pawfun.com and is Managing Director of Emerging Media for Proof Integrated Communications.]
[The “Remember Who You Are” archive is here.]
[Buy the “No Point Stressing Out” print here.]
[Download the high-res “Remember Who You Are” poster here.]
April 20, 2010
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[Today’s guest post comes from Brian Solis, author of a new book that I’m currently reading, “Engage!”]
Building Bridges Between Aspiration and Consummation
Several years ago, I was re-introduced to a famous quote. While I had long forgotten the words, I believe that they had subconsciously inspired me. I was much younger when they initially tested my awareness. For me, and of course, similar to almost everything I learn, it took several appearances to permeate the thinning filters of my attention and focus, ultimately earning permanent residence in my mind and heart. And consequently, it now serves us my guiding mantra for all that I do today.
“Life isn’t about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
Hugh’s maxim, “Remember who you are…” aligns with Shaw’s words and the piercing moral within each message, is the aide-mémoire of the experiences that moved and inspired us over the years and the hopes that each engendered. They define who we are and they’re the catalysts that trigger new opportunities and experiences.
It’s the remembrance and the application to who we are that becomes poignant. Remembering who you are serves as a history lesson as the state of “you” is the result of your past finding its place in the present. It is the future that is not yet written and without aspiration, ambition has nothing to fuel.
Understanding how we got to this place at this time is predicated by our actions as they were influenced by the events that touched us. Ergo, our aspiration is a deliberate state of intention and the distance defining our journey is measured by the actions that move hope and vision toward existence and propelled by conscious activity and purpose. It’s the difference between dreaming…and bringing dreams to life.
Lessons are the scenery that surrounds our journey and this is a trip best appreciated with eyes, minds, and hearts, wide open.
A good friend introduced me to the concept of Be, Do, Get…and I’ve since woven these words and the governing methodology into the hallmark of all that inspires me. The ideas and lessons that emerge through the discovery of answering the following questions serve as an everlasting sense of renewal of my personal mission and purpose.
What do I want to be?
Why?
How will I get there?
What’s working against me right now?
What challenges face me today and tomorrow?
How will I know when I get there and what is the reward for reaching my destination?
What is the opportunity cost of this ambition over others?
Once I discover and confirm who I want to be…I then do the things…that ultimately empower me to get to where I envisioned. The entire sequence is connected through discovery and action.
Again, life isn’t as much about finding yourself as it is creating yourself.
I believe that the distance between who I am and who I want to be is separated only by my actions and words. And defining who I want to be should remain in a perpetual state of aspiration rewarded through accomplishments and milestones intentionally introduced to transform the illusion of progress to a constant state of realization.
Remember who you are…
[The “Remember Who You Are” archive is here.]
[Download the high-res “Remember Who You Are” poster here.]
April 15, 2010
117 Comments
[Today’s guest post comes from Pam Slim.]
You, Less Than.
I still remember the smell of damp ivy from a recent rain as I stood in the backyard, waiting for my Dad to take my picture.
It was 1971 and I was five years old. I was wearing a brightly colored knit vest, a present from my grandma. I tied my shoes myself, but was not totally sure I had them on the right feet. It didn’t matter. I was one powerful little girl. The Champion of the World.
My Dad smiled at me, squinting his eyes as he crouched behind the camera. I was safe, cherished and loved. He snapped the picture.
Things blew up after that, rather quickly.
My Dad left home and his marriage, to find himself. That’s what people did in the 1970’s in Marin County, California.
My world of family dinners and Dr. Seuss bedtime stories in my Dad’s lap ended. It was scary, unfamiliar, off-balance.
The way I had known myself: child of happy parents, member of a “normal” family was no longer.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who I was. I tried to be a perfect student. And when that got to be too much, I inhaled, a lot. In my twenties I fell into a treacherous lover’s arms and paid dearly with a broken heart and wounded soul.
I found martial arts, self-employment and writing.
And one day in a box full of old family photographs, I found the picture.
Holding the yellowed edges in my hands, I remembered who I was. I felt who I was. Who I had always been, except when I forgot.
Circumstances can cause you to question who you are.
A boss writes you a stinging performance review.
A reader leaves a bitter comment on your blog post.
A vocal audience member questions your authority in the middle of your presentation.
A publisher sends back your treasured manuscript with a crass note.
A spouse berates your manhood, or womanhood.
And you go from You, The Champion of the World to
You, less than.
You, squashed.
You, angry and off-balance.
You, the misfit.
You, the fuck up.
When you fall into this deep pit of treachery and despair, you need something to pull you out. An image, a word, a note. It helps when this object reflects both the love you have for yourself as well as the love someone has for you.
Like a picture of you through your parent’s eyes.
Or a note from an impassioned reader who loved the piece that you loved to write.
Or a rock from a beach that was so beautiful you could swear that the sand was kissing your feet.
You, less than, is a lie.
Remember who you are.
[Pamela Slim is an author and coach. You can find her at Escape From Cubicle Nation.]
[The “Remember Who You Are” archive is here.]
[Download the high-res “Remember Who You Are” poster here.]
April 12, 2010
9 Comments
[’Gun”, which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can buy the print here etc.]
[Today’s guest blog post comes from JP Rangaswami.]
It’s Not Normal
Maybe it is a consequence of when I was born (1957) and where I grew up (Calcutta), but from a very young age I’ve believed in some things. Not many things. Some. Some very important things.
I believe that none of us is an accident, that we all have potential and purpose. We can deny ourselves reaching that potential and purpose. We can be denied reaching that potential and purpose by others. But we cannot deny the existence of that potential and purpose.
I believe, as part of this purpose, we are born to relate to others on earth, to enjoy spending time with others, talking with each other, listening to each other, having consideration for each other in covenant relationships. I believe that spending time with other humans is a joyous thing. We can deny ourselves this joy. We can be denied this joy. But we cannot deny the existence of this joy.
I believe, as part of this joy, we are born to share, to enjoy communal participation in things. In sharing, we make ourselves vulnerable. And in that vulnerability is joy. That that vulnerability and that joy inhabit all our relationships.
I believe, as part of this vulnerability, we are born to learn. To learn while relating to the people around us, to learn while sharing, to learn while making ourselves vulnerable. Learning involves doing new things. Sometimes the new things are called failures, sometimes they are called successes. We should celebrate both as learning.
I believe that doing all this: learning, loving, sharing, socialising: it’s called living. I believe that anything that stops us from reaching and extending our potential and purpose is wrong; I believe that anything that stops us relating to others is wrong; I believe that anything that stops us sharing is wrong; I believe that anything that stops us learning is wrong.
I believe that, seen from this perspective, there are many things that are wrong with this world. That this is not normal. And that we have the power to change it.
Remember who we are.
[JP Rangaswami is Chief Scientist at BT Group PLC. He blogs at www.confusedofcalcutta.com, tweets as @jobsworth, can be contacted via jobsworth@me.com. He’s passionate about his family, his work, his friends, his church community, books, music, information and food. He’s currently working on a number of books; the one he’s most likely to finish is about two of his passions: food and information.]
[The “Remember Who You Are” archive is here.]
[Download the high-res “Remember Who You Are” poster here.]
April 8, 2010
9 Comments
[“Echo Chamber”, which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can buy the print here etc.]
[Today’s guest post comes from Faris Yakob.]
You never know what you’re going to be famous for.
In the case of Polonius Lord Chamberlain to King Claudius in what is arguably the best known play in the world [Hamlet] it was some advice. His son Laertes is leaving Denmark, there being something rotten in the state of it, and is off to Paris. Polonius takes the opportunity to lay some fatherly wisdom on him and finishes up by saying:
“This above all: to thine own self be true.”
The expression lept out of the play and into the Big Book of English Aphorisms, becoming significantly more well known than Polonius himself.
It’s always seemed like good advice to me.
As we grow up we learn by imitating, trying on aspects of other people. We dream of being stars of pop and film, helpfully forgetting that what makes them famous was who they are — and that ain’t us.
Kurt Cobain once said that “wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are” [and a person is a terrible thing to waste, as I’m sure he would tell you] but it’s an essential stage of development.
The important thing to realize is that, eventually, you need start being you.
And then — you need to get really good at it.
It’s been almost 15 years since Tom Peters wrote “The Brand Called You” for Fast Company and in that time the idea of “Personal Branding” has gone from the height of douchebaggery to an inevitable consideration for anyone in the mediation generation.
Once you begin to extend yourself via media, you become aware that by broadcasting your life through media fragments, you are creating an idea of who you are that is distinct from, but inextricably linked to, who you are.
And that brand is a highly defensible asset.
Not in the sense of making you a social media superhero [everyone is famous online, but some are more famous than others] but because no one else can ever use it.
If you are hired simply to do a job, whatever it is, your job is never entirely safe.
This is because, if you are being hired solely because you can perform the tasks associated with the role, then, by inference, you are always replaceable, by anyone else that can perform the same duties. Being able to the job is the cost of entry.
If you are hired because, as well as being able to perform the duties, you are remarkably good at being you, suddenly you are no longer quite so replaceable, because no one else can do that.
I get sent resumes a lot — sometimes several a day. I try to respond to all of them with at least some advice.
And my advice is usually something like this:
1. If you are looking to get a job anywhere in the marketing communications industry, but especially in digital places, make sure you have links to your web presences on your resume.
2. Don’t just put what jobs you have done or what experience you have — everyone has done jobs and has experience and it mostly all sounds the same: somehow communicate what makes you awesome at being you.
I like to think Polonius would approve…
[Faris Yakob is the former (and first and only) Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson (NY) and Digital Ninja at Naked Communications (Everywhere). He will probably be doing another job soon that he will be, hopefully, uniquely suited to. You can find him on his blogs: Talent Imitates, Genius Steals and StolenGenius.com — and on twitter @faris. He hopes you have a truly awesome day.]
April 6, 2010
16 Comments
[“Love Without Harmony”. Part of The “Love” Series etc.]
[Today’s guest post comes from Mark McGuinness.]
Remember Yourself
“Remember yourself always and everywhere.”
These words were inscribed on the walls of the study house of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Château Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon, the home of the esoteric teacher George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. They summarised the essence of his teaching and were written there as a reminder to his students.
Gurdjieff taught that human beings are divided into two parts: Essence and Personality.
Essence in man is what is his own. Personality in man is what is ‘not his own.’ ‘Not his own’ means what has come from outside, what he has learned, or reflects, all traces of exterior impressions left in the memory and in the sensations, all words and movements that have been learned, all feelings created by imitation …
Essence is the truth in man; personality is the false. But in proportion as personality grows, essence manifests itself more and more rarely and more and more feebly and it very often happens that essence stops in its growth at a very early age and grows no further.
(G.I. Gurdjieff, as reported by P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous)
In other words, Personality is made up of the rules, conventions and expectations of the world around you; Essence is the real you. A bit like the white pebble.
By definition, Personality is hard to resist, since it carries the weight of the world’s expectations. It’s easier to go with the flow, to fall into step with those around you, to do as you’re told, at the expense of who you really are. But doing the easy thing comes at a price:
Moreover, it happens fairly often that essence dies in a man while his personality and his body are still alive. A considerable percentage of the people we meet in the streets of a great town are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead.
(Gurdjieff, ibid.)
According to Gurdjieff, we can only avoid this fate by staying in touch with our Essence and helping it to grow and develop unhindered by the shackles of Personality. The chief way of doing this is through an activity he called Self Remembering. In ordinary life, he said, we forget ourselves in the bustle of daily activity and the delusions of Personality. Self Remembering is the opposite of this forgetfulness — it involves becoming deliberately aware of yourself in the present moment, of your thoughts, feelings, actions and physical sensations.
Right now, for example, notice how you are reading words in front of your eyes, on a screen. Notice the thoughts and images that they are creating in your mind. Notice the emotions they are arousing in you. Notice how your body feels right this instant; the posture you are in; the sensations you can feel. Don’t let this article and these few seconds of your life be like a disembodied film being played out in front of you — put yourself in the picture. Feel what it’s like to be alive at this moment.
Now you are starting to remember yourself. Soon, you’ll forget again, and get caught up in demands and distractions of the rest of the day. But at any moment — if you remember — you can come back to yourself, and become a little more aware, feel a little more alive. Do this often enough, said Gurdjieff, and you open up the possibility of waking up to your real nature.
Self Remembering is not easy. Try to do it for more than a few moments at a time, and you’ll soon discover how hard it is to avoid getting sucked into the next train of thought, the next enthusiasm, the next pressing engagement. And the hardest thing is remembering to do it at all! When I was first introduced to Self Remembering, I experienced such a vivid sense of freedom and peace in the moment that I resolved to do it often as possible. Several days later, I ‘came round’ with a jolt when I realised I had completely forgotten all about that ‘unforgettable’ experience and hadn’t made an attempt to remember myself since!
As we’ve seen, the easy thing is to surrender to personality, the internalised rules and expectations of society. Remembering who you really are is hard work. You have to fight like hell if you want to hold onto it. That’s why Gurdjieff called it ‘The Work’ with a capital ‘W’.
Gurdjieff helped his pupils by providing reminders, prompting them to remember themselves ‘always and everywhere’. Sometimes he would ring a bell at irregular intervals during the day — on hearing the bell, his pupils were to remember themselves immediately, whatever they were doing, and start observing their mental and emotional state. He also encouraged them to make small changes in their daily routines, to create little reminders during the day. If you always take milk with your tea, get rid of the milk from the fridge — every time you go to make a cup of tea, the absence of milk should act as a nudge to remember yourself.
In his own way, I think Hugh’s after something similar with his cartoons and the ‘remember who you are’ shtick. If you have a picture like this or this hanging on your wall, looking you in the face every day, it’s hard to do the easy thing, forget your real nature, and slide back into conformity. The picture serves as a reminder, a challenge to stay true to yourself, no matter what. A bit like the writing on the wall back at the study room in Gurdjieff’s Institute.
[Mark McGuinness helps artists and entrepreneurs create remarkable things at Lateral Action. For bite-sized inspiration, follow Mark on Twitter.]
[The “Remember Who You Are” archive is here.]
[Download the high-res “Remember Who You Are” poster here.]
April 5, 2010
38 Comments
[“I Choose This Life”, which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can buy the print here etc.]
Are you a “Waker”?
If the answer is no, I’m sorry to hear that. Wakers are my favorite people.
A waker is someone who is very good at waking other people up from their metaphorical slumber.
Some people just have the gift. Being around them or their work just makes you feel more alive, more inspired, more motivated, more awake. The best wakers will make you do crazy-ass things, like quit your boring job and start your own business, write that song, move to Thailand, forgive that someone who once hurt you, or finally tell that girl that you love her.
A waker reminds you on a constant basis, just how alive you really are. Just how much human potential you really have inside of you. And there’s something about their influence that makes you utterly unable to go back to “sleep” ever again, in spite of your best efforts.
Wakers can be great artists– Jeff Buckely, Picasso, Harper Lee, Beethoven, Charlie Parker, Leo Tolstoy, Tilda Swinton, Louis Armstrong, Ralph Steadman, Saul Steinberg etc– but they don’t have to be.
Wakers can be great spiritual leaders– Jesus, Gandhi, Mohammed, Buddha, The Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Joseph Campbell etc– but they don’t have to be.
Wakers can be great public figures– Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill, Simone de Beauvoir, Diana Vreeland, Carl Sagan, John Peel, Susan Sontag, Alistair Cooke, Margaret Thatcher, etc– but they don’t have to be.
I know great wakers who are bartenders, bus drivers, teachers, receptionists, plumbers. Theirs is a gift, not a job title.
If you are a waker, I’m happy for you. There is no better way to spend one’s life than being a waker, I truly believe that.
The human race needs you, like flowers need sunshine. The human race would die out within three generations without you. Thanks for being here. Seriously.
If you’re not a waker, don’t you think you should be? Serious question.
[The “Remember Who You Are” archive is here.]
[Download the high-res “Remember Who You Are” poster here.]
April 3, 2010
13 Comments
[Today’s guest post is from Vinny Warren. You can buy the same print here etc.]
Re. The Genesis of “Remember Who You Are”:
When I (unwittingly) coined the “Remember Who You Are” phrase for Hugh [backstory here] it was in reference to the print of his I had just purchased, that we proudly display in my ad agency’s lobby. It reads: THE MARKET FOR SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN IS INFINITE. Which pretty much sums up EVERYTHING you need to know about marketing.
At the time I said that it reminded me of the Roman Catholic icons my mother displayed in my childhood home to remind us of who we were: Irish Roman Catholics. I write this on vacation, from my hometown of Galway, Ireland. And I am reminded afresh of why this practice originated.
You see Ireland, unlike Hugh’s homeland of Scotland, was never fully subjugated by the English. We had the great advantage of being separated from England by the sea. We also had the great advantage of being bloody minded in the extreme. The Irish are a passionate and unreasonable race. We are Celts and we will fight you to the bitter end. We will never give up.
At one point in the 18th century, our now-friends the English outlawed both our religion and our language and customs upon pain of death. Or worse, transportation to Australia! The English assumed, not unreasonably, that surely this would do the trick. That we would eventually give up our identity and assimilate. They were wrong. Ireland, despite our proximity to the UK, became the first “colony” of the then great British Empire to defeat it.
We ultimately did this by inventing urban guerilla warfare, aka terrorism. We made Ireland ungovernable by using unconventional techniques that favored our comparatively limited resources. The English expected us to fight them on their terms but we fought them on our terms. The Jewish Israeli independence fighters studied and used these exact same techniques against the British in the then Palestine in 1948.
Unreasonableness won us our independence. Our very identity was at stake. Being Celtic and Roman Catholic was literally illegal. Our reaction was: well f**k that s**t! And in the long run, and it was a centuries-long long run, we won out. Because we never lost sight of who we were, and the value that had to us. 
Some things just aren’t right. And no amount of bullshit and arrogance and/or money and power can make them right. They’re just wrong. Period.
What was the impulse that initially got you excited you about what you do? Stick with that impulse. Maybe you are right and THEY are wrong. The Sex Pistols were right. The Beatles were right. James Joyce was right. Bill Bernbach was right.
Life conspires to throw you off your true course. So we all need reminders of who we really are. Of what really animates and inspires us on a day to day basis.
My late mother’s statues of the Virgin Mary and pictures of the saints weren’t solely the product of religious devotion. They were also a gesture of defiance. Our culture had come precariously close to losing our identity. But we were damned if we were going to succumb to something that was just plain wrong.
Never forgetting who we are is the key to everything. For all we know, YOU may well end up being the center of the universe. Think about that. Assume that is the case. Why not? It could be true.
[Vinny Warren is a founder and creative director of The Escape Pod. A Chicago-based ad agency that knows who it is. You can follow Vinny on Twitter. @vinnywarren is his wildly creative handle. ]
[The “Remember Who You Are” archive is here.]
[Download the high-res “Remember Who You Are” poster here.]
April 2, 2010
16 Comments
[“90%”, which I sent out recently in the newsletter. You can buy the print here etc.]
[Today’s guest post is from minimalist maven, Everett Bogue.]
How to Eliminate Distractions to Focus on the Important
In the modern age it’s so difficult to focus on the important.
It’s not entirely your fault. For the last few generations the televisions told us to want everything, then Internet gave us infinite options. It’s no wonder no one can concentrate on their art, we’ve never had the ability to do everything for 30 seconds a day.
Why focus when you can spend all day hitting the refresh button on your email?
It’s important to take time to remember how to focus.
The most successful people realize that in order to create anything meaningful, they need to turn it all off. In order to do anything that matters, you need cultivate a healthy atmosphere of complete silence in order make a difference in your own life and change the world.
Leo Babauta is focused on the essentials. He’s limited his life to the minimum in order to focus on the important. Now he runs the of top 25 blog Zen Habits and published his print book The Power of Less.
Tammy Strobel is focused on using simplicity to save the world. She encourages her readers to give up their gas-guzzlers for pedal power, to exchange your stuff for the elegance of living with less.
Colin Wright is focused on living anywhere. He lives with less 51 things and moves to a new continent every 4 months. He runs a zero-overhead sustainable design and marketing studio from anywhere in the world.
Ashley Ambirge is focused on challenging the status-quo. She’s just getting started as the world’s leading rebel against mediocrity, even if that means living in a basement (for now) in exchange for the opportunity to travel to every corner of the earth.
Focusing on the important doesn’t have to be complicated.
For the last six months I’ve been investigating the implications of living with less — the minimalist existence. This journey started with quitting my day job and hopping on a plane to Portland, OR with everything I owned in a bag. This investigation continues daily as I explore the true implications of turning it all off to focus on the important in order to make work that matters.
The answer is pretty simple, everyone buys and does too much stuff. They’re over-extended to the point that no one knows what they’re doing anymore. Anyone who’s not making things (or not making good things) isn’t “not creative enough”, instead they’ve been hypnotized into thinking that junk and wasting time matters more than discovering their true purpose.
The secret to focusing on the important is simple:
- Turn off the TV.
- Donate your junk.
- Turn off your smart phone.
- Quit your day job.
- Stop buying stuff that doesn’t matter.
- Cultivate silence.
- Work on your art.
- Have your own ideas.
- Push for change.
- Do something that matters.
All of that nonsense they told you to buy isn’t going to make you happy.
The only thing that is important making art that matters.
The only way to make art that matters is to focus on the important.
[Everett Bogue is the author of The Art of Being Minimalist and blogger at Far Beyond The Stars.]
[The “Remember Who You Are” archive is here.]
[Download the high-res “Remember Who You Are” poster here.]
March 31, 2010
43 Comments
[“Popularity”, which I sent out recently in the newsletter. You can buy the print here etc.]
[Today’s guest post comes from my favorite saucy vixen, AV Flox]
“I wish I could be as impulsive as you are,” he said to me. He said it with a slight smile, but it was an insult. It meant: you’re a child. You’re out of your mind.
We were sitting at a cafe overlooking the islands around Stockholm. I’d suggested going to a pier that night and sleeping under the stars.
“Your feet are planted so firmly in reality, you can’t walk,” I responded, lighting a cigarette.
He took a sip of his coffee: “Wake up and grow up.”
“Let go and live for a change.”
“Anaiis, you have to realize that your independence and self are not separate from cultural and social norms,” he told me, putting the small cup on the table between us. “You can’t go around thinking you don’t belong within the social and cultural borders that, unfortunately, do exist. You think you are above that and you’re not. No one is.”
That was our last real conversation. We finished our coffees in silence. Afterward, we strolled back to the house, where we dined – still in silence, without turning on any lights. When we were finished, I went upstairs and packed.
“I love you, but I hate the way you are,” he said as I pulled my suitcases down the stairs. Then he turned to the piano and started to play Beethoven’s “Quasi una fantasia.”
I left Europe that night, and Magnus with it. But I didn’t leave full of conviction that I preferred to be alone than entangled in someone who didn’t embrace the choices of life, the freedom that we have to sleep in a warm bed or a cold pier. I left crippled with the weight of having said too much and having wanted too much.
At every airport I walked, on every plane I boarded, as I made my way across two continents and two oceans, I looked at the people around me, moving like a herd through security and boarding lines. No one stared or even looked at anything for too long, or – heaven forbid – struck up conversations. No one invaded anyone’s space or time. In the elite line, we were all seasoned travelers. We knew the deal: how to open our carry-ons quickly, what to remove and how to set it on the tray and we did it fluidly, without inconveniencing anyone around us. In the plane, we were quiet, we buckled our seat belts, turned off our phones and pulled out our books.
We knew the rules and remained firmly within them.
During a brief layover in Houston, I found a cafe and sat down to read. A few minutes later, I was interrupted by the sense that someone was watching me. It was a little girl, seven or eight years-old, sitting across from me at one of the gates. I closed my book and smiled at her.
She came to me, messy brown hair and big green eyes, and a Cheshire cat stuffed animal in her arms.
“What are you reading?” she asked me.
“The Bell Jar,” I told her.
“What’s it about?”
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath is about a young woman stifled by convention who slowly goes mad – how do you explain this to a child?
“Um. It’s the journey of a girl who is confused with who she is,” I replied.
“What chapter are you on?”
“Six.”
“What’s the girl doing?”
“Esther — that’s her name — is a model in New York and even though she has become friends with the girls around her, she feels all alone.”
“That’s sad,” said the little girl, “I’m not lonely, I’m with my mommy.”
Her mother seemed to materialize at the words, carrying a clear Subway bag with sandwiches inside.
“Alyssa,” she called, visibly unsettled by the sight of her daughter talking to a stranger.
Alyssa rose and ran to her, but in the middle of the walkway, she paused and turned back around.
“Alyssa!”
The girl walked back to me slowly and handed me her stuffed animal.
“Don’t get lonely, okay?” she said to me. “Talk to the cat.”
In a sea of people who know where they’ve been and where they’re going, who have every aspect of their trips planned to the minute, people who get in nobody’s way and expect everyone to extend the same courtesy, a little girl handed a stranger her stuffed animal.
I have never believed children are born pure in the standard sense of the word, but I do believe they’re born free of the boundaries we impose on ourselves later as a society – and perhaps this does make children pure.
Or maybe a better term is “free.”
A child would not hesitate to pack up a sleeping bag and sleep on a pier under the stars with you.
Since that flight, whenever people asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I replied, “I want to be a child.”
So if you ever wonder why I share so much of myself with the world, from the sacred to the profane, the answer is that I think everyone could use this license to be who they are and enjoy what that means. We do live in a society with norms about what we can and cannot share, what we can and cannot do, but as Einstein once said: “if the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” That’s what I want to do – I want to change the facts.
Your wants are beautiful, your truths are powerful. Maybe you want to sleep on a pier or share a fairytale kiss under every triumphal arch in the world. Maybe you dream of diving the wreckage of a galleon or quitting your job and starting your own company.
They’ll say you’re crazy. They’ll say, “I wish I could be as impulsive as you are,” and that you should grow up. Life isn’t like that – there are norms, you know. There are ways to do things. You don’t talk to people at the security line at the airport. You get through it as fast as possible, go to your gate, wait for them to board you, sit down and be quiet. You go to your job, bust your ass, go home, change, go to some social thing, entertain the same questions, go home, watch bad television and do it all over again. Polite, proper, efficient. That’s life, right? Then you get old and maybe play some golf, then you die.
Fuck no.
The only way to remember who you are is to refuse to let anyone or anything dictate what you want. I write to share my triumphs and defeats and to remind you that wanting something other than herd-like, soul-crushing monotony is not only natural, but necessary.
And I’ll tell you something: for every e-mail I receive that says I’m out of my fucking mind, I have two more from people sharing their deepest desires. People that much closer to remembering who they are.
And every time, I think, “you don’t have to be lonely – I’ll be your cat.”
[AV Flox is a sex columnist for BlogHer and warrior for self-acceptance and the pursuit of our wants. When she’s not chasing her own desires around the world (and live-tweeting her experiences at @avflox), she’s editing the Los Angeles-based sex news blog Sex and the 405.]
[The “Remember Who You Are” archive is here.]
[Download the high-res “Remember Who You Are” poster here.]
March 28, 2010
22 Comments
[This is the first of a series of guest blog posts, based around the “Remember Who You Are” riff I’m always going on about. Today’s post comes from my friend and mentor, Seth Godin, the great marketing author.]
Forget who you are
When most people say, “remember who you are,” what they’re really saying is, “remember who we think you are, remember who you were born to, don’t overreach, wait your turn, don’t get uppity.”
They rarely mean it the way Hugh means it. Hugh, I think, is saying that you are whomever you decide to be. That’s a statement of astonishing audacity, one that could only be said by an artist and understood by one as well.
I have no illusions about the mobility of our society. While it is far more flexible and open than some societies in the past, there are huge impediments to entering a different class.
And yet…
And yet art in all its forms belies that. Art, whether it’s the drawing art that Hugh does or the business art that a great Wall Street trader does or the customer service art that Tony Hsieh at Zappos espouses… that sort of art isn’t limited by social boundaries. When you connect and change another human being, when you create upside wherever you go, then who you are is decided by you, not by them.
Let’s change the mantra, then, from “remember who you are,” to “decide who you are.”
Decide to be the generous, change-making, scarifying, delighting, over-the-topping dreamer you’re capable of being.
–Seth Godin
[Download the high-res “remember Who You Are” poster here.]
February 7, 2010
53 Comments
[UPDATE: Download the high-res poster version here.]
This image to the left you should be seeing a lot of from now on, scattered around the gapingvoid empire. It’s now our official logo.
OK, so why “Remember Who You Are”?
Because it ties up everything I’ve been working on these last few years. First with the cartoons, the prints and the “Cube Grenade” private commissions.
Like I said earlier:
I’m interested in how art affects “The Real World”- the workplace, the world of work, the world of business. That’s what the Cube Grenade idea is all about.
My advertising buddy, Vinny Warren, grew up in a Roman Catholic household in Ireland. He was telling me that his parents would always have a few religious icons hanging on the wall somewhere. Pictures of Saints, Mary & Baby Jesus, that kind of thing.
Why? Says Vinny, “To remind us who we were.”
My work has never been about getting the approval of the New York art gallery mafia. My work has always been about “What Really Matters” to people, especially to my peers.
Art that reminds you who you are. Exactly. What applies in Catholic households also applies in places of business. Shared Meaning. Shared Purpose. Exactly. Social Objects. Exactly.
Secondly, I think there’s an insatiable hunger for it. Not to lose ourselves in the hopeless muddle we call Life, but instead, doing something that matters, making a difference, creating good in the world, creating value. Remembering what’s really important, remembering who we are.
This is not just about Art and cartoons, this is about EVERYTHING we do.
I’ve been saying this to my clients for years– to have a successful brand, personal or otherwise, it can’t just be about you, or even your customers, it has to be about something HIGHER than all of us. A “Purpose-Idea” .
gapingvoid is no exception; neither is your work.
“Remember who you are.” I’ll try to live up to it; I hope TO GOD that you will, too. Amen.
[UPDATE:] Yes, feel free to download it, print it out and stick it on your wall i.e. use it as a “Cube Grenade”. Even better, once it’s hanging somewhere, feel free to send me a photo. I’d love to see them. Thanks! Rock on.
