Life as a Day

Here’s a quote that I heard recently that I really like.

“… we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning…”

-Carl Jung

Anyone who knows the quote will notice that I’ve used about 1/5th of the whole thing, but I think the core of the thing lies in that slice of a sentence.

I take from this quote that anyone who thinks they have it all figured out and does not change with the world around them is doomed for a nasty surprise sometime during the decades that follow. I’ve heard this problem voiced from a few different perspectives and I think the most salient is told from a war history point of view.

In World War 1, the paradigm shift came as machine guns, trenches, tanks. In World War 2, it was aircraft and bombs. In each war, Allied generals tried to win This War the same way they won the Last War, (for god’s sake, the French insisted on using actual horse-mounted cavalry against German machine guns for a while) each was met with superb resistance until the armies adopted the next winning strategy. 

This applies to a person’s life in a very similar way, the world changes! What works today may not work tomorrow, especially in the supercharged network of technology we live in. In the same way, you change over time. We are all growing older, our bodies and brains work differently. Instead of trying to relive the glory days of early adulthood, maybe it would be a great benefit to try something new, to start on the ground level of a new skill or group. I have Chip Conley to thank for this advice. Is anyone noticing that I listen to Tim Ferris’s podcast?

I had a bit on the Vietnam war tying into this one, but I felt that it stretched the thing out too much. You’ll get that one tomorrow.

-Rob