Trust30 – #24 – The Call to Arms
The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
What if today, right now, no jokes at all, you were actually in charge, the boss, the Head Honcho. Write the "call to arms" note you're sending to everyone (staff, customers, suppliers, Board) charting the path ahead for the next 12 months and the next 5 years. Now take this manifesto, print it out somewhere you can see, preferably in big letters you can read from your chair.
You're just written your own job description. You know what you have to do. Go!
(bonus: send it to the CEO with the title "The things we absolutely have to get right – nothing else matters.")
(Author: Sasha Dichter)
Welcome to my world. As the Managing Editor of FlagShip, and a co-founder of Flying Island Press, the team looks to me for guidance. This prompt is a good excuse for me to sit down and do just that – chart out the next 12 months, and the next five years. What is that going to look like? Heh.
Good question. I've been treating the Trust30 challenge as a personal issue – something to improve my own writing, and clarify my own plans for the future. But it's probably time to expand that focus just a bit. In the meantime I have something to say about the path, and joy, and freedom.
I've been talking a lot here about the path, the rod, and the tree. It's a useful analogy, but like any analogy, it can be misinterpreted. For the longest time, I had in my head the idea that there is only one true path – one best course of action that would take us through our lives, and get the best possible ending. Yes, I know. I was thinking of life as though it was a SNES Japanese RPG, a la Chrono Trigger (best game EVER – and available for the Nintendo DS
). But while it is necessary and right to cling to truth, to walk toward the tree, we do have a surprising amount of freedom.
But the Talmud cautions that when a man dies, he will be called to account for all the unenjoyed, permitted pleasures of this life, which, after all, were given to him as a gift.
Mamet, David (2011). The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (p. 57). Sentinel. Kindle Edition.
That which is not forbidden is permitted. And men are that they might have joy. The number one thing I need to do is to look for the joy in my work. A call to arms for myself is to find that joy. It's there. We have the capacity to enjoy the work we do. Break that down. En-Joy. To put joy INTO what we are doing. If I'm doing the right work, it's definitely there. If I'm doing the work the right way, I'm putting the joy INTO it. And when other people see it, if I've done it right, a sense of that joy – that professional pride – that pleasure in placing the right word in the right place for the desired effect – will come through. It's just as important for a lawyer as it is for a storyteller… or a blogger…
Where is the joy in your work?
