Reflections on risk, life, edges – the entrepreneurial imperative
In my morning run, I was listening to a Jonathan Fields Good Life Project podcast. (Highly recommended) The guest was saying how he was a graduate of Harvard, Class of 1968. And that they had received their 45-year reunion book.
As he was flipping through it, he felt deeply sad. Here were all of these people given remarkable education, a life of privilege, and almost all of them had written about themselves a similar story. Worked at xyz for 20 years, married, three kids, two grandchildren. Accumulated lots of trophies and stuff.
Ok, so there is nothing wrong with the simple life of conformity.
But %$#&**!! Seriously…where are the adventurers, the explorers, the people on the frontiers? The ones challenging the status quo…?? Where are the ones who say hell no…like AJ Leon. (Listen to his story in the interview on the right) Mischief is calling. There is more…more…more to do, more to create…more to contribute.
Then I thought about my life. I have never felt like a success as so many people define it currently. I have never been flush with cash…well not yet. But have I lived on the edge…have I been the one at the frontier, the explorer…the one who challenges assumptions and is completely sure there is a better way to engage, run our businesses, live life?
Have I risked everything for my deepest values? Yes…
Have I walked the road less traveled? Hell yes.
Have I thrown stories of security out the window? Yes to that. (Security…what an illusion that is…if you think it lives outside of you…in the bank, or your assets.)
In that moment I saw my life as glorious. It is the story I would want to read in a 45 year year book. It is the epitaph I want.
Safe and secure and no boat rocking just isn’t my style.
Give me passion, feisty, love, edges, frontiers…give me this…any day.
Hell yes to that.
