7/31

How rare is it to find someone whose worldview and life purpose—whose innate interests, intrinsic motivations, visions for the future, perceptions of work, happiness, sadness, the human condition—align perfectly with yours? Humans are different—and that’s a feature, not a bug.

Yet it is often an arduous task to constantly remember this in our interactions. Whether in the office, the church, the school, the laboratory, or the bakery, when we’re called upon to do something together this truth suddenly becomes elusive. Most of us are excessively predisposed to selfishly sulk and to bicker, rather than silently observe, learn, and start discourse. Although we can probably acknowledge that most of humanity’s greatest achievements required a collective effort among a group of individuals unified in purpose and in intent, we end up shying, or perhaps cowering, away from greatness because of self-centeredness.

As Seth Godin might say, “I don’t know what you know, I don’t believe what you believe, I don’t feel what you feel, and that’s okay.” It is the courage to move forward because of our differences, not despite them. The key to success in this collective effort is finding a way to capture the hearts of individuals on vastly different walks of life, to tap into the vastly different lessons learned only attainable from a lifetime’s worth of mistakes, to break each other free from the short-sightedness and myopia that often blind us from a greater truth.