BEING AND TIME
While you are sleeping, I’m reading Heidegger. In the morning. Very early. Very very early.
I’m doing this partly for me, but mostly it’s for you.
Backtrack a bit. First, who is Heidegger?
He’s a German philosopher who in the early 1900s wrote something called Being and Time, regarded as one of the most significant and controversial philosophical texts ever.
I’m not actually reading Heidegger. That wasn’t precisely true.
I’m reading a book by a guy who helps me understand what Heidegger means, and even thebookthatmakesitaloteasiertounderstandwhatHeideggermeans is uber-difficult. The original Heidegger seems incomprehensible to me. Perhaps I should take up German. But then I would have to learn words that are as long as that string of words up there.
So it’s 5am, I’m up (barely) and I’m going to read a few sentences, paragraphs, at the most a page or two of this really hard-to-read book telling me what this German philosopher who lived some 85 years ago was talking about.
This is the “mostly it’s for you” part, because it seems he was talking about some pretty important things about how we are in the world.
Here’s one thing he was talking about:
We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as one takes pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as one sees and judges; likewise we shrink back from the “great mass” as one shrinks back; we find “shocking” what one finds shocking.
My gracious interpreter of Heidegger jumps in here to help:
There is a way one does things. There are ways to hammer, ways to drive, ways to drink coffee, and ways to be a teacher. Proximally and for the most part, we do things the way one does them. Because that man is drinking a coffee as one drinks coffee, his presence is unobtrusive, obvious. I “know what he is doing,” because he is doing it as one does it. If he is drinking coffee abnormally (say he is lying on the floor of the coffee house while he drinks), then he obtrudes, stands out, and requires interpretation.
Which made me think. The people that many of us admire for their innovative successes, think Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson – those guys, they are drinking their coffee any way that they want to.
They will drink it holding the cup with their feet. They will drink it like a horse laps at a water trough. They will drink it through their nose.
I have written a short poem about this, to the tune of Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham.
I would drink coffee
with my feet
I will lick my coffee
like it’s something to eat
I will drink my coffee through a hose
I prefer to drink it through my nose
So perhaps we could take a bit of self-inventory here.
What are you doing that is just like what everybody else is doing because that’s the way that everybody else does it?
I have a friend who has done quite well for himself. Very well for himself. He’s often in a position to speak to large groups of people or run workshops so finds himself standing in front of eager audiences several times a week. Let’s call him Malcolm.
Whereas I might fuss over the cut of my suit and getting the knot in my Hermes tie just right (am I the only one that has bad tie knot days and occasionally takes 15 minutes in the morning to get the perfect knot?), my friend Malcolm takes no concern over what he wears.
I have seen him in front of a room of high-net worth individuals wearing stained khakis and a batik.
Whereas I might fuss over the cut of my suit and getting the knot in my Hermes tie just right (am I the only one that has bad tie knot days and occasionally takes 15 minutes in the morning to get the perfect knot?), my friend Malcolm takes no concern over what he wears.
I have seen him in front of a room of high-net worth individuals wearing stained khakis and a batik.
The last time we met in Hong Kong, I picked him up at his hotel. Malcolm had forgotten to bring a pair of slacks, so had borrowed the hotel’s bell boy uniform pants, and was wearing those with a polo shirt. It wasn’t tragically bad but I certainly wouldn’t call it well-dressed.
Malcolm doesn’t care.
He has not bought into that idea of “social normativity” and wears whatever is lying around and he does just fine in spite of that. Or perhaps, because of that?
What if you were a head of marketing who didn’t market like heads of marketing are “supposed to” market?
What if you were a salesperson who didn’t sell like salespeople are “supposed to” sell?
What if you were a banker who banked your clients in a novel way?
I guess what I really mean to ask is…what if you drank your coffee through your nose?
Questions for Self-Reflection
What am I doing that is just like what everybody else is doing because that’s the way it’s done?
What possibilities open up for me, and what possibilities close down for me, if I change how I do that?