I don’t want to be the kind of guy that settles for the status quo. I really want to break the mold for what’s expected of me and what’s expected out of my generation. There are already too many people in the world that just ‘settle’ for the ordinary and embrace timidity in an attempt to avoid creating ripples in the water.
I just got done reading a book that a friend has been pressing me to read for a really long time now. Clearly, I didn’t want to read it because it’s been five months or more since he gave it to me. I read the whole thing last night because just couldn’t put it down.
While I thought that it was going to be a resource strictly on marketing, it wasn’t. It was about defying the status quo. It was about being an innovator. It was about leadership. It was about becoming a modern day heretic.
Seth Godin talks about how the day-to-day motion of our society has essentially become its own form of religion. Anytime we do something that isn’t a norm inside of it, it creates ripples in the water and – obviously – upsets a lot of people.
“It’s not the way that we do things,” they say.
And I think that’s the point.
I’m thinking about myself, about my generation, and about those that I surround myself with on a regular basis. We hate contributing to the norms of society. At least I hate contributing to the norms of society. Because we’re told by society to blend in and do what’s always been done, we immediately want to rebel against it. It’s the way we’re programmed. We want to rebel against the “religion” our society has created for itself. And we do. This makes us, what Godin would call: a ‘heretic’.
Our generation is chalked full of societal heretics.
I’m one.
I’m the kind of guy who for the last several years has vehemently denied a lifestyle that would even create an illusion that he’s settled for the status quo. I’ve traveled the world serving the least of these and now I’m committing myself to this generation, committing myself to a Kingdom that’s bigger than myself, because its very existence defies the religion that our society has created for itself.
Anyway, this is a thought that I’m going to continue to develop in my own time. It just really resonated deeply within me and I felt like I needed to share it this morning. If this speaks to you in any form or fashion, I highly recommend Seth Godin’s book Tribes. It got me to thinking…
