I'm not a marketing major, but whoever thought it a bright idea to send me this junk email sure got one tenet right: get your consumers to agree with you. What's the one question you can ask any person, with the certainty of eliciting an aye? (The subject line of the email) -
ARE YOU GETTING OLDER?
An insurance company, providing free quotes, suggesting you insure yourself, unless you're growing younger!
It got me thinking - Okay, I'm not getting younger, will my life be an epic worth narrating? Will I leave behind an indelible legacy or just be another pawn trying to get from one end of the chess board to the other? We march through life in lockstep with notions that society regards as the norm. A cycle that, for the most part has enslaved the civilised, educated parts of the world - Attend school, get a job, marry, buy a house, kids, work crazy hours, get a bigger house, pay for kids' college, retire, die!
Life to me is about the little things - the joy that comes out of experiences that can't be bought with a six-figure bank balance - the people we meet, the intensity of certain situations, but most of all - being content and at peace. I was flicking through channels this morning and ended up watching Oprah! One of the guests thought the Jacksons were a happy lot because they had a lot of money!
HE THINKS MICHAEL JACKSON IS A HAPPY MAN 'COS HE'S RICH!!!
Isn't that the kind of thinking that drives most of us? Bigger cars, better houses, fancy clothes, exotic holidays - what motivates you? I've got friends who slave for 11 months so they can splurge on the 12th in some remote part of the world and when they get there, all they can think of is, Where will I go next year?
We are led to believe that we are functioning teleologically by conforming to a standard way of living, but are we really? Some of us successfully emancipate ourselves from the ideal, in search of a better ideal. Maybe we will find something that works better for us, maybe we won't. Is that really such a bad thing?To me, that's life - find your own ideal and live it.
I'm gonna get some chai and savour this moment of clarity before another of life's challenges attempts to prick this bubble.