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Sleepwalking through life?

Today the GSCE results came out in the UK. For American readers, GSCE is like graduating from high school though you can stay and spend an extra two years working on A levels for university entrance.

Huff Post interviewed 4 boys from just north of London. I was immediately struck by two observations. The richer the boy, the more disorientated he was. And how all the boys expected a vague ill-defined authority to sort out their career for them.

The two poorer boys were infinitely better off in my view. Both had had an objective or some time. Both had responded to events, which might have been crushingly disapppointing, but were brushed off by simply finding another path to the same goal. But both, of course, exited the school system – not surprising if you know anything about the rigidity of class in the UK.

Where is the vocation?

But I am not here to lament class – well not today anyway. I was struck that ‘careers advice’ was simply functional. Sign on here. Do this. Do that. I would like to see young people getting ‘to the heart’ of what interests them and defining their economic relationship with the world through a lens of their abiding interests.

Where is the abiding preoccupation?

In business, we might talk in terms of  ‘vision’ and ‘mission’. But look at the way the manufacturing giant Danone puts it:

If associating health benefits with the pleasure of eating is our permanent preoccupation, ensuring that products are made available to the greatest number of people is now the Danone’s new endeavour.

First, let’s ask ~ what is our permanent preoccupaton?  What do we return to time-and-time again because it is so important to us?  What do we hold so dear that it puzzles us that others don’t?  What are we always willing to work on, no matter the time of day or night?

And then, what is our priority right now?  What is the endeavour or practical project that is needed at this moment?

Vision and mission. Preoccupation and endeavour.  I like the second set of words a  lot more.  Don’t you?

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