When I left home my mother advised me to get a good job with a big company, letting my boss look after me.  This, she promised, would lead to a fulfilled life.  As a student she was told she was South Africa’s next great concert pianist.  Instead she chose to teach.  Growing up, I watched her being ground down in an unsympathetic, unimaginative and bigoted education system.  Still the dream lived on.  I remember often going to sleep to the sound of Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu.  Then she stopped playing.  How long can we hold onto a dream?

We tend to avoid asking whether something is worth doing.  It is much easier to get busy.  Our culture lavishes rewards on what works.  We are swept up in achieving concrete, measurable results, without a thought for whether we are bringing to the world our unique, personal contribution that could make all the difference.  We sacrifice the passions so deep in our hearts on the altar of what is doable, practical and popular.

“What really matters?” is a dangerous question.  Asking “why?” steers us away from the comfortable, safe and well-worn path of control and predictability.  When we begin to reflect on our passion we notice the road less travelled leading to adventure, challenges and risk.

“What matters” is a philosophical stance in which I:

  • Hold myself accountable.
  • Choose to make a difference in my environment regardless of culture, recognition or disapproval.
  • Begin to reclaim and experience my freedom.Step out of my helplessness.
  • Create a world in which I can believe.

One question takes us right out of “what matters” into “what works”.  The question “How?”  This is an overarching statement of our inadequacy and disinterest including:

  • This is not important to me.
  • I will not wrestle with this.
  • There is a right way to do this, not one of a number of answers but the one answer.
  • At my very core I cannot figure this out.
  • Someone else knows what it is.
  • I must be told and I must to do it that way.
  • I need a constant stream of answers.

What is more, asking “How ?” affirms “what works” as more important than “What matters”.  “How?” takes us into the realm of utility, making us primarily pragmatic and utilitarian.  Of course things should work.  But perhaps we ask the “how ?” question too soon.

In “the answer to how? is yes” author Peter Block describes three core qualities supporting the path to ‘what matters’:

  • Our capacity to reawaken our idealism, seeking to bring a greater purpose into our day-to-day existence.
  • Our ability to become more intimate in our organisations, holding up our humanity when all around us everything is being automated and depersonalised.
  • Our willingness to choose depth rather than skipping over the surface of experience as we attempt to keep pace with living in the 21st century.

In the coming months I would like to explore these points here.

Here is a recording of the Fantasie-Impromptu:  06 Track 6 .