Ducks in a Row: Can You Hear the Song?
by Miki Saxon
In a recent column in the NY Times by Bob Herbert adds his voice to mine in condemning today’s wired, multitasking mentality, only he does it with far more flair. The part I want to share is near the end.
There’s a character in the August Wilson play “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” who says everyone has a song inside of him or her, and that you lose sight of that song at your peril. If you get out of touch with your song, forget how to sing it, you’re bound to end up frustrated and dissatisfied. … Other people have something to say, too. And when they don’t, that glorious silence that you hear will have more to say to you than you ever imagined. That is when you will begin to hear your song. That’s when your best thoughts take hold, and you become really you.
Just as individuals have songs companies do also and both need silence to hear them.
The song is MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) set to music; values and culture that sing to you and mirror you.
Songs are elusive and the cacophony that often pervades life and work makes it yet more difficult to hear them.
Why do people keep adding to it and then complain bitterly about the noise.
When I was young I realized that I could have all the stuff I wanted as long as I owned the stuff and the stuff didn’t own me.
Technology is like stuff—you can’t let it own you.
There is a marvelous world outside the window and inside yourself just waiting to be explored.
No thunderbolt will strike if you put it down, turn it off, look out the window, smile and say hi to those you can literally reach out and touch, feel the magic, hear the song.
Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/
