An organization-wide email was sent today about a company new hire, in which the new hire’s director was selling this person’s seemingly outstanding accomplishments. “That’s pretty good” I told myself. But then, thinking about it, I actually had very similar accomplishments:
- humanitarian work in Vietnam
- 2 high tech startups during undergrad studies
- married with one child
- Solution architect of speech and mobile enterprise systems for Fortune 500 companies
- Lead teams in US, China, Philippines, and Canada simultaneously
- Completed an MBA
- Business Process Reengineering of Organization
- and many many more to come
The point here is that it looks all nice on paper and summarized as such. But the true question is, are you proud of your accomplishments? When you’ll look back 10, 20, 40 years from now, will you be proud of all you have accomplished? In 40 years I’ll be 72, and probably retired. But when I think about it, 40 years is a really short time and leaves very little room for waste on irrelevant matters. In addition, in my accomplishments I mention that I have done humanitarian work in Vietnam; Although it is true, it was only one time, one summer in my life. Thinking of accomplishments this way made me realize there’s so much more that can be done by each and everyone of us in a Life’s Journey.
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Looking at the next 40 yrs as a short time is an interesting way to look at time. Recently I’ve had reminders from all over the place (the universe is clearly sending me a message) that life is short. Short. Short. We get no second chances and as I read today “life is not a rehearsal.”
I agree that we should not rest on our laurels. Whatever we’ve done, we can do more.
“life is not a rehearsal”. Wow, what a statement. As Michael Gerber says “don’t let the curtain down”. Both statements go so well together, life is live and in real-time. You put the curtain down and you go back in rehearsal mode. We have to stop practicing and do our live performance.
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