Last Saturday around noon my old friend LA called me out of the blue. He was in town for the weekend and wanted to catch up. As is often the case with LA, there was a certain urgency to his proposition. Indeed, when I picked him up in front of the Kunsthaus, he admitted that I had just saved him from a potentially horrifying visit to the Munch exhibition. The need to kill time or a lack of better alternatives had somehow guided him to the museum by an invisible hand. Or did it? Maybe he made a conscious decision that there weren’t any better alternatives at the time and gone there on purpose, hoping that something more exciting might emerge. Does that still qualify as aimless ennui and cool nonchalance? Or is it an elaborate, calculated bet that takes into account all his friends, their habits, motion patterns and availability on an early Saturday afternoon to come up with a probability of finding someone to spend time with, which he clearly preferred? In which case I didn’t actually save him – I merely proved that his bet was right and prevented him from going to a place he speculated on not having to go to in the first place. It’s a convoluted way of saying something rather simple: even when they make a conscious decision, some people intentionally allow chaos to enter the equation. Or put differently: the only conscious decision they ever take is the one that introduces a maximum amount of unpredictability to its outcome, thus rendering the decision pointless. The result of this line of thinking, of course, is a deliberate lack of control over their fate and avoidance of responsibility regarding their actions. What happens, happens, but it doesn’t really matter. One choice might be marginally superior to the other, but in the grand scheme of things, they are all equally fine. Q. E. D.
Once we sat down and sipped our cappuccinos, LA revealed to me that he hadn’t quite given up on becoming, what he called, a shark. I realize that sounds a bit trite. But you have to know that LA is a great admirer of Marc Rich, who in his view is the epitome of a shark. And not in a bad way. LA’s just fascinated by the fact that one guy had the guts to build a business of that scale from scratch, while taking on governments, oil majors, juntas, criminals, intelligence services, tax authorities, embargoes and so forth. We both agreed that it requires a huge ego, power of will, intelligence, ruthlessness, cunning, risk taking and hard-boiledness. Above all, however, it requires a lot of stamina. And that’s the point where the “whatever happens, happens” attitude doesn’t work any longer. Because here’s a funny thing about human energy: it decays if you don’t use it. Unlike a battery, the more energy we put into things, the more energy we create. It’s an extremely powerful, self-reinforcing mechanism. On the other hand, it can fall apart very quickly if the momentum fades. Ultimately, energy is a fleeting, ephemeral thing. It needs to be constantly flexed like a muscle in order to grow. It’s not enough to know an opportunity when you see it. You also need the legs to run for it.
Pretty evident, I guess, but also easier said than done for representatives of Generation Y. The unlimited options we (believe to) have are not necessarily helpful in making decisions. What’s more, the search for meaning, apparently the highest good these days, is inherently tricky: the NYT rightly calls it a “mercurial concept”. If you want to be a shark, you have to work for it – it’s not one of 524 choices out there that might fall into your lap just because you happen to have an open mind (actually, you very likely will have to be born for it). The fact of the matter is: some choices are better than others. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Scaling up the Maslow pyramid towards self-realization leads into thin air, up to a point, where the lack of oxygen makes you consider indecisiveness a virtue. There’s a memorable quote from the (underrated) film “Mr. Nobody” that encapsulates this perfectly: “As long as you don’t choose, everything remains possible”. A spot-on motto if there has ever been one – it should be printed on flags so that Generation Y can hang it from their balconies. The statement is true, of course. And because it’s true, so many millennials are stuck in a state of limbo, in constant search of the next big thing.
It sometimes seems to me that we’re so obsessed with possibility that we’re losing sight of the real objective. Personally, I’d feel more comfortable in a pool of dedicated sharks than in one full of one-eyed pirates paddling around in bathtubs. Embracing spontaneity is fine but there needs to be purpose, there needs to be direction in order to reach a destination. If not, we end up in an atomistic, short-sighted society that lacks the pull to resolve even the smallest issues, let alone the consequential ones. No need to be a shark as long as you choose any animal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpi0qsp3v_w