Extinction of Laughter
Today’s Millennials. Tomorrow’s Future.
Sitting at the foot of the Orchid with a mistletoe, reminiscing about the first Christmas I’d spend alone. Painting my fingernails with the red petals from the rose I love, visiting a stranger grave with the thought of what they’d give to have one more day. Reaching for the knob of the door I fear the most, I agreed that the world is frail and we are not winning.
Over the years, I have grown to be the love of my life. This was no easy feat and the growth cycle is not complete yet. In retrospect I see the world is fighting; to stay sane, to stay safe, and to win. I managed to build something for myself, a brand that broke industry standards, words that transcend men (and women), and a love that may be worth sharing. A simple answer to the question I always get “How did you do it?” is simple, I didn’t! This is clearly not satisfactory for most so I’d go into details and share my opinions on the winning strategy.
Before I begin I would like to appreciate Eno, my partner who paid my rent for four (4) years in college telling others I wasn’t crazy; that’s majorly how I survived this long. Now to the winning strategy, I would tell you two stories; one about yesterday and another about tomorrow. Spoiler, there is no winning strategy or secret to success. Out of the thousand blog post, books and articles on how to start a start-up or market your product or grow your blog, how successful are the results still?
A story about yesterday: Many years ago, Tim, an early man would go out in the morning with his hunting group and hunt for food. It was usually a party of six and he would come back later that day with fewer men than he went with that morning. At dinner, Tim and his men would share their tales of how they’d hunt in the forest and also how they were hunted by a Saber-tooth tiger who ended up killing 4 of his men. The next day, again and again, Tim would get additional men to make his hunting group of six and come back with fewer men, this time, three men, then four, then one day all six came back. That night at the dinner fire was different. Tim didn’t tell a tale of how dangerous the tiger was and how they struggled to stay safe, he shared how they had learned to defeat the tiger and news of this accomplishment spread across the tribe and soon every other village came to learn how to win. This was the invention of the media, the media that focuses on Tim, the one man who has learned to win the battle against the Saber-tooth tiger, the media stopped the conversation about safety and survival; the focus was all about the win.
A story about tomorrow: Many many years after Tim, the media is more developed and even more focused on the win. John, a young undergrad about halfway through college has an idea which he believes would get him the win. He’s a tech-savvy, smart and charismatic young lad with all the features of the winning tribe. He puts himself out there and gets attacked by the Saber-tooth tiger of a loss, a 30-second elevator pitch, a board presentation, and no sales. He feels awful and concludes there’s something wrong with him, his idea and the world is unfair because he is not winning and so he gives up.
Forget everything you think you know about what I am writing, don’t assume anything, don’t stop reading yet. Here’s why! Fear kept the early man safe and helped the human race ensure survival. Fear is a tool, just like guns, it can be used to ensure peace or cause havoc. Learning to dance with your demons (like the Saber-tooth tiger) doesn’t make it go away, but you just might win Prom dance of the night
Today, much of the emphasis is placed on winning and our world is designed to make you feel shame if you aren’t winning. There’s no tale for safety and survival anymore. Here’s what you need to realize, the world is an infinite game and there are no rules, there’s only a map with treasures scattered all around.
Now, to answer your question. What is the winning strategy, how do I win like Tim? The answer is counter-intuitive, you don’t! Let me engage your imagination here for a moment. Imagine life as a map with “X” marks the spot scattered all around. These “X” represent a treasure that has been found by a “Tim”. What this means is that the treasure is gone but what the media does is keep the magnifying glass on the X spot and that’s where a lot of us focus on. The spot where the treasure is gone, Tim’s way won’t work for us all, stop trying so hard to win the way others did. Here’s what you can do instead. You still have your map, with no rules or navigation system to identify the next ‘X” spot. Perform an anatomy of the transaction. Take the tales of 1000 stories about failure and survival and understand the blind spots, the red flags, and the process of how not to do it.
A lot of us grew up in the age of the winning media, which included Janes mum. So every day, she said to Jane, a high school teenager with the cheerleading squad “Don’t touch any boy, you’d get pregnant and your life would be ruined”. She said this because this is the way she won at staying safe and surviving her teenage days amidst the Saber-tooth tiger. What she failed to tell Jane was that “when he takes off his shirt, your world would go into slow motion. When he whispers in your ear the three words, you’d feel on top of the world. You’d stay up late at night to text him because he makes you feel safe but what he really wants from you is this and here’s why I say so. He say’s he loves you and wants to spend his life with you but he is asking you for this. If he really wants to spend it all with you, why is he in a hurry to have this now and gets upset when you say no?”
These are two ways of sharing the same message but what happens in a winning way? No one tells Jane about the pitfalls or red flags to look out for. So when he does take off his shirt, she feels a way she has never felt before and her mum didn’t warn her about this. Could this be different, could this be special? And if you know anything about emotions, you’d know they are greatly misleading and uncontrollable. She knows how to win, not how to spot the red flags of the Saber-tooth tiger, so she loses and feels shame and regret, depressed and hopeless.
When you go for failure; the anatomy of the transaction, you might not learn one way to win but you learn 1000 ways not to lose, you learn 1000 ways the Saber-tooth tiger might attack, you know 1000 paths followed that bore no treasures so this narrows your search down to an even smaller portion of the infinite map. Failure and fear don’t just keep up safe and ensure survival, it is the only tool we were given in life as a navigator for winning. Tim won because he knew how not to lose.
