On Tragedy As Motivation
Ben Margot, AP Images (edited)
I started writing about David Stern‘s death last week, but then Kobe and Gigi and 7 more loved ones died.
The day before the crash, I was crossing Fifth Avenue when I started thinking about fulfilling work…
How happy and grateful I was to be doing the work I’m doing.
That I hope everyone finds this energy and fulfillment.
That so many of us are unsatisfied with our work.
That sometimes we need a shock to our system to spark change.
That too often tragedy is that shock.
That we don’t need tragedies to wake us up to commit to a better life.
Because… what a waste of time.
I'll write about this next week.
~
I was working at a coffeeshop on Sunday when I read the news. Shock. Denial. Tears.
The guy next to me was a Kobe fan, originally from India, and said the Lakers were the only team people in India followed when he was growing up. I started crying so, he asked if I was ok and rubbed my back. (In this climate where we’re hypersensitive to if/how/when we touch other people, it was really nice for a stranger to volunteer comfort without hesitation, human to human.)
I thought about Kobe’s family. Vanessa. The pilot. Others onboard. LeBron. Magic. My friend Terrence, the biggest Kobe fan I know. My basketball family. The woman who accused him of rape in Colorado.
Life is complicated. People are messy. Tragedies are sad. Deaths are final. Life is still very short.
I thought about my friend, Dillon, who died suddenly two years ago. How his way too early death resparked my desire to help people figure out what to do with their lives. That was January 2018.
I got after it for a few weeks. Then life got in the way, as we say. A cross country move, work getting busy, another move, then a personal black hole, etc. But quite simply, I didn’t fully commit. I didn’t do the work. And I chose other things to invest my time in.
I thought about the second day of this new year when the highest ranking officer in the Taiwanese military and seven more loved ones died in a Blackhawk crash on a routine mission.
I was with my mom when we heard the news and it shook her. She shed tears for days and soon was talking about how precious life was, how she needed to put her health first, how she had to plan her path to retirement this year, and how she wanted to enjoy the years she had left.
I remembered the times she said something like this before. After 9/11. After her car crash. After my dad’s mom died. After planes dropped out of the skies. After oceans flooded cities. After bombs were dropped on other humans.
I wondered if it would stick this time. Or if it would only last as long as the sadness of the loss intertwined with her own sense of time and mortality.
~
We sometimes interpret events as “signals” or “signs” to make a change and other times as “noise.” But really, our decisions around which are “signals” are entirely subjective. The things we call “signs” are happening all around us, all the time. We just choose which ones to make meaning of and which ones to ignore.
The more shocking an event is, the more meaning we may assign that “signal” because our world was so rocked. But even those are hard to sustain, especially without a clear vision of what we want to change, why we want to do it, and how we’re going to make it happen.
Just like motivation and inspiration, energy from external forces is in short supply. They’re not sources of sustainable fuel that help us get out of bed each day, primed to do our best work.
Leadership will not be consistently motivational. Companies will not be endlessly inspiring. Our work will not be infinitely exciting. Tragedies will not be permanently meaningful.
But that’s what dreams are for. Or whatever word you prefer… purpose, passion, mission, meaning, goal, objective, vision, desire. That’s what’s constant after all the emotions settle down into normal life.
It’s our job to clarify what we want, focus on the goal, and put in the reps to create our own fuel. Otherwise, we’re just in the Matrix... living, but not alive.
Kobe said variations of the same message over and over… Don’t speak/cry/bitch about it. Be about it.
Yes, to be a champion. Yes, to be great at what we do. Yes, to own our dream and to put in the work. But in its simplest form, because life is still too damn short whether something tragic reminds us of it or not. And there’s no time to waste if there's shit you want to do.
As we mourn, then start to heal, then continue on with everyday life, it’s too easy to go back to the status quo.
If you’ve been inspired to do differently than you are, what will you do? And how will you ensure that the spark you were gifted doesn’t settle into complacency?
And after we figure that out, we’ll have some glorious days. And some good days. Some routine days. Some boring days. Some bad days. And some straight up shitty days.
But the up and down is the norm. And all of it is a lot harder to get through if we don’t know what we want to do, why we’re doing it, and how we plan to get there.
Love Kobe or not. Believe the #MambaMentality or not. It’s still our job to figure out why we’re here and what the hell we truly want to do with all this limited, priceless time we have.
It’s 100% possible for all of us to figure it out if we do the work. And I wish that for all of you.
Peace and love, 🙏
Pam
