as a kid i went to church every Sunday. around age 12 i learned something… the pastor’s kid is usually f*cked up.
at church, their dad is patient and forgiving. at home, he yells and holds grudges. the English word for this is “hypocrisy” but the sentiment is universal: betrayal.
observing man’s fallibility is just one of many milestones on a child’s journey to adulthood. realizing “things aren’t always as they seem” describes this gap between naiveté and maturity.
but now we must invert. things aren’t always as they seem… to seem.
reasons, not excuses
in The Effective Executive Drucker writes:
There are indeed no great men to their valets. But the laugh is on the valet. He sees, inevitably, all the traits that are not relevant, all the traits that have nothing to do with the specific task for which a man has been called on the stage of history.
Steve Jobs was not put on this earth to be a rockstar father to Lisa Brennan. nor Warren Buffet to be monogamous. or Trump to model humility.
nobody argues that Gandhi should have been a religious guru or MLK Jr. an actor. yet we’re quick to prescribe feel-good behaviors on ourselves.
without excusing hypocritical pastors we ought to wonder, in every scenario: who is the joke on, really?
avoiding purposelessness
it’s impossible to know our purpose, but by borrowing Carl Jacobi’s inversion technique we can avoid that which is definitely not our purpose.
a few things i was not created to do:
- shave (don’t own a razor)
- play sports
- feed homeless grownups (donate only to children)
- rescue animals
- enjoy hot tea
- metabolize carbohydrates (fuel the beef economy)
these plus 100s of other items on my non-purpose list unlock the ability to pursue whatever is my purpose. specifically they give me at least 15 hours per week to figure out why i exist.
what would you accomplish with thousands of extra hours per year?
content with rough edges
for years i maintained a martyrish identity of being “equally wholesome to everyone” (#EWTE).
Uber driver wants to chat? fine, i’m a conversational guy. new acquaintance is 25 minutes late to our meeting? no worries, i’m a patient zen master.
so what if it ate me alive sometimes? i’m Ryan Kulp! i am (checks notes) friendly, outgoing, energetic, kind, goofy, and don’t take things too seriously.
but here’s the rub. i am each of these things, just not to all people.
you can’t un-see it
sometimes i wake up at 4am and take a taxi to the airport for a 12 hour flight. in this haze i am not a jerk to ignore my driver’s questions; he is the driver, not my wife. our relationship does not merit a chat.
in fact it is by taking the 4am flight instead of the 2pm flight that i arrive early to my Airbnb. which means i can sleep well before delivering a presentation.
now let’s highlight a single word from Drucker’s riff: “he sees, inevitably, all of the traits that are not relevant.”
it is inevitable i leave Impression A on the Uber driver in order to leave Impression B on the audience. a layman finds this duplicitous; a rational man calls it the theory of constraints.[1]
following are more examples.
in the 2010 Korean thriller The Housemaid, a young au pair compliments her rich clients’ daughter for being so polite. the daughter replies, “my father told me to always be polite. it’s considered good, but is actually the most self serving.”
some department stores have “70% off ” signs that never go away. the product sells out, then it’s restocked.
a street vendor in Thailand thinks she “tricked the stupid Americans” for accepting her 150 baht ($4.80 USD) price instead of negotiating.[2]
the joke, dear reader, is on the maid. it’s on the bargain shopper. it’s on the artisan. and it’s on you, me, and everyone else who isn’t in touch with their purpose.
choose the right battles
by employing your talents on that which only you are uniquely capable of, you honor yourself and others.
i’m glad Steve Jobs didn’t repent to Lisa and become a stay at home dad. the world is a better place for their sacrifice.
footnotes
1. the driver is a bottleneck to performance.
2. in 2015 i bought a leather, hand made business card holder in Chiang Mai for $3 USD. it’s been my only wallet ever since. negotiating with the unfortunate is evil.
I like the idea of a non-purpose list. Recently I decided to redesign my approach to note-taking, with an attempt to capture my thoughts in a structured manner more frequently.
The idea of a non-purpose list, paired up with the theory of constraints, can give a great perspective on what one ought to do (or not to do) with his life.
Great piece, Ryan, thanks.
Terrific as always. Especially true with the “don’t negotiate with the unfortunate.” Who wants that bad juju? (But also… see point 3 as you will see)
I take a slightly different, but philosophically similar approach. In my mind, there are three specific areas of deviation you might want to consider:
1) False dilemmas: I agree Steve Jobs wouldn’t have honored his own gifts and the world as much if he recanted and became a stay at home dad. But that’s a false dilemma: I’m not sure anyone, even his daughter, thought he should have been a stay at home dad and changed diapers rather than build iPhones. But that doesn’t necessarily require he abandoned her the way he did, that he should have denied his own paternity of her or stiffed her mom for years, seemingly out of spite and/or a pretty cruel indifference. I don’t even think you agree that was “inevitable” to the expression of his other gifts. Choosing not to chat with the Uber driver may not be the most friendly thing in the world but its also completely understandable and moral. Plus the Uber driver Is (or at least should be) very comfortable with that as it was the enterprise he chose. Being a dick to your kids is, in my mind, not necessary. Which speaks to….
2) Agency/Free Choice: I know there’s an argument to be made that we may NOT have free will but let’s put that aside for now. If we assume we have a decent amount of agency over the course in our lives — as you seem to agree with do — we can make choices that aid us when we might otherwise be “inclined” to make other decisions. Are those part of our “essential nature”? Hard to tell..I would hope not. But if we do have agency I suspect we can exercise it in ways that a) aid our best natural inclinations without b) expending excess energy just to serve an ideal version of ourselves that is done more out of guilt than anything else. Put another way, I acutely feel your pain of your “old self” that used to do cartwheels to serve some #EWTE complex. THAT is indeed a waste. But don’t confuse making choices that might on their face seen inconvenient and annoying with really aiding, not taking away from, the larger mission. I suspect that’s why, for example, you chose to learn to code when it might have been considered unconventional, futile or just plain “unnecessary”– however one might wish to define that. That is, our agency lets us guide that “purpose” to places we might otherwise never be inclined to– so it becomes a chicken/egg thing and not as easily dismissed a matter as “if I don’t feel inclined to do something, it must be because it’s not ‘my mission.” That just sounds like a very slippery slope to me.
3) “How you do one thing…”: There’s also something to be said that “how you do anything is how you do everything.” Consider: if someone’s home– as in their surroundings, belongings, etc– is in disarray, their life and business likely is as well. To bring it back to Jobs, he was a minimalist in his home and that of course almost certainly fed and was reinforced by his simple aesthetic sensibilities in his products. So this would also undercut the idea that treating Uber drivers is divorced from how one acts elsewhere. I know executives who ask secretaries how job applicants treated them because–to your pt– of course they are going to treat the exec well… b/c he knows he’s being judged. But integrity is what happens when we think no one else is looking. I think there’s a lot of truth to that.
That said, let me know if I misread any of that…
Purpose is for tools and people aren’t objects.
Noah is right re: false dilemmas – there’s a middle ground where irrelevant behaviors neither help nor hurt achieving your “destiny”. And respect for others may or may not be one of those. Personally, I’ve found that disruptive / anti-social behaviors can just as easily impede achieving goals rather than helping. Only if by being a jerk in the cab at 4am you’re able to concentrate more on your presentation and thereby have more success from it that you could justify it. But it’s almost as easy to say “sorry i’m really tired” as it is to say “fuck off”, more or less. And if at the end of your life you haven’t fulfilled your “destiny” then you’ll look back and say wow I was an asshole. This is like a shallow ends-justify-the-means retread…