In a podcast interview, Seth Godin was asked some details about his early work and journey to the present. His response was insightful:
“I’m just very uncomfortable talking about this journey of mine, cause I don’t think it’s that interesting cause I was there. […] But I do think the lesson is that all of us have stories like this. That what we say we want is a regular periodic stepwise progression from here to exactly where we want to go. But the story we tell ourselves about our past is never that, and the decisions we make about our future actually don’t fuel that. That is what industrialists want from us. It’s what the placement office wants from us. But it’s not what we actually want in a life well-lived.”
Seth Godin, to Debbie Millman on Design Matters (2017 interview – approx. 12 minutes in)
I wish Seth Godin were more comfortable talking about his journey. I wish all of us were more comfortable talking about our journeys – the trials, the challenges, the unexpected and unwelcome twists along the way.
Because kids need to hear it. Kids overwhelmingly think that life is a straight line from here to there, and they are increasingly so pressured to achieve that they are rejecting anything that doesn’t seem on that line.
They need to know that everyone’s story is twisty. That almost no one is doing now exactly what they thought they’d do at seventeen. And if they are – it’s profoundly different than they thought.
Gap years, Community College, failed classes, dropped majors, lost jobs, disastrous moves, wrong partners, mid-life career changes. Twists come along the way.
If we act as if it will be a straight line, the twists will come as an unwelcome shock. If we are told, repeatedly and by everyone we met, that the twists are part of the journey, then we’ll be ready – and we’ll have more fun leaning into the curves.