I recently heard Walter Mosley interviewed on NPR, and one of his comments jumped out at me:
People are very small in the modern world. We could get crushed, and no one would notice.
Certain aspects of modern life--such as the ability to have a voice in a global network--make me feel a lot "larger" and more noticeable as an individual. (I blog, therefore I am?) But the global nature of this network also threatens to overwhelm me--I can feel lost in its vastness.
And I'm recognized by modern institutions--as a citizen, say, or as a customer--in ways that weren't possible in earlier eras. But, of course, the increasingly massive size of those same institutions can make me feel quite small and insignificant. How much do I really matter to them? (Customer service, anyone?)
So even as the modern world empowers us, it undermines that empowerment. We still have to strive to be heard, to assert our existence, to say that we do matter. And we still have to struggle to protect ourselves, to insure that we are noticed, to avoid being crushed.
Helping people achieve these goals is actually at the heart of what I do as a coach. Finding meaning in our work and being as effective as possible in our chosen field is one of the most powerful ways to discover and express our identities, to be heard, to be noticed. And balancing professional success with personal fulfillment may be the only way to survive the modern world intact, to not be crushed.
Photo by Mark Coggins. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.
