I don’t know about you, but I never did like rules. They tend to impose limitations and limitations are so…limiting. Some rules are, of course, necessary. They can be summed up in two words though: common sense.
Have you thought about how much time you spend wondering what others will think of you? How much time is spent sucking up to society for the sake of trends, life patterns, etc.? I am the first one to buy into a good marketing campaign (go Apple and Virgin!!!) because that’s fun – someone’s selling something cool and they are branding it in an imaginative way – rock on! It’s just since we were children we were brought up to be concerned about what others think about our style, our clothes, our cash, our homes…not to mention: our blogs…LOL. We want to be seen to be the ultimate masters of our lives in this society – we have learnt to play by the rules and we have won – we drive an Aston Martin, we wear Prada, we can go on vacation for x amount of weeks a year, we got our college degrees at reputable institutions. Branson does not have a college degree. Kamprad does not fly business class. Maybe they never needed to prove something, or they chose to prove it in other ways, or maybe they couldn’t do it as children and decided that wasn’t the meaning of life – there were more important things around.
Sometimes I still wonder what would have happened if I could have paid the fees for NYU? It was my dream uni and I got accepted, but I couldn’t go. Personally I believe the education I got was better, but I don’t have a paper saying “Graduate of NYU” on it. Would people look at me differently if I did? Probably. Am I a better director because of the education I did get? Probably. Will people know it until I prove it? No. If you haven’t got a stamp from so and so, you have to prove your own worth.
I believe in education: it saves you a hell of a lot of running around looking for information and clues of how to do things. If you know how others did something, you know how to do it and it can stop you from committing ridiculous mistakes. What I also believe though, is that once you have the ingredients for the pie, you have to start thinking outside of that list, or else you will never come up with a unique idea, or be any good at problem solving.
I’m pretty sure we all have a couple of skeletons dangling in our wardrobes – things we did and said that were maybe not all that clever. I’m also pretty sure that we would embrace these skeletons as great lessons, was it not for what we think others would think of us if they knew about them. Luckily some smart ass guy or gal came up with the expression “failing forward.” At least we can use that expression should someone bump into one of our darling skeletons (by now dressed up in fine costumes to try to delude people about their existence…I think I need to have that in a movie scene…lol).
I don’t know why, but rebels invigorate me: the guy with a twinkle in his eye always gets my attention – the one that is bound to be breaking all the rules and (almost) get himself in trouble in the process. He’s probably also likely to get out of it though – because of that twinkle in his eye and his ability to think out of the box. Maybe because I was a geek as a kid and didn’t “fit in,” I came to hate societal rules. On the other hand I was the first one to say “I’ll show the suckers” and I wanted to conquer the world and belong to the jetset. A few humbling years in the school of hard knocks and I don’t care that much about the jetset anymore. I care more about having my say – this blog was my way of having that say in a not so grand scale. I still have a company and a couple of movies in development stage, but that means fuck all till you launch. Point being: I am still a passionately crazy entrepreneur and artist, but my main focus is not to prove something to others but to have fun and help people. Pride did nothing of the sort.
Money = fun. You can play with it. To constantly think about what others think about you though, isn’t. To live according to other peoples’ wishes. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do things for others, that’s different. And I’m not saying you should wear outrageous clothes to prove something, or grow a beard the size of Santa Claus’, my point is just that when you start living for yourself things change. You become liberated. Let’s face it: some of the societal rules were invented around 2000 years ago. Have we developed since? I’d like to think so. Peoples’ ideas of right and wrong are often labeled as: what’s suitable? When really it should be: what’s good for you? What’s fun? What helps others and the planet?
Branson said it: Screw it let’s do it.
I like going my own way…
…however crazy that way may be…
