And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better
If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.
If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.
Isn't the punchline of that joke something like "because increasing some rich crook's bonus depends on your gullibility and servility"
The TLDR is something like that bumper sticker which is something like "work hard today, a bazzillion people on welfare depend on you" Where a bazzillion is whatever minimal delta the design needed to avoid paying royalties, I suppose?
What I have always disliked about this quote is that it implies that the external world is fixed, and that the task of the individual is to merely accept what is presented to him/her without regard to that persons own desires and inclinations.
It implies that who you are is something that is determined in advance.
I'm not writing this from an "elite" perspective. I am a self taught coder from a working class background. When I left school I was basically flung into work that I found soul destroying and depressing. At the time, I felt totally lost and wanted to kill myself.
I didn't want to be the best at that. I wanted to be a computer programmer and use my creativity and intelligence.
Now, according to "external" measures I should have accepted my lot. I was from a working class area where university was unknown and I did badly at school due to bullying and an undiagnosed learning disability. But for some unknown reason I had absolutely no interest in anything that was on offer in the world around me. I only wanted to be a hacker, like those cool Californian dudes I read about in computer magazines.
In those early years I had a terrible time trying to convince those around me that I should be a programmer. I was accused of being lazy, awkward etc, all because I did not want what was immediately presented to me as my future. Once I had enough success to be able to call myself a programmer, it was a different story! I was hard-working, clever etc. Everything changed as soon as I was able to bring concrete expression to my inner vision.
In coming to terms with this, I came to realize how few people really understand the notion of self-direction. They conflate it with egoism, complain about "special snowflakes" etc. because they are coming from a worldview that regards the external world as fixed, and the task of the individual being to fulfill a role imposed from outside.
Subjectivity is a mystery to them, shadowy and morally suspect. A few of them are forced to confront it eventually. You read about them in self-help books, having to go away to "find themselves" whereas "special snowflakes" like me have always known their "selves" as the foundation of their experience, and struggle instead to move the bulk of the world in order to express it.
From "What Is Your Life's Blueprint?"
And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better
If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.
If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.