As one grows older, the striving for results starts to recede as our attention and minds seem to gravitate towards making human connections. That’s seems to be my experience or perhaps that has been my disposition all along and it just took a while for me to accept that. Regardless, I realised how much self-awareness and appreciation for the human condition it takes to make a truly meaningful connection to begin with.
I attended multiple weddings last couple of weeks and there were some really heartfelt speeches that were made. What struck me was that for most of the key moments of our lives such as births, deaths, marriage, even more minor ones like graduation, promotion, or work success, we inevitably turn back to the idea about people around us. Some might say it is social norms and culture that led to speeches being about thanking people around us; that perhaps self-aggrandising in these moments served only to put others off. But the truth is that the culture is really about people and it is responsible a large part for those celebrations in our lives.
That is why I found what Dr Jim Loehr‘s idea of the invisible scorecard extremely compelling. Without the culture we live in, life would be brutish even with the luxuries of modernity. At some level, we understand that we are primarily driven by that human connection that takes place when we put in our best, when we do a good work, and when we make things better. It is about the feelings evoked, the impressions made.