Playing Follow the Follower
July 11th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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How many people live their lives playing follow the follower? Do you keep on keeping on, not concerning yourself that the path may be leading nowhere (or worse)?
Where is your current path taking you? Are you following the path of another, maybe not a specific person but an archetype? Are you following the path of the student, the attorney, the programmer, the family guy, the movie fan, the internet junkie?
Does it bring you comfort to know that there are thousands on a similar path? Do you derive a sense of security from numbers?
What if you were the only one who was on your path? What if there were no one else to follow, and you had to blaze your own trail? Would that make you more or less committed to your path? Would you go it alone, take on the responsibility of inviting others to follow you, or would you prefer that someone else take the lead?
Are you leading or following? Is your life path a conscious choice or a collection of pre-existing patterns?
July 11th, 2005 at 4:13 am
Steve, I think that the following quotation from the Sapnish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset may be of interest to you.
“The mass-man would never have accepted authority external to himself had not his surroundings violently forced him to do so. As to-day, his surroundings do not so force him, the everlasting mass-man, true to his character, ceases to appeal to other authority and feels himself lord of his own existence. On the contrary the select man, the excellent man is urged, by interior necessity, to appeal from himself to some standard beyond himself, superior to himself, whose service he freely accepts. Let us recall that at the start we distinguished the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter the one who makes no demands on himself, but contents himself with what he is, and is delighted with himself. Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline- the noble life. Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us- by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. “To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law” (Goethe).”
July 11th, 2005 at 6:32 am
Steve isn’t what your advocating also “a collection of pre-existing patterns?” Are you blazing your own trail, or following the trail of others, albeit with slightly different wording? I don’t see any new truth in your writings, nor do I in any modern writing. There is nothing new under the sun, just rehashed ideas.
July 11th, 2005 at 7:12 am
It didn’t work for the sheep because their shepherds were out to breakfast. There is another shepherd completely committed to the task at hand:
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.” John 10.14
Having said that, I could not agree more about living consciously and being deliberate everything we do. In my opinion, most “Christians” confuse cultural patterns and that which is essential to the faith.
Thanks for this blog which helps me think about my choices even more!
July 11th, 2005 at 8:44 am
American puritan work ethos? There’s a good column on this subject at SFGate.com, http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/07/08/notes070805.DTL&nl=fix. Also, my own brief post on the subject: http://thoughtsignals.com/2005/07/10/your-money-or-your-life/
I think you nailed it when you wrote “Does it bring you comfort to know that there are thousands on a similar path? Do you derive a sense of security from numbers?”
Takes courage to do something different. Sometimes a lot of courage.
July 11th, 2005 at 11:17 am
While you should be wary about doing things that thousands of others are doing just because it is comfortable, you also have to be wary of being different for the sake of being different. If you want to be a programmer, do you blaze your own trail or leverage the learning of the thousands before you who already discovered what did and didn’t work? There is no point reinventing the wheel…
…that is, unless you can make a significantly better wheel. B-)
July 11th, 2005 at 5:36 pm
I think that learning from people who came before you is different than following people blindly, without conscious thought. If the “sheep” are following the wrong path, you probably don’t want to be on it. But if you are on a path where the “sheep” are headed in a good, thoughtful, direction, consciously decided upon, then there’s nothing wrong with “following” them if you consciously agree with where they are going.
July 12th, 2005 at 8:42 am
This entry was wonderful food for thought and I enjoyed and was inspired by other’s comments as well as your thought provoking questions:
Regarding this gentleman’s quote:
“There is nothing new under the sun, just rehashed ideas”.
So it has been done.
Just because we are realizing or acknowledging an idea that others have figured out — years before or days before — does not make the discovery for the individual any less special. It means we are now as smart as they are, maybe even smarter. Perhaps we ‘arrived’ with a unique and interesting twist that paves a road, which will be more easily traveled for others that follow behind us. Perhaps even, the next realization that someone will have, will be smarter than the one I had! I certainly hope so. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind being known for having created electricity and/or being the ‘first’.
Even though it may not be new news for me, I enjoy reading of how others have ‘figured it out’. Mainly because it was often different (new) from the way I learned and for those times when I have reached the same conclusion as another, there is still much to be learned — Others’ realizations still encourage my own imaginations.
Are you leading or following?
Is your life path a conscious choice or a collection of pre-existing patterns?
It is both and more.
At different times …
* I am the leader.
* I am a follower.
* At times, I enjoy being neither and instead goin’ along with the flow - observing.
Most often …
I desire to break new ground - how I accomplish that ground breaking matters little. What matters to me, is that I pick up the shovel, dig a hole and jump in - alone or with others. I am bound to make a ‘mark’ doing just that.
Either way, no two holes that I dig will be alike. There will always be ’slight variations under the sun.’
Sometimes I will have the most perfect hole and at other times someone else will - you can be sure I’ll be looking at the better hole to add to what I know and make mine even better, if not the best for the next time around. Not with a, ‘better than thou’ attitude, but a, ‘WOW that was great! I’ve learned much from you and will apply this same technique to my own creation and with determination and drive, I will create something wonderful!’ Healthy competition encourages even more Beauty.
(and no, I am certainly NOT talking about stealing someone’s idea, twisting it around a smidgeon and then calling it my own).
As a side note:
I do believe it is much more fun to dig with others rather than alone. This does not mean I am following the crowd. For me, it means I enjoy listening too the chatter of others and sharing my own; discovering those tidbits of information that aid in helping me make wise, conscious choices on this adventurous journey I am on.
So, what am I?
In part, I am a leader who follows and joins in, while breaking new ground along the way. I am adding more to what I know and at times, creating something completely unique — encouraging others to do the same.
More than following or leading -
I am someone who fears ’settling’. It is what keeps me from stayin’ in the same hole for too long. Now, sometimes those holes I dig are darned hard to crawl out of; yet eventually I crawl out because of what I learn personally or from what I learn from others - the followers and the leaders.
In the long run (playing follow the follower) -
It matters what I do most of the time that counts.
Am I making strides and creating more Beauty or am I doin’ the same old same old?
Now, I have said nothing that someone else has not said before me…
My hopes are that I do that for my children and myself.
I’m ok with that.
For rehashed ideas eventually stick and onward I go.
And perhaps my rehashed idea will be a LIGHT coming on for someone else and even further, perhaps their LIGHT will become a new and even brighter light for others. And wouldn’t that be lovely? Knowing that, in part, I inspired greatness?!
~Shannon
Ps.
I enjoyed Erin’s comment. It is important for us to decide what sheep we want to graze with.
July 12th, 2005 at 10:21 am
Steve P: Exactly, exactly, exactly. Thank you for this post! Keep being a wolf!
July 12th, 2005 at 12:23 pm
“It didn’t work for the sheep because their shepherds were out to breakfast. ”
ITA, this was a management problem. The followers did what they were supposed to do. I think followers get a bad rap, and leaders get too much credit.
Thanks for the thought…
July 20th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Yeah.. I want to be different.. just like everybody else.
July 20th, 2005 at 7:42 pm
Hey Steve, I just came across this book “escape from freedom” by Erich Fromm. Here a quote from the review here:
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/fromm.html
“So, over a mere 500 years, the idea of the individual, with individual thoughts, feelings, moral conscience, freedom, and responsibility, came into being. but with individuality came isolation, alienation, and bewilderment. Freedom is a difficult thing to have, and when we can we tend to flee from it.”
interesting.. i think i’ll read it.