There is a small group of people I work with that work on commission, though they rarely make any commission. They spend hours on end some days when business is slow just sitting around talking amongst themselves. Their hourly rate isn’t much better than they could get at McDonalds and so you’d wonder why they don’t put some effort into making more sales. I tried to address this with them the other day and one of them flat out told me that they didn’t care about making their commission. This in spite of the fact that their jobs could be paying quite well if they were actually generating sales.
I’ve marveled at this for some time that some people just don’t seem to have any drive to succeed and are perfectly happy with that. There are some people who need to be doing, be creating, be striving for something better in order to be happy. And there are those who are happy simply being alive. Neither is right or wrong and people are all wired differently. I believe that society needs a good mix of both in order to function well.
But those of us who are driven to do something more are not immune to life’s brainless pleasures either . The danger comes when these things takeover too much of our lives. The kid who neglects practicing his guitar to play Guitar Hero might become an expert at Guitar Hero. One thing is for certain though: He still has no idea how to play the guitar, he’s just really good at a digital version of whack-a-mole.
The challenge for those who are driven to succeed is to remember to slow down and enjoy life while not getting carried away into mental laziness. And the challenge for people who do not have this drive is to be willing to stretch for it once in a while and see what is beyond just being alive. I realize that I’m making very broad generalizations about the entire population.