If you can’t win, change the rules. If you can’t change the rules, ignore them. I - Vishen Lakhiani

Of course, there’s a darker side to culture: when we get so focused on our rules that we turn them into decrees about how life “should” be and label people or processes as good or bad if they don’t follow the rules. This is how you should live. This is how you should dress. This is how women, children, the sick, the elderly, or the “different” should be treated. My tribe is superior to your tribe. My ways are right, which means that yours are wrong. My beliefs are right, and yours are wrong. My God is the only God. We create these complex worlds and then literally defend them with our lives. The language and rules that define our culture can cost lives as much as cultivate them.

And so it’s a subtle balance: 1.​You have a bold vision for the future pulling you forward. 2.​Yet . . . you’re happy in the NOW.

I was early taught to work as well as play, My life has been one long, happy holiday; Full of work and full of play — I dropped the worry on the way — And God was good to me every day. That titan was John D. Rockefeller, who wrote the poem at age eighty-six.