September 8, 2008
Greetings from a friend of Jake’s,
If you could go back to the moments just before these words
are typed each week, you would find me sitting here in my den, just the other
side of my favorite coffee cup.
My favorite coffee cup.
It’s a diner’s mug, a little scratched up and little discolored from
countless servings of the elixir of life that start my day. On the outside is a simple drawing of a guy
running, a giant smile on his face.
Under him is the caption: “Life is good.”
The guy on my mug is Jake, the ultimate optimist, the
creation of two guys who started the ‘Life is good’ company. You probably have seen the clothing and
accessories and everything else they merchandise featuring Jake, and his dog,
Rocket.
Almost twenty years ago John and Bert Jacobs started ‘Life
is good’ and grew it into a cultural icon.
Not only do they have a successful brand, built almost entirely on word
of mouth, but they have created a force for positive change for kids. Cool stuff.
Several weeks ago when I was in
Nashville I had the opportunity to meet Bert Jacobs. He was a keynote speaker at the convention I
was attending and after only a few minutes of listening to his story, I was
inspired. And a little uncomfortable.
During his presentation I flipped
open my notebook and on a blank page I wrote in large letters: “I want what that guy has”.
I ran into him in the hallway
afterward and talked with him for a while about his company and this simple,
optimistic philosophy that he prints on his stuff. The same excitement rolled off of him that I
sensed when he spoke on stage.
A few weeks later I was sorting through some papers and came
across this lined notebook paper, torn at one corner, and my large almost
indecipherable scrawl reminding me. “I want what that guy has.”
What is it about Bert Jacobs that I found so inspiring? His success?
Certainly. He and his brother
have made an incredible brand from nothing, and his company is churning $130
million dollars in sales every year.
Is it what he does?
From the sounds of it, he has a pretty good working day. Fun corporate culture, spends his days in
shorts and flip flops. Creates products
that people enjoy. His company regularly
puts on ‘Festivals’, events around the country that are dedicated to raising
money to help kids who are facing challenges they can’t handle on their
own.
And, by the way, he is tall, good looking and has all of his
hair.
Maybe all of those things, but eventually what I realized
that there was one thing that grabbed me, one thing about his message that it
made me write, “I want what that guy
has.”
What that guy has is passion.
Who hasn’t had times when everything is a grind, when every
decision is a repeat of yesterday’s decision, where it seems nothing we do has
any significance? There can be days when
it’s all we can do to drag ourselves from one crisis to the next. Hard to find passion when life seems like one
long chain reaction.
It’s not to say that I don’t have passion. If you slice me in any direction you’ll find
it. But there are times, days,
situations, environments, when I stand dull, flatfooted and uninspired, waiting
to be moved. That can leave you with
doubts sometimes.
On the other side of my favorite coffee mug is this phrase:
‘Do what you like. Like what you do.’
And that is my salvation.
It still gets to be a choice.
Passion doesn’t have to come down from heaven or be discovered like the
sword in the stone. You choose. Whatever I am going to do I am equipped to
bring the passion. Like what you do.
It is work. It takes
some effort to renew your passion. It is
not a switch in your head. It can be a
process of building the passion; there is value in this work, this relationship,
this creation. I have the gifts, the
skills, to bring the value out, to make it significant and useful and
positive.
For you philosophy majors who are rolling your eyes at this
overly simplistic and naïve position, try not to spoil this for me. I know it’s easy to say ‘Like what you
do’. But life is good. There is value in almost every place we find
ourselves. There are segments of life
where you can do what you like AND like what you do. Sometimes they are different things.
If you could go back to the moments before these words were
typed and look over my favorite coffee mug, you would see a man doing what he
likes. Yes, it might look like I have a
dazed, slightly lost expression on my face, but beyond that, I promise you, is
a passion that even Jake would be impressed by.
Hope this finds you passionate,
David
Copyright © 2008 David Smith
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