Have you ever heard the expression: “Keeping up with the Joneses?” There is a drive in Americans it seems, and maybe all people, to perpetually showing ones stuff. It isn’t enough for many for a job to be done well, people have to recognize it or it never happened.
It’s as if sometimes our lives are showrooms where we dust off the merchandise daily. We want to impress people with who we are. I got an email the other day from an ex-colleague and when I opened it I realized it wasn’t just to me. There was nothing in the to: box which means it was a mass blind carbon copy. These are like junk mail to me but I was curious how she was doing so I read it anyway. It was a paragraph with an attachment showing what the people she works with now do and there were 2 links attached that were at the top of Google. I wrote back a thank you and expected I’d hear something more but I didn’t. I can’t judge their motives but to me it just all seemed to be so braggart.
What if we lived our lives with the focus on the project. What if we talked about ourselves and our work less. What if we let it be what it was and left the emails for questions about how friends are doing?
As for me, I’m closing the showroom in some aspects of my life. Let’s face it, there is a place and a purpose for stuff like commercial real estate showrooms in the world. But as for this particular showroom, I want to listen and read more and proclaim what I’ve done less … much less.
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Close the Showroom
Close the Showroom