Years ago my father and I went to a dinner at the Elmer Grange. I do believe it was one of those fried oyster things wherein I gorged myself with about 30 or 40 of those bad boys and sucked down a gallon of ice tea.
On the particular occasion I am remembering right now there was a speaker. He was one of the DuPont scions. When I looked at him that night he seemed genteel. He also seemed quite elderly. Standing at the side of the room before he spoke he seemed frail at least to my young eyes. But when he got to the podium he voice was lively and bright.
His talk was part memoir and part motivation speech. His speech was part of the TED of the day. The key line I heard that night was “Everything has a cost whether you think about it or not. Thinking about the cost will make a difference in your life.”
As he talked this elder DuPont went to explain that his uncle loved little cigars and smoked them despite being advised not to. His uncle had been the CEO of DuPont near the start of the 20th century. His uncle of course was ravaged by and ultimately died of oral cancer. The speaker said that this was an example of cost. His uncle loved those cigars and they gave him joy. In the end the cost for those little bits of pleasure was his uncle’s life.
He went on to say that killing time had a cost too. Idleness meant that you weren’t working toward a goal, you weren’t learning something. He acknowledged that yes there was a benefit to rest, but that we needed to be aware of the tipping point between needed relaxation and a loss of motivation and direction.
He came back to his main point that everything has a cost in several different ways. But his digressions all had the same message, what you want, what you do cradle to grave, it all requires you expend something, time, money, energy, health or happiness. The cost may be worth it or it may not. His final point although I am putting in the jargon of our day was that to empower yourself, to better yourself you need to be aware of the cost. Ultimately you need to make sure the cost is appropriate and one you are willing to pay.
4 comments:
No longer willing to pay = retirement; no longer willing to shovel = moving to Florida. Come on down for a visit.
"He went on to say that killing time had a cost too. Idleness meant that you weren’t working toward a goal, you weren’t learning something."
What a silly thing to say. You can't learn anything unless you're working toward a goal!!
He was from a different era. He was one of those people that believed we should always be progressing toward something better. Such deification of progress was not uncommon in the generation that had grown-up pre-World War I. I have too long read and studied psychology regarding the benefit of doing nothing from time to time.
I ran out of space. Wasting time is often beneficial to innovation and productivity. That being said I agree that there is a cost tied to everything that you do. It's neither good nor bad it just is.
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