I listened to the recent conversation between Brian Koppelman and Seth Godin during my evening run, and I finally put my finger on the part of their pragmatic approach to getting work done that I can’t hang with.
Early in their discussion, they debate the relative merits of believing Bob Dylan is a genius.
Godin thinks Dylan is a high-level practitioner who got really lucky.
Koppelman thinks Dylan is an artist who operates on a higher-level: a generational talent.
Their conclusion? Believe the truth that works for you. Why?
Because you can hide from doing your own work by telling yourself you’ll never write a song as good as Dylan.
Or because you can hide from your work by getting indignant that Dylan got so lucky and you, who are just as talented, will never get all those breaks.
From their perspective it’s an existential dilemma. We’re confronted with what “is” (Dylan’s voluminous output and public acclaim) and then we have to imbue it with meaning. If that’s the case, the argument goes, why not make sure that the meaning we give it is something that helps us?
The reason I have listened to and read Godin so frequently is because there are elements of truth here: namely that our hearts tend to produce what St. Paul calls “vain imaginations” that further obscure the things we know to be true. We would do well to pay attention to the stories we tell ourselves about the world.
But that’s not the entire story…
Continue reading “True For You”