In the old classic movie Born Yesterday, Billie remarked with full honesty: “As long as I know how to get what I want, that’s all I want to know!” As the writers intended, the audience chuckled at her comment. But actually, upon further reflection, I realize that in a way, she might have a point. Yes, this may sound selfish at first blush, but hear me out.
Would this mean that one would ignore world peace; the health, safety and well-being of others; climate crises, and other things that are perhaps larger than one’s immediate frame of reference?
Not necessarily.
Think about it. Let’s say you are a person that knows what you want. You are focused. Now let’s say that part of your laundry list of ‘wants’ happens to include things like: ‘making sure that poverty is overcome in Africa’, in addition to a want that is more close to home like: ‘growing our business by 15% every year’ or ‘making sure to put my kids through college’.
Whatever the wants, they are surely not all wants that are directly about you, yourself. Rather, you are likely to have some wants that are also about your loved ones, your wider circles, and the world at large. Ideally, in a perfect world, we’d all have enough time in the day (and capacity in our brains) to handle a lot more data that goes far above and beyond what we directly want. In that way, we’d always grow, and become more aware of things that we may not have even known we wanted/wished for in the first place.
But with today’s information overload, there’s just too much ‘noise’. Back in September, I finally cleared out the physical clutter (more or less; improvements were made!) in my home office. See: Scarlett Letter #38: Clearing physical space for mental gain. Now it’s time to also remove the ‘noise’ in my own head.
Is it possible that Billie is wise when she suggests that she cannot possibly digest or attend to any data/information that does not relate to her interests? Or on the flip side, is she shutting out the wonders of social interaction in all of its forms—where information of all types is always available for digesting, integrating, analyzing, and applying?
Where is the balance between pushing out the noise while also remaining aware and open? Have you found the balance? I welcome your comments, dear readers.
