Jeremiah Tolbert

Seth Godin posted these imper­a­tives, as related to the won­der­ful TED con­fer­ences:

1. Be inter­ested.
2. Be gen­er­ous.
3. Be inter­est­ing.
4. Connect.

I’ve been think­ing about these imper­a­tives a lot for the last few days.  I some­times seek a guid­ing prin­ci­ple for my life.  Maybe that’s some­thing us non­re­li­gious peo­ple do–I don’t have a spir­i­tual belief to guide me in my deci­sions and path in life– just a deep-​​seated per­sonal moral­ity that isn’t much more com­plex than the Golden Rule.  Do no harm.  Do things to lessen mis­ery for everyone.

It’s not the eth­i­cal things that trip me up.  I’m more uncer­tain about things like pur­pose and role in life.  And in that regard(-ish), the TED imper­a­tives seem like a good guid­ing prin­ci­ple for a while, at least. I feel like I’ve man­aged to do enough to secure myself this year that I can start being more gen­er­ous and inter­ested.  And per­haps the other things will flow from that. They just feel… right at the moment.  Especially in regards to Godin’s sug­ges­tion that they are “valid guide­lines for any time you choose to stop hid­ing and step out into the world.”  I keep step­ping fur­ther and fur­ther out into the world lately.  I felt like the last cou­ple of years have been about rebuild­ing my life at the foun­da­tions. Now it’s time to start adding new ele­ments, con­nect­ing what I do and have done to oth­ers.  I’m less fear­ful of what oth­ers think of me and my inter­ests now.  And I’m deeply curi­ous about the things oth­ers are mak­ing, doing, and how they see the world.

What do you think of the TED imper­a­tives?  I’ve re-​​enabled com­ments on the site.  They may not be pretty, but they should be func­tional.  As always, this site is a work in progress.  If you’re fol­low­ing by RSS, you’re def­i­nitely aware of that.  I really need to rework the RSS feed to prop­erly include the pho­tos and link URLs.  Sorry for the dust, folks.

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