Digital ID Coach

Being in context

May 28th, 2009

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Perhaps you’ll remember a story from a couple of years ago in the Washington Post about internationally acclaimed virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell. The Post put Bell in a Washington DC Metro station to play his Stradivarius for the passers-by during a 43 minute period.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work…

Bell received donations amounting to $52.17 for his venture.

Watching the video weeks later, Bell finds himself mystified by one thing only. He understands why he’s not drawing a crowd, in the rush of a morning workday. But: “I’m surprised at the number of people who don’t pay attention at all, as if I’m invisible. Because, you know what? I’m makin’ a lot of noise!”

If you’re curious, here’s a link to Bell’s full performance. I love Bell’s playing, and have a bit of cognitive dissonance hearing the background noise. It’s playing in the background as I write this post. I was reminded of The Post’s story by a few random, passing incidents where people seemed a bit out of their element.

Coaching moment: Have you ever been in a meeting or part of a conversation where you felt that you weren’t being heard? Or that you were in a job that wasn’t right for you but you didn’t know how to escape or what a better job might be? Or that you were in the right place at the wrong time, or wrong time and place altogether? Yeah, you’re not alone.

Lacking proper training, connections, and insights about who we are or how to connect with our right livelihood, most of us do the best we can to identify our strengths and make the most of who we are. That’s good and bad. Once we think we know who we are, we have set our context in a way that may be hard to break out of.

The future holds a different story for us. Jobs and opportunities will develop in ways we could not dream of today. I’m reminded of a line from a Star Trek episode when Captain Picard is asked what people do with themselves in the 24th Century. “The challenge [...] is to improve yourself… to enrich yourself. Enjoy it.“

If you could write a new story for yourself–in a new time and place–what would your life be like?

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