I used a playful scene in Frozen 2 as a metaphor in the context of business, but the scene also works as a larger metaphor for our lives.  If we don’t have a clear definition of who we are, we get “lost in the woods” so to speak and it muddles our ability to make the best choices for ourselves and others.  Taking the time to thinking about what we out to be doing requires us to stand back from our daily routine and look critical at ourselves, our goals and our pre-conceived understanding of ourselves.  Kristoff lacked the self awareness to do this within the movie, but in a different body of literature, Hamlet did not:

What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

“Hamlet” by Shakespeare

Hamlet describes the vastness of the possibility of human potential.  This potential can be used for good, evil or just plain squandered but regardless it is centered on the individual and it is universal (we all possess it).  Our contemporary intellectual tradition gives us two ways for us to think about our potential and how we can orient ourselves towards our own.  We can better understand how to think about our potential, and orient ourselves towards our own in two ways.

The “Eastern” Way

In the Buddhist intellectual tradition there is a concept that perfection is within you and once the conditions are properly set, it can be achieved.  Proper orientation of the self, in this tradition, is to open yourself and enable the perfection in you to extend out into the world.  You, through your actions and your thoughts, create an environment for your individual perfection to manifest.  As a result, learning is not an external process but merely a form of self-discovery to uncover what is latent inside of you.  The fundamental need for you as a human is to be open:

“Be like the earth.  When the rain comes, the earth only has to open herself up to the rain…A teacher cannot give you the truth.  The truth is already in you.  You only need to open your body, mind and heart”

“The Heart of Buddha’s Teaching” (P. 12) – Thich Nhat Hanh

Bumper stickers love this concept – “a mind is like an umbrella, it only functions when open” but in reality to be able to achieve this requires an immense amount of patience, concentration and focus.  To truly embrace it means acknowledging that there are no shortcuts, which, ironically is probably why people are so interested in finding one and entrepreneurs are so eager to sell you the promise of it.

Koonu, a Hawaiian philosopher, took this concept and applied it to learning with the mantra “do less”. He doesn’t quite get it right, but don’t worry, we’ll figure it out in this post.

The “Western” Way

This concept of the self comes out of the Christian intellectual tradition and the belief that people are created in God’s image, have fallen into sin and are saved by grace. This means that we are not perfect, we are imperfect no matter who we are and what we have done.  This message, is not necessarily hopeless, however, because people are created in the image of God, who is perfect (meaning that we are created in the image of perfection) and we can be saved by grace (meaning that perfection is achievable).

This perfection does not live within us, as it I can only be achieved by an external force (Grace) and within the Christian religion, the means by which you are saved by Grace differs.  Tim Keller also understands this message as humbling and egalitarian:

Because we believe that the image of God is in every human being, we know that they are better than their wrong beliefs. And because everyone is a sinner, we know that we Christians are worse than our right beliefs. People who are wrong about Jesus are not as bad as they could be. And we who are right about Jesus are not as good as we could be.

This centers the individual as equal in relationship to other individuals and this equality facilitates the commandment to “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:36-40).

We are compelled to do better

In both ways of seeing the individual there is a strong call to action to be better.  Whether the action is external – doing something to others, or internal – opening the mind body and heart, action is central to being a better version of yourself.  The challenge is making the choice that is aligned with either opening your mind, of loving others.  The true way to make oneself better is to be patient, humble and kind and to resist the short cuts that allow us to feel better about ourselves without actually making a difference. For example:

What (and for whom?) are you “hustling” for:

Perfection is a journey, not a destination:

To re-iterate the popular maxim “life is simple, its just not easy”.  We buy “easy” but have to earn “simple” each day. and though the action of earning we either 1) reclaim what was lost or 2) find what we had within us all along.