Get the Spirit

I write this on the weekend of Pentecost. The moment when the spirit blows out and people catch fire. Getting under the spell of a great idea, being part of a movement. People of all kinds. Get the spirit to step out of the routine. To rise. Dare to put their ideas into the form. Recognize that they are different, no, want to be. Or actually not different, but themselves, and if others find that “different” then that should be.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.” The now famous text of the Apple commercial in 1997. A text not conceived by Steve Jobs, but by Rob Siltanen of the advertising agency. Later Steve Jobs told this just before he died: ‘ ‘That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is — everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.’

I know a lot of people who got the spirit and colored their lives differently. Because it could not be otherwise. Because it cannot be otherwise. The mind blows where it wants to and you blow with it. Because the desire for your own way is simply stronger. As strong as your mind.

There is a so-called “motivational speech” from actor Denzel Washington on YouTube. It is a speech he gives to students who have passed their exams. They are ready to go into the wide world. And oh well, there are so many of those speeches of course, but I have seen this a number of times over the period of a few months and it stays with me. Why? Because Denzel Washington is first and foremost honest to himself, and in that short speech he says that the way you go will be difficult. He makes a remark that he keeps repeating: “fall forward.” You fall, he says, but don’t fall backwards. In English that sounds like “falling back”, fall back on something when you embark on an adventure. No, he tells those students, do not embrace life with the idea of ​​falling back on something. If you fall, fall forward. Then at least you see where you fall. But also, choose the future, the direction forward. Take risks. Fall, try, fall again, try further.

‘Nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.’ –Denzel Washington –

Falling forward, it is what Victor Frankl once named as wanting to give meaning, the will to life. That will-to-meaning is above all something that we must discover and it requires an active attitude. Viktor Frankl writes about this: “We must wait for the tendency to consider values ​​solely in terms of human self-expression. Because logos, or “meaning”, is more than rising from existence, it is rather a confrontation with existence.”

Freely translated you can read and understand Victor Frankl as someone who does not ask a person to make himself known because it is so good for him or herself, but to make himself known because life demands it. It is a will-to-meaning, whereby the will does not lie solely in the hands of man himself. Life wants that too. In addition, frustration — “it doesn’t work, I don’t work” — is an important engine to make the will “strike.” It is the car’s ignition key. To stand in that light, an existential crisis is sometimes needed. Victor Frankl writes that the crisis or frustration comes from:

1. Frustration with existence itself.

2. Frustration with the meaning or meaning of existence.

3. Frustration with striving for a concrete meaning in individual existence, or the will for meaning.

The mind comes along in this frustration. And Steve Jobs tells a journalist: ‘The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.’

In an interview in the Dutch newspaper Trouw on June 8, poet/writer Willem Jan Otten tells about his spirit experience and this struck me in his story:’ I think that many people, maybe almost everyone, experience a lack, a feeling to lose something. That’s what the paradise story is about, the first and most important story of our culture.” And then about that Pentecostal story: “Jesus left nothing behind when he left. No doctrine, no rules, no laws, not even a successor. Only his love, the only thing he has to offer, and precisely that does not get through to the people. After his ascension a gaping lack arises and from that black hole the community of believers appears. The spiritual becomes physical, a breath that blows through you from the outside and elicits a physical reaction.”

Get the spirit and become a “misfit.” Want to live a meaningful life. Do what your heart tells you. “They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Ron van Es — partner Purpose Way