I was never in Boy Scouts. I live with a hint of remorse as I feel I’ve missed something important, but one must never live with regret. So, now I love other’s stories. I remember in 5th grade simply liking the decoration of it — the cool neckerchief, badges, uniform, sitting amongst a group of cool kids. My Uncle Charles has been telling me stories of his time in the Scouts and how it truly shaped his life, particularly from his Scout Leader, Mr. Lassiere (who had such an impact on my uncle and is community in South Louisiana, Uncle Charles gave his eulogy). Aside from that great man, the 12 words that code their behavior and perspective: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent come up often, at least once in every story. Of course, in the 1950s my uncle grew up very Catholic, yet his Christian Boy Scout values were never measured religiously. And today, as a non-believer he sees the world in his own perspective enmeshed with these values even if never expressed explicitly. Which I find very very honest and just plain cool.
So I started looking at my own life, here. Not within these values, but in the less conformist way my Uncle experienced his boy-scout-days. I think I’ve found how I love design, in as much as I can’t help but look at problems to solve — like a tick — but don’t necessarily take some hard and fast tradition from the dogma many seem to connect. I don’t own and read all the design books. I don’t go to conferences. I can’t listen to every podcast. I don’t know the celebrity names that people drop, often. I glean. I listen. I like the cool neckerchief and badges of design, but I don’t follow the Master Chief. I take the pieces — maybe the 12 values that connected with me — and I use them all on my own. And I can’t be the only one…I’m nothing special in that regard (though I’m sure my mother would say otherwise).
I was trying to figure out if this makes me an amateur and if that matters. I was wondering, this morning, if others might be better than me (because of course many are) because of their dogma and if that matters. I sat worried if perhaps I am naive in the art of getting things done and if that ideology matters. And I thought of Uncle Charles.
And I heard his voice, “Who cares”? Yep. Outside of myself, who cares? I find myself happier doing something I believe, in taking the pieces of design or routine or philosophy or dogma that I find natural, and use it. I’m curious if we all do this and if/when we become aware, we either stop it, to be more professional/self-conscious or if we stop it because it sounds lazy, somehow less academic and refined.
Well, perhaps it is just that, a little less refined, but wide open to fresh creativity. Perhaps we are not all as blind as we fear — hazardously doing anything from entitlement or prestige. In our sanguine temperament we contemplate and adjust rapidly and often because we’ve gathered information outside the normal. We’ve taken values from the Boy Scouts and implemented their relevance to friends, to cleaning our homes, to making dinners, to smiling at strangers, to enjoying quiet time, to caring for our humanity, to working hard at a small task, to changing diapers, to lazy strolls, to listening to a loved one, to laughing at jokes, to reveling in our favorite desert, to staring back at the future.
Tell me if you’ve noticed this — but over a period of time, throughout some span of serendipity, you’ve found more timely and necessary wisdom from reading or experiencing different thoughts all outside design thinking or methodology or theory? Here’s a quick list of things I can see from the point of view of my desk, this morning — @kinfolkmag magazine, Superbetter by Jane McGonigal, Essentialism, anything from Neil Gaiman, Stumbling on Happiness, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change it, Reality Is Broken also by Jane McGonigal, Understanding Comics, The Art of Tidying Up, my journal, this bowl of grapefruit, early morning quiet.
So, to all the other boys and men who missed being a Boy Scout, never fret. There’s plenty of ways to bring the purpose of other experiences to life, through your own perspective, to hold value in the work you do, even outside the norm, because “who cares”? — it makes you happy, you learn from any place you can, and the world should be better for it.