Even in the world of Twitter and Buzz, once in a while a plain old book comes along that resonates with you, makes your pulses vibrate faster than social media. It's not so much that the book teaches you something new: more accurately, it hits you where you already live. Seth Godin's new book, Linchipin, did that to me. About half way through it, I blogged about it and got an immediate response from a friend in India, a Sanskrit scholar, reminding me that the core message of Linchpin was the essence Vedic philosopy. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna repeatedly about what Godin calls "emotional labor."
Um…there's nothing new under the sun. The Eastern truths are more than just ancient; they are almost primal. While they resonate with me, they also resonate with Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists artists, and entrepreneurs.
I wrote about Linchpin before I even finished it, and then went on to become more and more impressed until yesterday, when I finally got to the summary, in which Godin again exhorts readers to make a difference.
And then I pulled out my own business card, which is a Hugh McLeod cartoon that says "Life is too short not to do something that matters."
Hugh is one of those artists whose work also resonates with me. I've tried to support him over the years in small ways — buying a set of cards here, a framed print there, and reading/commenting on his blog. Hugh suffers openly, and he celebrates openly. He's authentic, and he gets it. He brings his emotional labor to his work, and he doesn't have a "job." He defines himself as an artist, and he admits it is hard work, but he commits to it. He "shows up" with a cartoon in my inbox almost every day.It's his gift to me.
When I opened my daily email from Hugh this morning, I learned that the cartoon I love so much that I use it on my business card is…part of the "Linchpin Series."
Hugh, Seth, and Baba SND (my friend in India) are on the same "page." And so are all the people in our entrepreneurship programs who know, inherently, that entrepreneurs will pull us out of the economic funk (or not) through their emotional labor, not their physical labor or their money. It won't be the Wall Street guys, and it won't be the VCs. It will be the people who bring their hearts to their work that can change the world.
