THE E MYTH

Something is missing in most of our lives.

Part of what's missing is purpose. Values. Worthwhile standards against which our lives can be measured. Part of what's missing is a game worth playing.
What's also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another. In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? As a result, most of us scramble about hungrily seeking distraction, in music, in television, in people, in drugs.

And most of all we seek things. Things to wear and things to do. Things with which to fill the emptiness. Things to shore up our eroding sense of self. Things to which we can attach meaning, significance, life. We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion.

What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganised thinking that pervades our culture becomes organised and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are; the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost.

That’s what a business (or School) can do. It can become that place of community. It can become that place where words such as integrity, intention, commitment, vision and excellence can be used, not as nouns, but as verbs, as action steps in the process of producing a worthwhile result.

Michael Gerber, The E Myth