Context and the Gift of Temporary Pain.
About two weeks ago, I had a full knee replacement.
My body is doing fine. In fact, I’m way ahead of the recovery curve. Winning! Thank you, personal trainers.
My mind, however, had no personal trainers with a directive to make me strong enough to unicycle out of the hospital. So mentally, I'm either real ahead of the curve, real behind, or I have exploded the curve in enough pieces to encircle the universe with mental debris. I’m truly not sure.
Today's blog is brought to you by pain medicine.
The topic: Context. In business, marketing, and in life.
Before the robots took over, context in advertising was expressed by media buys that played on the mood of the target at the exact moment they were to see your expression. It was simple: don’t run a Pampers spot in Rosemary’s Baby, even though the numbers indicated a value buy for females of first-child bearing age. Context like this was precise and it was crafted by human hand. (I once worked with a media buyer who did a theater-by-theater Yelp! check for seat cleanliness when she placed a buy for on-screen ads. Now THAT’S dedication to context.)
The neuroscience basis for context was, and is today, clear and tested. But because robots now work for two cents an hour, if you search for a recipe for mushroom stroganoff you’ll get ads for fungus cream with photos of alien scales growing all over your body. Alexa, please stop.
It has been said that the only thing you can control is your attitude. That’s a lot to ask unless you are an old Buddhist guy living on a mountain. But context is hard-wired to attitude, which is why people feel inspired to be creative in cool workplaces. Or why music makes a party bangin’ (like my use of a current colloquialism?).
The default setting of context? Chaos. In this case, the bombardment of messaging, societal expectations, political manipulations, and the weighty responsibility to make money in our culture. None of which is a choice.
In the last two weeks I’ve been cross-eyed with pain, been grateful for the most intimate help, and have experienced the joy that comes with family love. I’ve read Marcus Aurelius, finished three inches of books about the Allied bombing campaign against Germany that informed the Apple series Masters of the Air, wrote lyrics for songs I can’t sing, and then practiced my singing (yea, got some lessons for my birthday). I took naps. Listened to birds. And contemplated just being, because there were times that just being was all that I could physically or mentally do.
What a gift! I was forced to surrender, and then I got to flow into the context of my choosing.
So what is the context of YOUR life today? What are you feeding your attitude? What energy are you choosing to allow into your life?
Even when we are lucky enough to love what we do for a living, we do it because we’re not independently wealthy. In business and marketing, we may get pleasure from mastery, a job well done, fighting the good fight for entrepreneurs and the people they employ, or just helping people with the skills you have. All great reasons to carry on and keep working beyond getting paid.
Today, my context is different than it was even just a few weeks ago. I hope it’s not because I’m still on drugs. I hope it’s because the surrender to pure, unadulterated, contextual me is not going away.