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“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.”

Kahlil Gibran

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“In his pursuit of the dream, he was being constantly subjected to tests of his persistence and courage…”

The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

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We often discuss focus in terms of the present, but what about focus and the future? To be clear. I most likely have a different view on focus. I see focus as a 6 lane highway in which you are always moving forward. The center line is the moments of clarity (crisis, emotional investment situations, when things feel ‘the rightest’). The remainder of the time you’re staying on task (your horizon point) somewhere on the highway focusing on what is relevant to your survival and your progress.

In my mind today’s world seems less about focusing than it is active versus passive engagement with information.

• Passive engagement means flickering focus on fragments of interest/relevance or ignoring what is unimportant to your task (and, yes, you can miss some things but they don’t really impede your progress).
• Active engagement is seeking things to focus on to enhance your progress on the task (but you pick these things on the move because stagnant means getting run over).

That said. Engagement is focus. Ok. Its about focus. Returning to that highway, the 6 lanes matter because I think to forge your way thru a chaotic world you will get bludgeoned to death if you treat it like a straight-line gauntlet (note: you die in gauntlets). You actually have to be, well, ‘serpentine’ in interacting with information. You have to focus while moving so you don’t get overwhelmed by information. The key here is in the pursuit of progress, or ‘the dream’, you are advancing. That may seem like an odd way to discuss focus, but let me suggest we could learn a lot from young people about focus. Watch one play Call of Duty. Their ability to focus in a multidimensional way WHILE always moving forward shows a dimensional sense of focus we could all aspire to.

“Why are we so full of restraint?

Why do we not give in all directions?

Is it fear of losing ourselves?

Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.”

Henry Miller

Which leads me to focus and structural corruption.

Suffice it to say most people enter an occupation with a variety of aspirations aside from receiving a paycheck, and then discover that work is structured so most of those aspirations will be unmet, in fact, they cannot be met.

Suffice it to say most people enter into almost everything in life with a variety of aspirations aside from focusing on achieving some result, and then discover that life is structured so most of those aspirations will be unmet, in fact, they cannot be met.

This simplistic suggestion is the foundation for why people are disillusioned with work, life and the systems undergirding everything. This is, at its core, structural corruption. Oh. Structural corruption doesn’t materialize out of nothing.

“It begins with a private but clearly stated agreement within a small group to cut corners, to find ways of doing things that appear to be in its favor but fail to account for their broader implications. The behavior then spreads to the wider workforce that hasn’t been party to the original consensus, but which now views the practices that have resulted as standard operating procedure. Often years pass before it becomes clear that the breadth of the original agreement to engage in questionable conduct exposes the entire organization to compromise and reputation loss.”

See. that’s the problem with focusing on short term objectives. Short term objectives accept structural corruption, forces constrain systemic compromise, and tamps down the highest potential in the results. That means you can focus on the short term to your heart’s desire and I can guarantee you will never attain the highest possible outcomes (let alone attain aspirations). Focusing on advancing toward ‘what will be’ sees beyond structural corruption and envisions new ways of doing things and thinking about things. That is What I would call “advancing focus”.

Which leads me to advancing.

“Advancing” takes work, demands resilience and focus. Shit. Reshaping structural corruption takes work, demands resilience and focus. Why?

“Anyone who believes that we’re just going to leap into some sort of glorious new age is very unrealistic … far-reaching turmoil can be expected, as individuals and institutions either adapt to, or resist, change.”

Alvin Toffler 1990

To be clear leaders and governing elite talk about leaps all the time. The problem is that most of the ‘elites’ “attack everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.” The consequence of this is for people to retreat rather than advance. Yeah. Self and community become the last defensive outpost on the barren battlefield of certainty, security, and safety. The battlefield air is further sapped of oxygen by the feeling the pursuit of a wealth is how the war is waged where nothing is measured by the quality, quantity, and ethics of productive labor but rather fealty to the amoral forces of global capitalism. This all creates a sense of quote do it yourself end quote individualism and a zero-sum attitude making any real safety elusive and fragile. And this is where I circle back to structural corruption. Because structural corruption has even seeped into the pores of what we view as a community. The seduction of a community in today’s world is a sheltered vision of the future dominated by the present because it is only within the present where individuals in the community can actually see and feel the cozy tranquility of certainty security in whatever freedom they may believe is accessible to them. The truth is the most promising kind of unity is one which is achieved and achieved daily by collaboration, debate, negotiation, and compromise between a variety of values, desires, preferences, chosen ways of life, and self-identifications. This suggests that unity is an outcome of coherence and not a given condition of similar collective interests. Structural corruption subverts the best of community and shapes it into a simplistic desire for defense against an uncertain unsafe world. This means two things about advancing.

• Advancing demands focus and work. In addition, advancing rarely incorporates retreating from the world. That is where focus comes in. The world offers an infinite amount of challenges and people only have finite energy. Active advancing is inextricably tied to effective focus.
• To advance is in some way to refuse to play the game by whatever rules the system suggests is a moral/ethical crime, i.e., against norms not just laws. The system encourages people to not see the game is not played the same way anymore. What I mean by that is it is no longer played between the bigger and the smaller, but between the quicker and the slower. Those who were able to accelerate faster and gain velocity are the ones who actually catch the power needed to be able to beat structural corruption.

This is where mass and gravity step in. To defy structural gravity in any meaningful way, a mass of coherent communities need to collectively fly, but that’s another piece for another day. Today let’s encourage focusing on advancing toward what will be.

So, I hesitated to end with this thought because Antonio Gramsci was a renowned Marxist, but the thought seems relevant: “the way to overcome cultural hegemony is by creating a new culture that is not based on the values of the ruling class.” And maybe that’s what it takes to advance towards what will be – a new way of thinking and a new culture. Ponder.