So here I am,¹ still in Johannesburg, Joburg, Jozi, the District 9 city. The African version of LA.
The rough & tough old mining town that I was born in. esCAPEd from. And evidently needed to return to make peace with (like an ex-smoker I bore greater rights to cast scorn on its dirty sexy evils when I’d slipped its golden handcuffs in ’99).
 
Here for the best of reasons – which means I’m not here for the money. And not leaving anytime soon. Which means I better bloody well deal with it.
 
I’m sure you’ve also caught strains of that tatty mantra : it’s not your conditions but your decisions that make for success. Unfortunately the damn thing rings true, and not the kind of thing a “When I ..” wants to hear. (You know those When I’s? those who stubbornly defer giving their best until some favourable condition shimmers in: when I ..get married ..finish school ..lose weight ..write that book ..get a job/liver transplant/goldfish ..er, get out of Joburg).
 
We humans have so many forces that nudge our destiny: biochemistry, genetics, market forces, religion, politics, chemicals in our food, the neighbourhood we live in, our choice of friends. We can’t even trust our rational decisions any longer – beware the descent into paranoia from Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational all ye elegant logicians (or watch this for 17 minutes for a quick scare).
 
It’s easy to be buffeted, eroded and move along en masse with the grand forces of our time and evolution. It takes a ferocious inner force to carve out your own destiny, regardless of circumstance. Hard cities are the best places to track down those who embody that level of defiance and strength.
 
Living in a place with a sophisticated, stable market to support your talent, obviously makes it easier to succeed. Urban social scientists like Richard Florida [Rise of the Creative Class] make sense of why some cities attract a disproportionate share of talent, spawn innovation and wealth with greater ease than most (think Silicon Valley or Singapore).² Being in Jozi just requires digging deeper (as you’d expect of an old gold mining town), but it yields some dazzling human.shaped gems.
 
This is a place where unexpected local brilliance radiates out globally, like YouTube star Khaya Dlanga

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Urban Survival : my 2 rules for enjoying cities that don’t share your ambitions

1. Deal with it. Resistance is futile. Remember the maxim: “bloom where you’re planted” fortune favours the fast adaptors. One of the best things you can do for your career is to learn some improv theatre techniques [think "Whose Line is it Anyway"]. Same goes for moving cities. Rocket scientist of adapting improv in business is Rob Poynton (Everything’s an Offer)³ who preaches almost only one thing: ACCEPT, then make something fresh/ useful/ outrageous from whatever life thrusts your way (sounds easy, but it takes serious theatre-ninja skills).

 

2. Genius begets Genius. There are 2 things I believe about developing genius. The second of which is that genius begets genius. Surrounding ourselves with people who are ferociously brilliant and determined, awakens the brain’s portals to significance, positive competition and heroism, otherwise dormant in less challenging company. HANG OUT WITH PEOPLE DOING INSPIRING THINGS, not just friends by convenience. Find your tribe and then go adventuring. Thankfully we aren’t limited by who’s in our hyperlocal ‘hood any longer. We have the world to search for our kind. Nothing beats realworld though – which is why it’s a no.brainer that the best and the brightest cluster in close vicinity - but resourceful digital nomads can get the best of both worlds. To stave off entropy, your average coffee, dinner, movies with friends doesn’t apply to this tribe. These are the people you want to go on expeditions with, develop a cure for Albanian measles, rack up some patents with, learn new languages together, build a school, discover a new species ..find something in your area of shared passion to defy time and the numbing cycle of work.buy.display.repeat. that our cities can loop us in.

[Wherever you are, be there.]

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* Check if YOUR city on the best-of lists (Joburgers, let me end your suspense. It isn’t. Deal with it.)

Monocle Magazine’s 25 Most Liveable Cities 2009
Business Week’s slideshow on The World’s Best Places to Live (from the Mercer 2009 Global study)

1. 9 months after leaving Cape Town for a 2 week holiday
2. Keep an eye on the Vinny Lingham & Justin Stanford passion project – Silicon Cape – vying to make Cape Town the first African creative attractor city
3. I’ve been lucky enough to get into Rob’s classes – find out where he is in the world and catch one of his sessions if you can

On the evening of 28th November 2008, I left for the end-of-year break ..and haven’t been seen back at home or work (or online) since.

Thoroughly irresponsible; mercilessly smitten; gently but certainly challenging beliefs I had thought hardwired, fumbling through an identity-crisis, in a city I had rained scorn upon. I’ve abstained from gym, discovered chocolate as a health-food; delved deep into some of the most beautiful music ever created; swum in more addictive US political intrigue than I thought my brain was calibrated for; negligently ignored the existence of modern telecommunications [imagine: no email or obedience to the phone] and worse ¹. All the while, blissfully roadtripping the length and breadth of this magnificent country with the best guide no money could buy.

I have NOT: been learning a new language, writing that book, saving a species, meditating for world-peace or anything vaguely useful to humanity, at all.

Sins of this order were unmentionables, unthinkables only a few short months ago in my busy=virtue world.
[Are you growling at me? You who cannot up and leave your world?] You’re thinking about all the dazzling things you’d do if you didn’t have to do anything aren’t you?
[Should you need to shore up your virtue, be soothed that I certainly haven't emerged gloriously. Nor prepared to take my position among the enlightened. I am happy in a dizzingly undeserving way though, if that counts for anything.]
If there is a lesson or an epiphany² from this indulgent meander, it’s so prosaic that it’s embarrassing (you kind of expect more of a sabbatical).
It’s this:
In hunting for genius, I’ve joined the ranks of those halfwits, who, refusing to sensibly learn from wiser ones or the volumes of sacred texts that dependably spell out that you could go to the ends of the earth, stand on your head, eat only lentils but why go to all the trouble when the answers have been with you all the time [mostly in a blindingly obvious manner]. Even if you’re a burger-noshing clod with no credits in your spiritual log, you know what you’re born to do, even if you don’t know you know, in line with aforementioned obvious manner. We are very skilled at missing the simple solution because complexity is like a honeytrap to the human brain. I doubt you’ll believe me unless you’ve gone off the map yourself; but you don’t need to unplug from the mundane world to ‘find yourself’; grab a gap-year to discover your purpose; or even ‘vision quest’ for Big Meaning³.

I’ve given up on believing the grand answers are magically “out there” for the intrepid to scoop. The angels won’t come chorussing in on cue when we’re ‘good enough’. There is no clarifying certainty. We’ll only ever tend toward it with tantalizing glimmers to keep hope stoked on the cookie trail.

THE SUPER-SUBTLE SOUL SWINDLE

Problem is, a persistent mythology holds: that we should work like the blazes until that ONE DAY when we may be lucky enough to retire/take a sabbatical/live in a small Karoo town or ascetic ashram ..when at last, safely removed from the mediocrity of the masses, enlightenment will timeously trickle in. THEN will we know our rightful purpose on this big spinning ball, and begin our life’s worthy work.

It’s a myth akin to believing that you should suffer during your time on earth, to save up credits for heaven. Being good or Father Christmas will know and you’ll be punished with socks and soap. IT’S ALL A DUPE!

starting small. starting now

Astronomers have discovered a curious way of  searching for deep space objects, a trick called averted vision - stare directly and you miss the fainter stars, which are only caught out of the corner of the eye (an odd glitch in our physiology). Meaning is out there, twinkling just beyond scrutiny. When we focus on other things, it seems to shimmer into visibilty (an odd glitch in our psychology).

Sometimes, with our monkey mind distracted by mundane chores, our higher mind can play at the periphery. Tinkering at the edge, as Einstein did while punching the card as a patent clerk, could yield moments of genius that change how the world works. Or lay the path to change history and human rights on your commute: “My only concern was to get home after a hard day’s work” - Rosa Parks.

Devoting our lives to the search for the elusive Philosopher’s Stone seems to yield only craziness.
Just getting on with things in a fashion that suggests that there is no heaven to expect ‘out there’; no perfection or control of all factors before we begin.  We surely don’t need a “wake-up call” disease to clear the decks? Shouldn’t we live with full gusto by default ..because what the hell else are we holding out for? We all seem to start too late, if we begin at all. It doesn’t mean giving up the day job, getting divorced or married, getting Big funding for the Big idea or running away to the circus/countryside ..whatever your rebooting dream looks like.

“I think you should profit from the mistakes of others. You don’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Lowell Ferguson

I guess we read other’s ramblings to grab a morsel or two of vicarious wisdom (hopefully saving ourselves the foolishness of going headlong into trouble we may otherwise feel compelled toward):
Herewith my crumb of hard-earned clarity || release the pause button || quit waiting for the right time, enough time, enough money, the kids to grow up, to get your degree, the clarity to sketch out your grand strategy. Get tinkering. Get messy. Get going >>

Deferring heaven to some angel-thronged post-body subspace where you get to cash in your rewards seems like the real sacrilege. We can muster an army of excuses for shelving our passions like winter jam and labelling them “When I.. (fill in favoured excuse)”. [BTW if you run short of any, don't forget you can mail me for spare ones that sound virtuous enough to leadweight any dash for delight. Workaholic speciality #7.]

Well I’m done with hunting genius, going for good enough to get going now. Ditching any lingering belief in clear strategic plans, finally happy to lay in a course in the approximate direction of that tenacious twinkle in the corner of my eye and see where it leads. Accepting that being human is messy, and precarious. That any genius we stumble on is inextricably tangled in so much paradox and damn luck that there’s little chance of taming it to serve us tidily anyway.
I’m finally paying attention to advice from someone I’ve missed hugely during my 404 -  simply: start small, start now.

So here’s to hopeful, curious tinkering on stuff we love (if nothing else, it may save your sanity if your day-job sucks) and to hell with whether it fits neatly into a business plan, to backing our own unlikely story in a world where the unlikely is increasingly likely.

“Often people attempt to live their life backwards; they try to have more things or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is in reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.” -Margaret Young

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* 404? Webspeak for getting lost in cyberspace – “Error returned when a server cannot find the requested page”. [Also: anthropomorphised to mean a clueless person, as in "don't bother asking him, he's 404".]

PS. I remembered Po Bronson’s What should I do with my life? on Fast Company & had a look through again, not bad if you’re feeling like the world has lost the plot & you need a mission makeover. [Don't expect any epiphanies.]

PPS. okay one last, for the geeks >> as master of your own digital realm, some 404 inspiration for fun.

1. my beloved friends & family relegated too – NOT something I would do again – this stuff’ll kill ya
2. Why is it that we wait on an epiphany to fling us onto the right road? “Never underestimate our ability to ignore the obvious.” Maybe it’s the fairytale hangover of longing to be divinely “called” to a world-saving mission, to be heralded at TED. Perhaps we’re a little bleak that our heart’s chief desire is to do something so delightfully ordinary that will never land us on the cover of Time.
3. ironically, it seems to  only deepen confusion, self-righteous separation and Don Quixote-weirdoness. IMO: STAY IN THE GAME!