Patience with Fools

When it first came out, a friend of mine commented on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. He did not complain that the Jar Jar Binks character made him want to spew. Instead he complained that this movie continued to reinforce a common theme in today's pop culture -- that if your heart is in the right place, you can succeed without any discipline or preparation, regardless of the difficulty of the task.

He may have had something there. I work with a number of young people at a large national retailer. A few are what I would consider typical youth, using their work experience as a way point on a journey upward. Others, however, will make noise about their plans and ambitions but seem to lack any ability to actually act in the direction of their stated goals. Nice kids, but not real clear on how life really works.

Some of the YouTube comments complain that the author of the video is being mean to aspiring writers. I would say it's fine to encourage those [fill in the blank] who are aspiring even as they work, but we need not have patience with fools. Fools should be slapped in the hopes that it will knock some sense into them.

While I haven't had a conversation exactly like the one in the video below, it made me think of some I might have.



Of course, then there are jaded old farts like me who are working at rebuilding their dreams and plans from the wreckage. C'est la guerre.

(hat tip to Jared Wilson )