Three joys that you can count on to bring you success

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On May 12, 2001 the Vice President of Boeing, Scott E. Carson, gave a speech at the Washington State University commencement titled Three Joys You Can Count On. The full text by the speechwriter, Andrew B. Wilson, is in a web page at Andrew B. Wilson Communications with that same title. He said:

 

“….What is the opposite of fear of the unknown, or fear of change?

 

You wouldn’t be wrong if you said ‘courage.’ But I am going to say ‘joy.’ Why joy? It matches up with fear of the unknown in the following ways: Where one denies, the other affirms; where one inhibits, the other inspires; where one contains, the other overflows.  

 

Here are the three joys that you can count on to bring you success in your future endeavors. They will never fail you or let you down in any way.

 

The first is joy in work. Whenever I read about some multimillionaire retiring at the age of 35, I shake my head in disbelief. Why would anyone in his right mind want to quit working? Work is, or ought to be a superior form of play – not only useful, but altogether stimulating and fun. I applaud the attitude of Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer, who had more than 500 books to his credit. ‘If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live,’ Asimov said, ‘I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.’

 

Next is joy in learning. Regardless of age, learning is always the key to improvement … the key to self-improvement and to the improvement of everything you touch. As the anthropologist Jacob Bronowski has written, ‘The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better.’

 

Third is joy in others, and this is absolutely essential to the other two. For instance, to experience the joy of learning, you must be open to and strongly interested in the ideas and thoughts of others. In much the same way, you will find no joy in work if you cannot communicate and cooperate with others. Nothing is worse than knowing engineering and only being able to talk with other engineers, or knowing accounting and only being able to talk with other accountants. To cause things to happen, you must learn to think and talk in the language of disciplines and professions other than your own.”

 

The smiley emoticons were adapted from this yellow one at OpenClipArt.