Love is important in this earthly life. It is the spark that leads to the fire. The desire that leads to the achievement. We can't get very far if we don't have love in our lives. And I'm not talking about that mushy mushy, "boy meets girl" type of love. No. I'm talking about love for life, love for what we do, love for ourselves.
Jay-Z comes to mind. He loves to rap, loves to entertain and loves to succeed. He also loves the limelight, loves to "live it up" and loves to make hit records. Jigga - one of the many names he's gone by in the last few years - makes sure he works with the best producers he can get. Getting that hit means that much to him (this is in stark contrast to his arch-rival Nas, but that's a story for another day).
Jayhova (yet another name of his. You can tell I'm a fan right?) is successful in all these things because he loves these things. But I'm sure he'll be the first to tell you that love by itself is no guarantee of success. One needs more than love, but without it, getting ahead is just so much more difficult.
Now, I haven't attached value judgements to the things Jay-Z loves. Is it "right" for Jigga to do the things he does? Is it right for him to talk about the subject matters he does? Perhaps not. And perhaps yes. Who's to tell. It seems right for him, so he does it. He loves it, does it and succeeds at it. And he's having a ball.
Now let's bring this closer to home. Let's talk about us, you the reader, and I the author of this piece. What do you love? What is it that I would gladly do for free? I've discovered that I would gladly teach/lecture/consult for free. That's what does it for me. I love the whole process of getting knowledge, finding out stuff, and then sharing it all with other people.
But like I said earlier, loving to do all this is not enough. It is essential, but it in no way guarantees that I'll be as sought after and respected like Steven Covey or Mahan Khalsa.
Love is like the spark from a spark plug. In a car engine it leads to motion. In the open air it brings about nothing, except for a bright light and perhaps some amusement for children (kids in Nigeria love to play with sparkplugs). As powerful and essential as love is, it still requires the right structure, utilization and processes for it to be effective i.e. to make a difference.
Hence the onus is on us, you and I, to learn how to succeed in the areas we love. Each of us has to be very clear about what success means to him/her. Each of us also needs to be in love with his or her own definition of success. Totally in love with it. Totally.
Thinking about this it, it dawns on me that specialization is built into human society. If each of us does what he loves to do then the natural outcome would be job specialization. We cannot all love to do the same thing!
It's self evident, but we take it for granted that society needs different types of people to make it work. We need the Jay-Zs that can spit 18 bars off the tops of their domes. We need the Kanye Wests that can provide the beats for Jay to spit on. And of course we need the Damion Dashes that make sure those Rocafella CDs get to us.
But when you trace it all back to the source, it all starts with love. Love - love for money, love for success, love for making hit music, etc - brought Jay, Kanye and Dame together to push out hits. Love for listening to the hit music they created made us by their CDs.
People always go on and on about how commerce and business are all about being cold and heartless. I disagree. Yes you have to know how the world works and how to steer clear of sharks. But at the end of the day it's starts with love for something or somethings. Just ask Jay-Z.
From The Black Album, his seminal classic, which is also meant to be the last album of his rap career:
"It's my life - it's my pain and my struggle
The song that I sing to you it's my ev-ery-thing
Treat my first like my last, and my last like my first
And my thirst is the same as - when I came
It's my joy and my tears and the laughter it brings to me
It's my ev-ery-thing"
Song's titled "My 1st Song". It's the last song on his last album. A befitting end.
