Skate to where the puck will be

Sitting and listening to the featured speaker at J1's graduation, I was prepared to not learn anything of consequence, and didn't, really.
But, something she said did stick with me. This seasoned executive was reviewing her own experiences since grad school and found that most of what she went through in terms of career development specifically (and her life experiences generally) were not things she could have foreseen while in grad school. She tried to alert the newly minted Masters and Doctors that life from here on out will be mostly adaptation, and adapting to the unanticipated, at that.

You face forks in the road all the time, and have to pick one to move forward (that is, unless you're one of those people who doesn't mind pitching your tent at the crossroads and just hanging out there until some person or circumstance comes along and compels you to move). If you want to move forward, you choose an option and go, based on what you know at the time. Later, you may gain more insight and second-guess your choice, but usually you can't get a do-over. Your life direction has moved on, like it or not.

All this I knew, first-hand, from experience. But what she said that stuck with me was a paraphrase of hockey great Wayne Gretzky: the people who are most successful in life (and maybe most at ease with wherever they find themselves), are those who don't skate to where the puck IS. They skate to where it WILL be. They never feel like life has passed them by, because they've been watching it, anticipating what's next. You could use a football analogy just as well. Successful quarterback/wide receiver combos are ones where the QB throws the ball to where he knows the WR will be - they know each other well enough for the QB to throw, before the WR even makes his cut.

It's a great way of visualizing your career progress or your life direction. Of course you have to adapt and adjust to what else is going on around you, to what other people and organizations and cultures are doing, that's part of the game and part of the challenge. Where are you going? Where is the culture around you going? Where are the people you care about going? And will you be in a good place in relation to them 1, 3, 5, 10, 20 years out?

In Seminary right now, and in my recreational reading, I'm focusing on the emerging post-modern culture, the generations stacked up behind me which are coming on fast, and their implications for society and faith. Just because I will hit "retirement age" within the next decade doesn't mean I have to check out. Far from it. I need to be even more discerning because my reflexes will be slowing down, my ability to adapt will become less, and both cultural & technological change will be more difficult to absorb.

So if I am going to successfully and meaningfully connect with the culture around me, and make an impact on people for good... I need to put myself in a position to understand them when we reach that future state together. I need to skate to where the puck WILL be. (even if I don't skate quite as well, or get up as fast after falling as I used to. Hopefully I skate smarter and am not as dependent on speed or agility. The wisdom gained with age is supposed to have benefits!)

That's why I listen to contemporary music as well as other classic forms. It's why I learn the harmonies (2nds, 9ths, suspensions) that underlie current Christian music, so I can continue to be useful on worship team as musical tastes change. It's why, when I have a chance to do an independent study class on Colossians, it takes on a focus of the church and culture, or why an Ecclesiastes class becomes about the ancient author's uncanny ability to relate to today's disillusioned skeptics. And it's why authors like Donald Miller resonate with me, and why I read magazines like Relevant and Good, all so I can sense direction and head that way.

C'mon! Let's skate!