Clark's Blog

The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear.

There’s probably no other U2 line that I find myself thinking more than this one.  The song, I’ll go crazy if I don’t go crazy tonight comes from their album No Line on the Horizon.  It’s on my favorite playlist for listening to when I’m skiing.  And when I’m pounding powder on Tuesday morning instead of being in some office somewhere that line feels so appropriate.  There are some people who think it’s ridiculous that I’ve chosen to check-out of the American corporate grind.  But skiing is something I hold dear.

The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear.

I've always been a little ridiculous. Check out the braids in my high. I believe this photo was taken my sophomore year of high school.

I was thinking about that line again this past week when I read the book 20 Miles Per Cookie by Nancy Sathre-Vogel.  The book tells the story of the Vogel’s year-long, 9000 mile bike ride across the United States and Mexico with their twin 8-year-old boys.  I wrote a review on 20 Miles Per Cookie for Family Trek.  But as I read the story of the Vogel’s epic bike ride I thought (actually I even tweeted) that Bono, Nancy, and I have something in common.  The right to be ridiculous is something we hold dear.  I wonder if Nancy is a U2 fan?  I doubt it.  But maybe….  I always like someone more when I realize they share the same love of that little Irish rock band.

I was having a drink with someone a while back and told him about the Vogel’s epic bike ride.  He looked at me like, “that’s crazy” or “that’s ridiculous.”

It’s the same look I’ve gotten when I try to explain to people why I don’t just go get a job.  But having a job in the sense that we think about a job in modern America where employers value time over what you actually produce requires a trade-off that I’m not willing to make.  Just getting a job means that I have to trade something of infinite value (my time) for something of finite value (money).  I’ve written about this in the past and even have a YouTube video called What are you trading your life for?

Is that ridiculous?  Maybe it is, but that’s something I hold dear.

Money does buy freedom — to an extent.  And to the extent that money buys me freedom I want money.  But to the extent that money hinders my freedom, I don’t want it.

I’ll admit this has been a tough issue for me because I’m a pretty Type A personality.  For a lot of years my identity and measure of my self-worth was wrapped up in the success that I achieved in my career.  Having gone in a totally different direction with my life there’s been a lot of introspection.  Am I successful?

It’s not that I’m an underachiever.  It’s just that I’m trying to achieve something different in life.  I’m not willing to give the best years of my life to my career only to wake up at 65 and wonder what the hell happened to my life?  What happened to my sweet little kids?  What happened to the dreams of the epic life I had when I was young?

I’m on a quest to work less, live more, and travel the world with my family?

Ridiculous?  That’s something I hold dear.

This post is the fifth in a 52 week series through 2012 on meditations drawn from U2 lyrics.  To find out more read this intro to the series.  

Don’t miss a beat.

 To follow-along on the journey you can subscribe to my RSS feed.

I’d also love to connect with you on Facebook.

You can follow me on Twitter.  Send me a message and let me know if you started following me after reading this post.

Leave a comment on this blog or on my Facebook page if there are U2 lyrics that have resonated with you.