On the Holstee Manifesto

By now the Holstee Manifesto has been viewed over 800 million times and is one of the highest driving revenue products for the online clothing company, which first drafted the manifesto as part of it's founding mission statement. Just in case you haven't seen it yet, here it is: 

Before I go further, I'll note that I actually think their products are great. The clothing is made out of recycled material and I believe there is merit to ecologically conscious design.

But I can't say that I really jive with the manifesto itself, which I feel has all the buzzworthy hallmarks reminiscent of the last five minutes of an episode of Girls. Although there are parts of the manifesto I agree with, after reading the whole thing I feel as if I'm left with more questions than answers. The rest of this post serves as a working response to some of the ideas in the manifesto. 

This is your life. Do you what you love, and do it often.
I actually find this to be very vague. It's hard for me to define what I love. And even if I love doing it, being able to do it often assumes there aren't any other barriers (I also realize that the whole effect of the statement is to argue that such barriers can be easily taken down). I love to go out and drink. But I don't do it so often because in the long term I love the idea of being hard working and serving a good purpose. As such, the reality of how I base my decisions is often in acknowledgement to this relationship between long term and short term loves or this balance between living in the moment and planning for the future. The two don't have to be irreconcilable. There is a way, as my friend puts it, to plan to be happy in ten minutes and plan to be happier in ten years. 

Stop over analyzing, life is simple.
I'm conflicted about this. Is it really that simple? What about living the examined life? What I believe the Holstee boys are actually saying (and I don't disagree) is that we should champion actually taking action, which is often stymied by all the vexing questions we have about life: "What are we doing with ourselves?", "Why am I so unhappy?" Invariably such analysis ends up with something along the lines of "I don't have a definitive answer on these questions so I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing until I get those answers." Classic analysis paralysis. But that still doesn't mean life is simple. It just means that at some point we need to actually bust some moves instead of waiting around.

In response to reading my objections on the two points above, my good friend asked me if I was spending too much time thinking about this. I probably am. So what if these people say "Stop over analyzing, life is simple." Who cares? I don't have to buy their products. 

But I do think there is merit in writing down one's values and even your own manifesto if you want to call it that. In fact, going through the act of writing down something like the Holstee manifesto is probably important for one's personal growth. It's most likely better than buying something already hashed out. 

The Plow Mule and the Angel

Have I ever read anything by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of New York Times bestseller Eat, Pray, Love?

Not a chance.

And if I tell more people about the incredibly honest, thought-provoking interview she held with Rachel Khong at the Rumpus, none of my friends (read: bros) are ever going to invite me to a fantasy football league again so please keep this on the hush. 

Rumpus: I love your TED Talk about creativity. You talk about all the pressure creative people put on ourselves to be “geniuses,” and how that’s messed things up and given us an unrealistic amount of pressure, when in fact we should think of “genius” as a thing out of our control. Has that perspective made writing easier?

Gilbert: I’ve come to think of it as the plow mule and the angel. This is how I think of it: there’s a contract between you and the mystery. And the mystery is the thing that brings life to the work. But your part of the contract is that you have to be the plow mule, or the mystery won’t show up. It might not even show up if you do your work. There’s no guarantee. It doesn’t promise you anything, but I can promise you that if you don’t do your work, it won’t show up. That’s the only guarantee. It’s not going to wake you up in the middle of the night to be like, Hey I’ve got this golden gift for you! It doesn’t do it that way. It needs to see that you’re giving the full commitment.

It’s the idea that I will do my side of this bargain. As long as I am able, as long as I have agency over my body, I will do my part of this, even when I don’t want to, even when I don’t believe in it. It’s gonna be a long life, hopefully. And so it’s all right to embark on a project that doesn’t work, and it’s okay to abandon one. It’s okay to recognize that you took a wrong turn, and to begin anew. It’s okay to write a book that gets bad reviews. It’s okay to write a book that no one reads. The idea is just to focus on how you want to spend your life. My intention is to spend my entire life doing this, so any one piece of it isn’t that important when you think of it in the long scale. Then when you open up that scale even further and you think of the entire history of human collaboration with the arts—my little piece of it is really insignificant, and that takes the pressure off a lot, too. I’m just joining a history of people who do this work. I’ll do it for as long as I’m permitted. I’ll do it to the best of my ability. It may not be successful, it may not be lucrative, it may not be well-received, but I’m gonna give it everything that I have, and then I’m gonna die, and then other people will do this. And so it will go. And what a wonderful way to live your life! What a great company of saints to join. And a wonderful team to play on: the makers. It’s worth a lot of trouble to get to do that.

Thanks to Ian Alas for sending along the full interview.