I spent a good chunk of my life learning to be reasonable. In business, the mantra for any proposal was always: “Is it practical?” It seemed to me that reasonableness (and its sister practicality) were virtues. People who were unreasonable or impractical seemed to be exceptions—they came across as flaky, dangerous, occasionally lucky, unpredictable, disconnected, loose canons and, above all, they weren’t team players. When I turned 50, I came upon a quotation by George Bernard Shaw that hit me between the eyes and totally changed my approach to life and, in particular, my future.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him …. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself …. All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

It was always obvious to me that the key to anything is action and that action is mostly a function of commitment. Until I got this quotation, however, it never occurred to me that I could choose to commit to something that was either reasonable or unreasonable, either practical or impractical. Only committing to what is reasonable, practical or feasible means that, by definition, I am committing to more of the same. What is reasonable is a product of social convention and historical experience—it defines the proverbial ‘box’ and, moreover, any breakthrough I could think of, whether personal or collective, only happened when someone committed to something that was unreasonable.

There’s a long philosophical and historical reason for this kind of ‘reasonableness’ thinking. But at the end of the day it keeps us locked in a ‘control and predict’ frame of reference that blinds us to any other possibilities. Being reasonable traps us in a feedback loop: making our future life look reasonable (like our past) means we must keep trying to predict the future so we can control outcomes… so that we end up with more of what we have already had. An exercise in futility if ever there was…life goes on regardless of our efforts to control it.

I propose that anyone contemplating the future should start from the position of "If anything were possible" and then ask themselves the following questions:

• Since the future is up to each of us as a function of our commitments and actions, are my commitments going to define the circumstances in my life or is my reasonable interpretation of what is and isn’t possible going to determine my commitments?
• If I could BE any way I wished in the future, who would I BE?
• What would I have accomplished?
• What is my vision for the rest of my life?
• Is it possible to have the restof my life be richer, happier, healthier, more loving and more creative than any other period of my life?
• Can I be more valued and make a bigger contribution than I have ever imagined?

And so it goes. It is unreasonable perhaps, but I would rather live the rest of my life in an attempt to fulfill or manifest an unreasonable vision and fail, than spend the next 30 years maintaining and replaying the same reasonable, practical and self-limiting conversations that I have had in the past. These weren’t wrong at the time and they aren’t wrong now. Their rightness/wrongness isn’t the issue. The issue is who am I now and who will I be in the coming years.

© 2008 Jim Selman. All rights reserved.